The Mile-Long Road That’s Quicker to Walk

By PATRICK SAWER

THE mile-long stretch of the Strand from the Royal Courts of Justice to Trafalgar Square is one of the most painfully slow journeys any driver can make.

Here, where buses crawl end-to-end and cabbies and their passengers sit in frustration, even street sweepers cleaning the gutters move faster than the traffic.

Walking along the Strand, I conducted a private race with vehicles heading west towards the square.

But I was soon having to stop to allow them to catch up at the tailbacks stretching from traffic lights and pedestrian crossings.

Cabbie Karen O’Hanlon, 44, said of the road: “I never use it. It’s so slow. If I’m coming from south of the river I’ll go round the back and through Covent Garden.

“First they shut off the route that allowed you to come up from the Embankment, then they changed the phasing of the lights so all the traffic going into Trafalgar Square slowed down. At first the congestion charge speeded things up, but then they extended it west and all the people who live in the new zone started to drive in.” In front of the Savoy, Elizabeth Reissner, 39, was striding purposefully along past a long queue of stationary buses.

A fellow of the Courtauld Institute in Somerset House, she has given up trying to catch a bus there from Charing Cross station. “It’s so much quicker to walk,” she said. “I once made the mistake of trying to catch a cab from the Courtauld to the station and it was a complete waste of money.” Chauffeur Stuart Rowe, 59, was taking a break in a side street before wearily easing his BMW into the traffic.

“People don’t use public transport the way Ken Livingstone wants them to,” he said. “It’s too expensive and it’s already too crowded, so they pay the C-charge knowing they can get from door to door.”

(c) 2007 Evening Standard; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.