| Topic: | Re:Re:Onesie arrogance and incompetence | |
| Posted by: | Mark Evans | |
| Date/Time: | 27/06/22 08:26:00 |
| I travelled along Acton Lane South Parade this morning and, although early, things do seem to be returning to some sort of normality. The main queue was eastbound at the lights by Bedford Corner although admittedly this was quite early. Hopefully the massive problems last week won't be replicated. They may have been particularly bad because the Bath Road/South Parade/Acton Lane corridor became the main way for people employed at the Chiswick Business Park to get to work if they were approaching from the east. We tend to forget that the working population of this office development is around the same size as the working population of Chiswick residents and, unusually for a workplace in London, it has ample parking for staff. This means that a disproportionate number of people working there will drive to work. The normal route that people would take to get there would not be South Parade, Acton Lane but turning down Goldhawk Road to get to Chiswick High Road. This however, became totally blocked due to the cycleway works and Hounslow Highways were directing traffic to carry on along Bath Road to join the queues on South Parade. With the train strikes a lot of business park staff will have worked from home but others will have switched to using their cars and most of them will have been coming along South Parade. This could have added several hundred cars to traffic in the area taking the roads beyond the capacity they could cope with. Last week opening Fishers Lane would have allowed these cars to circumvent the queue and rejoin CHR which was flowing reasonably well because it was being throttled at the Goldhawk Road junction. Obviously this would have resulted in queues on Fishers Lane but it would have improved the flow to Acton Lane and stopped the tailbacks reaching Bedford Corner. Doing this would have benefitted cyclists because Acton Lane/South Parade is a valuable east-west route for many and cutting across the common is a less than ideal alternative. The question for this week is will the number of business park staff who normally drove but worked from home last week be outweighed by the number who normally take public transport but drove to work during the strike. If they do then the end of the train strike won't result in the end of problems in this area. Things didn't seem too bad earlier today so perhaps there is reason to be hopeful and, looking at Google Maps, South Parade seems to be busy but with traffic moving. It'll be interesting to hear from people on the ground but, while Fishers Lane should have been opened last week, it probably isn't worth doing it now. |