| Topic: | Re:ReHammersmith Bridge The real world | |
| Posted by: | Tom Pike | |
| Date/Time: | 26/09/24 15:59:00 |
| Adrian, although it's only one bus, your observations are consistent with TfL's data. TfL stated that most passengers, averaging 20 per bus, crossing the bridge were heading to the tube. That's in line with what you saw. As for the extra time taken to walk over rather than stay on the bus, it's probably nearer 10 mins - 20 minutes is generous in getting from Lonsdale Road to the tube station, and the traffic on the gyratory is bad at peak times when most passengers are travelling. If it's raining, most people taking public transport can expect to get a little wet, getting to or from the bus stop or station either end of their journey. Certainly, walking over the bridge is a far more pleasant experience without 22,000 vehicles a day were thundering over a creaking bridge feet away. I'm not sure spending £250m to help us through some rainy days will make it to the top of the government's current priorities. Indeed, if the prospect of an occasional wet walk over the bridge was regarded as a significant obstacle, we'd have seen passenger numbers at Hammersmith tube fall significantly immediately after the bridge closure as a good proportion of the station users come from south of the river. In fact passenger numbers stayed flat. That's consistent with LBHF counts of more than 12,000 pedestrians and nearly 4000 cyclists crossing the bridge after the closure, compared to 3000 and 1000 before the closure. The difference equates to 600 bus loads of 20 people each. By far the greatest disruption was when the bridge was completely closed. That's still somewhat less than the over 800 buses crossing the bridge before the closure, but passenger numbers at both of Barnes stations ticked up after the closure, making up some of the difference. What's left will be to some extent distributed on other public transport routes, but will be difficult to discern with any confidence. There's certainly little evidence that the bridge closure has led to more people driving, quite the opposite, with traffic numbers slightly down in the area compared to London as a whole. Pollution is down as well, especially in Barnes. There's no dispute about the bus numbers: My London just screwed up. The number they use, 1,800, comes not from TfL as they claim but from the LBHF timeline below where it refers to the number of buses before the limits on crossing the bridge were introduced. The "16,000 pedestrians" also comes from the same LBHF timeline but is in fact the count of pedestrians and cyclists after the closure. You're simply clinging to shoddy journalism from My London, not any valid number from TfL. https://www.lbhf.gov.uk/transport-and-roads/hammersmith-bridge/hammersmith-bridge-timeline |