Jam

[Leon Roskilly]

New generation of jams may trap drivers for days

 

Police make plans for roadside medical tents and helicopter evacuations as fears of gridlock grow

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/...,948592,00.html

 

It might be an idea to always carry some basic fishing tackle in the boot!

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 03. May 2003, 10:42 PM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[billy5000]

hi leon

i haven't got a car so im ok,but at the rate of cars growing on the roads its only a matter of time till the roads get a bigger joke but this report i saw on tv and thought it was a con but i see im wrong.

just imagine sitting in a traffic jam and some motorcycle thug pulls up and robs you and the next 20 other people down the jam then rides off totally unaffected by the jam. (tents on the raod side well whats next and to think they tax you for the privilige of this i suppose its not comming out of road tax to pay for these survival kits you are gonna have to carry)

 

talking about cars i suppose you have seen these hydrogen driven cars they have started on about abroad,one question if you crash whats to stop you turning into a big four wheel bomb

 

billy

[yoxer]

I believe the goverment has plans afoot to allow the use of the hard shoulder on motorways soon . Aint got a link but it was the national news a week back . Just wait for the first pile up .

[billy5000]

hi yoxer,

(quote)I believe the goverment has plans afoot to allow the use of the hard shoulder on motorways soon . Aint got a link but it was the national news a week back . Just wait for the first pile up .

 

just like every other lane,maybe they will rip up some more nice countryside to make more motorways

which will get just as clogged

 

 

billy

[yoxer]

In a recent interview concerning the state of Britain's roads, the former transport minister John Prescott replied: 'I don't see any traffic jam. I see plenty of space between the vehicles and they are all travelling at a reasonable speed.'

 

When asked about the traffic heading the other way, he replied: 'if they stayed at home, they wouldn't have to clog up the roads'

 

When it was suggested that these vehicles needed to get to their destinations, he replied: ; well they should move and live up there, then they wouldn't need to keep going backwards and forwards'

[Leon Roskilly]

yoxer:

In a recent interview concerning the state of Britain's roads, the former transport minister John Prescott replied: 'I don't see any traffic jam. I see plenty of space between the vehicles and they are all travelling at a reasonable speed.'

 

When asked about the traffic heading the other way, he replied: 'if they stayed at home, they wouldn't have to clog up the roads'

 

When it was suggested that these vehicles needed to get to their destinations, he replied: ; well they should move and live up there, then they wouldn't need to keep going backwards and forwards'

We wouldn't need to keep widening motorways so much if only drivers were to use the existing lanes as intended.

 

Not many seem to know that the rule is that you keep to the left and only move out into the overtaking lanes to pass slower vehicles, returning to the left once the overtaking manouvre has been completed.

 

Instead people cruise in the overtaking lanes, and the more lanes there are the worse it gets.

 

People then start illegally overtaking, using the inside lanes, until you sometimes reach a situation where the rightmost overtaking lane is almost at a standstill, and traffic is flowing at speed on the inside!

 

But mostly, all the lanes become clogged with slow moving traffic, even though the inner lanes are relatively traffic free, with long streches of unused lane that no one will move back into.

 

Regarding Prescott's comments about living nearer to where you work:

 

People decide to move to an area, or take a new job, considering their commuting needs.

 

Not in distance, but in travel time. Some happy to travel an hour, some a couple of hours.

 

At motorway speeds, that's often 70 - 150 miles or more away from their workplace.

 

So, the same number of cars spend longer on the road.

 

Then as their kids get older, they have to buy cars to travel to distant places of employment too.

 

More cars, spending more time on the road, the roads become congested, so everyone has to spend even longer on the road, and now there are more cars spending longer.

 

And that 1 or 2 hour commute is now taking 3 or 4 hours, and the motorists are demanding more road-building.

 

But because of these, and many similar factors (I used to have great fishing in cycling distance, now a car is essential to reach most venues), the more road you build, the more time each car will spend driving on them, and the more cars will use them, destroying the health of the nation (the cost to the NHS of motoring related conditions and conditions exacerbated by motoring are quite staggering!), destroying the peace and pace of life of communities, and the environment.

 

All of that is unsustainable.

 

The problem is finding politically acceptable solutions that will reduce car use.

 

The worrying thing is the current projections of increased car use (which will be multiplied if 'they' attempt to build out of the problem of congestion).

 

A road will flow with increasing levels of traffic, but whereas you would expect it to become gradully slower as the traffic increases, once it passes a certain point, the traffic slowdown becomes exponential, from free flowing to constant jam often in a matter of weeks.

 

This is due to 'overload' points becoming saturated.

 

ie Whereas most of the route can accomodate a flow of x vehicles, a junction along the route can only accomodate y vehicles.

 

More roundabouts and lights will slow the traffic, but keep it moving, but only up to a point ('we never had a problem until they put in those lights!' is a typical ignorant and short-sighted response!)

 

The point to remember is that, if the projections are right, we are living in the golden days of free and easy traffic flow.

 

Not too far down the road, a nightmare awaits.

 

A lot could be done now to avoid that nightmare happening, but the measures needed will be politically unacceptable.

 

'Wait until the crunch happens, and people see that radical solutions are the only option available' seems to the name of the game right now

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Jim Roper]

Why are there so many people, mainly women it seems, driving around in large 4 X 4s outside working/commuting hours?

 

[ 05. May 2003, 09:45 AM: Message edited by: Jim Roper ]

[Peter M]

A few years ago French and Saunders did a sketch where mothers dropped their kids off at school driving tanks. It certainly isn’t very far away.

[poledark]

Probably for the same reasons that male prats charge around in bright coloured low slung sports cars. At least the big 4x4's have a multidude of uses, the sports cars only serve to prove that the owners/drivers have no regard for the rules of the road.

 

My wife owns a Grand Cherokee Jeep ( what a posy name) and admits to feeling good when she is driving it, she also admits that it is horrendously expensive to run, but we can get lengths of timber up to 2.4mtrs long in it, we have a large easily removed dog cage in the back (used twice a day)and it will probably last for ever! (It will have to as we cant afford another 30grand)

 

The other thing which is often overlooked is that these 4x4's do not in fact take up any more space than your average medium to large saloon,and they are very rarely seen hurtling around corners,you cant do that with a big 4x4.

 

Incidently, the fact that they are designed to do about 21/25 mpg is very comparable to most other large saloons on the road, and with modern emission control systems they do not pollute the environment.

Jim, I bet you created more air pollution in one week of digging out your lakes than my wifes Jeep does in a year

 

 

Den

[chesters1]

seems to me the way to beat congestion is 2 ways .

1) stop the choice of schools for parents (improve the bad ones) as every driver knows when the schools are on half term congestion is mostly gone ,this is caused by parents choosing schools that are not in their vicinity and have to deliver the sprogs rather than them walking.

2) i have noticed that especially on moterways in the morning the traffic is gridlocked in 1 direction whilst at night its the opposite ,to cure it simple a moverble center barrier ,in the morning it moves 1 lane over into the little used side in the afternoon it moves in the opposite direction giving the needed side a needed extra lane and in the other a dual carraigeway