Bus lanes and traffic chaos

Many cities are now setting up bus lanes. These are a good idea if they encourage people to get on the bus and not drive into busy city centres. One problem is when they hit traffic lights. Buses are given priority here and the main traffic stream is stopped. This is a bit annoying but what makes it supremely frustrating is when taxi drivers use the bus lane and the priority at the lights. A taxi is a commercial vehicle just like a delivery truck. They should not choke the main traffic stream up by using the bus lanes and turning the lights red. And taxis aren't green either; they often contain just one driver and a passenger.

While I'm at it another thing that really burns my waffles is when people park illegally (in my city often on a dual carriageway on double yellow lines) with their hazard warning lights on. Like that makes it OK. There is nothing more annoying than queuing to get round someone who is pretending to be broken down while they pop into a takeaway.

As you can probably tell I'm fed up with traffic. It's bad enough the roads are busy without sneaky or lazy motorists playing the system. The city of Doncaster has just moved its bus station on top of the train station and under a busy shopping centre. This has created CHAOS. The main road that feeds the train station is now severely choked and to make matters worse it has five sets of traffic lights in the space of a quarter mile. The problem here is that the buses don't go down the bus lane into the bus station. They go into the town centre to drop people off then cut into the main road to get into the station. Result; traffic lights going red every twenty seconds and the main road through Doncaster choked.

Doncaster has horrendous traffic problems. There is really only one way in or out and to get from one side of town to the other involves a trip into the town centre. There are partial ring roads but they aren't enough. One such road is unfinished and it will link two major traffic hotspots (the football stadium is in this area) and bypass the town centre, providing major relief. The reason this hasn't been completed and opened up is that the Asda supermarket nearby have objected on the grounds that customers will have easy access to the nearby Tesco and they will lose trade. How dare a supermarket dictate traffic planning and road building.