London mayor Sadiq Khan has announced measures aimed at tackling growing congestion on London’s roads, including doubling bus priority schemes.
The mayor’s office said Transport for London (TfL) will ‘take immediate steps using new and improved strategic management, technology and communication to tackle the problem of congestion in London head-on’.
You wait ages for a London bus and then...
The measures include better communication directly with road users and better collaboration to reduce disruption from roadworks.
Mr Khan has also set out measures to increase the reliability of bus services, including investing £50m in bus priority schemes, doubling the bus priority programme to 150 schemes, with traffic signals linked to on-bus GPS to prioritise buses that are behind schedule.
The mayor’s office said reversing the congestion that has caused bus passenger numbers to fall over the last few years is a key priority for him.
Mr Khan said: ‘We need to be much smarter in how we use our roads and tackle the causes of congestion head-on.
‘It’s now crucial that these changes are implemented alongside our longer-term plans to make cycling and walking more appealing. Ultimately, while today’s plan sets out some important practical steps, we can only tackle congestion in the long term by making public transport more affordable, and making cycling and walking more appealing choices for all Londoners.’
Specific measures to tackle congestion include:
- Reducing the time taken to clear up unplanned incidents by using new data sources including social media and crowd-sourced traffic apps to identify incidents sooner
- Ensuring that the infrastructure that supports the road network, including traffic signals and road surfaces, are reliable, faults are minimised and repairs are carried out faster.
- Communicating better with road users to allow people to make more effective decisions about their journeys based on the most accurate and up-to-date information.
- Collaborating more efficiently with local authorities, utility companies and developers to reduce the impact of planned road works.
The Government will also be lobbied for greater powers to manage road works including increasing the scope of fixed penalty notices and legislating around the use of cranes and hoardings that impact on the road network.
The mayor’s office said there would also be more long-term strategic approaches, which are being developed as part of the mayor’s Transport Strategy, due to be published in Spring 2017.
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