24 November 2003
Latest council bid to foul up traffic
If you want to know anything about traffic congestion, just ask Norwich City Council. They cause most of it.
Their latest device to foul up traffic in the city was not advertised in advance, and certainly no-one who was going to be affected by it was consulted. But it has a number of negative effects.
What am I talking about? The insane decision to prevent drivers turning right from Thorpe Road into Riverside Road.
This is a problem area in the city – not least because the city council in a previous but equally idiotic incarnation allowed the Big W to erect a massively unsuitable store on the Riverside development, and then installed a job lot of traffic lights that nobody has ever bothered to co-ordinate properly. Particularly striking is the pedestrian phase outside the station entrance, which is so long that it regularly gives priority to thin air for about half a minute at a time. (Not in itself surprising: our local highway authorities would rather give priority to a bucket of leaking toxic waste than a car.) This serves to back up traffic to the Foundry Bridge lights, which means cars coming along Riverside Road cannot get across and are frequently piled up back towards Ketts Hill. Meanwhile, vehicles emerging from the Riverside car parks block the approaches to Foundry Bridge from the other direction. Not a pretty sight. But how does the new no-right-turn make it worse?
For one thing, it makes it well-nigh impossible for people living in Aspland Road – a cul-de-sac off Riverside Road – to reach their homes during busy periods. Whereas before we (for I am one of the lucky ones) could approach down Thorpe Road and turn right quite easily for the short stretch along Riverside Road, now we are forced into one of the two traffic jams already mentioned.
But the really crazy thing about the turn ban is that traffic coming down Thorpe Road and wanting to turn right is now forced into the heart of the city instead, and is soon contributing to the traffic jam approaching Castle Mall.
So why has the city council done it? I honestly don’t know. It was not hurting anyone, and it has not made life easier for anyone else. Pedestrians as well as car drivers will suffer from the resulting increased pollution, and there is a good chance of an accident at the extremely confusing junction.
I have always thought it a good policy not to attribute to malice something that can be adequately explained by stupidity, but here the stupidity is of such a high order that I’m really not sure.
High tide event mystery
The most beautiful parts of Norfolk are often hidden. For 12 years I dwelt innocently only a few miles from Hardley Flood – a stunning stretch of water just outside Chedgrave – but didn’t know it was there.
Those who do stumble upon it cannot help but be intrigued by the notice that greets them. Certain parts of the path through Hardley Flood, it reveals, are sometimes “flooded by high tide events”.
What can such an event be? Walking along the path, I looked out for an event horizon, but there was only a normal, stunning horizon, and a normal tide. Clearly I was missing something.
I turned to Prof V A R Scheinlich, the well-known authority on knot theory, which goes almost as far as string theory in accounting for nearly everything. He suggested that the high tide event probably referred to a rip in the space-time continuum caused by the pull of the moon’s gravity at high tide. Chedgrave people are probably familiar with it.
In passing, he said he was developing a faster-than-light string drive which he hoped would enable us to leap into one of the mysterious other dimensions predicted by string theory. In fact, he showed me the string he was working on and said he was a bit tied up.
“Hardley Flood may be the solution,” he said.
Cars caught in roundabout horror
A reader from King’s Lynn has alerted me to an alarming situation there. Apparently the road markings on the born-again Hardwick Roundabout – freed by the new flyover from the assaults of A47 through-traffic – are so confusing that a number of drivers have been seen circling it for some days before being guided off it, exhausted and barely coherent.
The lady who wrote to me found herself in just such a situation when attempting to visit her daughter in West Winch. She described the horror of circling the roundabout several times and “waving gaily to others doing the same thing”.
She advises taking a survival kit if you wish to attempt the navigation of the roundabout – and possibly a compass. She concludes: “I’m not sure, but it seems all roads lead to Hunstanton.”