I watched a repeat episode of Top Gear on Dave last night featuring Terry Wogan. Terry and Jeremy were both lamenting the placement of a bus lane on the M4, a wheeze implemented by John Prescott in the heady days of his, ahem, integrated transport policy. Maybe I've been asleep for a number of years because I'd never heard of the M4 bus lane. I do know that for the most part John Prescott was totally out of his depth with such a wide ranging and complicated brief. But let's face it, the man would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle.
Anyway, I checked it out, and on the face of it, putting a bus lane on the outside lane of a busy motorway looks like one of John Prescott's daftest ideas. But for once, the old fool actually appears to have done something moderately clever.
Check out this: http://www.cbrd.co.uk/indepth/m4buslane/
The fact that Mr Prescott actually got something right is probably within the laws of averages, given the number of thing that he cocked up, but it is still a bit of a surprise.
I didn't know that either and yes it seems to make good sense. A good bit of lateral thinking there by someone.
I'm a bit less pleased by the idea of motorcades being allowed to use it if they carry 'important' people.
On the plus side that would mean that if you had a spare portable anti tank weapon handy you could treat it like one of those 'shoot the ducks' sideshows at fairgrounds 
eccs - you owe me some life back after posting that link to crdb... I have spent more time than enough on that website 
I love the descriptions of the Coventry ring road "The most interesting ring road in the country? Quite possibly. The most frightening? Yes!" and "The second is that this is the road equivalent of a fairground ride - frightening but an awful lot of fun!" from personal experience, I can say that both the descriptions are valid... the secret is to drive faster than everyone else. If everyone did that we would have our own LHC, or perhaps an LVC!!!
I may have to give them some examples of the sport of renumbering A roads to decrease their use... Merry lives on the A4632 these days, not the A46 
The road through Avebury is no longer the road from Barnstaple to Leicestershire (A361) but the A4361... and there are others that I can't recall.... perhaps I am getting autistic with age? 
Ron