- News
- Reviews
- Bikes
- Accessories
- Accessories - misc
- Computer mounts
- Bags
- Bar ends
- Bike bags & cases
- Bottle cages
- Bottles
- Cameras
- Car racks
- Child seats
- Computers
- Glasses
- GPS units
- Helmets
- Lights - front
- Lights - rear
- Lights - sets
- Locks
- Mirrors
- Mudguards
- Racks
- Pumps & CO2 inflators
- Puncture kits
- Reflectives
- Smart watches
- Stands and racks
- Trailers
- Clothing
- Components
- Bar tape & grips
- Bottom brackets
- Brake & gear cables
- Brake & STI levers
- Brake pads & spares
- Brakes
- Cassettes & freewheels
- Chains
- Chainsets & chainrings
- Derailleurs - front
- Derailleurs - rear
- Forks
- Gear levers & shifters
- Groupsets
- Handlebars & extensions
- Headsets
- Hubs
- Inner tubes
- Pedals
- Quick releases & skewers
- Saddles
- Seatposts
- Stems
- Wheels
- Tyres
- Health, fitness and nutrition
- Tools and workshop
- Miscellaneous
- Tubeless valves
- Buyers Guides
- Features
- Forum
- Recommends
- Podcast
news
M25 traffic queue (CC licensed by Timo Newton-Syms on Flickr)Cost of Britain’s traffic jams hits £9 billion a year
According to a new report by transport data company Inrix, British drivers faced 1.35 million traffic jams in the past year, meaning that around £9bn was lost in wasted time, fuel and unnecessary carbon emissions.
The Telegraph reports that analysis of queues during the 12 months to August found that November 2016 was the worst, with almost 170,000 traffic jams. Inrix said that there were many factors that might influence, but cited particularly cold weather as being one that stuck out for that month in particular.
What to do? Transport minister Jesse Norman – who wrote to cycling organisations last month asking them to instruct their members to follow the Highway Code – has an idea. He has apparently written to Highways England suggesting that slip roads be used as contraflows to relieve the pressure on overloaded motorways.
Referring to an incident on the M3, he wrote: “A particular feature shown in the media was the availability of empty slip roads, and I would be interested to know whether you considered if these could be used as contraflow to move traffic off the motorway.”
Earlier this year, a study into the economic benefits of road building found that any respite from congestion provided by a new or widened road is temporary. The Impact of Road Projects in England report, produced for the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), said that road building and associated development generates more traffic, which in turn creates pressure for more road building.
Last week a report produced by Centre for London recommended that urban motorists give up residential car parking to make more space for other forms of transport. Citing rising congestion and pollution, the think tank suggested that greater emphasis needed to be placed on trains, buses and bikes and advocated reallocation of space to create more segregated cycle lanes and priority bus lanes.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
Latest Comments
- Rendel Harris 5 sec ago
Pogacar's performances in this year's Tour surely give the lie to the idea that he is inferior to Froome on long climbs, e.g. KOM on the Galibier...
- David9694 22 min 23 sec ago
Driver fuming after ploughing into carpark barrier 'painted black'...
- Keesvant 26 min 57 sec ago
Been using this light for 2 years now.....
- Keesvant 32 min 41 sec ago
Landfil ? As with al modern woke products arnt the helmets 100%recycleble ?;...
- Pub bike 5 hours 32 min ago
A similar issue occurs every day on Priory Lane that links the Roehampton Gate entrance of Richmond Park with the Upper Richmond Road: part of the...
- Dunnoeither 10 hours 53 min ago
Thankfully no one here lives in a country with a history of colonialism, slavery or a corrupt financial industry (the list goes on)so we can point...
- Mr Blackbird 13 hours 37 min ago
I agree. The officials probably earn a pittance or just get paid expenses. They do what they do for love of the sport. Without them the sport would...
- ubercurmudgeon 13 hours 3 min ago
Those rainbow bands look more like plaid at that speed.
- Hirsute 14 hours 54 min ago
Oxford from Emily Kerr "Anyone know anything about the THIRD major smash up on Iffley Rd in my ward in a year? "
Add new comment
21 comments
Out local authority have announced that they are spending £5.88m to "attempt" to reduce congetsion at....and I'm not making this up...ONE roundabout on an A road (Runneymede, if you want to go there and help rip up and burn £50 notes) The rest of which is solid traffic in all directions anyway, obviously. And this while they cut funding to children's services and and elderly etc.
I ask you, with these sort of mahoosive fucktards in charge from top to bottom, what hope is there?
What he's suggested is that when the motorway is extremely slow or even stopped completely, that motorists be allowed to turn around and use what the USA calls an on-ramp. But I doubt that the Highways Agency would allow this as it would require a lot of coordination, and also because there's absolutely no way a 44-tonne LGV would be able to turn onto the slip road from lane one easily.
In other words, it's a bollocks idea. The only time it should be done is when the police are there, and only because the motorway is facing an hours-long closure.
Is that what he was suggesting?
leave the motorway at the slip road, go over the junction and join the other side??
I must admit I've done that on occasion it works if a couple of people are doing it but make it a normal thing and it'll cause absolute chaos. sweet baby jesus, this man is a moron of highest order.
I'm not entirely sure he knows what he means or even if what is reported as being written is actually what is said but it's common practice already when an incident has forced closure of the bit of the motorway between the exit and entry slips. Of course if it's anywhere else on the motorway then you're still screwed. I was stuck on the M1 last year for nearly 5hrs due to a fatal accident only a few hundred metres ahead and they had to turn around 5 miles of tail-backed traffic and get it up the exit slip of the previous junction.
