The big change happened at 8pm on Sunday evening as the last buses barrelled through, barriers emerged and traffic ceased. Ian Visits was there for a final ride, Darryl was watching when the road was sealed off and London Centric took photos all through the night as transformation continued apace. You should be able to access at least one of those.
I waited until Monday morning for a good look around, also to enjoy the new sense of freedom, also to ride on some buses. Unfortunately it was raining throughout, bringing a less than celebratory vibe to all the intended publicity and good feeling. But hundreds of people had come out for a look, hundreds more were here to go shopping anyway and hundreds more were discovering how their journeys would now have to change. [14 photos]
First things first, this is very much work in progress. The Mayor can't introduce everything overnight, particularly when a lot of it needs to be painted, unpainted or bolted in. The intention is to watch how things develop over the next few months before a more permanent settled state is reached in a year's time. But they were able to add temporary bollards, hang additional signs and remove unwanted bus stops, so they did, also coned off sidestreets, covered over defunct traffic lights and stuck down a whopping green carpet with photo opportunities in mind. A queue of people were waiting to stand in the sweet spot to grab either a selfie or a longshot, and had it been drier I might not have had the patience to wait for mine.
Monday morning's main work task seemed to be to replace the plastic barriers laid out hastily overnight. Several fluorescent-jacketed crews were out installing what looked like giant green shark's teeth, each carefully branded with the Oxford Street logo. These all have to be spaced out carefully so cars and motorbikes can't get through but pedestrians and wheelchairs can, not just to deter ordinary traffic but also as hostile vehicle mitigation. Every entrance to the newly pedestrianised space is getting toothed, bollarded or combed, the net effect of which is that it's not quite so appealing an accessible space as it would otherwise have been.
One casualty is the famous X-shaped crossing at Oxford Circus. Formerly you could cross in all directions, but now there's no need so it's morphed into a single east-west rush. The classic X was introduced in November 2009 so lasted 17 years, if you were planning to write its obituary. I whipped out my stopwatch because I wondered if they'd changed the phasing but no, the Oxford Circus lights still cycle every 1 minute 35 seconds. What's more pedestrians still get exactly the same amount of time to cross with the countdown timer ticking down from '20'. The big beneficiaries here are thus northbound and southbound traffic who are now getting much longer to flow through the junction, and maybe that'll change after all the defunct signals have been removed but for now it's no victory for the pedestrian.
There are four other places where traffic cuts across the pedestrianised stripe - at Duke Street, Davies Street, New Bond Street and Holles Street. This is fewer crossings than before but still an intrusion, not least because they too are growing teeth. And inbetween, where traffic has been evacuated, were pedestrians yet walking in the street? Not yet, most of them were still happily walking on the pavement, but expect that to change as familiarity grows and further changes take place.
I think what most stood out was suddenly seeing signs at each end of the street saying PEDESTRIAN ZONE with a red 'No vehicles' sign underneath. We don't see these empty red circles very often and I wonder how many people know precisely what they mean. I checked the Highway Code and the official meaning is "No vehicles except pedal cycles being pushed by hand" so yes, you are supposed to get off your bike and walk. Obviously some cyclists won't and yesterday a few didn't, although a heavy official presence meant they didn't get very far before being approached.
I saw a lot of moaning online yesterday about bloody cyclists terrorising pedestrians on Oxford Street, almost all of it suppositional or based on a single example, drawing angry conclusions as blinkered grousers are prone to do. The reality, if you can be arsed to climb off your angry soapbox, is that it's barely an issue at all, as you'd know if you'd actually been there rather than amplifying hate from a distance.
Another overnight change was that all the Legible London vertical pillars had been covered over with new maps. They'd used thick board rather than stickers because it's more durable, but also much cheaper than ripping everything out and making new ones. The typeface used isn't the usual TfL one, it's the one branding company Koto have devised for everything to do with the updated Oxford Street and still feels unfamiliar. The pillars also include a local bus map, but alas that's a total TfL balls-up as I'll explain later, indeed it's probably time to start talking about some of the buschanges.
Four bus stops down Oxford Street will never see another bus, and all their flags were swiftly removed overnight. The remaining shelters join at least half a dozen others left over from previous bus stop rationalisations, all merrily scrolling electronic adverts and making TfL a nice wodge of cash. According to planning notices attached to lampposts, the intention is to retain the "internally illuminated sequential advertisement display capable of displaying static and dynamic content with automatic rotation of images" when a shelter is removed.
Also if you check government tenders you'll see the Mayor intends to introduce a heck of a lot more adverts going forward, all under the umbrella of 'Oxford Street Opportunity Advertising'. This is "expected to form a significant revenue stream within the Oxford Street pedestrianisation programme. To maximise both the commercial returns and the placemaking outcomes, the advertising opportunity will be considered as an integral component of the urban realm design rather than a subsequent overlay." They may be taking away the traffic but they intend to add a lot more commercial distraction, alas.
Four new bus stops have been added, all virgin and new, but 200m further north on Wigmore Street and Henrietta Place. They don't all have shelters, which on a day like yesterday was a serious mis-step. They also don't all have timetables, but it's a start. The really important thing is how to find the new bus stops if you've been shopping on Oxford Street, given there are umpteen sideroads you might choose to walk up. To solve this TfL have done one excellent thing which is to create big red boards with arrows and attach them to street furniture along the road. You have to know which bus you want but they are accurate and they do work... which is more than can be said for the maps.
On Day 1 each defunct bus stop had a pink-jacketed ambassador ready with advice and also a pad of tear-off colour maps to dish out. Giving out paper maps on a day it's pissing down with rain isn't exactly ideal, but you can't plan for that. One side of the sheet has a local street map, perfectly decent, but with no bus stops marked. The other side is called "Where to catch your bus" and has all the local bus stops, all 21 of them, even though several of them are irrelevant. The route list underneath only includes buses that used to travel down the pedestrianised section, not 20 other routes you might want to catch which stop nearby. But the utterly incompetent thing is that the list of bus stops is missing all the new stops and only mentions the old.
According to the map route 139 to Golders Green only stops at stop RC on Regent Street, whereas it also now stops at RE, HB. and WB. According to the map route 390 to Victoria only stops at O and OP either side of the interruption, whereas it also now stops at BA, WA and CA. In total five routes have three of their stops missing, so if you used the map and believed it you could end up walking half a mile out of your way rather than heading to a stop just round the corner. It's a balls-up anyone competent could have spotted if they'd proofread the map properly. Instead it's been printed out thousands of times as a handout, also slapped up on Legible London signs everywhere, also it's been on the BBC news website for a week so presumably nobody noticed there either.
