Lorry overtaking ban, M11

Not a bad idea but there is the money aspect. Plus the tree huggers will whine. Certainly the motorways in France often have 'crawler' lanes on key stretches on long inclines etc.

Building extra roads creates traffic. Look how all new roads have just filled up. The M25 was expanded massively - not that you'd know. Smart motorways have added an extra lane and now *they* are already at capacity.

We'd be better off making better use of what we have:

However none of those fit in with the dogma of reducing private motoring, so are unlikely to happen. The public health issue of the additional pollution this dogma leads to is a small price to pay.

With a matching increase in productivity.

Untrue.

Untrue.

We have a steep 3 lane sect of local motorway ... about 1 mile before its start most trucks move to middle lane ... then once hill starts the middle lane ones crawl past slow lane trucks or sometimes can't even keep up. All cars & vans move to outer lane - result everything slows right down.

Building new roads or improving existing ones does not magically create traffic that did not exist before. It may, however, attract traffic from other routes and that is often the purpose of the new roads. The Western section of the M25 is a particular example of this happening, although to a greater degree than anybody first expected. I suspect that the answer there would be to follow part of the original ringway plan and build another motorway well outside it, with limited access to other motorways only. That would then serve the purpose of allowing through traffic to avoid London, without the road becoming a commuter route.

An idea that has never caught on and is unlikely to do so now.

Motorways are the safest roads in Britain. We need to encourage people to use them, not to provide a disincentive.

Too many problems with minimum speed limits for them to be used except in very specific cases, usually tunnels.

Oddly enough, if you read the many pages of guidance on how to design light controlled junctions, that is exactly what they are supposed to do. Of course, it may not always be the road you happen to be on that they are optimised for.

One of the problems with traffic light junctions is the hours that they work. When traffic is busy, lights are essential to give everyone their turn to access the roundabout or cross roads, without a heavy stream of traffic in one direction permanently denying access to the stream to its left. But at quiet times they cause traffic to stop unnecessarily when it is obvious that there is no other traffic that you need to give way to.

The other problem is traffic lights which are not properly phased so each stream of traffic that enters the roundabout has access right off the roundabout in whichever direction it wants to go, without having to "ratchet" around the roundabout, passing one exit on each phase of the lights.

The thing that really kills a junction is when traffic which has just left the junction builds up on one of the exit roads, maybe because of another set of lights further up the road. You find that one stream of traffic fills up the road ahead when it has its turn through the lights, then the lights allow traffic from another direction to access the junction, but it can't enter the junction (if it's a box junction) because its exit is blocked by the queue of traffic. That means that traffic from one direction never gets its chance because its green-light phase is "wasted" because it always corresponds to the time when the exit is queued back to the junction.

Oh it certainly does

people who used not to be able to make a specific journey to a job 10-20 miles away because the local route was too heavily congested have now been provide with a way to make that journey.

This is especially true of the M25. I know someone who commuted from Harlow to Gatwick every day - that would have been impossible without the M25 meaning that when his job relocated he would have had to move (and his wife would have had to give up her job)

The problem with only having junctions at the motorways so that they don't because a commuter route is that you are then denying locals the opportunity to join the motorway for their long" journey

take a simple example of the original plan for the A329(M) which was to link up with the M3 (and possibly beyond). Would it really be sensible to build this road without providing an access for Bracknell?

Having commuted from Gravesend to Wembley every day, before the M25 I can assure you that it quite possible to go through central London without significant problems. So your Gatwick example is invalid.

Of course it's true. Before we had roads there was no traffic.

Think about it.

This could easily be solved by allowing the limiter to be overridden by say 4mph for short periods by pressing a button.

I do the same (apart from the law abiding bit). And I can't understand how anyone could not feel guilt when they have 20 cars queued behind them.

...

That doesn't mean they wouldn't have made the journey, just that the journey is now quicker, which is usually why the new road has been built.

...

The whole point of the outer ring would be to carry only through traffic. If locals want to do a long trip, they can still use the M25, which won't have the through traffic on it.

That would depend upon what the planners wanted the road to do.

Many countries in Europe (and elsewhere?) turn the lights to 'flashing orange' in all directions to handle this.

It would probably be cheaper to build a second layer above the M25 for through traffic. Using Lego type unitary construction would be very cheap. I'm always impressed by the I10 across the Mississippi delta which uses standard concrete building elements to a great extent.

In Palo Alto, the traffic lights, which on installation had been tuned to allow someone to drive at a constant 25mph along certain roads, were subsequently deliberately *de-tuned* to slow the traffic down. This also had the useful side effect of increasing revenue from fines, so one may question the motive. Having fines from traffic offences (other than parking) go to local govt rather than the state gives an incentive for this kind of behaviour, so we should resist any attempt to introduce that here.

Yes there was and you are a troll.

On 04-Apr-17 12:54 PM, Capitol wrote: ...

While I like the idea, I'm not sure how easy it would be to do it without disrupting the traffic on the existing road.

K.

I think it's all down to empathy (or lack thereof) and / or, awareness or simply NGAF.

We saw a good example of either of the last two today when a van, coming up to a small roundabout in the opposite direction to an ambulance on twos and blues and just turned right across the path of the ambulance?? ;-(

Ok, the van was there a second earlier than the ambulance so technically had right of way but ffs.

Same with people parking diagonally, or in the middle of a gap big enough for two cars at the side of the road or the one that gets me, people parked up on the wrong side of the road at night and with their dipped beam left on! Not only are they not moving (so only need side lights) but are showing the wrong lights for that side of the road but blinding drivers coming along because their beams are 'dipped' right into their faces.

We suffered the poor observation this afternoon whilst following a car doing exactly 30mph in a (clear / dry / day) 40 limit.

They eventually sped up to 50 (still a 40) before waiting at a T junction for what seemed like hours till they couldn't see any car for

Cheers, T i m