Motoring gripes

Manchester is thinking about congestion charging and the government is smiling on it. Businesses are up in arms and there is much debate. The M60 motorway is to be included in the plans. I vehemently disagree with this idea. Why should I be charged to drive past Manchester on my way to somewhere else? How else am I supposed to get to Liverpool or Warrington (which I have to do occasionally)? OK, tax those going into Manc but not those who are using one of the key motorway routes in the north of England. The idea seems to be half baked. With a looming recession and motoring costs hitting the roof the last thing we need is more tax on motorists. Trying to price us off the road is not fair for two reasons; 1) those who are poor should not be prevented from travelling on certain routes 2) People have to use the road. When I drive to Warrington to do my experiments the boot is full of scientific kit. I can't take that on a train! Also, with the housing market being batsh*t crazy people can't afford to live near where they work and even if they can the jobs market is so short term people don't stay living near their workplace for long.

Motoring gripe number two; speeding. The number one killer in the world is traffic - car crashes, people being run over and particularly pollution. Cars that are speeding produce more pollution and are more likely to collide with something or someone and the effects of that collision are more serious. So why aren't all vehicles fitted with speed limiters? These would prevent a vehicle from reaching more than a certain top speed. Some vehicles already have them fitted by law and with some small investment in infrastructure all vehicles could be fitted with a speed limiter that could sense the local speed limit and restrain the speed of the car. I can't think of a single good argument against the idea except for the initial costs. The benefits would be immense. Even for motorists. Fewer traffic jams caused by vehicles doing gas/brake cycles and causing phantom jams. And just think about pulling out at a junction. To leave my housing estate I have to pull onto a road with a 30 mph speed limit. Except the vehicles are just dropping down from 40 mph (ie doing 50 mph) and I can't get out. Of course, the real reason we don't have speed limiters for all vehicles is the motoring lobby. A £60'000 car would be no different to a fiat punto except for a few more creature comforts and a bit more acceleration (but with a flat top speed to aim for who cares?). There is no way the oil lobby and the motoring lobby would take it. And their voice is far more powerful than that of the millions who die each year on the roads.

Traffic hell (again and again)

This morning I had an important appointment to keep (a timeslot booked on a microscope at the York nanocentre). My usual commute takes 45 minutes. An hour and twenty minutes before I had to be there I checked the traffic news; my normal motorway route was down to one lane and the queues were already 7 miles long. I was immediately filled with panic that I was going to be late. With an hour and ten minutes to go I set off along an alternative route that was shorter by distance but on smaller, lower speed limit roads. I arrived twenty minutes late and lost a quarter of my microscope time. This is the second time this week that the A1 motorway has gone down. Today was not as bad as monday but the delays still caused a 12 mile tailback and 2 hour delays for those determined to plough through.

There are simply too many vehicles on the roads. People cannot live near where they work because of the nature of the housing and jobs market. A couple who live in Doncaster might individually have jobs in Leeds and Sheffield and their home is a halfway point. Homes are expensive too and difficult to sell so people can't always live in their choice location. The authorities don't make things easier. There seem to be very few contingency plans for when one of the motorways in Yorkshire goes down. The diversions don't seem to work. One day in 2005 the M1 was closed so they diverted onto the A1 which got blocked by an accident and then the last escape route, the M18, was blocked by an accident. The resulting jams I will never forget.

So in a week like this what do we need? What we don't need is Doncaster council conducting a traffic census on one of the approach roads that feeds the A1 motorway and central Doncaster itself. They forced the road to one lane and slowed this down as they called people over to get a sample of travelling habits. Result; tailbacks for miles and miles and miles back into South Yorkshire. Idiots. Not a good idea to make the rush hour worse, especially considering the commuting hell that this week has brought.