As for the newly diverted bus routes, TfL's Commissioner went on the lunchtime news yesterday and assured Londoners there'd be "no material change to journey time". I've given it a try and I beg to differ. I made eight journeys a couple of weeks ago to establish a baseline, you may remember, and decided it took 7-8 minutes to travel down Oxford Street. Yesterday I went out again, between the same endpoints, and rode the 98 west and the 390 east.
98
west
M&S → Marble Arch
THEN
10m 10s
(8 red lights)
98
west
M&S → Marble Arch
NOW
14m 10s
(10 red lights)
390
east
Marble Arch → M&S
THEN
7m 40s
(5 red lights)
390
east
Marble Arch → M&S
NOW
21m 00s
(18 red lights!)
The 98 took four minutes longer, or seven minutes longer if you compare it to the previous average. The 98 saved time by not having to go through the Oxford Circus junction, but wasted far more time while deviating north round Henrietta Place and Wigmore Street. And that was the quicker journey.
The 390 was a nightmare trip taking 14 minutes more than previously, or if you prefer THREE TIMES LONGER. We reached Wigmore Street fairly quickly then progressed very slowly east in a jam that couldn't quite get through the next set of traffic lights before they changed, These signals have a lengthy cycle so each delay really added up, especially those that took two attempts to pass through and one that took three. Great Portland Street was a particular pinchpoint, a most frustrating finale trying to turn the corner back into Oxford Street. And I was only going a few stops, so imagine the crushing effect on anyone trying to ride route 390 from Victoria to Euston, because in central London taking the bus can be a disastrous choice.
It could just have been a day 1 snarl-up, alternatively this was the start of half term so traffic was likely lighter than usual. You can't draw too many conclusions from only two journeys so I will come back in November and do this properly, several times, once things have bedded in. At present though, all the signs are that "no material change to journey time" is bolx.
For the vast majority of pedestrians and shoppers though, come on, this is great. Sorry to the taxis and sorry to those with accessibility needs and sorry to all the bus passengers who've just been sent all around the houses, but one day we'll wonder why it took so long to turn the nation's shopping street into somewhere you can simply walk along. [14 photos]
Every time the end of October comes round I realise that several attractions are about to close until next Spring, so if I want to visit I need to go now. This is great for me but bad for you as I end up blogging about somewhere you can no longer go. I've done this before with Camber Castle, the Chiltern Open Air Museum and 575 Wandsworth Road, so apologies but I'm doing it again. Harmondsworth Great Barn only opens on the second and fourth Sundays of the month from April to October, so I went yesterday but you won't be able to visit until 2027, sorry. Stick April 11th in your calendar now.
ENGLISH HERITAGE:Harmondsworth Great Barn Location: Manor Court, Harmondsworth UB7 0AQ [map] Open: 11am-4pm (2nd & 4th Sundays) (April-October) Admission: free (donation welcomed) Website:english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/harmondsworth-barn Four word summary: The cathedral of Middlesex Time to allow: up to an hour
What's extraordinary about Harmondsworth Great Barn isn't just how big it is - the largest timber-framed building in England - but also that it's still here. When the barn was built in 1426 these were open fields in the Colne Valley but it now finds itself half a mile from the M25, quarter of a mile from the M4 and, if Heathrow's expansion ever gets the go-ahead, 150 yards from the new Third Runway. It was built at the behest of the Bishop of Winchester to store sheaves of wheat and barley from local farms before threshing, ultimately to help fund Winchester College. And it's massive, a full 58 metres long with an exhilarating interior that once led Sir John Betjeman to describe it as the cathedral of Middlesex.
We know it was planned in 1425 because documents confirm two men called John att Oke and William Kyppyng travelled to Kingston to inspect trees before replacing the previous barn on the site. We know the oaks were cut down in spring 1426 because when they dated the timbers, that was that outer ring of growth. We know the work was complete by September 1427 because the tilers were paid a bonus for completing the roof so quickly. And we know it's 600 years old because a slew of events have been arranged to celebrate the sexcentenary including an architectural conference, a Birds of Prey Day and a visit by Gardeners' Question Time.
You'll find the Great Barn in the centre of the village of Harmondsworth, up a short dead end where the Manor used to be. Hop off the bus at the top of the High Street and aim for the village green, all part of the conservation area that's due to be ultra-marginally retained should the Airport's expansion plans prove successful. Keep both pubs to the left, perhaps wondering how they'd both stay in business should bulldozers eliminate their clientele. Admire St Mary's church, parts of which are very early Norman and whose front railings are currently festooned with 40 plastic poppies, twice as many as bedeck the green. And if you've come on the right day the gate at the end of the drive will be unlocked and you can come in.
The barn complex is a bit weird because when the old farm and its outbuildings were sold off in 1978 (sale price £67,000) the purchaser decided to create a mini trading estate on the site. Businesses formerly trading here include Ballast PLC and a herbal importer, their buildings boarded up and partially scaffolded, while a luxury car hire company continues to park up their sleek black Heathrow-bound minibuses opposite. And there beyond the car park is a very very long tiled barn, sleek but in a different way, hopefully with all three of its barn doors wide open. If so then volunteers will be waiting to welcome you at a trestle table, dishing out a brief information sheet (and also maybe a Quality Street if you're young enough).
"People normally say wow at this point," said the volunteer in charge of welcoming me, and she wasn't wrong. The barn is twelve bays long, 11½m wide and also 11½m high. It only becomes more incredible when you realise all the beams and timbers have been here since the days of Henry VI, all supported by foot-thick aisle posts standing on squared blocks of Reigate stone. We know from the original paperwork that the carpenters used 250 spykenalls, 350 fyfestrokenaylls and six woodcobbleeze to secure the main structure, also from modern counting that they needed 2800 nails to attach the outer boards and 40,000 tacks to fix the tiles. Each truss was numbered before being raised into position and you can still see four scratches on the fourth one along, or you can should a volunteer point it out which they probably will because they clearly love this place.
