For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

It’s a two-way street (19.04.11)

It was the Peruvians – that’s if Wikipedia is to be believed – who invented the first one-way street for their capital Lima.

The idea to the layman appears obvious, traffic flows better if all vehicles are moving in the same direction. Find two parallel streets in a city and you have the makings of a one-way traffic system, and with the correct signage or today’s SatNavs, nobody should get lost or confused.

Now conventional traffic planning appears to have been turned on its head. The first scheme to remove a one-way system was the Aldgate East gyratory, built in the 1970s it was criticised ever since for creating a “racetrack” mentality among motorists, terrifying pedestrians and cyclists. The word racetrack in this context is a euphemism for no traffic jams and was about the only road left in London where you could travel at 30mph. Now at Aldgate, the surrounding areas of Whitechapel and Spitalfields are gridlocked for virtually the entire day. The queue of stationary traffic spreads throughout all the small residential streets around the area.

The next one-way system to receive attention was Piccadilly Circus. Creating a bus lane at the southern extremity of Shaftsbury Avenue and making the west side of Piccadilly Circus two-way by inserting a 200-yard-long bus lane has improved journey times for buses travelling south. Unfortunately for buses travelling north on Lower Regent Street, the effect can only be described as gridlock with dozen of buses stationary. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Freedom Pass holders are alighting from their bus at the back of the jam, walking past the Piccadilly Circus pinch point to get on to the next available bus exiting the jam.

The latest roads about to get a £14 million two-way makeover are Piccadilly, Pall Mall and St. James’s Street which is but a stone’s throw from Albemarle Street which was the first one-way street in London. The occasion prompting this decision was a series of lectures given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge at the Royal Institute. The resulting traffic jams caused by those eager to attend resulted in such horrendous queues of horse drawn carriages that the measure was quickly adopted to remove the congestion and the road remains one-way to this day.

Supporter of the two-way movement, the Head of the New London Architecture Centre, Peter Murray, said: “One-way streets reflect the dominance of the car and the failed go-faster policies of the traffic engineers. As we begin to realise that walking and cycling should be the dominant forms of transport, the one-way street should be consigned to the dustbin of history.”

The two-way movement believes that a lot of gyratory systems were built in the Sixties and it is timely to remove them believing two-way streets make journeys easier for drivers and keep more traffic on the main road and out of side streets.

Other thoroughfares in the traffic planner’s sights include: Wandsworth; New Cross; and I can’t believe I’m writing this; Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street; followed by Baker Street and Gloucester Place once the 2012 Olympics are over.

No doubt there is a wealth of computer simulations that turn conventional wisdom on its head to prove two-way is the way to go, but they should remember the best-laid schemes of Mice, Men and Macs can go wrong.

In 1864 London’s first traffic island was built on St James’s Street, one of the roads currently being turned two-way. It was funded by one Colonel Pierpoint who was afraid of being knocked down on his way to (and more likely from) his Pall Mall club. When it was finished, the good colonel dashed across the road to admire his creation, tripped and was bowled over by a cab.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Goldilocks Hotels are just ‘right’ (12.04.11)

The ignominy, being thrown out of a hotel for the second time; it happened to me last week quite unexpectedly. The hotel in question, which uses Scotland’s national flower for its trademark, has decided that cabbies are persona non grata.

They are, not unreasonably, fed up with a procession of cabbies traipsing across their foyer to use their own “guests” toilets; but for them, the problem they face is that their hotel is a Goldilocks Hotel.

Let me explain: Some hotels are too posh, and wouldn’t want cabbies rubbing shoulders with their well-heeled customers in rest room. At the other end of the scale are the budget hotels whose customers don’t have the luxury of anything beyond their room and in the foyer a showcase of flyers with suggestions on how to spend their time in London after their budget breakfast. Between those polar opposites fall the Goldilocks Hotels, not too cheap, nor too rich; they are just right. Here cabbies can park outside; usually, these hotels also have taxi ranks, and gratefully use the toilets facilities.

Once it was a matter of civic pride for a borough council to build public toilets, often with gleaming brass pipes and beautiful tiling, while many toilets would have an attendant on duty to ensure that high standards were maintained.

Now many London Boroughs trying to squeeze as much value from the rates, to justify their manager’s inflated salaries find that maintaining adequate toilets that non-ratepayers might use, how can I put it? An inconvenience.

If you need to leave your taxi unattended while answering the call of nature, finding somewhere to park in Central London can prove at best difficult, at night in the West End, impossible.

Overzealous parking attendants, themselves indirectly employed by the self-same councils whose toilets you are trying to use. Cameras are now employed to book you for parking if your stay exceeds the magical two minutes and one second beyond that allotted time allowed for stopping cabs. I would defy anyone to be able to answer the call of nature in that Olympic time. At night, with no parking places available, it makes bladder control a prerequisite for passing The Knowledge.

Garages would seem united in their inability to find a decent plumber, for most claim when asked, that their toilets are out of order. Some of London’s private squares are covered by CCTV cameras, so fed up are the residents with people using their beautiful gardens as a toilet.

So I (and my bladder) would like to thank all the Goldilocks Hotels who tolerate the cab trade using their facilities and would like to think my colleagues will always provide those self-same hotels guests with the cabs they might require.