Thank you

This morning my 45 minute commute to work took 3 hours. The A1 motorway was closed due to a bad accident and the knock on effects on surrounding motorways caused 20 mile tailbacks. There was no indication that the motorway was closed ahead until I hit the wall of traffic. If I'd known I wouldn't have got on the motorway and would have gone the long way round. The local TV news didn't even carry the warning which is most unlike them. Given that the accident happened in the early hours which gave plenty of time for the services to get organised I'm a bit miffed.

I queued for about 20 miles along country back roads to go around to join another motorway. In the small villages we passed through there were no police marshalling people through. In fact lots of small stretches of roadworks caused even worse bottlenecks. The workmen could have just put a road plate over the holes in the road and shut down their roadworks for the day (I know this because I used to do roadworks). The traffic light sequences weren't changed either. So in the one direction you had a half mile queue made up of local traffic and in the other direction a 20 mile queue of thousands and thousands of stranded drivers. Why isn't there a traffic flow contingency for such days. When one motorway in south yorkshire is hit the whole road network goes down. Grrr.

Lee Hughes

Football player Lee Hughes killed a man and severely injured another in an RTA in which he was drunk and driving recklessly. In court he showed no remorse and behaved with total arrogance. After 3 years in prison he is now out and has immediately been signed to play for Oldham athletic. How has he been able to stay football sharp whilst in jail? Should he have been allowed to continue his football career upon release? Should the inevitable abuse he will suffer from away fans be quietly applauded or has the guy been punished enough? The question is the same one that we had to think about when the guy who stabbed Phillip Lawrence was released earlier this month; did the punishment fit the crime and should the offender be granted their full rights as a free man upon release? For starters Lee Hughes should have a lifetime driving ban. And a percentage of his earnings should go to his victims and their families. He should also be allowed to continue his football career.

In other motoring news a banned driver who led police on a high speed pursuit risking lives was caught and the judge gave him.... a driving ban. Sigh.

A64 Motorway safety

The A64 motorway that encircles the city of York is notoriously dangerous. It is a dual carriageway with a 60 mph speed limit, many short exit entry slips roads and it is used by extremely slow moving agricultural traffic. Despite this a third of the traffic on the road travels at speeds of 80 mph and over. The mix of two lanes and traffic moving at many different speeds is a recipe for disaster. A similar two lane road near Cambridge was put under continual speed camera surveillance and the calming effect on the traffic is amazing (even though it feels like being on prozac).

The exit off the A64 I use is terrible. There are two lanes on the slip road, one to go into York and one to go away. Queues into York form at peak times and the left slip road backs up onto the motorway. Naturally, drivers use the right lane to jump the queue which backs the traffic up even more. I asked North Yorkshire police why they don't enforce the lane discipline more and I got this response;

Many thanks for your enquiry re the roundabouts at Fulfrod

I can understand your frustration at motorists using the free flow lane to shorten their wait but there is no offence in undertaking this manoeuvre however annoying it maybe.

Unfortunately it is not possible to use the stinger under these circumstances.

We are in conversation with the Highways Agency and the City of York Council over the queuing of traffic on the A64 off slip road and they are monitoring the situation at the moment to see what if any action can be taken for a long term solution.

Thank you for your enquiry

regards

Martin hemenway

Bus lanes and traffic chaos

Many cities are now setting up bus lanes. These are a good idea if they encourage people to get on the bus and not drive into busy city centres. One problem is when they hit traffic lights. Buses are given priority here and the main traffic stream is stopped. This is a bit annoying but what makes it supremely frustrating is when taxi drivers use the bus lane and the priority at the lights. A taxi is a commercial vehicle just like a delivery truck. They should not choke the main traffic stream up by using the bus lanes and turning the lights red. And taxis aren't green either; they often contain just one driver and a passenger.

While I'm at it another thing that really burns my waffles is when people park illegally (in my city often on a dual carriageway on double yellow lines) with their hazard warning lights on. Like that makes it OK. There is nothing more annoying than queuing to get round someone who is pretending to be broken down while they pop into a takeaway.