The Friends of Harmondsworth Barn were formed in 2005 after local MP John McDonnell convened a meeting to try to help save the building. English Heritage eventually took on both ownership and upkeep but the Friends do the day to day work, turning up to open the doors, organising the events and curating the interior. They have 24 bays to fill and each gets its own theme, so one has old maps, one has archaic agricultural tools and one's devoted to owls (because they have one in the roof called Ollie). Elsewhere you can listen in on eyewitness conversations, admire old tools, watch a short video, buy souvenir 600th birthday mugs or learn the name of today's horse, depending. One corner has a kettle, but I think that's just for the volunteers rather than general refreshments. Also fire extinguishers are prevalent, as might be expected, indeed the southern end of the barn burned partially in 1972 so the tiles and oak panels here are not the originals.
Last time I visited in 2014 the barn was packed full of scaffolding as part of English Heritage's full-on £½m restoration project. It looks so much better now, a testament both to them and to the medieval carpenters who built this place to last. It is an extraordinary survivor, and perhaps underappreciated by the wider population, hemmed in as it is in a dead end village on the edge of Hillingdon. Not all the amazing buildings in London are in the middle, some are right on the periphery... and opening up again after Easter, sorry.
The clocks go back today, the last Sunday in October.
25th October is the earliest possible date the clocks can go back, ushering in darker evenings at the earliest opportunity.
When did the clocks go back?
before 1916: they didn't 1916-1924: various dates in late Sept/early Oct 1925-1938: the day after the first Saturday in October 1939-1947: it's complicated (thanks to Double Summer Time) 1948-1949: the day after the last Saturday in October 1950-1952: the day after the third Saturday in October 1953-1960: the day after the first Saturday in October 1961-1967: the day after the third Saturday in October 1968-1970: they didn't (thanks to permanent Summer Time) 1971-today: the last Sunday in October
It's been 2am ever since 1916.
2am on Sunday was chosen because it was the quietest time of the week, after trains had stopped running but before shift workers and churchgoers set out.
This means there are two half-past ones, indeed an entire hour repeats.
It means you could have two twins, the elder born at 1.55 and the younger at 1.05.
It also means October is the longest month of the year, one hour longer than January, May, July, August and December (and two hours longer than March).
» For much more about British Summer Time see Wikipedia
Why do the clocks go back?
Essentially they go forward to provide more evening daylight from April to October, then flip back to ensure winter mornings aren't too dark.
The initial trigger in 1916 was to support the war effort by increasing daylight during the working day and reducing energy consumption for lighting.
In the UK the man with the original idea was Chislehurst builder William Willett.
There are always either 21 or 22 weeks of Greenwich Mean Time before the clocks go forward again.
This year it's 22, sorry.
There are 22 weeks of GMT most of the time (17 years out of every 28, i.e. 61% of the time)
It's 21 next year, hurrah.
Clocks go back two months before the winter solstice but go forward three months afterwards.
This means they go back when sunset is around 5pm GMT, but don't go forward until sunset is around 6pm GMT.
This is neither balanced nor ideal.
If things were better balanced we'd put our clocks forward at the end of February rather than the end of March.
This would avoid a slew of March evenings that are darker than they need to be.
I understand the reason for the imbalance is that October evenings are mild (so it's still worth going out), whereas March evenings are cool (so there's less incentive to head outdoors), but I suspect farming comes into it somewhere too.
They go back today all across the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Also across the EU (including Ireland and Portugal, whose Summer Time is the same as ours).
Also in many other European countries (including Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Balkans and the Baltics).
Also Israel and Lebanon (Palestine switched last night and Egypt jumps back on Thursday).
Meanwhile the USA, the eastern half of Canada and most of the Caribbean go back next weekend.
Their clocks always go back one week after us (whereas their clocks go forward two or three weeks before us).
All of Asia (except Israel, Palestine and Lebanon).
All of Africa (except Egypt).
Equatorial countries (because Daylight Saving isn't useful where sunset times don't vary much).
Also the whole of the southern hemisphere (except New Zealand, southeast Australia and northern Chile).
What happens when the clocks go back?
Essentially the time of sunset suddenly jumps an hour earlier. People hate that.
It's only been a week since the last day London had a sunset after 6pm.
Now suddenly sunset is before 5pm, and it all feels terribly premature.
But make the most of tonight's 4.45pm sunset.
It may feel miserable but it'll be 31st January before we get a sunset later than that.
Sunrises work completely differently.
This morning's sunrise is at 6.40am, which we last had on 19th September.
We next get a 6.40am sunrise on March 3rd, and then again on March 30th.
This all feels counterintuitive, but we pay far less attention to sunrise than sunset.
So much debate, so many arguments.
Daylight saving has always been controversial ever since it started.
Why should we do it, why don't we stop doing it, why don't we delay it, why don't we do it twice?
There have been numerous parliamentary debates about altering it, also EU directives suggesting it ceases, also drives to introduce Double Summertime instead, all backed up by arguments that work for some people and not for others.
They're not 100% definitive on what to be ready for, but it includes severe weather, national emergencies and prolonged periods without water and/or electricity and/or gas and/or internet. Flooding is one of the most serious weather-related events and you probably know if you might be susceptible to that, but the entire nation could be at risk from cyber-related power failure, the Russians cutting our undersea cables, a solar radiation event, a nuclear accident, water infrastructure failure, food supply contamination, another pandemic, AI overthrow, nearby war, mass rioting or whatever. You might not be top of the list for rescue, merely left to cope as best you can, so it pays to be prepared.
In particular they've come up with a Be Ready Checklist packed with things you might like to have ready just in case. They've said to build it up gradually, as and when, not to rush out and buy the lot now. They've said you should do this 'if you can', because not everyone has the spare money, the storage space or the stability to comply. And they've provided a handy printable checklist on which to tally things, which does kind of assume you have a printer but it's the individual items that are important, not the ticks.
Use the checklist below to review the steps you have already taken, and what you might still need to do.
Water
● Bottled water for 3 days. 3 litres per person per day for drinking. More would be needed for other tasks such as cooking and washing.
That's a lot of bottled water, or at least it is if you're a household that doesn't normally buy the stuff. I'm perfectly happy with what comes out of the tap but if that tap went dry for a prolonged period of time I'd be stuffed. I had one dry evening a few months ago and that was awkward enough (how do I brew a cuppa? how do I clean my teeth? how long do I leave this to flush?) so three days would be purgatory, not least because I couldn't expect Thames Water to turn up and dish out bottles from a street corner.
The guidance urges you to "set a reminder every six months to check expiry dates and swap out items that need replacing", which could be expensive and/or annoying with something like bottled water. I checked some bottles in the supermarket yesterday and the best before dates were anything from 8 months to two years away, suggesting a stash could need regular replacement (or consumption). Do I really want to keep buying water I won't drink in case it's needed, but how stupid would I feel if a true emergency came along and I hadn't bought any?
