At the end of February, you may remember, TfL contractors descended on Bow Road and downgraded its speed limit from 30mph to 20mph. This involved replacing all the 30 signs with 20s and painting a lot of 20s on the road. They also painted them really badly, including this 20 followed by a 30 at the only exit from Kitcat Terrace.
What's really stupid, I said, is that all these boundary 20 signs aren't actually needed. All the roads leading off Bow Road already have a 20mph speed limit so what TfL were really doing was creating a giant all-20 zone with no boundary at all. Not so fast, you said, these boundary signs are in fact legally necessary. A 20 limit and a 20 zone are different things with different features so you do absolutely have to be told when you're passing from one to the other. Bow Road has a 20 limit but Kitcat Terrace is in a 20 zone, despite being a cul-de-sac, hence the splurge of 20 signs in both directions.
Then last week the contractors came back with their sanding machine and erased the rogue 30 from the street. Now it just says 20 on the way out and 20 on the way in, one referencing the 20 limit ahead and the other the 20 zone behind. But one 20's on tarmac and one 20's further back disfiguring the cobbles because there wasn't any space on the tarmac when the painters came round. They couldn't scrape and shift the 20 from the cobbles because they're historic, so now we're left with this suboptimal layout and unnecessary white paint disfiguring heritage assets. And all because the idiots sent the painters round before the sanders, not the other way round.
In the grand scheme of things this is nothing important, but the country is littered with little things that weren't important and what a mess they've made.
