Bus lanes to treble

Secret plans for a huge increase in London's bus lanes can be revealed by the Evening Standard today.

Transport officials aim almost to treble the amount of road space reserved for buses in a bid to speed up journeys and get more people onto public transport.

The plans are revealed in documents obtained from Transport for London by the Standard using the Freedom of Information Act.

They show TfL will spend £325 million by 2010 on "bus priority" measures such as new lanes and electronic devices to turn traffic lights green in favour of approaching buses.

Nine "flagship" projects - including the 38 bus route from Clapton to Victoria, the 25 from Oxford Street to Ilford and the 253 f rom Hackney to Euston - have been chosen to get new road layouts in a bid to speed up bus times by 10 per cent.

Across London, a total of 57 bus lanes will be built this year, with dozens more to follow, while 1,250 sets of traffic lights will be altered over the next five years so they can recognise buses as they approach. Some existing bus lanes will be made out of bounds to cars for longer periods each day.

The documents predict that by 2010, the amount of time bus lanes operate across the capital will have virtually trebled, from 2,640 to 7,300 kilometre hours - the measure of how long a kilometre of bus lane is in force - a week.

The aim of the plans is to combat worsening congestion in the suburbs and keep Mayor Ken Livingstone's expansion of the bus network on track.

Congestion is expected to rise in outer London - where 80 per cent of the 8,000-strong bus fleet operates - by at least eight per cent by the end of the decade but TfL knows it must improve reliability to tempt people out of their cars and provide better links between suburban town centres.

A survey of 1,758 bus users found two thirds strongly support better enforcement of lanes, but only 37 per cent want more lanes built. There was a lot of support for banning goods vehicles from bus lanes and ensuring taxis were not able to block the lanes in the West End.

Half of the respondents said more regular and reliable services would make them use buses more often, but one in three said nothing would increase their bus travel.

Some councils have removed bus lanes at pinch points because they believe they add to congestion. Kew Bridge in Richmond, areas of Barnet and parts of Kensington and Chelsea have all had lanes removed.

Roger Evans, Tory transport spokesman on the London Assembly, said: "It sounds unrealistic to expect to increase bus lanes threefold. Road space is at a premium in London. We should be guided by the principle of using roads to carry as many people as we can - in some cases that will be buses, in others that will be the car."

But Brian Cooke, chairman of the London Transport Users Committee, said: "Broadly we welcome the introduction of extra bus lanes. But motorists are very confused about bus lanes because of the huge variance in the hours they operate. We think that TfL should do some work to standardise this. That may mean that more bus lanes become 24 hours."

TfL has vowed to crack down harder on motorists who venture into the lanes and penalise them with £100 fines.