Michael, nobody is trying to delay anything. If you go to the High Road you will see the cycleway has already been constructed. The move to a permanent traffic order is only symbolic and another temporary one could be made if necessary.The Monitoring Report raised more questions than it answered. The issues raised with perceptions of danger at bus islands were dismissed by saying that the design follows recommended guidelines and there have been no serious injuries which are both technically correct. However, the report gave no indication that the authors had actually visited the site to have a look if people's concerns were legitimate.The way the bus data was presented also tended to obfuscate rather than clarify the situation. Tom Pike has previously claimed that rush hour travel times have not been affected on Chiswick High Road. It would be valuable to know how this squares with increased travel times particularly eastbound. Are buses just a little bit slower across the whole day or are there specific times when the service has problems. The Chiswick Lane delays are much more severe, has this reduced ridership or had a broader impact on scheduling. No effort appears to have been made to discuss this with the bus operating companies.On safety, the detail was very sketchy. The object of the exercise seemed to be to present the data in the most favourable light rather than look at the collisions that have occurred with the aim of reducing future risk. Certainly Chiswick's section seems much safer than the Hammersmith one, it would have been good to have seen some analysis of why this might be. Without that you still just can't rule out Chiswick having been lucky so far.You may be right that cyclists can sometimes outnumber cars on the High Road, I've never observed this happening myself but there is no doubt that the absolute number of cars has fallen. This means that cars don't make up the majority of motor vehicles on the High Road at times with buses, lorries, vans, taxis and private hire vehicles predominating. I'm not sure this counts as a win as those missing cars appear to have been displaced for instance to Acton Lane, Bath Road and Chiswick Lane.
Francis Rowe ● 613d