I do have a 2 litre bottle stashed away for just such circumstances but it wouldn't go far. However it's been there a long time, indeed I checked the best before date and it's March 2007, so is it safe to drink? You'd think not but I Googled and it said "sealed bottles kept cool and dark stay safe long past their printed date", "water itself does not expire: the best-before date on UK bottled water marks packaging quality, not safety." My 20 year-old water is thus likely full of microplastics and tastes bad, but in case of dire emergency shouldn't kill me. You can't search for this important information if the networks have gone down, so it's worth knowing in advance.
Food
● Non-perishable food for 3 days. Food with a long shelf life that doesn’t need refrigeration or cooking e.g. tinned meat, fish or
vegetables, dried fruit and nuts. It’s best to buy food you’d usually eat.
This is about stocking up your food cupboards with packets, cartons and tins, indeed anything nutritious that'll last and doesn't need cooking. Forget boiling water for rice or wokking up a stirfry if the power goes down, unless you're fortunate enough to use gas and that still works. Everything you rely on in your fridge or freezer could be unsafe within days so it makes sense to have an alternative calorific supply to hand. You might still have leftovers from the early pandemic you never got round to eating, and almost by definition they should still be edible now, just maybe not enough.
I have an emergency can of corned beef, also tinned soup and baked beans and sweetcorn and peach slices and mandarin orange segments and really rather a lot of Christmas puddings, also a Fray Bentos pie in a tin that might or might not be OK without cooking. If I started by eating what was in my switched-off fridge I could make it to three days no trouble, perhaps a week, after which the country might be in such a parlous state that lack of food was the least of my problems.
Hygiene
● Hand sanitiser, wet wipes, hygiene and bathroom products.
The lack of water could be terrible for personal hygiene, especially if it's July rather than October. Hand sanitiser is much better-known since the pandemic so maybe you already have an industrial-sized bottle somewhere, and if not maybe you should because imagine Day Seven without water otherwise.
Light and warmth
● Torch (and spare batteries).
● Blankets, sleeping bags and warm clothing.
They're quite insistent on having a torch rather than candles, this because candles have the occasional tendency to set your home alight and because a raging inferno during a civilian shutdown could cause untold damage. I promise to watch over my IKEA tea lights like a hawk and not let that happen. I do have two torches but also insufficient batteries to maintain them over a long period, plus I couldn't just nip down to Stratford to buy more, so that's something I probably do need to stock up on.
Communication and information
● FM radio (battery/wind-up).
● Charged power bank.
So many of us have switched to digital that the absence of electricity, 4G or wi-fi could completely cut us off from the world. How are you supposed to know what's going on if your screen doesn't work and your phone doesn't connect, and more importantly how is the government going to advise us all what to do? Is this some localised outage or is the world barrelling towards Armageddon... you won't know unless you have old-school technology tuned to a frequency the BBC hasn't turned off yet. Thankfully I do have a wind-up radio, I am genuinely prepared, but I know from experience that keeping it powered for more than 10 minutes is difficult so even my smug state as one of the informed might be difficult to maintain.
Money and documents
● Cash (mix of coins and notes) and cards.
● Copies of IDs/documents
● Important phone numbers and information (e.g. regular medication and doses).
You may love swanning around town flashing your phone at things, paying as you go, but a mass power cut or cyber outage could suddenly leave you with zero access to your money and no chance of buying anything at all. Even a plastic card is useless in a world without connections. It could even happen tomorrow, you never know, so maybe dash down to the cashpoint soon just in case. Similarly if you were unable to fire up your phone or laptop how much critical information would be instantly lost, so maybe write down the important stuff while you can.
Medical and health
● First aid kit / first aid items.
● Essential medication and medical supplies.
I'm lucky in that if I stopped taking my prescribed tablets it wouldn't immediately damage my health, but you may not be so fortunate. Also what would you do if you received an injury that normally required a trip to A&E, might a first aid kit buy you extra time, and would you curse yourself if you didn't have one? Imagine some mildly terrifying scenario and how easily you could either mitigate it now or watch it spiral out of control later.
Baby products
Pet products
Not my problem, might be your problem.
The Be Ready website also reminds us that we are not alone, we have a community around us. Should the worst happen there is strength in numbers, so maybe create some local connections together now rather than asking later if they want to be your Disaster Friends. Also there may well be neighbours who'd be relying on you for help, so think about that now rather than only realising later when it's too late.
The worst may of course never happen and you'll have wasted time and money on resources you'll never use. My emergency can of corned beef may never be opened. But if disaster does entirely disrupt your life you'll wish you'd prepared for it, so either take the risk or Be Ready.
Hillingdon has a new museum. They kept that quiet.
Obviously they didn't keep it that quiet, they even wrote MUSEUM in large illuminated letters outside the entrance to the new library in the Civic Centre. They also announced the opening last December in the borough newsletter and the Hillingdon Times ran a news story, but I guess I live far enough away to have completely missed that.
It's part of a cost-cutting project to co-locate as many council services as possible in the Civic Centre including the Register Office, the adult education centre and a family hub. The library also shifted from larger premises in the High Street, annoying many, and the local archives service shifted here too. Most of these services have been squeezed into the former Middlesex Suite, an underused wing of the council offices which opened in 1978, all cost-efficiently co-located behind a single reception desk. Just appallingly signed.
I walked in... Study Centre to the left, some kind of council service queue to the right and a bookish opening straight ahead. I carried on into the new library, now just the one floor where there used to be six, but still plenty of books surrounding several busy study tables. I checked all the corners but found nothing more museumy than a Hillingdon Heritage Notice Board advertising nothing upcoming. So I went back to reception and asked, and was directed instead to walk through the Study Centre on the left and on through the corridor beyond. "So it's behind the door that isn't labelled Museum," I said, perhaps expressing my incredulity with insufficient exasperation.
It's not signposted in the Study Centre either, you have to know to continue on towards the toilets, but the third set of electric doors does have an A4-sized sheet of paper saying Welcome to Hillingdon Museum and Archives. This brings you to a corridor with a nearby door into the bright and welcoming Archives room, complete with trails and postcards and old maps by the desk. The museum is down the end of the corridor, still not labelled but by now obvious by default, and what I'm saying is that the signage is inept to the point of invisibility.
