Depending on your viewpoint, being told that there’s nearly 900 separate road works planned between now and December 2021, which could lead to thousands of days’ worth of delays, could be a good or terrible thing.
Of course, no one likes sitting in traffic jams, road works have become the bane of modern motoring, (well, that and being treated like a portable cash machine), but is there an argument in favour of these works?
Damned if you do…
It’s easy to sit here, staring out of my window looking at the rolling Warwickshire countryside and complain about being delayed while driving virtually anywhere thanks to roadworks, but I also have a foot firmly in the other camp: “We pay all these taxes, duty on fuel, VED, anti-pollution, congestion charges and look at the state of our roads … potholes big enough to crack a wheel and punch your suspension strut through the bonnet”.
No happy medium, unfortunately.
There’s an argument for carrying out the roadworks overnight (where possible), but that would lead to extending the overall length of time, a further increase in costs and overhead as the roadworks need setting up and breaking down each night, and lest we forget that ultimately, it’s the motorists that are paying for them.
… damned if you don’t
The planned road works are estimated to affect around 1 billion (913,609,699) journeys between now and December 2021, and although some major roads will be affected more, there doesn’t seem to be a geographical area that will be safe and free-flowing from these works.
The M6, in particular, will face at least 34 planned works, which the study creators say will cause disruption for 1,586 days (despite there only being just over 900 days until 1st December 2021), it’s thought that these 1,500+ days come from the extended timings for every journey affected.
The crux of the problem, at least according to Edmund King, President of the AA, is the desire to change traditional motorways into smart motorways, or as they’re now being called, ‘digital roads’.
Digital roads
Smart motorways, digital roads, whatever you call them, there’s still major concerns over road safety; over 400 miles of motorways are set to lose the hard shoulder, which has traditionally been the safety refuge for stranded motorists, despite there being inherent problems with it – Highways England announced last year that over 100 people were killed or injured every year while on the hard shoulder.
Of course, there are financial implications to the argument for digital roads vs traditional motorways; in a document on parliament.uk, it breaks down the costs of traditional widening, and for turning a motorway into an ‘All Lane Running’ motorway, but one particular section makes for important reading.
“Cost savings are at the heart of the Department’s justification for the permanent conversion of the hard shoulder into a running lane. The Government’s preference for All Lane Running is based on the fact that extra capacity can be obtained at a 60% lower cost than traditional road widening. The fact that All Lane Running is the least costly of the scheme designs cannot be challenged. That this involves the loss of the hard shoulder, resulting in a risk to safety, is another matter and is not justifiable.”
The reality
Despite bemoaning the fact that road works are seemingly everywhere, and that we once planned our journeys based on time & distance rather than guesstimating delays due to road works, the reality is that they’re now part of daily life as a motorist, and possibly with good reason.
How we travel is changing, or perhaps the vehicles we use to travel in, are changing. Vehicles are becoming smarter, able to interact with their surroundings, to know when to switch lanes, which direction they need to go, how much traffic is around them … smart cars are getting smarter but they need better infrastructure to work to their maximum efficiency, and better infrastructure means more roadworks.
For the majority of us that drive vehicles that have no connectivity, that still use a CD player for In-Car Entertainment or rely on outdated fossil-fuels to get from A to B, roadworks are painful. But we are literally a few steps away from full autonomy, science-fiction is fast becoming science fact, and the days of the ‘Johnny Cab’ are here already, providing the environment can cope with them.
So despite the fact that sitting in traffic jams due to road works is something akin to having teeth pulled, they’re a good thing, and if we don’t benefit from them, you know that our children will.
Is there a better way to build & repair roads? Are roadworks simply a fact of modern life? Is the Govt. wrong to put money before safety? Let us know in the comments.
While I appreciate roadworks are a necessary evil, there does seem to be very poor planning when it comes to implementing them.
If we didn’t have miles of coned-off road with no visible sign of work being done, or roads re-worked a few months after completion (A130 towards Canvey/A13 anyone?) then it wouldn’t seem so bad. It’s the inefficiency that gets me.
We visit Switzerland occasionally and find that their roadworks cause far fewer problems. The reason is that they do them on small sections, usually two or three miles long instead of the 20 miles or more that we seem to favour over here.
Yes that’s right. We have a section of the m5 between 1 and 4 in both directions with 50mph and a ridiculous 30mph section. Cars don’t like 30! And never anyone working although signs keep telling there are 456 people working underneath. And then there’s the 20 miles of smart motorway 50mph works up the m6. Rarely a soul in sight.
Cars are fine at 30 mph, it’s motorists that don’t like 30
My car is automatic and at 30 mph would cruise in 2nd or 3rd gear. 40 mph may allow me to cruise in 3rd or 4th! 50 is the minimum speed that would guarantee the car cruising in top gear! Less fuel used in top!
far fewer cars in Switzerland too
I agree with you Some agreement should be reached whereby a road works contractor is given a time shedule to complete and apart from incidents out of their control high penalties are imposed on a dailey basis for missing targets
But then there’s a risk of corners being cut
roadworks.org check it out. the time and everything is on the site.
Yes, I’m a hgv driver and no matter what time of day or night you pass the m6 roadworks no one is doing any work! Takes the p#^s when other countries do a mile section over night without much problem. Our jokers put cameras an clones out weeks before starting any work. Oh, an why do we need cameras on an 50mph when no bugger is there?
The cameras are there to help pay for the road!!!?
Kerchin is the only reason. Short of a few quid. Fine someone.
