Road design

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Wed 24 May 2017 18:40
Road design - hillman

I hate there traffic calming cushions and slow down to below 20 mph and drive one wheel over them and one wheel on the original road surface. Thus I've never broken a spring or worn out the inside shoulders of the tires. But, there are other hazards.

In Furness Vale there is a level crossing on a hill.. The level crossing was redone a few months ago and the railway rails are level, as you would expect them to be. Where the road meet the level crossing there has been no attempt to make a radius. Thus there are many scars in the road surface where cars have grounded where drivers have crossed too fast and the springs have ‘bottomed’. That is on the uphill side and the downhill side.

That recalls to mind when our houses were new and we were all concreting our driveways. My house was on the upside of the hill and the path was long enough to park two cars before the front of the house. The neighbour opposite had a house was below the footpath and the drive was quite short and steep. The neighour made a radiused former from ¾ in plywood and carefully floated the concrete from the footpath to his driveway. It worked marvellously well for his Reliant three wheeler. His next car was a Humber Hawk (anybody remember those ?) The first time he turned into his driveway the car grounded. I don’t know how he got it off but he reconcreted the driveway with quite a lot of concrete.

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Wed 24 May 2017 19:18
Road design - badbusdriver

I used to live in Inverurie, a town in Aberdeenshire. Being on the A96 Aberdeen to Inverness road, the town was very busy with lots and lots of big trucks coming through. Quite a few years ago (mid-late 90's i think) it was decided that a bypass would be made, specifically to get the biggest trucks out of the town centre. On the bypass itself, as you'd expect, there were a few road bridges and at least one foot bridge. Unfortunately the foot bridge was not set high enough for the tallest trucks (like triple deck cattle floats) to get under, so they had to be diverted back through the town centre till it could be modified......!

Recently outside a village near me, a new roundabout was made, but it was put in well off to one side of the existing route. The only reason i can see for doing this is to keep the traffic flowing as normal on the old road, till the work is nearly finished, then just join it on to the old road minimising the amount of work to be done and traffic disruption. But this results in a roundabout in an odd position with odd angles and sharper turns than you would expect. Surely it would be better to make a temporary road off to the side for the traffic to use and make the roundabout on the route of the existing road?

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Wed 24 May 2017 19:45
Road design - frankly

I used to live in Inverurie, a town in Aberdeenshire. Being on the A96 Aberdeen to Inverness road, the town was very busy with lots and lots of big trucks coming through. Quite a few years ago (mid-late 90's i think) it was decided that a bypass would be made, specifically to get the biggest trucks out of the town centre. On the bypass itself, as you'd expect, there were a few road bridges and at least one foot bridge. Unfortunately the foot bridge was not set high enough for the tallest trucks (like triple deck cattle floats) to get under, so they had to be diverted back through the town centre till it could be modified......!

Recently outside a village near me, a new roundabout was made, but it was put in well off to one side of the existing route. The only reason i can see for doing this is to keep the traffic flowing as normal on the old road, till the work is nearly finished, then just join it on to the old road minimising the amount of work to be done and traffic disruption. But this results in a roundabout in an odd position with odd angles and sharper turns than you would expect. Surely it would be better to make a temporary road off to the side for the traffic to use and make the roundabout on the route of the existing road?

I suspect the odd angles etc here are traffic calming. On the uk gov web sites there are substantial pdf doc's on this subject. It's time we should have a new department called "traffic swiftly" does it.

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