The museum is a single gallery divided into three areas which someone at the design stage might have optimistically described as rooms. One corner's Hillingdon Treasures, one corner's Shopping in Hillingdon and the other corner's a generic Victorian parlour with no Hillingdon-specific elements whatsoever. You might expect me to say it's far worse than the previous museum but no it's hugely better, this because there was no previous museum, not this century anyway, so even this semi-empty space is cause for celebration. There definitely once was an Uxbridge Museum because one of the items on display, a massive multi-bladed stack of three dozen knives, was donated there in 1955, but this is not its genuine successor.
Hillingdon Treasures is an eclectic collection of artefacts in four cases. One of these is only small but does contain several coins from 55AD unearthed by HS2 diggers, the largest contemporary discovery of 'potins' anywhere in the UK. Another case is dominated by a 2023 quilt from Ickenham, this above a woolly mammoth's tooth and a Poor Law accounts book, that's how eclectic this is. I have no idea why a 1950s electric heater was included, and the label fails to explain the local relevance too. Elsewhere are Roman tesserae, a medieval vase and a tin of stock cubes, this because OXO funded the 1908 Olympic marathon which crossed the borough. The two dozen treasures have to cover the centuries and the length of Hillingdon so are pretty disparate, alternatively thin, and the history of the borough around the walls gets pretty generic too...
» Although there is evidence of Roman villas in Hertfordshire and the Chilterns, there is no evidence of Roman Roads or villas in Hillingdon.
» The English Civil Wars, fought between 1642 and 1651, also had a profound effect on the local area during the Early Modern period.
» Democratic and egalitarian ideas from the French Revolution undoubtedly influenced ordinary people.
Not all the text is that empty, but I don't expect any history classes would consider coming here on a school trip.
Then there's the shopping corner. This time it's photos and objects, including a pig-sticking spear, a metal sweet scoop and a model delivery van. Older visitors may go 'ah yes I remember', and may also already know a lot of the history in the panels round the walls. Bits of Randalls department store are particularly prominent, and rightly so, also the massive inn sign from the King's Arms and a painted sign from a local butchers in which a pig with a quill is writing 'The critics say there's nothing like Bonny's Camberwell pork sausages'. Object-wise it's mostly all Uxbridge, so shops from the rest of the borough have been shoehorned into the outer narrative, perhaps alongside a photo. The whole thing screams "well, we've got this interesting artefact" rather than telling any kind of overall tale about Hillingdon.
As for the Victorian parlour it's basically filler. It might be more convincing were it a room rather than a partitioned space wallpapered on two sides, and filled with more than a fireplace, a dresser and a writing desk. Some curator probably had high hopes that visiting children might play Snakes and Ladders or read an old book or think to open the spice cabinet, even design their own coat of arms at the table, but they'd have got more mileage from the space by making it in some way Hillingdonny. The only other exhibit is "Hillingdon at 60" where residents reminisce over the phone (but when I lifted the receiver it was dead), also a digital map (that so far only 10 people have worked out how to add something to).
According to Hillingdon council's magazine "there are more than 2,500 objects on display" which is very much incorrect, I barely spotted 50 in the two proper galleries. What's here is just a small selection from the borough's collection, interesting but sparse, a mere scratch of the surface. This alas is what a borough museum looks like in the age of austerity, a few objects shoved into the corner of a council building that's always open anyway, much like Enfield and Southwark's attempts. I liked it as far as it went but it didn't go very far, so is more somewhere to drop into should you be in Uxbridge... assuming you can find it at the end of a ludicrously unmarked corridor.
One-word street names are unusual but not entirely uncommon.
Two-word street names are definitely the norm.
Three-word street names are all over the place.
But four-word street names are rare.
Here are a few: SCOTLAND GREEN ROAD NORTH, ADAM AND EVE COURT, DUKE OF YORK STREET, HAUNCH OF VENISON YARD, HYDE PARK GARDENS MEWS, LITTLE ST JAMES'S STREET, STOKE NEWINGTON CHURCH STREET, SAINT MARTIN-THE-FIELDS CHURCH PATH
And five-word street names, or longer, are even rarer.
I wondered how rare.
Specifically I wondered what proportion of street names have 1/2/3/4+ words.
You can probably guess that two-word street names are most common, but are they 60%, 70%, 80% or whatever? You might want to have a guess before I bash some stats.
I started with my local postcode area, E3.
It has 461 streets, according to an online list.
None of them have one word. [0%]
414 of them have two words. [89.8%]
45 of them have three words. [9.8%]
2 of them have four words. [0.4%]
The two four-word street names are BLACKWALL TUNNEL NORTHERN APPROACH and MARY LE BOW WAY.
One is an arterial road and the other is a path through a private play area near the Limehouse Cut.
They're both in the National Street Gazetteer so they're both officially-named streets.
But they are very much in the minority.
I moved on to the London borough of Haringey.
That felt fairly representative.
It has approximately 1400 streets, according to the Gazetteer.
3 of them have one word. [0.1%]
1254 of them have two words. [91.7%]
107 of them have three words. [7.8%]
3 of them have four words. [0.2%]
Haringey's four-word street names: HEART OF HALE LANE, THE GROVE LYNTON ROAD, TOWN HALL APPROACH ROAD
I moved on to the London borough of Greenwich.
That also felt fairly representative.
It has approximately 2000 streets, according to the Gazetteer.
28 of them have one word. [1.4%]
1761 of them have two words. [89.4%]
166 of them have three words. [8.4%]
11 of them have four words. [0.6%]
2 of them have five words. [0.1%]
1 of them has six words. [<0.1%]
Greenwich's four-word street names: BLACKWALL TUNNEL SOUTHERN APPROACH, BLEAK HILL KINGS HIGHWAY, DUKE OF WELLINGTON AVENUE, OLD POST OFFICE LANE, PRINCE OF ORANGE LANE, PRINCE OF WALES ROAD, ROCHESTER WAY RELIEF ROAD, ROCHESTER WAY SERVICE ROAD, ST MARY MAGDALENE CRESCENT, VANBRUGH PARK ROAD WEST Greenwich's five-word street names: SIDCUP ROAD SERVICE ROAD EASTBOUND, SIDCUP ROAD SERVICE ROAD WESTBOUND Greenwich's six-word street name: ACADEMY ROAD WOOLWICH COMMON SLIP ROAD
The two 5-wordnames are very much a technicality, and residents on that stretch of the A2 just call it Sidcup Road. And the 6-word name is a 20m slip road on the edge of Woolwich Common with no houses and no street signs. Effectively the maximum name length here is four words.
