The unusual site banners are to bring attention to the fact that Labour activists in Bexley are manipulating Facebook Groups with fictional posters. They deny it, threaten police action for ‘harassing’ a fictitious character and then demonstrate their willingness to impersonate by creating a false Administrator account in my name. The banner on display is chosen randomly from a selection of three, with a fourth bearing the familiar Bexley Council is Bonkers logo.
25 February (Part 1) - Chaos by design
I have given up on driving home via Albion Road and Church Road. First you have a roundabout that doesn’t allow anyone to maintain any lane discipline and then you get held up in a queue which prevents a right turn from Broadway into Church Road.
It
used to be possible to join an outside queue and turn right but since the
award winning redesign the carriageway is narrower than it was.
I am not alone in thinking that the problem could be easily solved by slicing a
couple of feet from the traffic island or maybe nudging it a little to the
north, but there is little possibility of common
sense being applied because residents are up against Andrew Bashford, its designer and
one of the men who inspired this website back in 2009 when he lied to me over
Abbey Road, Belvedere. He said that his width reductions conformed to the Transport Research
Laboratory’s recommendations unaware that those recommendations came from the
department where my own son was the Senior Consultant.
Now buses struggle to pass each other.
The crossing is rarely used, perhaps because it is right next to a traffic light
controlled crossing. Maybe Mr. Bashford hasn’t noticed.
Mr. Bashford says he has no plans to change the junction to relieve congestion,
he has no interest in anything that might take away the symmetry of Trinity
Place. It is designed to please the eye, nothing else.
Things can only get worse under Stage 3 of the Phase II regeneration. Albion Road is to
lose two of its four lanes.