Every day London’s roads are host to 11 million cars and motorbikes, and 400,000 cyclists. Upwards of 7000 buses carry 6.3 million people on their journeys, plus London Underground brings 3.5 million passengers into the centre. Add into the equation a million separate road works, 500 public and special events annually; security alerts, accidents and breakdowns, and it might seem like a miracle that the traffic moves at all. Managing the sheer volume and diversity of the growing demands on one of the most complicated urban transport networks in the world requires some fancy footwork behind the scenes.
Phil Davies of Transport for London’s street directorate says, ‘Our job is to keep London moving, squeezing as much as possible out of the existing road network. London’s historical road layout largely predates motorised transport and in the City of London, is largely unchanged from Roman times, a traffic planner’s nightmare. The capital has 13,800 km of roads, of which 580km are strategic routes under our direct control here in the London Traffic Control Centre (LTCC). You have to remember that many cities, like Bangkok or Buenos Aires will accept much higher levels of congestion, but paralysing gridlock is just not economically, socially or politically acceptable in London.’
Geographical May 2006