At the point I arrived on scene Google Maps hadn't picked up on it and there were still emergency services vehicles arriving for the next 40 minutes so it had only just happened. Sadly the nearest junction was 5 miles behind me so that was it - stuck there for hours. Our glorious Junior Minister's idea wasn't worth a damn at that point!
A big cause of, or rather exacerbater of, congestion in towns is parking. Both parking in stupid places and manoeuvering to park in approved places.
Cockwomble. That is all.
How exactly can one have a contraflow (the clue is in the name) on the slip road to relieve congestion? I presume the cockwomble politician in question means use the slip roads as extra lane capacity...
Naturally if a sizable proportion of the traffic is sent off to go around the (inevitably signalised) roundabout and rejoin it will lead to gridlock at the junction and of course more turbulent flow on the main carriageway (the on slip at Baberton on Edinburgh City Bypass - and I'm sure many other places - demonstrates the effect of joining traffic on mainline flow every weekday evening).
Something like 20-30% of congestion is caused by collisions. From your multiple fatality motorway smashes to the rear enders in a queue of commuters. And what causes these collisions - Bad Driving. So maybe if we cracked down on bad drivers by maybe prosecuting people for driving badly before they had a collision, taking licenses away and viewing driving as a privilige to be earned not a right given at birth may be we'd have less queues. Of course the additional benefits of less dead and injured people, less work for the NHS and cheaper car insurance would also be nice to have. I doubt Mr Norman would have the courage to take that route though he strikes me as a political follower rather than a political leader
There is a complex junction near to me which is almost always congested and at a standstill, certainly during the busy periods of the day. When it's like this the motorists all ignore the lights, the white lines, the bus lanes, even the normal lanes, and frequently even try to jump ahead against oncoming traffic, making the congestion worse and worse.
But just recently I've seen two or three PCSOs in peaked hats and yellow jackets standing at the junction, observing. This seems to have the effect of keeping the traffic moving without any congestion at all, and leads me to specualte that one of the main causes of congestion is the selfish stupidity of people who try to get a jump on others, which snowballs into a general disregard for traffic rules, and makes the congestion ever worse.
The Prisoner's Dilemma in action, I suspect.
Try M4 J11 in the mornings - whoever designed the new layout needs a good smack, for 2 main reasons:
1 - due to the layout and phasing of the traffic lights, traffic heading South on the A33 will always block any traffic trying to head onto the M4 Westbound from the B3270. This bit desperately needs some of the yellow boxing to get drivers to leave some room. As it it, you generally have to pull out into the wrong lane and then try and get into the right lane.
2 - This is compounded by impatient drivers heading North on the A33 into Reading blocking the Westbound M4 slipway. This also desperately needs a yellow box. The lights here seem to be on green for a disproportinate amount of time, for some reason. This means you then also end up with drivers coming off the M4 to head North on the A33 being blocked, the resulting tailback causing many of them to come up the left lane of the slipway and then try and force their way across 4 lanes of traffic.
So, the whole thing becomes a cut-throat mess of people trying to make any sort of progress.
It doesn't help that the roads are already at capacity, so the slightest incident screws everything - an accident near me the other night buggered the roads for miles around and it's only going to get worse with the 2,000-odd new houses being built around here.
Most the traffic build up I tend to see is around slip roads.
Congestion is a feature, not a bug. It lets you know when the roads are at capacity and you should choose a different method of transport.
To be honest I had him pencilled in as smugly Machiavellian, but if he's proposing this then perhaps he's simply a complete idiot after all.
Odd sort of redemption, but there you go, that's transport ministers for you.
Increasing capacity has never reduced congestion, rather the opposite in fact, with the induced demand quickly creating more traffic and bigger jams. This has been known for at least a generation, so it is rather puzzling that a minister for transport is ignorant of it.
Perhaps he could talk to Lord Adonis of the Infrastructure Commission about congestion, as they appear to have cracked it; stop building roads and spend all the money on public transport, cycling and walking.
Motorways are jammed so what do you do? Look at ways of reducing vehicle use to reduce likelihood of congestion on motorways?
Nah. Sod curbing vehicle use, let's just clog up every other road as well.
Fuck it, why stop at just using the sliproads? Let's just tarmac over the entire country and then we can all drive in dead straight lines wherever we need to go.
Has he been on the Moroccan woodbines again lol?!?
My jury isn't: he's the bloke who hasn't accelerated the long-overdue roads review, but insists we need a speedier review to tackle one bloke on a brakeless fixie, one dead pedestrian, and a completely disproportionate media response.
He responded very quickly to a negative headline about him in a targeted (Graun) article.
A cynic might suggest he's a fucknut who spends more time worrying about headlines and pandering to them, than actually understanding and resolving real transport problems.
I'd say the jury's out on Jesse Norman (being generous). He's perhaps trying to be dynamic.
Tinkering at the edges by changing the rules on slip roads isn't going to solve the fundamental problem of too many journeys by car. It's time to stop trying to meet the demand for road space for cars, because it's a strategy which will never succeed, and invest seriously in alternatives.
You know when companies get in a "consultant" who swans around on vast sums of money "advising" them by using all sorts of management buzz-speak and sounding clever while actually not understanding any aspect of the business itself?
Well that's what Jesse Norman sounds like.
I do hope Highways England write back telling him to fuck off.
I humbly suggest that Minister Jesse Norman is a moron.