The A1...

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Tue 17 Aug 2004 13:02
The A1... - Xantiargh!
Hi people,

kinda car related... I live near the A1 and have noticed it is a lot busier this year, and has a heavy flow of traffic well into the night. A year ago it would be dead by half seven, eight ish.

Is it just that roads getting busier generally, or are heavy goods using it to avoid something (say on the M1)?

Just wondering...

Mike
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Tue 17 Aug 2004 13:06
The A1... - AngryJonny
It's a long road. Whereabouts do you live? I tend to drive from London to Grantham if I'm visiting the folks, usually around 8-9PM in the evening. It backs up around Peterborough at the moment, as a result of some roadworks in the vicinity. Strikes me as weird that a road which is relatively empty grinds to a halt when you lose a lane. I find the Lincolnshire areas of the A1 much busier than the bits closer to London as a rule.
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Tue 17 Aug 2004 13:10
The A1... - Xantiargh!
I live Peterborough neck of the woods. There's roadworks up at Stamford, 8 miles or so up the road, however its no so much queuing traffic as more trucks.

Just seems to be a lot more heavy traffic on it these days, well into the evening and starting earlier. Just wondering if its a permanent thing (i.e. more stuff on roads), or hauliers avoiding a delay on another road...

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Tue 17 Aug 2004 13:37
The A1... - Mapmaker
>>Strikes me as weird that a road which is relatively empty grinds to a halt when you lose a lane

& reduce the speed limit.

3 lanes at 70 = 210mile-lanes per hour

2 lanes at 50 = 100 mile-lanes per hour

Worse: 2 lanes at 40 = 80 miles-lanes per hour; compared to 3 lanes doing 80 = 240 mile-lanes per hour.

So you've got one third the capacity (given that people stick to a 40 limit, but not to a 70 limit.)



Now, I know it doesn't really work like that..., as you may drive closer together when traffic is going more slowly - and the maximum traffic-flow rates come at about 10mph (as I found out when I did a Geography coursework project at school on a new bypass), but you get the general idea.
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Tue 17 Aug 2004 13:53
The A1... - AngryJonny
Ah yes. I can understand the maths there, but this seems to be several orders of magnitude worse.

At 9pm or so on the A1, just south of Peterborough, there really is no traffic on the road. You overtake another car every so often, but there's perhaps only a car on the road every few hundred yards. And then, suddenly, you hit a wall of traffic. It just doesn't move. And you sit there packed together until a minute or two later when someone pulls up behind them, another car pulling up behind them a minute or two later still. You just don't move. And you must be moving at a snail's pace for traffic of that density to build up in the first place.

Three or four times I've joined this queue now, and I've never seen it all the way through. On one occasion it took me over an hour to get to the next junction where I could pull off and go round the Peterborough by-pass. I've seen my fair share of roadwork tailbacks in my time, but this just seems to be on another level. Perhaps I'm just unlucky.
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Tue 17 Aug 2004 17:37
The A1... - L'escargot
There is heavy traffic on the A1 near Doncaster 24 hours a day, and has been for the past 15 years at least.
--
L'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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