Spot-on, MikeB, my thoughts exactly. Most often, when I encounter a section of roadworks, I muse on the fact that ‘work’ is rarely taking place at the time. I’ve no argument with the necessity of maintaining the roads, but why can’t the work be done within a shorter time period (ie more hours per day)? That way the disruption is reduced. Also the stupidity of coning off many miles while working on a small stretch – WHY?!?!!?!?!? I am amazed beyond comprehension at the sheer chutzpah of the person who posted the signs on the M6 in Staffordshire, notifying that the ‘smart’ motorway ‘upgrade’ will necessitate a 50mph limit (sometimes reduced to 40mph, I’ve found) along the whole stretch until 2022. Please, can somebody in the Ministry of Transport explain why road contractors are allowed to get away with coning off many miles in order to work on a single quarter-mile stratch…?
Blame the cost cutting government attitude, ‘make them suffer, make them pay’. Time they woke up to the new more effecient ways to repair roads, recycle our plastic waste and turn it into tarmac.
Is already happening, albeit on a small scale… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-48332259
A good idea, but I wonder how much of the plastic surface wears away forming microbeads, which is what we are trying to keep out of the environment.
Plastic waste is the LAST thing we want in road surfaces – it results in microplastic particles polluting the water system and poisoning the food-chain!
When you live on a tiny island 603 miles tip to tip, (725 by road), one is never further than 77 miles from the sea, then jam 65,000.000 people into it, then what do we expect? 650,000 more want to come in every year (250,000 make it, plus illegals) doesn’t really help, does it?
Yes, but don’t forget that a number of those 65,000,000 die each year. Plus it’s 874 miles from Lands End to John O’Groats. Roads are hopelessly inefficient means of transport even if we had self-driving cars. They are vastly more expensive than rail.
I understand the US give roadbuilders and repairers targets. As others have said, roads are left coned off with nothing happening (in general, workers don’t work in the rain in Europe for example). Working round the clock to fix roads would help
What about loading cars onto car transporters for long trips. Save road space and petrol. I don’t know how much it would cost, but someone can work that out.
Many years ago British Rail as was regularly ran car carrying trains. No reason that can’t be resurrected?
Instead, how about we seek to turn our rail network into additional roads to relieve the pressure on existing road network. Perhaps making these new roads for cycles and motorcycles only, which would in turn also help reduce the risk of car or truck vs. bike accidents.
Let’s be honest, Rail has had its day and (given the epidemic of privately owned vehicles in recent years) citizens clearly prefer to have their own vehicle rather than crammed on to a smelly old train. Privately owned rail companies are also forever hiking up prices faster than inflation (without enriching the service they provide I might add ) and commuters that do currently use them are forever complaining about ‘poor value’ for the service they receive.
The railways have never been more popular for passengers, and are by far the most efficient way of moving big tonnages of freight. We should be investing MUCH more in the railways. On the contrary the – roads obsession has had its day!
However there is a huge obsession with stopping HS2, fulled by the roads lobby.
There is no “obsession” its overpriced and the costs are growing by the day by the £billion… and the benefit? We can get to London a few minutes quicker..
Its not worth it… and we are currently throwing more and more good money after bad continuing the project.
Rail prices are crazy. We wanted to travel one way to Southampton. Cheapest was £195 for the 2 of us. So we’re going National Express £35, the travel time is a little longer, but we’re not in enough of a rush to warrant the £160 difference. HS2 will no doubt be even more expensive, prob only Londoners will be able to afford it!!
“prob only Londoners will be able to afford it!!” Don’t you mean the Home Counties Brigade who clog London daily with cars and vehicles in their desire to rape the world financially and don’t give a damn about the city, its residents or its history”
It doesn’t serve the Home Counties Brigade there are no stations between London and Birmingham and t costing £10 Million a day now and they are only just starting.
Hear, hear. Time to scrap it.
As a Mancunian, nobody I know wants HS2. We all think the money should be spent on upgrading the existing infrastructure and in particular as a very common complaint is no seats, lets have some more rolling stock on existing services. You won’t get me out of my car but I would prefer my taxes to be spent as above rather than wasted on HS2.
There isn’t the space on the existing track network to increase capacity. Therefore we need new tracks. Any new tracks may as well be constructed using latest technology. The existing tracks are overloaded with passengers leaving insufficient capacity for the amount of goods that could be transported by rail.
George Osborne’s vanity project costing billions to supposedly save 20 minutes but now because of problems in West London won’t save any time at all.
Surely you must have learned by now that the HS2 £100 billion vanity project is going to solve all of rail users capacity, comfort and reliability issues!
Don’t hold your breath, money better placed in NHS with proper management. 40 yrs ago Freightliner was very successful, transporting containers of goods, lorries and cars.
Yes it will mean we can get to Birmingham 5 minutes quicker than a normal train
Who the hell wants to come to this total dump of a city. And I live in it. HS2 is being built to the wrong destination. To all who want to come, bring your own Kalashnikov, you will need it.
ITS NOT JUST ABOUT SPEED FROM A-B, ITS ABOUT EFFICIENCY 0N THE RAILWAY.
FOR EXAMPLE, EUSTON TO GLASGOW FIRST TRIP BACCK TOEUSTON THEN TO BIRMINGHAM BACK TO EUSTON THEN EDINBURGH RETURN AS A WORKING DAY FOR A PENDALINO UNIT.
ON HS2 ONE HS UNIT WILL DO 3 ROUND TRIP TO EDINBURGH IN THE SAME TIME. WITH 3 UNITS THE ROUTE WILL DO MORE THAN 4 PENDOLINOS AMASSIVE SAVING IN UNIT COSTS AND ENERGY SAVINGS-NO CONTEST!
