Motorways in this country are rubbish. I wish we could have motorways as perfect as the French ones.
They have smooth, uncongested, spot on motorways. "Aire" of such and such every mile or so if you need to stop. We should pay to use our motorways and there should be less lorries and replaced by rail freight.
|
We should pay to use our motorways and there should be less lorries and replaced by rail freight.
Good idea in principle, however you're forgetting that our rail network is equally carp. Lorries should be restricted to lane 1 though (something which is being trialled on stretches of the A1M between certain hours).
|
As we can't make our small country as large as France we must reduce the number of vehicles on the road by 50% (yes fifty) to get uncongested motorways.
Anyone know how to achieve this and still be popular with the electorate?
|
|
Invest in the railway system. Getting rid of lorries would surely get rid of at least 25% of the congestion of our motorways? And say another 10-15% of car drivers wouldn't bother with motorways if they had to pay to use them.
|
|
|
As we can't make our small country as large as France we must reduce the number of vehicles on the road by 50% (yes fifty) to get uncongested motorways. Anyone know how to achieve this and still be popular with the electorate?
Er, how about increasing capacity (rail and road) to match demand, like what should happen with all public services. Investment in infrastructure has lagged requirement atrociously for decades.
And that doesn't mean 'concreting over the whole countryside'.
|
|
|
"As we can't make our small country as large as France we must reduce the number of vehicles on the road by 50% (yes fifty) to get uncongested motorways"
Following that same rationale, widening the motorways by 200% would also work.
Our country may not be big, but a motorway is only a few metres wide.
|
|
|
reduce the number of vehicles on the road by 50% Anyone know how to achieve this and still be popular with the electorate?
Yes. Restore the property qualification for suffrage that prevailed before universal male suffrage (women were only allowed in later).
If only people above a certain net worth or income level were allowed to vote, draconian laws to get most of us off the road would be quite easy to frame, most easily through a radical stiffening of MoT-type requiremenets, as in Japan but much more ferocious.
The minority electorate would be very chuffed. However there might be revolutionary rumblings among the helot classes.
|
|
|
|
|
> wish we could have motorways as perfect as the French ones
Not been on one at the height of the holiday season then? I remember using one 200km stretch and it was carnage, wrecks, jams, fatalities, burning coaches..........
------------------------------
TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
|
|
I lived 16 years in France. Admittedly, I wasn't the driver, my dad was. If you're going to mention holiday season, the Paris peripherique,and motorways around main cities then ok,of course they can get crowded. Same principle in every other country in the world? But you've got to admit it, the French have got it right on that one: Rubbish at building cars (...) but they know how to build a road and make it work quickly and efficiently.
|
TVM - you've just given opposing points of view: the M25 is OK because in its entire length the odd accident usually doesn't affect you, but your personal experience on 120 miles of French motorway makes you think the whole network is carp.
Is this what they call the 'Monday morning feeling'? ;-)
|
Dont be picky. I am just saying that the french motorways are not a panacea.
------------------------------
TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
|
|
|
|
Putting a lot of freight on the railways would require extensive modification of the rail network. Much of it is one up and one down line and you can't run freight on that. The freight trains would have to be in sidings during the day!
|
|
Freight trains from midnight to 5 am!
|
|
The UK has in all forms the worst infrastructure of all countries in europe with the excetion of perhaps Greece,I have travelled throughout South America and most countries leave the UK for dead.My question is where does all our money go, the powers that be keep telling the the UK populate they are one of the richest nations in the world.
|
|
|
Putting freight on the railways is not only impracticable, it's a logistic nightmare; even then you would need all those lorries at each end of the line to deliver/collect the freight being moved by rail.
Some 97 per cent of everything we eat, drink, wear etc goes by road, using many, many thousands of lorries and trucks. You would have to have dozens of trains several miles long running in every direction you could imagine to even remotely emulate such a feat.
Then there's the question of perishable goods, plus the many thousands of parcels delivered daily by couriers on a completely flexible basis.
Some freight could probably go by road, but it's certainly a comparatively minor amount of the overall total.
One thing that would help is to encourage greater movement of goods and their distribution at night.
Even so this can prove a problem. In my town, for instance, local residents, normally backed by the council, block delivery of local supermarkets' goods during the evening and overnight because of the "noise" which is created.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
|
Putting freight on the railways is not only impracticable it's a logistic nightmare; even then you would need all those lorries at each end of the line to deliver/collect the freight being moved by rail.
I've driven quite a bit in the US, and I always wonder what they do there - you do see some trucks on the main roads, but *nothing* like the number on a UK motorway. On the Interstate's many are doing 80MPH.
OK, I realise that across America stuff isn't going to go by road, but even within a State you don't see much trucking.
|
>>I've driven quite a bit in the US>>
No doubt you realised then just how long the freight trains are in the States...:-)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
|
|
Stuartli
If you've experienced trucks, some with auxilliary refrigeration motors, parking and manouvering while you try to sleep you don't put the noise in sarcastic quotes!!!!
|
>>you don't put the noise in sarcastic quotes!!!!>>
The word sarcastic is alien to me in this case. I was merely relaying the reason for residents' objections.
Having never experienced it, I can make no comment on the actual reason.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
|
Having never experienced it I can make no comment on the actual reason.
Sceptical perhaps rather than sarcastic?
I suppose I'm just intrigued as to why the word noise requires quotation marks at all. It is a real problem for those living in mixed developments.
To some extent the Councils are to blame as they often encourage a mix of retail and residential use where town centre land is being redeveloped (eg Morrison's superstore cheek by jowl with flats when Northampton's cattle market was redeveloped in the late nineties).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
perfect as the French ones.....
just tell this to friend of mine who left 5 hrs for a 1 hr journey to Perpignan airport last week! They still missed the flight. Never mind, his daughter caught the next flight, only 500? to pay!
--
pmh (was peter)
|
I use it every day (J12-16 in the morning and 16-12 in the evening). Once you accept that the 4.7 miles anticlockwise between J14 and J12 usually takes you about 25 minutes in the evening rush, you turn the air-con up a notch, switch the air on to recirc, slip something relaxing into the CD player, and take a deep breath. This is a monumentally carp stretch of road, but not carp enough in normal conditions to warrant a detour.
Also, the part I travel on is at least quite consistent. Most days I can predict to within a couple of hundred yards where the queues start and where it starts moving again. Only the odd lorry fire or breakdown really makes a difference and that's only every few weeks. On that note, I've often wondered what it is that makes lorries spontaneously combust around Junction 14? Unburned jet fuel falling from the so-called "air" around Heathrow perhaps? ;-)
Cheers
DP
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
|
Its seasonal too. M25 approaching j15 Northbound, at about 20:00 this time of year.
The sun is highly visible, very low and very bright. Bright enough that it blinds you southbound via your rear view mirror. Always causes a Q northbound as cars come over a slight brow and get hit by the full glare, drivers brake, and the q ripples backwards.,
------------------------------
TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
|
When i first came to London, pre M25.....on a friday evening about 4pm, it would take me up to 3 hours in horrendous traffic to get from North London (Hendon) to J2 of the M4 (Chiswick)...
The M25 isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's far better than what was availabe before.
Doing the same journey now i'd be mortified if it took me 3 hours....
To relieve the pressure, what's wrong with building a second tier on top, no moans about using extra land, double the capacity.....you could use one tier when the other was closed in an accident and/or bad fog etc and still have a functioning motorway.
|
|
A sort of enormous double smoke-ring round the, er, smoke so to speak...
|
|
|
|
|
|