As a summary...
LONDON E3 Two word names 90%
HARINGEY Two word names 92%
GREENWICH Two word names 89%
In the three areas I've investigated, about 90% of street names have two words.
And about 8% of street names have three words.
One-word and four-word street names are uncommon (maybe more ones than fours).
Nationally I suspect about 90% of street names have two words.
Just under 10% of street names have three words (a lot are named after people or saints).
And there are probably more one-worders than four-worders, but still less than 1%.
I remain interested in identifying any London street names of five words or more.
Even across the wider country.
n.b. Streets with addresses and/or streetsigns preferred.
n.b. Hyphens don't make separate words.
London Five word street names: St. John's Wood High Street NW8, King Edward The Third Mews SE16 Six word street names: Seven word street names:
rest of UK Five word street names: There And Back Again Lane BS8, Coat of Arms Bridge Road CV3, Old Bank of England Court NR2, Laurens Van Der Post Way TN23, Home Park Mill Link Road WD4, Dick O' The Banks Road DT2, Hall I' Th' Wood Lane BL2, Top O' Th' Close Road OL14, Top O' Th' Hill Road OL14 Six word street names: St Martins at Oak Wall Lane NR3 Seven word street names: Eight word street names: The Ocean At The End Of The Lane PO4
The invasion of previously pristine real estate at Elizabeth line stations has begun.
This is the directional signage at Farringdon station, formerly just a route diagram on a plain white background. Alas it now has an advert squished into the gap at the bottom, spreading up almost as far as the bottom of the 'g' in Reading. Arguably it doesn't get in the way of anything important, or arguably it's an unhelpful distraction.
It's part of a new campaign at several zone 1 purple stations, edging into spaces not previously used for ads. The strapline is Find a Gap See Where It Takes You, which may be a clever reference to the advert filling a gap at the bottom of the sign or it may not. The only people who've found a gap here are the marketing team, keen to make some dosh out of it, so it's all a bit meta and up itself.
And it gets worse, much worse. This is the new seatback on the platform where previously there were just stripy outlines.
This is just two-thirds of the advert, it continues for two more columns to the left and is then repeated all along the platform. It's a generic office diary with entries including Project Kick-off, Creative Review and Dinner With Mates, all written on a grid of moquette colours. The real screamer is the aeroplane silhouette splashed across the lot, again urging you to find a gap in your busy schedule for a getaway. You could of course spend that getaway anywhere but, based on zero evidence, they really hope you'll want to go to Turkey.
And the worst thing is that it's going to be in situ for a year.
All of TfL's most nauseating commercial content is on Linkedin, and that's where I found this upbeat zinger.
It's someone's job at TfL to write this guff, just as there's a team that revels in doing deals with brands to distract us as we travel. Fair enough, it is their actual job, but the jolly zealotry they exude as they invade our eyeballs really grates. These are the same people, you may remember, who intend to introduce vast corridor wraps in Elizabeth line passageways just so long as the research says the moving images don't trigger too many customers' disabilities.
According to the official contract this year-long invasion will raise £1.1m for TfL's coffers. But don't get your hopes up that it'll be transformative, it's only enough to fund London's busiest bus route for 3½ weeks.
Personally I'd have gone for Find The Gap rather than Find A Gap because that'd be a much cleverer reference to an iconic TfL phrase. Although in truth I'd really have firebombed the entire concept and left our Crossrail stations unblemished, and I despair at whatever horror they might introduce next.
Well this is odd.
There are adverts all over the tube for the Falkland Islands Tourist Board, all featuring a cute rockhopper penguin, and the first thing I thought is "hang on, is this a wind up?"
It's not, it's part of a genuine campaign encouraging travel to the South Atlantic islands, which are admittedly extraordinary but hardly somewhere most people can visit. Flights are weekly, I understand, also you have to go via Chile rather than closer airstrips in Argentina, for obvious reasons.
Questions I immediately asked myself included "what are the dining options on an archipelago with a population of 3500?", "what's the accommodation like?" and "but what would I actually do there?". Birdwatching and walking are the obvious answers to the latter, also touring military sites with due reverence if that's your preferred focus. I love that the tourist board have produced 19 downloadable walking leaflets offering anything from a 45 minutes circuit to a 7 hour hike (also available from the Jetty Office).
As for accommodation seven nights at the Malvina House hotel can be had next month for £1568, whereas 'camp life' at Port Howard Lodge is considerably cheaper. During the day several basic cafes offer fairly basic refreshment (potentially fish-based), then Groovy's has the nightlife you crave and Street Fighter is tonight's film at the 55-seater Harbour Lights Cinema. It would certainly be the holiday of a lifetime, but I do wonder how many people will see these adverts on the tube and choose to go.
You could perhaps choose to visit on Peat Cutting Day, an annual public holiday on the islands, but that's the first Monday in October so you've just missed it (or have eleven months to make plans).
Well this is stupid.
These adverts are all over tube and train carriages at present, perhaps because winter is approaching and people are thinking about their health. It's for a Vitamin D supplement, this being the time of year when sunlight levels aren't necessarily enough to provide your daily dose. But a spray?
Tablets are normally the way to go, if you bother, or perhaps gummies or some multivitamin supplement. A spray does nothing clever except get absorbed direct, which is irrelevant, also it costs you more. But the advert chooses to show happy people spraying inside their cheeks like it's the cool thing to do, in the hope others will choose this more expensive route.
According to the project blurb (not here, online) the spray is "scientifically developed for superior absorption directly into the bloodstream", which is unnecessary. It's also a "convenient alternative to tablets and capsules", where instead of 'convenient' they could have written 'dearer'. Being more effective is effectively irrelevant, because as long you get the basic dose there's no benefit to getting more.
There is an increasing wellness trend to flog unnecessary extras to folk with disposable income, encouraging them to think they might be missing something the product could provide without ever directly saying that. And if that means people end up taking something daily, weekly or whatever for months, or even for life, that's a nice little earner for the company concerned.
You don't need to spray Vitamin D into your cheek, just as you don't have to eat oily fish and egg yolks to make up for missing daylight. Consider the cheaper just-as-effective alternatives, and think before you squirt.
Today is my Dad's 88th birthday, and I wondered what he and I had been up to on birthdays past. I have 50 years of diaries so I looked back and checked. The 🎂 symbol means that he and I spent his birthday together.
