Forgive me if I'm skeptical - these surveys are usually heavily loaded.

A recent survey regarding some changes in Ipswich which would destroy a free-flowing roundabout CERTAINLY did not try to take motorists into account - it wasn't even listed as an option when being asked what type of 'road' user I was.

I filled in 'motorist' wherever I could and told them how bad the scheme was, but I'm sure they won't listen - they will no doubt remove the roundabout and add even more traffic lights, jamming the town centre up more than it already is.

As a business owner in the city I have to say I have little hope for this being any improvement. The current 'bus only' area of royal ave and the surrounding areas is a complete joke with more cars than ever in the city centre. Its not policed in any genuine way and the blue badge scheme in NI is so bent and corupt every tom dick and harry has a blue badge.

As for improving the city, the city centre is dying on its feet with less and less people travelling into the city, this will only accelerate the decline. As always in NI we do stuff on the cheap and go for half hearted solutions. We should be building light rail in Belfast city centre and to the surrounding areas instead we go for painting bus lanes and a crappy eway glorified bus solution which takes decades to complete and will just end up being a bus route like any other just tarted up with some stupid marketing.

Meanwhile as the city centre racks up closed businesses and empty units what's the city council doing? Holding consultation sessions to discuss if people think the Union flag should be flown. Absolute morons the lot of them!

its also worth noting that nearly all the on street parking in the city centre will be removed at the same time

This document has just been published - it shows what uses will be permitted along the sides of every road in the city centre when Belfast On The Move is completed. Including parking, loading bays, bus layover, taxi ranks etc.

They have built a traffic island seperating the left lane from the others on Oxford Street before the Waterfront. Presumably for traffic lights to let buses cross lanes.

Bit of confusion with traffic as this is in place but the legal order is not yet active.

Signs up today say Barrack street rat run will be closed from Sundayy 24th June

The bus lane is on Oxford Street now, followed by a traffic light where Bus lane + 3 lanes turns into 2 lanes + Bus lane + 1 lane.

Signage indicates that lane 4 should be for turning right onto May Street only, though there was still confusion.

The bus lane is active from 7am-7pm.

From what I could see of Bruce Street, the left hand turn off Great Victoria Street is not open yet.

On a side note, great to see so many tour coaches and foreign cars about.

It will take a while for people to learn the new layout. I spoke to a guy who was down Oxford Street a couple of days ago. He said it was total chaos! Nobody knew what lane to be in. Cars were in the bus lane etc etc.

There is serious confusion occurring at the junction of Oxford Street and May Street. Oxford Street is marked as right lane for May Street, but it is not not clear, when turning into May Street, which lane you can move into (or when) as the bus lane isn't marked there. On Friday morning two lanes were full of parked vans unloading into St George's Market.

I suspect it'll make no difference (or make general travel worse) but one thing I can say with certainty is that it is making the environment uglier.

If you'd like an example of the NI Government's travel strategy, here's one. Park and Ride at Bangor Train Station is a very small car park, but there's a large public car park just round the corner in Dufferin Avenue. It was free, but they are now introducing an hourly charge on it. I was considering using the train to get to work but (a) with irregular shifts there is no decent pay as you go option from Translink, and (b) the additional car parking charges just introduced, though small, tip the balance into driving being cheaper - as well as more convenient.

Muppetry.

And... while I'm ranting, another thing.

Traffic lights approaching the back of the city hall on May Street. When driving along there at 5.30am, passing one set of lights on green triggers the next set of lights (100m further on) to turn red. Why?!

What I observed was utter confusion for traffic that previously used the 2nd lane from the right to continue towards the Ormeau Road, getting stuck in the rightmost lane for May Street, then having to cross the bus lane to get onto the 2nd lane from the left.

The bus lane for May Street doesn't appear to have been marked yet, I think it should be the leftmost 2 lanes until City Hall, when similar traffic lights to Oxford Street will let the buses cross to the rightmost lane.

I can imagine the green-red lights phasing is to prevent cars using May Street / Donegall Square South as a racetrack?

David Coulthard took a Red Bull F1 car along Wellington Place / Donegall Square North a couple of years ago. Though he couldn't take it out of 2nd gear due to the camber.

As for park and ride, I noticed on the Saintfield Road park and ride that the car park closes at 6pm, not much use if you don't get out of work til after 5! And evening shoppers can't avail of it either.
From the Newtownabbey end, people are using the Abbeycentre and Whiteabbey Hospital as unofficial park and ride car parks.