As you can probably tell I'm fed up with traffic. It's bad enough the roads are busy without sneaky or lazy motorists playing the system. The city of Doncaster has just moved its bus station on top of the train station and under a busy shopping centre. This has created CHAOS. The main road that feeds the train station is now severely choked and to make matters worse it has five sets of traffic lights in the space of a quarter mile. The problem here is that the buses don't go down the bus lane into the bus station. They go into the town centre to drop people off then cut into the main road to get into the station. Result; traffic lights going red every twenty seconds and the main road through Doncaster choked.

Doncaster has horrendous traffic problems. There is really only one way in or out and to get from one side of town to the other involves a trip into the town centre. There are partial ring roads but they aren't enough. One such road is unfinished and it will link two major traffic hotspots (the football stadium is in this area) and bypass the town centre, providing major relief. The reason this hasn't been completed and opened up is that the Asda supermarket nearby have objected on the grounds that customers will have easy access to the nearby Tesco and they will lose trade. How dare a supermarket dictate traffic planning and road building.

Road Pricing e-petition

I am one of the 1.5 million people who has signed an online petition on the Downing Street website to ask the government to scrap plans for road pricing and road tracking. This morning I received a response e-mail from 'Tony Blair' which pretty much said that nothing had been decided and options were being checked but pilot schemes are going ahead and some form of congestion charging will have to be introduced. So the will of 1.5m voters and tax payers is to be ignored. Add these people to the list of attendees at the anti war marches a few years ago. Or the people who campaigned against the poll tax. This is not a republic; we don't elect people to make decisions on our behalf we elect them to enact our will. Democracy does not work in this country at the moment. But the masses are busy with their 'lifestyle'. No October revolution here.

The simple fact is that people have no choice; no-one willingly sits in traffic for tens of hours per week. House prices in this country prohibit many people from living close to where they work. The nature of the job market in this country also means at least one person per household has to travel. Give me a tax break to buy a house near to where I work and force the employers of my partner to let her work from home 3 days a week and that will cut four lengthy and 'unnecessary' journeys per day. But don't charge me to use the roads at peak times. I already pay to use them. Paying to congest the roads will not prevent congestion.

Christmas Drink Driving

The drink driving figures for Christmas 2006 are out and they are worse than last year in Yorkshire. I'm amazed they managed to catch more people because there are fewer traffic police on the roads. As the roads become busier we need more traffic police but the exisintg officers have to help with regular police duties. What a waste of their training. There are shocking examples of bad driving on the roads at the moment and I really feel that during an upcoming journey someone will involve me in an RTA. Take a 10 minute drive and you are guaranteed to encounter someone; speeding, cutting up, tailgating, driving in an overtaking lane but not overtaking anything, not indicating, using a mobile phone etc etc.

But drink driving is the worst crime. I know it can be expensive to get home after a night out. Tough. I know of a pub whose car park is usually full (especially on a Saturday afternoon). On an evening the car park is also busy. People try to hide their vehicles by parking them down the side street. I have nothing against that particular pub (in fact I like to go there when I'm in the area; it has just had a really cool interior renovation) I just don't want anyone to get hurt. And I'm not being preachy; members of my own family have been in trouble for drink driving and the same applies to them. What can be done? There are some ideas around. Personally I favour alcolocks which prevent a car from starting until the driver passes a breath test. In Sweden all vehicles will have alcolocks by 2012.

Will alcolocks work? Can someone else blow into the machine for you? They are on trial in Bristol and Birmingham but civil liberties groups have already grumbled. I don't think a drunk person has the right to decide whether to start the engine. But then again I'm in favour of speed limiters being fitted on vehicles that would prevent a breach of the speed limit in danger areas like accident blackspots, school areas, supermarket car parks etc. I like the idea of people being physically prevented from commiting a crime like in A Clockwork Orange, the 'Justice' episode of Red Dwarf where Lister sets himself on fire and the Simpsons episode where Lisa conditions Bart against stealing cupcakes by electrifying one.