Four months of major roadworks were supposed to begin at the Bow Roundabout on Monday 30th September. This did not happen. But they are now underway and - spoilers - it's bad news for local road users.
Monday 7th October
The roadworks begin... although all the workmen have done so far is seal off the link road under the eastern end of the flyover, inconveniencing almost nobody. Traffic continues to flow freely.
Tuesday 8th October
Ah, here we go, the cones are out. One lane has been coned off at each of the four entrances to the roundabout and hey presto, queues are building up. The queue on Bow Road stretches almost as far as the DLR station, which is bad. They've also switched off the existing traffic lights, perhaps forever, and switched on the temporary traffic lights they installed last week. There are even temporary cycle lights, temporarily replacing the UK's first low-level cycle lights installed here 10 yearsago.
Intriguingly the temporary traffic lights are running to exactly the same timings as the usual traffic lights. However only half as much traffic can now get onto the roundabout which means multiple vehicles are backing up along the various sliproads. For example on Bow Road well over a dozen vehicles would normally have entered the roundabout during the 12 seconds the lights were green. Now only about 7 vehicles are getting through, and if a bus or massive lorry is in the queue then sometimes it's only 4 or 5. Negotiating the cones isn't helping. There's a lot more honking than there used to be.
However as a pedestrian this is all unexpectedly brilliant. Previously each of the six pedestrian crossings crossed two lanes of traffic but now they only cross one, making it much easier to nip across in a gap when the lights are red. There are also more gaps because traffic is slower and more sparse, so basically it's jaywalker heaven. But for drivers it's not great, and what's more as yet none of this is necessary because no 'proper' roadworks have begun which would require the closure of a lane of traffic.
Wednesday 9th October
Drilling has occurred! Unfortunately it's only occurred on the link road under the flyover so the cones on the roundabout are still entirely superfluous.
The end of the westbound contraflow lane has been coned off, in part so it can be used to park contractors' vehicles but mainly because it's now permanently closed. Traffic entering the contraflow lane at Marshgate Lane is being warned 'Road Closed Ahead' but several vehicles either aren't seeing it or aren't believing it and are gettting caught out. I watched three cars attempt to do a U-turn rather than turn up Cooks Road and go round again, and I hope drivers catch on soon.
In particularly stupid news, westbound buses on Stratford High Street are joining the queue to go round the Bow Roundabout rather than whizzing over the Bow Flyover. This is stupid because there are no longer any bus stops along this section now that the Bow Flyover bus stop has been temporarily closed, so buses might as well go over the flyover. To be fair I only saw buses on routes 25 and 425 in the stupid queue, whereas a driver on route D8 whizzed sensibly over the flyover. Maybe the managers at their bus garage are more astute.
Thursday 10th October
Proper drilling has occurred! It's along the inside kerb of Stratford High Street, just before it reaches the roundabout. I believe this is destined to become an extra lane of traffic so it's a good place to start. It means there is now a reason for one lane of traffic to have been coned off.
However as yet there's no reason for one lane to have been coned off on any of the other three slip roads, and the ensuing traffic queues are still not good. Northbound off the A12 they sometimes stretch back, eek, to Tesco. But Bow Road and Stratford High Street have it worse, this likely as a direct result of 25% of their 'green' time being cyclists only. And Bow Road has it worst of all, I'd say, because the road narrows near Bus Stop M so traffic aiming for the flyover can't always squeeze past.
Friday 10th October
Now that things have bedded in I thought I'd try riding buses past the Bow roundabout to find out how much they've been slowed down. I did this at 10am after the morning rush had died down because I'm not a masochist. First I hopped on a 25 at Bow Church DLR heading east to Stratford. We joined the queue just before Bus Stop M but ultimately it wasn't too dreadful. After five minutes we were through the roundabout and after just 13 minutes we pulled up outside Stratford station. The 25's new temporary timetable allows 26 minutes to get from Bow Church to Stratford but we did it in half that. This suggests that the temporary timetable is ludicrously pessimistic, at least at this time of day.
And then I caught a bus back again which proved most odd. All the westbound buses on route 25 were showing 'Bow Church' as their destination, which was odd because normally they go a lot further. Oddly the display inside the bus said 'City Thameslink Holborn Viaduct' instead, and that was additionally odd because the current western terminus is St Paul's. Things seemed less odd as we trundled dutifully towards the clogged-up roundabout... but this time, hurrah, we dodged it by crossing the flyover instead. Someone's plainly told all the drivers heading west to use the flyover, not just on route 25 but on all the bus routes, and this means avoiding all the queues and all the congestion entirely. Plus there's a great view up there.
I'd made this journey from Stratford to Bow Church before the roadworks to get a sense of how long it normally took, and it normally took about 12 minutes. But today it took nine minutes, such are the benefits of closing a bus stop and skipping over the flyover... a much faster bus service. And yet the 25's new temporary timetable allows 29 minutes to get from Stratford to Bow Church, a full 20 minutes longer, suggesting that the westbound temporary timetable is even more ludicrously pessimistic. Even at 6am the temporary timetabler has allocated 21 minutes to get from Stratford to Bow Church, a preposterous number, and this suggests someone ought to rewrite this timetable because it's ballsing up the buses.
So messed up are the schedules that buses really are terminating at Bow Church, then either hanging around or turfing everybody off. My bus duly pulled up outside the DLR station and terminated, at which point a Stagecoach operative dashed up the stairs to tell us all to 'jump on the bus in front please". I did as asked, entering the (rather crowded) bus in front through the middle doors like a criminal. Ridiculously the bus I had been on was despatched just three minutes later, now with 'St Paul's' on the front blind and with just one passenger on board. What's happening here is a customer herding charade, and all because a few men are drilling one kerb near a roundabout.
Perhaps don't catch a bus near the Bow Roundabout any time soon, unless it's one of the temporarily faster buses in which case absolutely do.