This is the stupidest comment I’ve ever seen. HS2 goes nowhere near Glasgow or Edinburgh. It won’t even get to the centre of Birmingham. If the plans had actually been for a National High Speed train system I would approve of it. Current HS2 is a farce and even the “second “ stage makes little sense and no formal route approved yet.
How’s about instead, far greener and could be far more efficient (look at the continent!) to re-instate the railways and ensure they are in public ownership (look at the continent), then more people will also use them (look at the continent) which will also relieve the road network so that people such as yourself who eschew the trains will have more space. Travel will be much more pleasant (look at the continent).
Losing our hard shoulders on the motorways is a very shortsighted move – how will emergency vehicles get through??
Or a vehicle that has broken down where do you put that ( just stay in lane an wait for the crash ) keep the hard shoulder for Emergency any fool can see that it’s there for that reason
Rail fares on the continent are so so much cheaper because the Tories sold the railways to foreign governments and foreign companies, so now the British subsidise rail users on the Continent.
DR. BEECHING CULLED OUR RAILWAYS MANY YEARS AGO-NOW WE NEED TO RE-OPEN SOME ROUTES AGAIN EG GLASGOW -EDINBURGH.
Your assessment of the demise of trains as a transport provider is not reflected in annual increases in passenger miles.
Motorail as it was called failed because it was expensive and slow compaired to just driving. There was also a problem with cars being damaged in transit ( I know this because I have an uncle who used to be a regional rail manager for Northern Scotland) so it fell out of use and was discontinued.
They did – but at enormous cost to the user. For it to become popular there would have to be a price calculation that extended beyond the P&L of the train operator and was aimed at attracting drivers. That won’t happen any time soon – but if it did, the rails would soon be jam-packed, driving cars back on to the roads…
Le Loi Murphy seems to be applying here.
Yep Motorail as it was called should be introduced to a parkway station on M25 and additionally motorail sleeper services from there direct through the Chunnel to South of France, Spain, Swiss Alps and Italy. Some would probably be seasonal. But a motorail service where the vehicles obviously limited by UK loading gauge are safe from outside weather, damage etc and with a sleeper allow business people and holiday makers alike to arrive refreshed able to start in the destination fo choice. Just takes a bit of thinking. Co-operating with European Railway COmpanies who own large parts of the British system anyway it would reduce congestion, lower emissions, reduce accidents and utilize the chunnel in the middle of the night when it is not at its most congested.
Cannot do that now, the shareholders need their dividends and it will cost too much in carriage and investment. Besides, the train operator doesn’t even know if they will have a network after their short term contract is re-tendered for. And the cost will be ten times the cost of fuel for travelling the same distance.
That used to be done.. Don’t know why it fell out of favour but suspect over-charging! Just like over-charging on long rail journeys has driven passengers away from rail and on to the roads. Successive and myopic governments need to shoulder responsibility for this drift away from rail services.
We did have that. It was by rail.
I thought the same but I have since discovered that SNCF are about to finish its rail car transporter from Paris down to the South of France. Despite French fares generally being much cheaper than the UK the cost of this service is about 4 times more than it would cost in terms of diesel and Road Tolls to drive there. Profiteering or a real reflection of the cost… who knows!
My work colleague used to drive to Poole, over to Cherburg, on to Paris and catch the overnight car transporter to the Southern French coast, arriving nice and refreshed after a sleep in a carriage. He found it far cheaper than paying tolls and for fuel. He and his family loved it.
It was called motor rail !
Not a bad suggestion,weekly train a la eurotunnel the length of the country weekly,disembark where you want.Expand if the demand is there.Also must be reasonable cost,not 4x the price by car.
Could work
Road surfaces cannot be laid in wet conditions, it will just come up as soon as the traffic starts tob run on it in any volume.
The road worker normally leave the site by 16.00 so as to be home for eastenders a soap on television
You say that roads are vastly more expensive than rail ….have you seen the price of rail tickets!!!
BELIEVE IT OR NOT NEWCASTLE TO NEWQUAY THROUGH TICKET WITHCROSS COUNTRY IS EXORBITANT. BREAKING DOWN THE SHORT SECTION FROM PAR TO NEWQUAY COSTS OVER £50 ON A THROUGH TICKET-SO BOOK TO PAR AND A SEPERATE TICKET TO NEWQUAY FROM THERE FOR LESS THAN £10! THIS CAN BEDONE ON MANY ROUTES-AND YOU DO NOT EVEN HAVE TO CHANGE TRAINS .
But the US has its issues. Whenever it is a holiday traffic season, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving or Holiday weekend like Labor Day Memorial Day of even 4th of July they start construction on the big interstates. I do not think I would recognize I94 if it was not under construction.
I was wondering how many comments it would take before someone blamed immigration rather than massive underspending by consecutive governments.
Nothing to do with immigration, it’s all down to Brexit lol.
You’re both wrong. Our poor roads are the result of global warming.
Dec 2018 Govt signed the UN Migration (DEATH) pact to us people. Phase 1 is to import 59 MILLION dangerous, economic immigrants to Western world by 2025. In that pact, those said illegals, are now deemed to be legals & MSM won’t be allowed to refer to them in that way. The same way, they won’t be able to refer to them with their Islamic nationalities when they commit further crime, whether thats by road, car theft or our children.
Love it when people talk lobbocks.
You mean Bravo Oscar Lima Lima Oscar Charlie Sierra police phonetics
Michele Mohammed, are you blaming Muslims for the roadworks or are you using this or any other forum to spout your unsubstantiated, xenophobic and islamaphobic views regardless of the topic for discussion?!
