Kilburn Park Road and Shirland Road: Bus vibrations improvement
Happy New Year from all three of us!
A piece of good news to start a year which will no doubt be full of challenges ...
Residents in Kilburn Park Road and Shirland Road have, for many years, expressed concerns about the volume of TfL buses using the roads. Although welcome from a public transport perspective, the sheer weight of buses was also believed to be significantly affecting the quality of the road surface and, as a knock-on effect, creating vibrations which were affecting the nearby houses.
We have tried for a number of years to discuss what could be done with Transport for London and Westminster's Transportation Department. We are pleased to report that, after further lobbying of TfL during the Autumn, they have agreed to reduce the number of buses by approximately 10% from January.
Although this is unlikely to resolve the vibration problem, it is a step in the right direction. We'll keep a close eye on what is happening and keep speaking to residents of both roads. Hopefully this change will show some improvement!
Lee
A piece of good news to start a year which will no doubt be full of challenges ...
Residents in Kilburn Park Road and Shirland Road have, for many years, expressed concerns about the volume of TfL buses using the roads. Although welcome from a public transport perspective, the sheer weight of buses was also believed to be significantly affecting the quality of the road surface and, as a knock-on effect, creating vibrations which were affecting the nearby houses.
We have tried for a number of years to discuss what could be done with Transport for London and Westminster's Transportation Department. We are pleased to report that, after further lobbying of TfL during the Autumn, they have agreed to reduce the number of buses by approximately 10% from January.
Although this is unlikely to resolve the vibration problem, it is a step in the right direction. We'll keep a close eye on what is happening and keep speaking to residents of both roads. Hopefully this change will show some improvement!
Lee
Labels: Kilburn Park Road, Shirland Road
posted by Lee Rowley at Sunday, January 09, 2011
5 Comments:
So bus users get a 10% reduction in services and the supposed vibration problem isn't solved? How does that benefit anyone at all?
Let's be honest here, the residents on these roads don't like the number of buses because they generate noise and they don't happen to use them, not because of "vibration".
I fail to see how a reduction in the number of buses on these roads is a "step in the right direction", unless the ultimate plan is to have no buses at all, providing peace and quiet to residents who don't use buses and making life extremely difficult to bus users (who are disproportionately young people, the elderly, poor people and ethnic minorities).
Well done Tories, another victory for yourselves at the cost of the rest of society.
Thanks for the comment.
I'm not sure I'm going to convince you on this, given you're pursuing the standard lazy "anti-Tory" arguments. But let's have a go anyway ...
* Bottom line: the sheer weight of buses is causing a problem for residents of these streets. Or, to put it another way, a part of "society" in Maida Vale is affected by a problem. Perish the thought that a Tory might try and assist that part of "society" ...
* The number of buses on this street has significantly increased over the last decade, meaning that a reduction would not have the armagaddeon consequences that you suggest
* Let's also be "honest": TfL's own figures show that the average number of passengers per bus is 16.5 (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/media/newscentre/metro/16499.aspx) on buses that were built for double or triple that figure. Do we just leave that, forever?
* Reducing buses from 24.5 per hour to 22.5 per hour will see an additional wait of about 15 seconds - is not everything in politics a balance between competing interests?
Hope that helps. Happy New Year.
Lee
Thanks for taking the time to respond, but I'm struggling to accept any of the points you've made.
By your own admission, the 10% reduction won't solve the "vibration problem", so what is this achieving other than reducing the quality of the bus service?
You say that it's a "step in the right direction", but you don't say what your goal is. How many buses would have to go in order for the problem to be solved? "A step in the right direction" implies that you wish to have even fewer buses, what are you actually aiming for? If it isn't feasible to remove enough buses to actually fix the problem, getting rid of a few is bad for bus users and good for no-one.
Of course, reducing the bus frequency in Maida Vale doesn't just affect bus users in Maida Vale, but in all parts of London that these buses go to, which means there is quite far-reaching impact.
As a bus user, the increase in the frequency of the buses has been noticed and appreciated; wait times are significantly lower and crowding has been eased. The number of buses has increased because the number of passengers has increased, your implication that reducing the number of buses to the levels seen a decade ago wouldn't have an impact is nonsense since there are more people using them now than there was then.
Quoting general bus usage statistics for the whole of London when talking about specific routes is pointless. Your 16.5 passengers per bus statistic covers all day and all night for every bus in London, including night buses in Zone 6. We're not talking about every bus in London, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that the routes in question are extremely popular and well-used.
Your last statistic appears to make the assumption that every bus on these routes is suitable for every user, which is completely ridiculous. If there was a bus suitable for everyone every 2.5 minutes, then yes, cutting the service by 10% would make absolutely no difference, but this clearly isn't the case. Shirland Road carries buses on three different routes and Kilburn Park Road carries buses on five routes. Only one of these uses both roads (the Number 6). So I can only assume that your 22.5 buses per hour statistic is split between 7 different routes, making the additional wait far longer than 15 seconds.
Thanks for your comment.
The point we are making is that the reduction may go some way towards mitigating the problems that have been experienced in the last few years. At its most basic, it will also assist in testing if that theory is correct. Isn't evidence-based policy a good thing?
You keep setting up a strawman that supporting a reduction in bus use also means that we support some kind of total removal. Fine, if you wish to do that but the slight problem is that we've never said such a thing.
Fundamentally, your position on this subject seems to be more = good, less = bad. If that is the case, I'm afraid I will respectfully have to disagree. Everything in public policy is a balance and the view of local residents is that this balance has tipped too far in one direction. It isn't the most unreasonable position in the world for local residents (and their councillors) to make such representations and to welcome a minor reduction in service (which, presumably, TfL has only put in place after careful consideration of any effect on the travelling public).
Regards,
Lee
I live on this road, and anything to improve the vibrations is welcomed by me. I often feel my house shake so much I am convivced there are structural issues due to so many years of this. It wasnt as bad when we had the single decker 328 and 31 buses. I know the reason this road is so bad because of heavy bombing during the war, and the fact it is built on a river, so maybe rather than reducing buses they should redirect some of them to a road that may not have these issues.
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