Monday, January 15, 2007

Congestion

I've never liked buses. Even in London, I never liked buses. It's such a tiresome and ridiculously frustrating mode of transport. A few years ago, the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, had the genius idea of introducing the congestion charge - which was a charge created to supposedly ease congestion in Central London. If you wanted to drive into the city, you had to pay five pounds a day (about ten bucks). I could have solved London's congestion problems overnight. I'd abolish buses. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. All they do is hold everybody else up because they can't get out of the way.

The same is true in Manhattan. I have two buses that run local to me. One goes downtown and one goes cross town. The downtown bus stops every two blocks - EVERY TWO BLOCKS! The cross town one is even worse. Every block. That's insanity!

Now I'm not suggesting you abolish buses in Manhattan. There are people who need to use them. But come on now - let's be sensible about it. On every block there is a stop and on every block there is a set of stop lights. How do you expect to get anywhere without aging considerably?

Personally, I think for downtown buses, there should be a stop every five blocks and for the wider cross town blocks, say a stop every three blocks. It would ease congestion considerably and you can't honestly tell me, that people are going to be up in arms about having to walk, at the very most, two and half blocks to get to a bus stop.

2 Comments:

Blogger MWT said...

Allow me to be your very first non-spam comment. :) Your writing is great fun to read, and you should write here more often!

Glad to hear you're settling in well in New York.

11:40 PM  
Blogger An Englishman in New York said...

Thanks. I appreciate the non-spam. I will definitely try and write more here.

8:34 PM  

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