Michele, that is not your real name, is it? I agree with your comments. The noose is tightening, but most people don’t notice yet.
Whereabouts in the Russian Federation did you learn English?
I take your point John and agree except living in the heart of the West Midlands is certainly more than 77 miles from our nearest”get to” sea!
Probably not a huge number of new immigrants(Can I use that word?) will be driving on our roads, so not so much of a problem.
how do you think they get here? Have you never been on the the Calais – Dover night crossing?
…just a substantial exponential future one 🙂
I don’t fly like a crow so my nearest sea? is 86.5 miles away at Southend, I could find no coastal towns/villages I would visit less than 100 miles away and they mostly necessitate using M25 or A14 which make for a pleasant journey! Sorry if you live in Southend it’s just not my choice and if I’m to spent half a day travelling I want a destination I would enjoy and leave others to enjoy their choice. Spent a month enjoying our North England’s coastlines with much quieter roads but that’s 200+ miles each way.
70 million in England alone, that’s why we have a population crisis!
And immigrants get a house & money from the government it’s no wonder that they want to come to England if you go to their country to live without a job to go to you starve an sleep rough England is a soft touch . The immigrants now have MPs in government to safeguard their future the English are no longer welcome in their homeland . More & more houses are being built for the refugees that come to England
Dragging xenophobia into the equation doesn’t reslly help, does it? We are ALL “immigrants” in UK or descended from immigrants…..and invaders. The NHS for example is entirely dependant on immigrant labour. Do your homework before spouting irrelevant and indirect hate speech.
Ah the British excuses. Japan and SOuth Korea are high population density countries who manage roadworks very efficiently. Many countries have 24 hour working on construction work for Motorways and Key arteries. They will never be popular but it is a fact that large stretches are coned off and worked on 6-7 hours during the weekdays only. All night and all weekend they are deserted while traffic snarls and Speed Cameras are used on speed restrictions to fill the coffers irrespective of traffic density. No management of road works in UK is very poor. But then so is transport planning so is building the M25 with bridges that cannot accomodate 4 lanes, so is the M1 M25 junction, so are the junctions in the Midlands and the Manchester connection to the M6 Birmingham and London.
But the government needs all these extra people to keep our infrastructure going, the logic of a madman.
The government did say that they were not going to allow mega long roadworks. That seems to have been ignored on the M4 into London and I guess other motorways. Whatever happened to that promise?
Must be the first ever broken Govt promise
I thought we had the worst roadworks in Europe until last month when I drove across Belgium and crawled to Liege along, I think, the E42 for Mike after mile.
Poor Mike!
The major problems are caused by:
1) Untilities can dig any road up without recourse to anyone!
So how can local authorites plan anything to do with roads?
2) Why, in this day and ages are roads being ‘dug up’ anyway?
Utility companies should be forced (by law) to install
multiuse easily accessible ducts, so any issues can be resolved
by accessing the ducts, and not digging up the roads, and
inconveniencing millions of road users!
3) Utility companies are the creators of virtually all the ‘Pot holes’
on our roads, if we had proper ducts, pot holes would be a thing of the past in most
instances!
It is not ‘Rocket science’, just ‘common sense’
Pot holes are the result of water getting into the road surface and freezing. A more durable road surface would stop this happening.
Yes, and I suspect cost cutting and corner cutting in the repair process makes things worse than they need to be.
How about used ground up rubber tyres and bitumen. The ice would squeeze the rubber, but not break up the surface (in theory!)
There is a company supplying a 10% recycled plastic additive to precisely this effect
No they cannot. Utilities need local authority approval to dig up a road. In our town there has been at least one occasion recently when one utility was asked to postpone its work so it could coincide with that of another utility at the same location.
That cant be london . In London they are always doing the work twice it’s more like training for road crews and they repair pot holes in the rain knowing they will get paid to do it again a fortnight later an to make matters worse we have speed bumps so high you need a Sherpa to see you over them or low just a line of bricks with tarmac on top & any speed over 8 mph causes suspension damage
Critically why to road works take far too long in the UK? Work that would be done in two weeks of overnights in a Japanese city takes a six moths full closure in the UK. (And so on pro-rata for big motorway renewal schemes). This has got to be because of sloppy contracts, without firm enough penalty clauses for late delivery. Contractors seem deliberately to overquote time needs for work in the UK. Probably, we understand, because they are extracting a £2.5 Million payment for a job that would be charged at £500,000 elsewhere in the world. Welcome to another aspect of the well understood Rip Off Britain phenomenon. We all, from individuals through to commissioning UK agencies, really do need to sharpen up here in the UK, and fast .
Bring Chinese construction company here, everything will run at least twice faster.
…….and fall to pieces twice as quick 🙂
…and fall to
…pieces twice as quick 🙂
And then the Chinese buy the houses ( like my daughters landlord )and charge double the rent £1,400a month for a 2bed house in Mitcham south west London
Not too bad a rent actually. Going rate in neighbouring Norbury is £1500 a month for a 3-bed semi.
I spent 2 years living in Southern California 1990-92. At the outset the 101 (Ventura) Freeway between Van Nuys and Calabasas was pot-holed and crumbling. Over a period of 18 months or so it was completely rebuilt, but I only encountered cones on one occasion. They would close a section down at 10pm, putting diversions in place, and put an army to work under arclights. At 5-45am they would re-open the section with everything tidied away. On one occasion something went wrong and one lane was still coned off in the morning rushour. Chaos ensued and heads rolled!
