IMAGINE you are in charge of a city. A big, brash, sometimes brilliant, one. Then imagine that city is trying to bounce back from a pandemic that has plunged it into a deep freeze for more than a year. A lockdown that has seen it drained of people and income, drained of its whole point of existence. Left a hollow shell of itself.
What would your No1 priority be? Would it be, oh, I don't know, just a shot in the dark here, but would your priority be to help that city get back on its feet? To bring the people back in. To let it flourish once more?
Or would your priority be to make it as difficult as possible for life to return to normal? To actively chase people away?
Because that is what Glasgow City Council seem to be doing while we've been looking the other way.
If you are one of the few people who are regularly in the town, you'll have noticed the strangest thing. Beside many bus-stops, a completely unnecessary and, frankly, dangerous piece of civil engineering has been imposed on our already-strangled roads.
If you haven't seen them, I'll try to explain and I'll understand if you don't believe me. Tarmac platforms, the width of a lane of traffic, have been thrown down in front of bus-stops on busy roads, such as Bath Street and Hope Street, thereby blocking that lane to traffic. This means our poor bus drivers can no longer stop at the front of the bus-stop and will have to swing out of the bus lane and into traffic to stop for passengers. This is guaranteed to cause traffic jams but, worse, it will cause accidents. Cyclists will be knocked off if they are in the drivers' blindspots. They could be killed. And then, of course, it'll be the bus driver to blame.
And it's not just cyclists at risk. Many of these bus lanes are part-time which means drivers and motorcyclists are perfectly entitled to use them out of restricted times. Now, imagine you are a visiting motorcyclist and don't know the city, it's dark and the rain is streaming off your visor. You're tired and you are trying to find your hotel and you hit one of these monstrosities. You are going down, quite likely headfirst. You could get up again but maybe you won't. Landing on your head is never good for your health. And let's hope there's no pedestrians about to be clattered by an out of control 250kg bike.
These lane-blockers are not even properly built. They are uneven, with the kerbs higher than the surface and the last thing older people or those with sight problems need.
I don't blame the roads department. I'm sure they are trying their best to keep the city moving. I'm sure they'd rather fix the plague of potholes or, even better, resurface our battered and beaten roads. No, I blame the politicians. I blame them all. No matter which party they represent, they all seem to have swallowed the goody-two shoes orthodoxy: Car driver=bad. Motorcyclist=even worse.
It's not just Glasgow, this is a problem across Scotland. It looks like the powers that be, those that soak up our council tax, are using the pandemic not to build back better but to try to reshape, with no discussion, how we live our lives according to their prejudices.
The city belongs to us – not those numpties in the city chambers – and it might be nice if somebody asked us before they tried to change it.
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