Major road works at the Bow Roundabout continue. They might even be halfway through, depending on when you think the start and finish dates are.
The biggest change since last month is that the new sliproad underneath the flyover is nearing completion. This'll carry westbound traffic from the contraflow lane on Stratford High Street, and it now exists and is fully kerbed. It also ends at a completely new set of traffic lights, already with tactile paving, where a new junction is being added just before the roundabout. That's because two existing lanes of westbound traffic need to merge with one lane of contraflow so will take turns to enter a new holding zone, three lanes wide. That third lane is coming along nicely too and is now fully tarmacked.
What I still don't understand is how all this is continuing to cause four months of traffic chaos. Almost all the roadworks are on just one arm of the roundabout, on the Stratford side, where most of the worksite has been contained within an untrafficked area beneath the flyover. It makes sense that one lane has been coned off on all sides. But the only other worksite is a small strip on the Bow side of the roundabout, which quite frankly could have been finished weeks ago whereas instead I hardly ever see anyone there.
All this has somehow validated narrowing all four access roads from two lanes to one, causing massive tailbacks, even though no work whatsoever is taking place on the A12 sliproads. Occasionally at weekends they remove the cones from the Bow Road slip road and traffic flows freely but then they put the cones back and the queues begin again. I guess they can't overwhelm the roundabout if a fraction of it has been narrowed but it does feel like overkill, much of which could have been avoided with a more proactive traffic management plan.
I also get the impression every time I go past that not enough workers are on site, thus prolonging the works and condemning local drivers and bus passengers to four months of unnecessary misery. Combine slow work with excessive coning-off and it does seem like all this has been planned to suit the contractors rather than the rest of us, and still we queue.