After I left there was a major earthquake and several raised sections of the 10 (Santa Monica) Freeway collapsed. Initial estimates were that rebuilding would take at least 6 months (I think that some estimated it might take as long as 18 months). LA went onto shift working to spread the rush hour to 24/7. Even then a 1 hour commute took 3.5 hrs. The rebuild was put out to tender and the winner offered to do it for $14.9 in 5 months, with a bonus of $200k for every day he finished early. The work was completed in under 3 months and the contractor ended up being paid $29.4 This could only happen because unlike the UK where the DfT works to a budget, in the USA they realise that there is are economic consequences to road chaos. The $200k extra per day received by the contractor paled into insignificance compared to the losses faced by lost industrial output, not to mention damage to environment from all the exhaust fumes from the jammed traffic etc. So the contractor put extra resources onto the job and everyone won, the contractor, the workers, the commuters, business, and the state.
Why can’t we in the UK learn from this? Mile after mile of cones, speed restrictions and little or no activity just cannot be justified. The priority should be to keep the traffic flowing.
here here. Two suggestions for you. Bring in the teams that repair runways at airports. They can relay 100yds of tarmac, which is 3 times deeper than the average road in under 6 hours..
Think outside the box – ban lorries from the roads between 6.00am and 7 pm. This will free up space during the day and lorries will be able to move more quickly and efficiently during the night. Yes there will be a cost in terms of unsociable hours pay to both the drivers and recipients of goods but as the lorries will be moving more steadily and not stuck in jams there will be a huge cost saving in terms of fuel, wear and tear, and damage to the environment and more reliable delivery times.
I BELIEVE THE PERIPHERY AROUND PARIS (25 MILES) WAS COMPLETED IN AVERY SHORT TIME COMPARED TO TIME TAKEN TO BUILD THE SAME AMOUNT OF M-WAY IN THE U.K.
Road capacity can be vastly increased by enforcing good lane discipline.
Keep left except when overtaking;
Restricting HGV’s to the two nearside lanes especially on roads where there are more than 3 lanes (including digital roads);
Introducing a “ZIP” system of reducing the number of available lanes;
Other steps that can be taken
Enforcing speed limits by installing speed cameras on every bridge (when motorists know they can lose their licence in as few as four
bridges , they will slow down or not be welcomed on the road anyway) This will reduce “concertina” driving and increase traffic flow.
These things are available now, if there is the appetite and enthusiasm to introduce them
Couldn’t agree more, on the 4 lane stretch of M25 between Hampshire and Kent everyone seems to stick to lane 3 and never move over to the left, reducing a good 4 lane road down to 2 effectivly cutting the flow in half.
Not so sure about the speeding bit, i often travel the same section in the early hours and feel it wouldn’t hurt to relax the speed limits durring lighter traffic times.
They are called ‘Smart’ Motorways. Bristol , for example used to flow freely, until they introduced the cameras and speed signs. Now , there’s always a jam on the way in, partly because the just can’t resist mucking about with the speed limits now that they can. I think the idea is to ‘catch people out ‘ and boost revenue.
Having spent time living and working in the USA, I think that many of our problems stem from the UK rules on lane keeping.
In the USA you choose a lane and generally stay in it going the same speed as the traffic ahead. The idea being that you keep towards the left, but work your way to the right when you will be forced to leave at the next intersection. If you try to get ahead of the traffic by “weaving” between lanes you are likely to be stopped by the police. Generally I find that system works far better than ours! They seem to have far fewer motorway accidents than us despite their criminally poor standards of car maintenance.
1. Most of the motorway accidents I’ve observed here have been caused by drivers changing lanes unsafely.
2. Most motorway road rage events seem to be due to perceived poor lane discipline; ie. the driver behind being frustrated in his desire to speed, by the driver of the car in front failing to move to the slow lane.
3. Everyone acknowledges that when in a motorway traffic jam, all lanes are used and their speeds vary with cars overtaking and undertaking each other quite legally. Now there has to be a transition between free-flowing traffic and a jam. The point at which that transition occurs and the normal rules of lane discipline stop applying seems to be somewhat subjective. When different drivers have different ideas as to whether others should move over or whether undertaking is acceptable, chaos, road rage and accidents are bound to follow.
4. re Rich’s example below of people sticking to lane 3 – if he could use lane 1 or2 and legally overtake then the capacity of the road would be full again. What I often observe is that when a motorway speeds start to reduce, most people move over to the fast lane to express a desire to go faster, not realising that the car in front is not moving over because he wants to do the same but is being held up by the car in front of him. Somewhere, several miles further up the road is the car or truck causing the bottleneck as it very slowly but legally, overtakes traffic in the slow lane(s) which is way out of view to the traffic at the back of the queue.
5. Now consider the case with active (or adaptive) cruise control which I have on my car. That system works perfectly in the USA, the car just keeps a decent distance to the car in front and matches its speed. It doesn’t work as well in the UK for several reasons:
a) I might be in the slow lane following the car in front when the traffic in the next lane slows down due to weight of traffic. The adaptive cruise control does not prevent me from undertaking them, so I have to take manual control to disengage it.
b) the adaptive cruise control tries to keep a safe distance to the car ahead. That gap is temptingly large enough for other drivers following “good lane discipline” to drop into, causing the adaptive cruise control to brake the car to re-establish the gap, causing the next car to overtake me, so he can then drop into the freshly established gap. I end up going slower and slower.
To make the adaptive cruise control work properly here, the car would need to be equiped with additional sensors and intelligence to be able to sense not just the car ahead, but also those in adjacent lanes, and provide prompts to the driver to adapt the driving according to the behaviour of the cars in the adjacent lanes.
UK rules certainly make the challenges for autonomous driving vehicles more challenging than the American ones – and guess where most of the research is being done? not in the UK.
