Total travel chaos around Elephant

Those traffic lights have failed several times now, causing traffic chaos each time and hugely increasing the risk of an accident.

Trying to withhold judgement but it's currently making life difficult for all user groups: cyclist/driver/pedestrian/resident. Getting across SE1 is incredibly difficult with the cycle highway and seemingly uncoordinated road closures caused by the ongoing development explosion.

The 100 bus is taking 45 minutes to go from one end of Blackfriars Road to the other. Cycling is quicker but very unsettling as the road width is so variable, with more construction lorries than ever before and a lot of very confused drivers such as the Addison Lee driver who nearly knocked me off my bike when he accidentally drove up the (as yet much underused) new cycle path at the bottom of Blackfriars Road earlier this week.

There are some bits that are supposedly finished and yet completely nonsensical. From the completed section of Westminster Bridge Road, you have to cross two bus lanes - coming in the same direction - to turn left into Gerridge Street - feels like quite a reckless manoeuvre and quite dangerous but it's the only way to access that particular street.

I could go on, pass the Valium. Maybe it'll all be ok in the end.

This was part of the reason why I sent my green badge, front and rear identifiers, and both licences back to TFL when I gave up driving a black cab.
We used to joke with passengers that TFL had an office on the top floor of Palestra in Blackfriars Road, where a bunch of suits on £150,000 p.a. would sit around a table discussing, "How can we REALLY screw the traffic up, worse than it is now?"
We were kidding, maybe it wasn't so far from the truth.

I'm with Tom about the traffic, I rarely drive for bigvan.com anymore because it takes forever to get to and from jobs, (I've sold my car, using Uber and buses and trains), yet the pollution and air quality is just getting worse.
We were promised a low private vehicle future in Central London, with cleaner air.
Ken and Boris have colluded to ruin that, delivering congestion and pollution.

Coming back from St.pancras yesterday by bus which is a very rare event! Traffic was not too bad, thenI saw sign that said fifty four weeks from March 2014...only another four months! Tom the row of Cabs at St.pancras stretched right back around the corner. The traffic lights in midland rd. only allow four vehicles across and you'll find nine pounds on meter before going the corner! So as it's the start of bus route for number 63..and I had no money or card on me I bussed it!

A month ago, I had to go to France for business and as I was going to the E&C tube station, I saw the 63 bus and decided to hop on it. Big mistake, it took me forever and I arrived just 10 minutes before my Eurostar. The staff kindly let me get (you normally have to be there 45 minutes before departure). Given what's happened in Paris recently, I don't think they would let me do that now. I've learned a lesson there, never take the bus to go to a train station, just be on safe side and take the tube. Silly me always preferring to see the world outside instead of grumpy tubers.

The traffic all over the area was terrible this evening, I presume as a result of people trying to avoid E&C. It was also very bad tempered with a lot of beeping. This really can't carry on.

I think it can carry on, Zoe, and I think it will. I presume that it's part of TfL's strategy to make the roads so unusable that cars will keep out of the area. It's like a congestion charge, but it costs you time rather than money. I can't believe TfL is so incompetent that this wasn't in some sense deliberate. I'd be interested to hear from their strategic planning department, if such a thing exists.

I can only add to the dismay and frustration. It is quite simply hell getting around at the moment.

I live in Bermondsey SE1 and work in Clapton E5, with a choice of routes between the two, but all are snarled up at the moment through a combination of works at Aldgate, both Cycle Superhighways, Cycle Quietways and Crossrail. In the other direction there is E&C. Wherever I want to go, TfL's roadworks thwart my plans.

I'm sure it'll all be lovely when it's finished but I can't believe that all these works were allowed to take place concurrently rather than being staggered. I can only assume it was a deliberate decision, either a) to discourage car use permanently and get people onto bikes or b) so that Boris Johnson can secure his legacy before bowing out next year while marshalling support for his would-be successor Zac Goldsmith on the basis that Tory mayors 'get things done'.

Whatever the reason, the situation is little short of scandalous and I and many others are at our wits' end. Who at TfL is accountable?

I honestly don't think this is deliberate, people are over estimating how much planning goes into things. In fact I suspect that's the problem, there is absolutely no planning of how works will interact with each other, so no steps are taken to alleviate the impact.

Bel Ludovic wrote:

b) so that Boris Johnson can secure his legacy before bowing out next year

I think this is a lot to do with it - Boris wasted a lot of time in his first term and didn't initiate serious infrastructure projects (witness the first cycle superhighways which were blue paint and not much else), and is making up for it now.