CitroJim's AX, C3 Picasso, Cycling and Running Tales

[myglaren]

Something of a diversion but I was on a bus last week. Waiting to turn left at traffic lights, ten cars with hazards on piled through the right hand lane and through the red light.

A few minutes later as we approached the crematorium/cemetary gates the road was completely blocked. Cars on both kerbs and a hearse in the centre of the road, dozens of mourners gathered around it.
The driver stopped the bus (no choice) and checked around, no possibility of reversing safely and she was told that it would be twenty minutes before the road was clear again. The ten cars that ran the lights were all behind the hearse. She had to phone the depot to advise of the delay and to re-route busses coming in the opposite direction.
Difficult enough for her with cars dumped all over the roads, not just near the crem., but all over every day. And cars pulling out in front of busses.

I did send a photo to my daughter (an embalmer) but she couldn't identify the hearse, possibly not local. It was flying green, white and orange flags.

[Huskyxantia]

Then there are the ones who have a go at you for doing the speed limit ....

[PaulC5]

We gave up travelling for holidays on Saturdays and bank holidays getting fed up with the long queues. We used to go from Warrington to Torquay for many years and the M6 M5 route was awful on Saturdays but most places self catering were Saturday to Saturday bookings. We found it better to stay in Plymouth a couple of nights before in a hotel and set off back early Saturday or late Friday night. Plymouth is worth a visit for a few days. When we had a caravan we used to travel on Sundays.

[CitroJim]

I did send a photo to my daughter (an embalmer) but she couldn't identify the hearse, possibly not local. It was flying green, white and orange flags.

That particular community are known to cause absolute mayhem on a regular basis at our local crem. Steve...

We gave up travelling for holidays on Saturdays and bank holidays getting fed up with the long queues.

Saturdays I've always avoided Paul! I'll now be going back to travelling in the small hours both ways and doing as you have and staying over wherever I can to allow travel at those times.

The level of traffic and congestion on our roads generally and the lack of any real initiative to find any sort of solution is frankly a national disgrace. Stonehenge for instance, a massive bottleneck, is so easy to resolve. Just build a dual carriageway through the site. It won't disturb the monument at all. And what if it does? Avebury has a road going right through it and it seems to be OK so I'm sure Stonehenge would be too.

What makes it even worse is all road works seem to happen at a geriatric snail's pace and the use of temporary traffic lights and random road closures seem to be far in excess of what's actually needed.

Living fairly near some HS2 works is instructive in just how incredibly slowly they're progressing. I've seen glaciers move faster

[bobins]

Living fairly near some HS2 works is instructive in just how incredibly slowly they're progressing. I've seen glaciers move faster

I see in CountBinface's election manifesto, he pledges to rename HS2 to FFS1 if he gets elected
https://countbinface.com/makerfieldmanifesto

[CitroJim]

I see in CountBinface's election manifesto, he pledges to rename HS2 to FFS1 if he gets elected
https://countbinface.com/makerfieldmanifesto

A most appropriate name for it!

[MattBLancs]

... random road closures seem to be far in excess of what's actually needed.

I've wondered about this, I presumed the paperwork associated with a lane closure drives the planners to "just cone it all off" when the task is only really a very short section being worked on.

Example a couple of miles of dual carriageway coned off down to one lane for...

...two blokes with strimmers, cutting the grass on the central reservation.


I too prefer an early departure to avoid queueing with (what feels like) most of the UK population

[mickthemaverick]

For the last 20+ years I have made a point of avoiding motorways whenever possible. Alternative routes will generally take longer of course but I'm happy to spend more time actually driving than less time sitting in traffic. To get to my mate Bob's house in Reading using M25 and M4 at 02.00 takes 1 hour and 20 mins. To get there using no Motorways at 02.00 takes 1 hour and 40 mins as a direct comparison.
However leaving Hertford any time after 08.00 the Motorway is highly likely to take 1 hour 45 mins with hair loss while the alternative just 1 hour 50mins with no frustration
No contest in my view!

