(posted 7953 days ago)Telegraph
Friday 12 July 2002
Light at the end of the jam
(Filed: 12/07/2002)Stephen Robinson meets the man responsible for the capital's traffic
It was probably a mistake to mention to the taxi driver that I was running late for an appointment with Derek Turner, director of street management at Transport for London and the man who has his finger on the capital's 4,500 traffic lights.
As we sat stalled in the capital's permanent gridlock, the driver regaled me with tales of how motorists and cab riders are being cheated by Ken Livingstone's office.
By the time we reached Transport for London's headquarters, my ears were ringing and I had a firm invitation to join a forthcoming cab drivers' protest, a formation drive in north London where a new bus lane has made cabbies' lives a misery.
The charge sheet against those who are supposed to keep the capital's traffic moving is long and damning.
Seven months before the launch of the mayor's controversial road charging scheme, London streets are lined with cones as long-delayed road works are being hurried through with chaotic consequences for traffic.
A baffling new chicane in SW1 - more suitable for Silverstone than Pimlico - has just been completed, supposedly to ease the passage of buses but causing confused motorists to crash.
Traffic that once flowed freely from north London into the City has been snarled by a stop-start bus lane system which has served only to slow everything, including the buses. Sinister new posts are appearing on intersections where, from February, cameras will record the number of every vehicle entering the central charging zone.
South of the Thames, mothers and babies have been on Kennington's streets, protesting that the charging zone's southern boundary will slice through their community, cutting it in half and creating a noisy east-to-west rat run.
And then there are the traffic lights, a subject likely to send any London motorist into orbit. All over the capital, lights are being tampered with so that they stay red longer, causing infuriating back- ups.
Some changes are temporary and relate to the pedestrian scheme around Trafalgar Square but most are permanent and many more lights will be tweaked in the months ahead.
Average traffic speeds, which in 2001 dipped below 10mph for the first time, have fallen further this year. London is grinding to a virtual halt.
In most cities, the man responsible for traffic might see his role as making sure it actually flows but Mr Turner was anxious to put me right. His major concern, he claimed, is safety.
To justify rigging traffic lights against the motorist, he cites two fatalities in 1998 which were blamed by coroners on traffic lights giving inadequate time for pedestrians to cross. That apparently triggered a fundamental re- think of how long a Londoner should have to walk across the road once the green man flashes up.
Since then, Mr Turner's whole approach to traffic in London has been, as he puts it, "safety-based" and all traffic signals must conform to national standards.
He suggested that his hands were tied by central government diktat but the document his office subsequently provided on request was a simple "advice note" on how pedestrian crossings could be improved, with no obligation to proceed.
"If you get knocked over on a traffic signal, you would be distressed and try to get recompense," Mr Turner said. That might be so but what about the motorist and the importance of the traffic flow, the lifeblood of any heaving metropolis, as goods and people move around and make the city function?
What about mothers who will have to pay £5 to pick up their children from school and shopkeepers in north Kennington who are now separated by a road toll from their customers in the southern half of the district?
And why should "Red" Ken be presiding over a road tax system which offers no serious deterrent to a Bentley- driving investment banker but will cause terrible aggravation and cost to, say, a restaurant worker who heads home from central London long after public transport has stopped running?
Mr Turner is unmoved, reciting lists of statistics and noting nonchalantly that "very few Cs and Ds are driving into central London".
He means poor people but does not deny that it will be the low-paid who overwhelmingly will make up the predicted 10 to 15 per cent decline in road usage next year. Disconcertingly, he has the same flat, slightly nasal intonation of Livingstone as he lays out his gloomy vision of driving in London.
Mr Turner denies that he is philosophically opposed to private car usage - he owns a car and takes the bus to work - but Mr Turner's exposition of the case for taxing motorists reflects a dispiriting, government-knows-best mindset that permeates the Livingtone mayoralty.
He says an office worker driving from Kensington to Canary Wharf is guilty of an "inappropriate use of road space". He seems to think that he and the mayor own the capital's road network and that the motorist can only use it on their terms.
Road charging will fund a huge proliferation in the mayor's patronage. Already in the past 12 months, the number of staff employed by Transport for London has increased by nearly 50 per cent to more than 3,100. This will rise further when several hunded more are employed to man the call centres running the charging operation.
Mr Livingstone, who has complained that he has no real powers over key issues such as policing and the Tube, is making sure he at least has the trappings of a serious mayoralty.
In the meantime, Londoners face expensive and stress- inducing delays caused by traffic light changes based on the death of two pedestrians four years ago. Thus, as a matter of policy, traffic is being slowed.
If the £5 charge does reduce congestion by the 10 to 15 per cent claimed, traffic speeds might begin to increase again. And if that happens, Mr Taylor can be expected to step forward to announce bold new "safety-based" measures to slow it all down again
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.