50 October 20th birthdays
Thu 20 Oct 1977:🎂 Opened presents and cards before school/work. In the evening we spent two hours at a Greek restaurant - the Culverhouses were also there! [I can't remember which restaurant, where it was or what we ate, sorry] Fri 20 Oct 1978:🎂 Dad's 40th birthday! Opened presents and cards before school/work. Managed to squeeze in a special meal - roast dinner followed by chocolate cake - between two choral commitments. [39 seemed more special] Sat 20 Oct 1979:🎂 One of Dad's presents was the new LP by Sky [included Westway, not Toccata]. Bacon sandwiches for lunch, then Dad and my brother headed down to Vicarage Road to watch Watford beat Newcastle United two nil. Mon 20 Oct 1980:🎂 A lumpen friend of mine from Liverpool was staying over which delayed the usual present opening. By the evening he'd gone home and Dad invited his Mum up the road for a roast dinner. Tue 20 Oct 1981:🎂 Opened presents and cards before school/work. Bucketed with rain. In the evening Dad's BestMateFromSchool came round with his wife and the four adults had a nice meal. [my brother and I did the washing up] Wed 20 Oct 1982:🎂 Dad had the week off work, mainly so he could repaint the parental bedroom, but he took time out to drive us to school. After school a cake was cut, then we drove to the Ponderosa in Watford High Street where Vera the waitress helped us celebrate.
Thu 20 Oct 1983: The first birthday I missed because I was now at university, although I did ring home (cheap rate) from the payphone at the top of Staircase 6. [I missed dinner because a tutorial overran so had to resort to emergency fruitcake] Sat 20 Oct 1984: Dad had a family wedding to go to, which I guess is a special way to spend a birthday. I was still at university where it was also one of my flatmates' birthdays. [the meal we cooked was chilli followed by peach melba] Sun 20 Oct 1985: Faffed around at uni reading the Sunday papers, playing board games and dropping water balloons. What it says in my diary is "happy birthday Dad, no time to phone". [sorry Dad!] Mon 20 Oct 1986: I was 150 miles away and didn't phone, but I had dropped in at home over the weekend to wish Dad an early happy birthday [roast pork and blackberry and apple pie], also to admire all the Silver Wedding cards and presents from two weeks ago. Tue 20 Oct 1987: This was the week after the Great Storm [during which the tortoise escaped] and I now had a job so once again I wasn't home. One of Dad's presents was a painting of The Green at Croxley [which still hangs in his living room]
Thu 20 Oct 1988: Dad's 50th birthday! Rang Dad after work to discover he only got 12 cards, and perhaps his best present was that he could now get cheaper car insurance. Mum cooked him an orangey apple crumble [and I got the leftovers at the weekend] Fri 20 Oct 1989:🎂 Whizzed home after work [Dad drove over to Windsor and back, thanks] before a steak meal and Challenge Anneka. We'd have a proper meal with wine tomorrow after driving up to Norfolk [where my brother was now living] Sat 20 Oct 1990:🎂 Again Dad spent a good hour of his birthday collecting me from Windsor, this time for an unspecial meal of chicken and apple pie. [most of the afternoon was spent cooing over the new neighbours' new baby] Sun 20 Oct 1991:🎂 I'd been a homeowner for precisely nine days, so the whole family drove over to celebrate Dad's birthday in my new flat. Mum struggled to cook on my electric hob, then we struggled to find some matches so Dad could have candles on his chocolate cake. [Sunday trading not yet a thing]. Most of the afternoon was spent playing Lemmings and assembling my four IKEA shelf units [thanks again]
Tue 20 Oct 1992: Dad also now had a new flat, purely for work reasons, so rang him there (quite late). Wed 20 Oct 1993: Couldn't ring Dad after work because he was spending his 55th dining at a Norwich hotel. Thu 20 Oct 1994: Dad had been a grandfather for about a month, and was discovering that his birthday now played second fiddle to all things baby-related. Fri 20 Oct 1995: Obviously for his 57th I sent Dad a home-made card with a picture of a tin of Heinz beans on the front. Now retired and firmly embedded in a Norfolk village, he spent the evening at a carpet bowls match. Sun 20 Oct 1996: A birthday phone call across the miles [I decided not to mention I spent the whole of yesterday out on the town in London with friends and partners, it would only have complicated things] Mon 20 Oct 1997: Another birthday phone call across the miles [no details recorded]
Tue 20 Oct 1998: Dad's 60th birthday! Work prevented me driving over to celebrate but yes, Dad did like the thick architecture book I bought him. Another birthday evening spent at carpet bowls. Wed 20 Oct 1999: This year's gift, a Croxley Script fountain pen, also went down well. [my two-year relationship was just about to combust at this point, and it certainly didn't help that the kitten had managed to turn off the freezer] Fri 20 Oct 2000: No birthday shenanigans [but I did take Dad down to London the following weekend for a look round the new Tate Modern and the Millennium Dome] Sat 20 Oct 2001: I'd finally moved to London, and let's just say I was taking advantage [so when the birthday call came I asked my visitor to go and hide in the bedroom] Sun 20 Oct 2002: I burned Dad a CD of Beatles songs which prominently featured When I'm 64. [it was appreciated]
Mon 20 Oct 2003: After work gave Dad a call to wish him a happy state pension day, but made the cardinal error of ringing during University Challenge. [sorry! sorry!] Wed 20 Oct 2004: I didn't send a card, I emailed one [a bit lazy!]. Also Amazon delivered my gift [Grumpy Old Men, the Official Handbook] a day late. Thu 20 Oct 2005: Another birthday phone call across the miles [no details recorded] Fri 20 Oct 2006:[non event] Sat 20 Oct 2007: Too busy out on the town to call [I'll ring tomorrow]
Mon 20 Oct 2008:🎂 Dad's 70th birthday! Day off work so I could attend a pub lunch at The Angel. [the bill for four came to £45, which isn't bad given I had salmon]. Several villagers popped round afterwards for a slice of cake [decorated by bowls, vegetables and a camera] Tue 20 Oct 2009: Another birthday phone call across the miles [no details recorded] Wed 20 Oct 2010: Forgot to ring home [that's bad, especially this year, sorry] Thu 20 Oct 2011:🎂 Caught the 8.38pm train after work, dragging Dad out on his birthday to drive me home from the station at 10pm. [The following day we climbed to the top of Horsey Mill, spotted 40 seals on the coast and enjoyed Barry Cryer at the Norwich Playhouse.] Sat 20 Oct 2012:🎂 Train to Norfolk to spend the day with Dad enjoying the town of Ely, everything except the cathedral [how much?!]
