Raise the Hammer

His point is not that there's no problem with traffic-flow from Wellington through to Mary, but that the problem is caused by the screw-up of lights through downtown. The lights need to be fixed, not the width or lane-profile of the roadway itself.

I mean, the bus lane doesn't even *exist* from Wellington to Mary. Obviously the road worked just fine before the bus lane, why is it congested now? The traffic from Mary through to Bay is the obvious source of the back-up. That area is now 2-lanes, just like Wellingotn->Mary. But Wellington->Mary worked fine as 2 lanes.

Basically, Wellington->Mary proved, *before the bus-lane* that King Street can run just fine with two lanes of live traffic, provided the lights stay synced and nothing else snarls the traffic.

So theoretically, Mary->Bay should be able to do the same isntead of backing up traffic right through to Wellington. But it doesn't. Why?

Well, the obvious culprits are twofold: the Mountain buses (John->King turns across all the traffic, and then King->Macnab turns across all the traffic) and the bad light timing.

Otherwise, the buses are out of traffic, so they're not a source of the snarl. That is, after all, *the whole point*.

Now, since we've already considered how King runs fine with 2 lanes, we can also continue this logic further to Queen (we'll ignore West of Queen since that's where the truck route begins and traffic from Cannon is shunted onto King). If we had 2 lanes there too instead 2.5 (right now it's 3 rush-hour, 2 otherwise) then we could give the North side businesses back their North-side parking meters (the South side businesses all have parking lots anyways). Bye bye "NO MORE BUS LANES" signs, everybody's happy!

Finally, let carpoolers use the bus lane, making the whole area into 2.5 lanes instead of 2 (I dissent on letting cyclists in there - the whole point is that packed vehicles should be able to go fast, which bikes aren't. And I'm a cyclist).

All these quick wins were obvious within a *week* of the launch of the bus lane. Why did the City sit on their hands.