I know people who have tried public transport to get to their work, they wanted to cycle to the train station - get the train - then cycle to their work.
But Translink have deemed that bikes can't use the train until 9.30am (but without restriction in the evening).

The journeys most attractive to cyclists in the mornings are the ones most likely to have standees. It's rather less of a problem in the evenings, as pupils get out of school much earlier than most workers, spreading the load.

Outside of bus lane hours, if I am heading up Oxford Street and want to head towards Cromac Street/Ormeau Road, which lane do I use? There will be cars in the bus lane and the lane to the left of it, both of which could then be heading into a single lane.

marksi, the most cost effective way to travel on the trains is buying tickets through their iphone app called mlink - obviously its only available if you have an iphone or itouch. The three day flexi allows any 3 days out of 7. Mlink tickets are always cheaper than the paper equivalent.

Apologies for going OT - Retro King - while that is slightly better than the weekly ticket, it is still time limited. Why can't I buy a ticket of, say 10 journeys, which will not expire in a week or a month or whatever?!

I often don't know at the start of the week how many "normal" days I'll be working and how many times I need to be in work at 5.30am, which means Translink multi-journey tickets are useless to me. The 3 day one still expires after 7 days, even if I have only used it once.

Because its Translink and as a public company they have next to no true accountability! Its only within the last year that they've introduced a monthly ticket that doesnt have to start on the first of the month! I kid you not!

NIR tickets are subject to random checks rather than 100% - conductors should at least ask for passengers without tickets to buy them, but not all tickets are checked on all journeys. That is why all tickets other than singles and day returns are timebound rather than journey-based. Contract tickets did exist, not sure if they do now.

I understand there were limitations on the ticketing system preventing odd-day monthly tickets.

If you want multi-journey, rather than multi-day, use the bus, which of course has 100% checks on all journeys. Buses officially only take bicycles on vehicles with boots, though.

I have no idea what tickets are available on Ulsterbus (website helpfully says "phone us") but I don't believe that non-time limited multi-journey tickets are available outside the Metro system. Ulsterbus has only weekly and monthly tickets, or the wonderfully ridiculous iLink system which places Donaghadee in the same ticketing zone as Enniskillen, and which is therefore wildly more expensive than anything else.

In any case, a bus from Donaghadee to Belfast takes around an hour. There's an express morning service which takes 5 minutes longer than that. I'd prefer to drive to Bangor and get the train, but Translink and the Roads Service are actively making it cheaper and more convenient for me to drive, despite the fact that I would LIKE to be using public transport.

I did tweet Translink yesterday to ask, with the response that "unfortunatly non-time limited tickets are not available - please contact NIR". If it is "unfortunate" then (a) fix it and (b) I've contacted "Translink" and they refer me to contact someone else. You'd almost think it wasn't an integrated transport company.

In other news, the lane markings at the Cromac St end of Oxford street have been altered to fix the issue I raised before (which lane for straight on, outside bus lane hours) however there's still confusion on the turn into May Street.

Weekly and monthly tickets as such no longer exist on Ulsterbus. They've been converted to the same multijourney smartlink cards as Metro, valid for a year.

The reason they don't do multi-journey tickets on NIR is fare evasion and the likelihood that especially at peak times that not all tickets will be checked, whereas an iLink card is reasonably likely to be checked at least once a day.

It's precisely the same on IE and in GB, apart from the Scotrail flexipass which is only valid for end-to-end journeys including a station with manned or automated barriers and some carnet tickets. IE and National Rail also still insist on monthlies being from the 1st to the 31st.

NIR once did contract (carnet) tickets in tens for internal services, but sold so few that they ended up withdrawing them - presumably they cost more to stock than the business they attracted. They still sell them for the Enterprise.

In a British Isles context, NIR is better than most for season tickets. If you want it to improve, you need to pay more in the Regional Rates.

Final question for now - if you know on Monday afternoon what your working pattern will be for the rest of the week, why don't you buy the 3-day mLink ticket just in time for Tuesday morning?

I don't know what time I will need to be in for the rest of the week. At any point the next day or days could turn into an early shift starting at 0530. I know I am an unusual case.

So the bus lanes have been implemented, the schools have been back a month and on the first rainy day it was a total shambles.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 16327.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-19725940

I don't use the city centre a lot, but have noticed that traffic has backed up and gotten busier on the periphery routes such as the Castlereagh Road and Malone Road back to Shaws Bridge.
They want through traffic to use the Westlink, this has definitely gotten worse. Doesn't help when people use the inside lane to sneak in to the M3 / Titanic Quarter lane.