Well TfL think so. When they redesigned this junction with the A2 a couple of years or so ago, it was even worse. They removed the dedicated green light for Deal’s Gateway, which now had to share the green phase with traffic emerging from Greenwich High Rd, much of which turns right. If you were trying to cross from Deal’s gateway into Greenwich High Rd, the ASL and stop line were positioned so far back that by the time you got to the junction proper you were faced with a stream of fast moving right turning traffic which was impossible to get through, even in a car, let alone on a bike. After much hassle, emails, many complaints and the involvement of people like Len Duvall who they seem to listen to a bit more than us ordinary folk, TfL finally did a safety audit themselves and agreed to move the ASL and stop line as far forward as they could here. It was an improvement. OK. We conceded that. But we thought it wasn’t enough to make it as safe as it could be. And a year or so on, local people are still extremely unhappy and downright scared of this junction.
There are alternatives, it’s true. On a bike you could dismount and cross to the central reservation and cross on foot , although there are no pedestrian phases for the crossing here, which seems crazy, especially as there is quite a lot of new housing in this area, a bus station and busy DLR station too. You could ride round to the crossing further up, a staggered toucan crossing outside the DLR station. But these are all counter intuitive and most cyclists heading along the bike path though the park will end up here if they are on their way to Greenwich.
So, we have sent this to TfL just to show them how their plans and ideas for improving traffic flow actually affect the lives and journeys of the local people who live, and travel around these junctions, rather than just those speeding through on big fast roads to somewhere else.