您对全球城市公交车速变慢的分析准确指出了其运作机制，而解决之道也随之显现（《伦敦公交在走下坡路？图解全球城市公共交通为何慢如蜗牛》，9月23日）。伦敦交通局（Transport for London）自身的测算表明，速度下降10%会导致6%的需求流失，而帝国理工学院（Imperial College London）在15个城市中也发现了同样的降幅，这展示了当公交车周围交通拥堵加剧时它们的遭遇。
Your analysis of slowing buses in global cities sets out the mechanism exactly, and the remedy follows from it ( London buses in decline? Why public transport in global cities is slowing to a crawl – visualised, 23 September Transport for London’s own calculation that a 10% fall in speed costs 6% of demand and Imperial College London’s finding of the same decline across 15 cities show what happens to buses as the traffic thickens around them. Retiming the lights will not reverse it, and London is already trying. The phrase to notice in the article is one used by TfL: signals will give more buses priority “where possible”.
重新调整红绿灯时间无法扭转这一趋势，而伦敦已经在尝试这样做。文章中值得注意的一个词是伦敦交通局使用的说法：信号灯将“在可能的情况下”给予公交车更多优先权。
There lies the difficulty.
难点就在这里。在一条每两分钟发一趟车的线路上，信号灯被要求在每个方向每小时干预30次，而路口在接到上一个指令后，还没等下一辆车抵达就无法恢复正常通行。
On a route running a bus every two minutes, the signals are asked to intervene 30 times an hour in each direction, and the junction cannot recover between calls before the next bus arrives.
布里斯托尔市议会的工程师在审查其公交优先权政策时恰恰发现了这一点：在该市交通最拥堵的区域，优先权完全无法节省行程时间。
Bristol city council’s engineers found precisely this when they reviewed their bus priority: in the most congested parts of the city, priority delivered no journey-time saving at all.
这对比表面看起来对经济的拖累更大。阻碍城市发展的，恰恰是跨城通勤、拜访客户和前往商店的纯粹艰难程度。一家公司可招聘的地理范围缩小了，一个工人能找到的工作减少了，商业街能吸引的人流量也随之下降。商业街的衰落，在很大程度上源于人们抵达那里的便利程度下降。
This is a bigger brake on the economy than it looks. What holds a city back is the plain difficulty of getting across it to work, to customers, to the shops. A firm can recruit from a smaller area, a worker can reach fewer jobs, and a high street can be reached by fewer people. Much of the decline of the high street is a decline in how easily people can get to it.
解药是用更少的车辆运载相同数量的人。一辆有轨电车运载的人数相当于三到四辆公交车，因此它可以在一个又一个路口获得优先通行权，而交叉交通依然能够轮流通行。
The cure is to carry the same people in fewer vehicles. One tram carries as many people as three or four buses, so it can be given priority junction after junction, and the crossing traffic still gets its turn.
自1985年南特开通有轨电车以来，大约有30个法国城市在其市中心铺设了有轨电车，并围绕它们重建了市中心。由此可见，它们的市中心街道变得更加繁华了。谢菲尔德的有轨电车与汽车和小货车共享一条商业街，并且在高峰时段和正午运行相同的时刻表。大卫·安德鲁斯（David Andrews）轻轨交通协会主席、布里斯托尔地区公交与有轨电车商业案例主要作者贵报关于伦敦公交车走下坡路的报道，凸显了伦敦糟糕的交通政策，这一政策受制于宣传而非实用性。
About 30 French cities have put trams through their centres since Nantes started in 1985, and they rebuilt those centres around them. Their central streets are visibly busier for it. Sheffield’s trams share a shopping street with cars and vans, and run to the same timetable in the peak as at midday. David Andrews Chair, Light Rail Transit Association lead author, Bristol Area Bus and Tram Business Case Your article on London buses in decline highlights poor transport policy in London, which is guided by publicity rather than practicality.
由于专用公交车道在很大程度上被一味迎合的自行车道所取代，公交车变慢了。伦敦是一座拥有狭窄街道的古老城市，随着个人自行车交通被赋予高于大众公共交通的优先权，公交车速度变慢且服务变得不稳定也就不足为奇了。
Buses have slowed down as dedicated bus lanes have been largely replaced by a poor choice of cycle lanes. London is an old city with narrow lanes and, with individual cycle transport given priority over mass public transport, it’s no wonder that buses have slowed and become erratic in service.
人们只需观察一下自行车道的使用情况就会发现，除了工作日上午7点半至9点以及下午4点至5点的的高峰期外，这些车道都是空置的。这是对宝贵道路资源的极大浪费，而这些道路本可以用来行驶公交车。
One only needs to observe the utilisation of cycle lanes that are empty except during the peak hours of 7.30am-9am and 4pm-5pm on weekdays. That is a gross waste of valuable road space that could be used by buses.
用专用公交车道代替自行车道可以加快公交车运行速度，并使其更加可靠。公交车道可以与自行车共享，在高峰时段专供自行车使用，而在一天中的其余时间则供公交车使用。
Having a dedicated bus lane instead of a cycle lane would speed up buses and make them more reliable. The bus lane could be shared by cycles and during peak times be dedicated to them, while being free for buses rest of the day.
遗憾的是，政客们目光短浅，极少能超越选举的考量，未能将公交车置于自行车之前。有关部门在自行车道上浪费了数百万资金，却在大力改善大众公共交通方面惨遭失败。V·纳拉亚南（V Narayanan）
Sadly, politicians rarely look beyond elections, and fail to prioritise buses over bicycles. The authorities have wasted millions on cycle lanes while failing spectacularly to improve mass public transportation. V Narayanan