The last argument in the article; that roadworks are preparing for the age of “connected” cars – I am very skeptical that any current roadwork project will actually deliver this, as manufacturers and governments have yet to decide on the “standards” that will let these vehicles use the enabled motorway. Once (hopefully a single) standard is agreed I predict yet another wave of roadworks to install infrastructure to the new agreed standard.
You can live in hope that the government will ever sort this out, they can`t sort out brexit so what chance do we have sorting out our roads.
Currently there are plans to dual the A47 from Brundall in Norfolk to Great Yarmouth, allegedly work will start March 2020. Along the route there is a proposed roundabout to let traffic out from a road which serves a rural community of about 3,000 people, plus up to 300 very heavy lorries in and out of the A47 at the same roundabout to access the local sugar beet processing factory. Current plans include putting traffic lights on this roundabout, plus traffic lights on the Vauxhall roundabout where the A47 enters Great Yarmouth.
I have not been able to get a definitive answer on how long this work will take, or how the very heavy holiday traffic to and from Norwich to Great Yarmouth will take.
Details are on the Highways.gov.uk website, look up A47 proposed improvements. Those of us who live in the area will have to put up with delays hoping the improvements will be beneficial in the future, as sometimes the single carriage way from Acle to Great Yarmouth can be blocked by the amount of traffic in the holiday season, especially when sadly someone is involved in a fatal accident.
We do look forward to completion of these roadworks which hopefully will make driving safer for everyone visiting the seaside etc, as well as for those who have to travel to work in this area.
Please be patient during the time the work will take, it should benefit us all when completed.
Back in the day I remember watching on ‘Tomorrow’s World’. A wonderful new pothole repair that was stronger than the road! Whatever happened to that! Probably too efficient for the trade to accept 🤔
So, which are the most jammed roads? Or was it just an inflammatory headline which jacksh*t content??
Exactly what I was thinking.
As they have done sporadically here, make those carrying out the roadworks pay rental on the closed off sections. That way they will be incentivised to get them completed more quickly. Does it really have to take several years to complete a stretch of motorway improvements?
I live just off the M1 in South Yorkshire. It took over 2 years to convert a 16 mile stretch of motorway to “Smart”. The whole section was coned off with 3 narrower lanes and a 50mph limit, with average speed cameras along the whole length of works. I didn’t understand why a 50mph limit as the workers were protected by a solid concrete barrier and the lanes although narrower were not narrow. Needless to say only one small section was worked on at a time and on a number of occasions travelling the full length of coned off motorway there was no work taking place anywhere. Amazingly work seemed to speed up when this made the national news and a minister visited. Since the work completed there are regular hold-ups/accidents caused by a vehicle breakdown, which on the old motorway would have been on the hard shoulder causing very little in the way of a problem. The new system is dangerous and is just a way of trying to increase capacity at the cheapest cost. Lastly most vehicles now sit in the two outside lanes, with lorries and the odd car using the inside lanes, meaning traffic doesn’t flow any better. Until we can encourage drivers to use lanes correctly the extra capacity is a waste of money.
That is a disgrace. I would suggest that the lack of money being put in by DoT and the lack of appropriate penalties for over-running works are the chief causes. The A30 works over Bodmin Moor took so long because for miles no bugger was working even in safe, light, dry conditions. Even the DoT and Highways England didn’t know what was going on. I was asked in a survey whether the 50mph limit was appropriate. In fact the limit was 40mph! Doesn’t inspire confidence does it?
I have a simple approach.
1) if there is congestion then reserve the leftmost lane for the next junction exclusively.
2) Integrate ‘turn around lanes’ into the central reservation, so in the event of an accident those who’s journey isn’t imperative can go back from wence they came.
3) Enforce driving under the speed limit, so those doing 56 in fair conditions with no restrictions on a motorway should get penalty.
4) Do away with fuel price boards on motorways (they’re all roughly the same) and add instead signs 2 miles on advance of joining a motorway of expected delays, this will enable drivers to decode if it’s worrhwhile joining.
Here endeth the lesson
Like this, however look out for sinkholes – how come they all seem to be in the central reservations?
🙂
The greatest difficulty with all suggestions for lane use and so on is that they must be self-policing. Elsewhere in this forum a contributor has referred to driver behaviour in the US. The drivers there must accept the Rule of the Road and stick to it otherwise chaos like here would ensue. The US driver must be educated by experience and/or social pressure to conform to the expected standard of driving. There is much less of such pressure in the UK. There is also no effective policing of the stategic road network. In fact in contradiction to many writing on here I have observed in 50mph average speed check roadworks on motorways the flow is more consistent. I suspect that is because the usual numpties who like to race along and switch lanes at random are held back by fear of penalties.
And also, for those already stuck in traffic on motorways, use the matrix signs to provide information and the expected length of the delay. The worst thing about being stuck in traffic is not knowing why you’re stuck and how long you are going to be there.
Whatever the job is it will take a certain number of man/woman hours to complete. For example, a job could take 1 person 180 days to complete or one day if 180 people are working on it. Yes, I know that is a gross over-generalsiation but you get the idea. Our local council have recently had about 100 yards of a city centre thoroughfare closed (used by numerous bus routes) for around six months but I never saw more than half a dozen people working on it. As has already been said, projects like these are just not managed. I was watching a TV programme recently and, apparently, the first 22 miles of the M1 were built from scratch in 19 months. I’ll leave you to do the maths to work out when the M1 would open if our council were building it.
I love the fact that the millions we spend on freeing u the hard shoulder now provides 2 empty lanes to the left of the morons with poor lane discipline, whilst congesting the outer two (i.e. overtaking) lanes.
