The slip road used by the 168 bus

• SOUTH End Green was ruined when the 168 bus was allowed to park there, the result of nimby opposition many years ago to a plan to locate the bus stand in Cressy Road that exploited the spurious claim that emergency vehicles would be prevented from exiting swiftly from the ambulance station.

I welcome the proposal to pedestrianise the slip road where the buses currently stand, (‘Streatery’ set for South End Green slip road, July 27).

In opposing the so-called “streatery”, your correspondent (Move a bus stand for a so-called ‘streatery’?, July 30) suggests that the only, and impractical, alternative is for the 168 to do a loop down Constantine and Agincourt Roads and park in Fleet Road.

The solution needs to be more radical. It’s ludicrous that so many buses should disfigure the landscape of South End Green – two 168s in South End Road, with a third sometimes sticking its backside into Pond Street, plus four or five 24s in South End Close.

Why can’t the two routes be combined into a single joint franchise, with all buses parked, as the 24 is now, on the north east side of the green and the buses allocated their route number as and when they’re despatched?

The direction of traffic in the close would need to be reversed, so that both 24 and 168 would make a left turn into the bus stand from Elm Terrace. Both routes would emerge from South End Close, the 24 turning left down Constantine Road, the 168 right up Pond Street.

Where there’s a will…

ROGER HUGHES,
N1