[MattBLancs]

Yep, our recent short holiday up to Penrith and then on to Scotland, set the Garmin to "avoid motorways" and a very much more enjoyable, quieter and more scenic trip was the positive Vs added something like an hour to the journey time.

I'd love to plot it all out via paper maps as you to Mick, but it ain't happening. Sat Nav avoiding the motorways does the job for me

[mickthemaverick]

The 'no motorway' satnav is a good option for general use but I like the record of my major tours which I am able to keep on the maps to use again. However it does create a complete rack in my study:

My map rack

[bobins]

Example a couple of miles of dual carriageway coned off down to one lane for...

...two blokes with strimmers, cutting the grass on the central reservation.

As maddening as it may seem, a lot of the times there is method in such madness. Those bods doing the strimming will be moving along the carriageway all the time - this using up the miles of coned off area. Doing shorter sections of coned off areas isn't always a good idea as there's a risk included with moving on and laying out a new stretch of cones. Having a long section of coned off road helps to regulate the traffic speed - it doesn't work miracles, but it's marginally better than the alternatives.
Having done occasional roadside works on more minor roads, I quickly came to the conclusion that the majority of drivers are barely competent f**kwits / idiots. It should be compulsory for all drivers to spend a morning working roadside, a morning using a pushbike on the roads, and a few hours with a horse on the road

[MattBLancs]

Oh yes, I understand it's trying to keep workers safe from inattentive motorists, but my niggle was that they seemed to have coned about 2 months worth ** of strimming area off, most of the cones area wasn't protecting anyone.

Mind you, I travelled that road pretty regularly at the time, often it was coned off but no one there at all, which was even more annoying

[Zelandeth]

Some of that is also going to be down to the legal side that goes on behind the scenes regarding road works.

Disclaimer: It's 16 years since I was involved in this, so exact details may have changed. This was also in Scotland and dealing with the Transport (Scotland) Act 2000, so in England the exact detail may be slightly different, given works here deal with the 1985 regs which do in some areas differ. Scotland look to have an amendment issued in 2019 as well... I'm not digging through it to see what's changed!

If you're doing anything on the roads which involves encroaching onto the carriageway by even a millimetre, this requires a temporary traffic regulation order (TTRO) to be submitted to the relevant traffic authority. This details what you're doing, why you're doing it, and exactly what restrictions are going to need to be in place to allow the work to happen. That's where the information that's fed to the emergency services, live mapping services, abnormal load management guys, information passed to public transport operators, etc comes from.

The information in this documentation is very black and white, and most importantly is *site specific.* So if you were to come off one small area, do your work, move onto the next bit, strictly speaking those would require separate traffic orders to be submitted. At hundreds of quid a pop and with at least a couple of weeks turnaround from the Traffic Commissioners office, nobody is going to do that. There just doesn't exist a mechanism in how that it set up to handle what we'd consider mobile works "cleanly."

Wouldn't surprise me if the regs also probably date back to pre-motorway days - where having one set of mobile works running for tens and tens of miles just wasn't something that needed to be considered.

It's a right nuisance when you're doing really brief works which are pretty much in and gone like line painting.

There are obviously exceptions for emergencies and such, but the expectation is that in these cases you'll inform the TC's office what's happened or happening the second you're able to, and that they will rain down hell on earth on you as the local transport authority if you don't!

[MattBLancs]

Zel - thanks so much for that great summary - always good to know what's going on "behind the scenes"


I'm going to (to my surprise!) claim I wasn't far off in my presuming earlier!

I presumed the paperwork associated with a lane closure drives the planners to "just cone it all off" when the task is only really a very short section being worked on.

[Stickyfinger]

The growth of the "BLOB" has encroached into everything....it is not about improving anything, it is about taking control.

TBH it is not the Politicians fault (well some of them it is) but the "BLOB" that has grown and taken power and constantly FAILS at everything it does. (except at spawning 1000's more of their like every year).

Failure of HS2, Local Road Works etc....SACK the Civil Servants (The BLOB) who have the real control, oversight, contract responsibility and creation !..there needs to be consequences for the abject failure (HS2 contracts/regulations....NHS Computer System Upgrade...Birmingham Tech... for example) as there is in the REAL WORLD.