Perhaps the smart cameras that issue speeding fines for speeds over 77mph could have a software update to sort out lane discipline? Otherwise its a great waste of millions for an extra lane no-one uses……..
You have just made good the reason why “smart” m/ways are not so “smart” the M60 round
Manchester is now a “smart” m/way & where possible I stay out of the nearside lane & just hope & pray I NEVER NEED to stop /breakdown & have to us the nearside running lane, this idea is possibly the worst idea anyone has ever come up with.
I tend to call these “managed” motorways “mismanage” motorways as there seldom seems to be any great logic in the changes in indicated speed limits, 60mph followed by 40mph for one or two gantries followed by a derestricted sign; the result is a bunching of traffic for no (apparent) reason! the worst section for this is the M5 to M6 interchange North to past the M^ /M54 junction, the conversion to “smart” motorways in my (subjective) opinion has not helped traffic flow!
I think it’s because they’re so expensive to build they use all the functions so they think we’re getting value for money 🙂
Instead of penalties for work not done on time – which affects the firm but not the ‘workers’ – I wonder whether if a bonus was paid for work completed earlier it would give the guys an incentive to get off their mobiles and do some work!!
Or cut corners
only about half the original planned motorways were eve built and then to a design life of 30 – 40 years now we have to re build them. just look at the elevated section at the start of the M5 too small too bendy and the ring road around the midlands is still being built piece by piece (m42 M6 toll and the M54). manchester had a ring M-way that is too small as well
Are smart motorways another name for cash collect schemes. All those new advanced ‘speed’ cameras will soon pay towards the road works.
The main problem with most roadworks is that there are very few workmen repairing them. How many times do you drive past miles of roadworks and see no workmen. The government needs to enforce stricter time schedules by using more workmen, therefore less upheavel for motorists.
Madness, not smart in the slightest. Put money and intelligent thought into public transport, and not the HS2 stupidity either.
How true! Such idiotic ideas. Where has common sense gone? Its certainly not apparent in the governmment.
Very smart way to expand the network whilst controlling the flow of traffic.
I visited a customer in Belgium several years ago, and they resurfaced a complete section of motorway overnight. How come we’re so slow in the UK? Also, why tackle such large sections on one go, and not small chunks at a time.
A bit contradictory isn’t it? Repair a complete section overnight but do it in smaller chunks???!!!
1. Smart motorways = future charging.
2. Recently toured around Lake District & Yorkshire Dales where the roads seemed to have all been resurfaced recently. Whereas in the South East only a few small sections of motorway have.
3. Why are French roads so much smoother than ours?
4. Agree on the comments regarding speed when concrete barriers are in place and the lack of work being done.
5. On a visit to NZ whenever I came across road works there was always somebody working, rain or shine.
6. Bring back the chevron off junction signs tather than the gantry signs high in the sky. It is always easier counting off the junction you want with the old signs.
6. My Waze tag is the DofT is inept, but maybe here I can there useless at planning.
The m1 and m6 roadworks have been ongoing for 10+years and there are rarely any people working in any of the sectioned off works with 50mph average speed cameras! Why section off 12+ miles of road then not do any works for yrs in some cases? Can anyone explain this?
So that they can stick on an arbitrary 50mph speed and raise cash as people drive according to conditions. No traffic, no hold ups, nobody working and yes I got flashed at 55mph on the M6, dreading the postman.
In some sections of the M6 it was 17 Mile’s!!
For years our governments have run our roads and railways into the ground. Then they come up with exotic projects like HS2 which is going to cost billions, money which should have been spent on fixing our current road and rail infrastructure. Then they blame everyone but, themselves!
Possibly one of the worst local authorities at roadworks planning is the East Riding of Yorkshire County Council. Since I moved to Bridlington nearly 10 years ago the town has suffered from constant roadworks, one recently finished project took over four years on a half mile stretch of roadway, I reckoned that if the Romans had been building Watling St at the same rate, it would have taken them over a thousand years to complete. For some reason the council always like to start short term repairs in Brid and the surrounding countryside a couple of weeks before Easter and drag them through the summer, just in time for the holiday traffic to be put off from coming. To a seaside town such as Bridlington, day trippers are lifeblood and the council (based inland in Beverly) just don’t seem to get it.
cheap p**s poor repairs…… do the job right first time and it will last a lot longer rather than the p**s poor attempts
Macrebur is the company which makes enhanced tarmac using recycled plastic Check them out: https://www.macrebur.com/
Article doesn’t seem to answer the question clearly. I can’t be bothered to read it through. Zzzzz
Which are the most jammed roads then?
Used to wonder why so-called smart motorways only have refuges every so often. Its all about money. Bet the 100 fatalities a year due to accidents on hard shoulder will increase, which is not a nice prediction. “smart” is a misnomer it should be “potentially fatal” which is completely non PC but there it is.
I’ve had my teeth pulled, I’d rather be sat in traffic.
This maybe a stupid question but if we upgrade all our motorways to these new smart/digital motorways by removing the hard shoulder how do emergency vehicles get to the scene of an accident? I mean I can’t speak for anyone else but if I’m in a serious road accident on the motorway, I want the ambulance to get to me ASAP, not trying to weave its way through 4 miles of stationery traffic whilst my life is slipping away.
Now as a fellow motorist, I have driven through roadworks on the M1, M6 and M23 whereby they have reduce the speed from 70mph to 50mph and also on the A14 between Cambridge and the A1 whereby it is reduce from 70mph to 40mph, no matter what time of day or night, or weekday or weekend, there’s miles upon miles of roadworks but not a soul in sight (other than other motorist).
