Merrywalks?

What is up with the planning in Stroud? When I arrived there was no Macdonalds, Dominos Pizza, Costa Coffee, Subway. What we did have was a bus station. You could shelter from the rain. There was a bus and coach office conveniently located at the corner. Admittedly the back end of the Merrywalks Mall was very ugly and the smokers waiting for their buses made it unpleasant. But at least you could go to one place for a bus. Now the bus station is just a series of halts either side of the road. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/7866809.stm
Hopes of a new bus station that integrates with the railway seem to have vanished.

The street itself seems to have been named using the rules of Newspeak as Merrywalks is certainly not merry but a doubleplusungood road for anyone but especially bad for the cyclist. Why did they put so many traffic lights in such a small stretch of street? Was there a special offer on at the time? Travelling up the hill I often get stopped and it is tiresome to do hill starts on a bicycle. I could just zoom through like the other cyclists. The bus bays are often illegally stopped in by cars looking for pizza or getting to the cinema. This is hazardous as these cars move in and out as I roll down the hill. The pedestrian crossings are ignored by many people who run across the road when they see their bus. They aren't on the lookout for bikes so I need to travel in the centre of the road to avoid these sorts of people. The traffic is signposted as being 20mph. I can assure you that if drivers can go faster they will. Then there is the busy traffic coming out of Macdonalds, the surgery, the car parks and again I need to stay in the centre of the road to avoid these cars crossing and turning. Finally there is the dreadful road surface with lots of bone jarring holes. Even though these are patched up regularly the heavy traffic seems to gouge them out again.