Cost of Britain’s traffic jams hits £9 billion a year

mrchrispy wrote:

Is that what he was suggesting?

leave the motorway at the slip road, go over the  junction and join the other side??

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!

gmac101 wrote:

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.

ConcordeCX wrote:

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.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

I'd say the jury's out on Jesse Norman (being generous). He's perhaps trying to be dynamic.

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.