As for the length of the roadworks I can understand it, we live in a nanny state which is obsessive about health and safety to the extreme and it would not surprise me in the one least bit if there was some kind of barmy health and safety rule stating something like “for every mile of roadworks on the motorway you will need to cone off 50 miles of the motorway either side of the works and in both directions”
Too many people using cars. Uncontrolled immigration?
Yes indeed but it started in 1066 BCE. The French again I expect you to say.
road works are essential. What is not essential is having miles and miles of traffic cones, and speed restrictions laying idle for months and months whilst the few operatives attend to just a short stretch or flit from site to site. The now common situation of total road closure with no proper diversions set up, or a plethora of diversion signs that have nothing to indicate which diversion they belong. The excessive excuse of health and safety to commence restrictions miles ahead of any actual activity. Why is a newly built dual carriageway restricted to 40MPH because the central barrier has not yet been installed, when we are legally permitted to travel at 60mph along narrow, winding, bumpy country roads without any barrier? Do the contractors still get paid for the number of cones laid rather than the number needed? Why are the cones and speed restrictions not covered or removed when no work is taking place. If they focussed all their resources on getting shorter sections completed instead of wasting time and money on planning the logistics of a vast enterprise I am sure greater success would be achieved at lower cost as well as tremendous savings to the motorists. A couple of years ago we saw news pictures of a huge collapse of a motorway in China or Japan which was devastated by an earthquake or something, a couple of weeks later it had been rebuilt and reopened. Here I doubt the work would have even been put out to tender. Local contractors who close a road should be legally compelled to put all their resources into completing that job and not allowed to spread their workforce over several similar works. There is a modern tendency to overmanage everything so there is never any one person accountable.
At present if you breakdown on a motorway with a hard shoulder you are told to get out of your car to wait for assistance to avoid getting injured if your car is hit. You can’t do that in a line of traffic and are more likely to get hit. I can see more deaths because there is no hard shoulder.
How on God’s green earth are we supposed to achieve “net zero emissions” if we are all sat in traffic jams pumping out co2? And for that matter motorists are paying twice…..once for the fuel and the tax paid on it and again whilst wasting it sat in traffic. And to put peoples lives second to saving money is beyond belief! Sort the problem and sort it FAST by running roadworks in the night AS WELL AS during the day. Nothing more frustrating than sitting in mile after mile of traffic queues watching absolutely nothing happen!!!!!!
On the continent public transport is very cheap and runs on time so less cars used on roads if that happened here more cars of the road when I go abroad now I don’t hire a car it’s cheaper to use pubic transport creating less stress
Massive generalisation there John 🙂
That old pubic transport can be a bit distracting though.
Time taken to widen a road. Have look on you tube for JOHN LANG M1 1956. Full motorway M1 built from scratch 1956, 55miles in 19 months. includes all slip roads traffic islands . as well
For non motorway roads, I’ve often wondered why the services underneath the surface are not moved to the pavements as traffic is constantly falling down potholes that are largely caused by hgvs driving over manhole covers that the subsurface can’t handle – pedestrians wouldn’t cause this hence less roadworks and potholes
Years and years ago, you used to travel through the night for long journeys. Now the roads are closed overnight, so you have to travel by day. Can’t go into London at weekends because it’s bus replacement and the roads are closed. Don’t go now!
I would have used a well known expletive to depict the choices ilo “dammed”
The A52 roadworks near Derby have created chaos for over two years. The project is over 12 months behind schedule so we are in for more than a year more. The latest estimate (which will surely increase again) is £42m against an original budget (including contingency) of £15m. Sheer incompetence, The problem is that major works are all controlled by a public sector which tolerates such incompetence. Private sector project managers would be out on their ears at an overspend of 10%, let alone 180% plus.
Turning the section of the M1 near Nottingham into a smart motorway was a pain while it was being done but now it’s finished it was well worth it
Except when they change the speed down to 40mph, which automatically stops traffic. They did that and the new slip from the A50 was stationary. No other reason than the speed had been reduced to 40! Very worrying when you’re stopped in it.
Right here is the rundown . Utilities , Gas , Water, Electric ,BT and other . Dig up the highway THEY HAVE instructions. to put back the reinstatement as stated but you and i know they don’t so in a month they sink , break out causing a pot hole .ext . Now it is their responsibility to go back and repair the pothole you and know they don’t. .It is cheaper to loose their retaining fee than to go back So it fall on the local Highways to pay out .
Road works are a necessary and expensive and as usual we have been losing money from foreign trucks they get a free road for the time they are here, I drive the M20 and and on the weekends the motorway is void of foreign trucks except for the odd one but during the week it’s horrendous.
British trucks using European motorways pay their tollways.
Freight coming into the U.K. should go straight onto the railways for distribution to Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
No more degradation of our roads from trucks and all those diesel prime move not polluting.
Mike. B- I live in the same area as you and I’m fed up with the road work in A130 & A13 which have been on going for a year and no sign of workers. To make things worse, the Police catch you for speeding in the 50-MPH limit they have imposed for safety .All a big joke and a con. GAV P
Omg the M6 is a nightmare on a good day!!!
One of the worst roads to drive on due to incessant night closures with no clue as to diversion roads !
Thanks Highways for not letting the sat nav companies know !!!!!!!
I think that vehicle tax should reflect this nightmare of evening driving!!!!!!!!
I also think it’s a big mistake to get rid of hard shoulders for so -called Smart motorways! Of course this would not have anything to do with greed!!!!!?
Still as long as we know the price for this plan will mean lives/ and /or road safety!