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Dangerous road lay-out
• I REFER to your article about a 70-year-old pensioner being run over in Tavistock Place (OAP hit by car at ‘blackspot”, December 18).
Local residents have been complaining ever since the new layouts were set up along Tavistock Place at the junctions of Marchmont Street and Judd Street/ Hunter Street.
Traffic engineers have come to monitor the complaints but nothing was changed. We now have a fatality.
As far as local residents are concerned both junctions are dangerous for pedestrians to cross. The Judd Street junction gives insufficient time for elderly pedestrians to cross. I recently accompanied an elderly lady and we got one third of the way across when the light changed.
The Marchmont Street junction is also user-unfriendly for a number of reasons and primarily because the pedestrian crossing is set away from corner and so people tend to walk straight across when they think it is safe.
Other issues with both crossings are that even when you think it is safe to cross there will be cyclists who skip the red light and come at you from all sorts of unexpected directions.
The cycle lane is also confusing to car drivers. I have witnessed, on four occasions now, motorists turning from Marchmont Street directly into the cycle lane.
A final observation is that since the cycle lane was installed, Tavistock Place has had to be closed to vehicular traffic on numerous occasions as it is today.
The street is now so narrow that there is not enough room for two-way traffic when there are minor road works. Emergency vehicles cannot progress between rows of traffic as they had in the past. I can’t even think that the crossings have increased safety of cyclists.
David Irving
Sandwich Street
WC1
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