{"id":6665,"date":"2017-10-29T11:08:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T11:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=6665"},"modified":"2017-10-29T11:08:45","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T11:08:45","slug":"pancras-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/pancras-road\/","title":{"rendered":"U-Turns in Pancras Road"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Note: This is aimed particularly at anyone who cycles in central London and travels near either King&#8217;s Cross or St Pancras stations. Everyone else? As you were. Unless you work for Camden Council&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>While tube maps show King&#8217;s Cross St Pancras as a single station, anyone who visits will know that there are actually two different stations served by that tube. King&#8217;s Cross serves trains to the north and Scotland, as well as Hull, Cambridge, King&#8217;s Lynn and suburban stations to the north of London. Over in St Pancras, there are Eurostar services to the continent, services towards the midlands, and trains running north-south between Bedford and Brighton.<\/p>\n<p>Between the two stations is Pancras road. While you <em>can<\/em> travel through towards Camden, it&#8217;s mostly used by black cabs, minicabs and a few buses dropping people off and picking passengers up from the station. There are dropoff points for both stations along the road, and King&#8217;s Cross&#8217;s taxi rank is set back from the road too (St Pancras&#8217;s taxi rank is on the other side of the station).<\/p>\n<p>These are busy places, and there is always lots of traffic.<\/p>\n<p>However, Pancras Road is also used by a large number of cyclists who are entering or leaving either mainline station. And that&#8217;s where the trouble comes, because the road can be positively chaotic. On the St Pancras side, is a long area for setting down and picking up, but at busy times double parking is pervasive. So minicabs in particular will crawl along the road waiting for a spot to open up to safely discharge their passengers. They tend not to worry about other traffic users. <\/p>\n<p>Then there is the real problem &#8211; vehicles conducting three point turns. I understand that once you&#8217;ve set down, vehicles want to return into central London, but vast numbers conduct three point turns. I took this video on Friday with separate vehicles all trying to do the manoeuvre in very busy surroundings.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/_aWzljg2fh8\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It would be safer for all in the vicinity if three point turns or u-turns were made illegal on this section of road. Particularly for cyclists, this can be dangerous as there is so much movement in the area, that cyclist can become invisible. <\/p>\n<p>Instead, such turns should be further up Pancras Road, where there is already taxi-waiting space for those cabs queuing to pick up passengers at King&#8217;s Cross. For others, it&#8217;s easy to loop around St Pancras station via Goods Way and Midland Road, from where drivers can head off in any direction again. Let&#8217;s just keep the horrible 150m section between Euston Road and the passenger entrances of King&#8217;s Cross and St Pancras Stations clear of u-turning traffic can we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: This is aimed particularly at anyone who cycles in central London and travels near either King&#8217;s Cross or St Pancras stations. Everyone else? As you were. Unless you work for Camden Council&#8230; While tube maps show King&#8217;s Cross St Pancras as a single station, anyone who visits will know that there are actually two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[56,51,830,829,745],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6665"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6667,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665\/revisions\/6667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}