On Roadworks…

There are some major roadwork projects going on up and down the UK. The A1 has seen some significant development with many parts of the works not scheduled for completion until Summer 2016. There’s an interesting site over at https://roadworks.org/ that gives up to date information wherever possible on locations that are likely to end up in longer journeys due to incidents or ongoing works.

Google returns 340,000 results for the search terms of ‘council duty of care and roadworks’ which is not insignificant. Of particular note having browsed some of the policy documents of various councils is that they are all differing in what they set out to do, when and how they will do it when it comes to indicated works.

Even parliament gets in on the act with the policy document note http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn00739.pdf here that states “Highway authorities have a legal duty to maintain the highway“. Now the question I would like to ponder is how you feel your local council is looking after your highway? For my money, the roads nearby to my home have recently been repaved. The surface is good, it is nice to drive on and it is appealing to look at. No issues so far.

Some of the roads on my standard commute are not so well maintained, but nothing so drastic as to damage my car or seriously disrupt my journey. Even some planned roundabout works that will alter the layout to a light controlled junction don’t bother me overly – I hope that in the long run it will ease congestion problems for my commute home.

So what does really get my goat on the way to work? Well, there’s a set of lights… no, there’s actually two sets of lights located at two badly designed junctions. The sequence never seems quite right to me. The busy stretch of road that should be the default ‘green’ position if you like to allow traffic flow often isn’t and will show a red. As this is a long straight road I can only assume that this is to discourage drivers from gaining too much speed (and potentially driving over the speed limit).

My problem with this is that traffic lights are designed to control the flow, not speed, of traffic. Not only that but we’re now aware, in general human society, that global warming is a serious and genuine threat (http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/). Why is traffic then having to face slowing down, stopping, losing all that built up momentum and then having to burn more fuel to start again?

Roads are designed to allow us – all of us – to get from A-B. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a cyclist, a motorcyclist, a car driver, a lorry driver, a bus driver or using any other of road transport. So, my question to you is does your local highway authority and council allow you to do this with well maintained roads, suitable traffic flow control and appropriate and speedy repairs? If not, why not? They, after all, work for you – http://www.theyworkforyou.com/…