Sun 20 Oct 2013:🎂 A dozen cards to open, plus the gift of a free TV licence. A full family meal with all grandchildren present, gammon-based. [I brought a bottle of rosé but nobody drank it] Mon 20 Oct 2014: Birthday stuff had been over the weekend instead, including a distillery tour, a walk round Lopham Fen and shepherds pie with the family. Tue 20 Oct 2015:🎂 Got the train up to Norfolk and, just for a change, took BestMate too. We spent the day at Banham Zoo watching the meerkats, penguins, tigers, giraffes and snow leopards, sneaking out for a pub lunch midway rather than enduring the on-site cafe. Thu 20 Oct 2016: A birthday lunch with villagers was already booked [so no family visit required]. Fri 20 Oct 2017: I visited last weekend, we went to Framlingham Castle and a film at the village hall. [no birthday interaction]
Sat 20 Oct 2018:🎂 Dad's 80th birthday! A helium '80' balloon had been attached to the front hedge overnight. On the way to The Queen's Head a pheasant ran under the car (and never ran out). Dad enjoyed his liver and bacon. Only one grandchild attended as the other two had started jobs and moved away. Sun 20 Oct 2019: Didn't go up to Norfolk this year [which was an error given what happened next year] A phone call sufficed. Tue 20 Oct 2020: For lockdown reasons I hadn't seen Dad since my birthday, so extremely muted celebrations this year. Wed 20 Oct 2021:🎂 A stormy day in Norfolk, thunder even. Dad's sisters rang, we cleared out some cupboards and then headed to the village hall to help an American journalist. Thu 20 Oct 2022:🎂 A dozen cards to open and most of the presents were birdfood. Off to The Stag for lunch, and Liz Truss resigned while Dad ate his Eggs Benedict. [her constituency was visible across the roundabout]
Fri 20 Oct 2023: For Dad's 85th we were determined to go for a pub lunch, despite torrential rain and reports of serious local flooding. The drive to The Angel was very ropey with water flowing off adjacent fields like a waterfall, and the drive home was heavily delayed because apparently all roads back into the village were blocked. We sloshed home extremely cautiously, eventually, and I ended up staying an extra night because all the trains were borked. [the steak and ale pie was the only normal part of the day] Sun 20 Oct 2024:🎂 Just me and Dad for this one as other family priorities took precedence. This year we decided against a pub lunch because it was damp out. Countryfile, Antiques Roadshow. Mon 20 Oct 2025:🎂 Sorted through old boxes of black and white photos [there were far more from Mum's side of the family than Dad's]. Birthday lunch was eaten above a furniture showroom at a table for five, and afterwards I headed home because best not get in the way. Tue 20 Oct 2026:🎂 I'm back up in Norfolk again, staying over, so let's see how this goes...
Shared-birthday-wise I note:
• I've shared Dad's birthday 32 times, which is just over half of the 62 times I could have been present.
• I've only been present on 36% of his birthdays, having missed out on all of the first 26.
• I attended every birthday until I went off to university, as most children do.
• Then there were 25 years when I barely attended at all, thanks to jobs and living much further away.
• Since Dad's 70th I've made much more of an effort to be together on the day.
• I think there's a lesson there.
Disability campaigners are seeking to close Bus Stop M because it's too dangerous. And not just Bus Stop M but all floating bus stops, that's those with a cycle lane between the main pavement and the kerb.
The government sort-of listened last year, announcing that construction of the most dangerous type of floating bus stop should be paused and no more built, then in January released updated design guidance. But last week's petitioners still weren't content, instead demanding that all bus stops changed to accommodate cycle lanes should be changed back to ensure direct access to the bus stop for all passengers. It's a big ask.
At Bus Stop M a segregated blue lane bends round the rear of the bus stop, keeping hundreds of cyclists daily out of the path of passing traffic. It took two months to create, and presumably would take a similar time to remove. Four years after it was built TfL realised the step-free access was insufficiently signposted so came back and painted zebra stripes on the crossing and also substantially increased the amount of tactile paving leading to it. This was deemed sufficient in 2019, but today's campaigners still aren't happy mainly because the crossings are piddly and cyclists don't always stop.
This is a different kind of floating bus stop, officially called a "cycle track with bus boarding island", as seen on Lea Bridge Road. Here the cycle track runs between the bus stop and the road, with a very thin supposedly-safe boarding area on the nearside. A third type of floating bus stop is the "shared use bus boarder" where the cycle track goes right up to the kerb, thus getting in or out of a bus requires standing directly in a cycle lane. These are the most dangerous of all, not just for the disabled but for anyone stepping off a bus who could walk straight in front of a bicycle without either party realising, and it's these the government has paused.
Which type of floating bus stop gets built depends on circumstance and location. Bus Stop M, for example, had sufficient spare pavement to carve out a separate cycle lane behind but not every street is wide enough to accommodate this. Also some boroughs are keener on the cheaper "stepping into a cycle lane" option, notably Camden, Greenwich and Waltham Forest, whereas TfL only ever build proper bus stop bypasses on their roads. Bus Stop M, like all 32 floating bus stops in Tower Hamlets, is on a red route and goes round the back.
One intractable is that when a cycle lane meets a bus stop, either it has to interfere with bus passengers or cyclists have to pull out into traffic. Both are dangerous, but the number of recorded collisions between cyclists and pedestrians is much smaller than collisions where cyclists are hit by vehicles. TfL say they recorded just five pedestrian casualties involving cyclists at floating bus stops over a three-year period. That doesn't help the visually-impaired with an understandable reticence to use floating bus stops for fear of an accident, but it does seem an over-reaction to demand their widespread withdrawal endangering many more cyclists instead.
The real issue is that many cyclists don't stop at piddly zebras, and the design of floating bus stops throws them into the path of pedestrians who may not see them coming. But not everyone on two wheels is a fearsome hurtling menace. Alas a lot of people rant about cyclists, over-generalising wildly, when the true issue is confined to a small minority. In an ideal world everyone would look out for everyone else, but not everyone does and not everyone can.
By all means get rid of the so-called shared use bus boarders, because waiting for a bus in a cycle lane always seemed ridiculous. But a bus stop innovation that makes cycling massively safer shouldn't be outweighed by the fact some cyclists don't deserve to use it. The priority should be to improve behaviours and minimise the risk, not to rip out floating bus stops that help far more than they hinder.
