20 February 2006
Reason for lights on roundabouts remains a mystery
Returning from a few days away, I suddenly realised that coming home was getting depressing.
In the past, reaching the outskirts of Norwich along the A11 meant a smooth transition from trunk road to city by means of a roundabout that functioned perfectly well.
Now drivers are faced – despite recent changes – with a ludicrous 30mph limit that is almost impossible to get down to, given the excellent road conditions. Yes, I do know where the brake pedal is, but 30mph on a wide dual-carriageway feels like slow walking pace, especially when everyone else is overtaking you.
Never mind, we have the joyous prospect of a 40mph limit in the near future, plus an array of traffic lights that make Yarmouth seafront at the height of the season look embarrassingly naked.
Why do we need traffic lights on a roundabout? No-one knows. All we are sure of is that when they aren’t there, traffic flows much more smoothly. One experience sent in by a Coltishall reader demonstrates this.
“The other Sunday morning,” he writes, “I was sitting motionless in a Norwich traffic queue, pondering the age-old question of traffic lights or roundabouts – or roundabouts with traffic lights.
“The road in question was St Augustine’s, leading down to Pitt Street and the St Crispin’s inner ring road. The queue started at the junction with Drayton Road, where the old swimming pool used to be. When we got to St Crispin’s we found that the only reason for the traffic queue was the lights on this large roundabout. Otherwise the traffic was light, as it was all the way to Carrow Road.
“If you turn left on to St. Crispin’s, there are no lights at the next roundabout. Nor are there lights on the next, large, normally busy, Barrack Street / Riverside Road / Ketts Hill roundabout.
“If we had turned right on to St. Crispin’s we would have found that there are no lights at the Barn Road roundabout. Travelling up Grapes Hill we do find the notorious roundabout-plus-lights, of which the least said the better.
“We all know how to use roundabouts; so what prompts our traffic czars to add traffic lights to large roundabouts, when we all know that they will mainly serve to cause traffic build-ups that otherwise would sort themselves out?”
My feeling is that 21st century road works in almost any area seem designed to prevent traffic flowing smoothly for as long as possible. At the Thickthorn roundabout the traffic lights will not only cause unnecessary hold-ups, they will introduce new dangers.
A block of fairly slow-moving traffic moving away from lights and on to the southern bypass is far more hazardous than individual vehicles able to adjust their speed easily to through traffic.
The eventual solution no doubt will be to slow down the bypass traffic, because highways authorities are only really happy when nothing is moving at all. They call this “settling down”.
Secret plans to remove duck threat
In the latest startling move in Martham’s contentious duck wars, a dissident duck has claimed that there is a clandestine plan to remove a number of local birds to a “secret location”. The duck, an Indian runner, alleges that the ducks are being removed to an area totally unsuited to pond life – possibly Siberia or Pluto, which I read recently is colder than expected – on the spurious grounds that they are a threat to the “infrastructure of the water” at Martham, where it is claimed the local pond can support only eight. This is roughly 170 fewer than use it at present, according to local estimates. Reports have come in of attempts to catch the birds in butterfly nets. These have so far failed, but there are fears that advanced technology may be introduced, and the ducks lost for ever. Global warming is the only hope, said an observer.
Building slippery roads the way forward?
Correspondents are getting a firm grip on the slippery roads issue. Allan Hale returned from a trip down the newly opened Thorney bypass on the A47, where he was horrified to find “slippery road” signs covering the whole length of it. “And they were not just temporary signs,” he writes. “They were the good solid permanent ones. So clearly those in authority are expecting this brand new road to be permanently slippery.
“Are the contractors purchasing inferior surfacing material, and if so, why?
“Presumably it must be cheaper. But this leads us back to speed limits and speed cameras. If we want to make the roads safer, shouldn't we be correcting this slipperiness before we start worrying about employing more and more cameras? “But no, that would cost money rather than generating it!”
Unguided regions come up with wrong transport cake
When the eight English regions put forward their wish lists for transport funding up to 2016, some 72 per cent was allocated to road building, as opposed to 24 per cent for public transport schemes. According to newspaper reports, this shocked the anti-car and pro-bus Transport 2000, which I rather admire for sticking to its name despite appearing to be six years out of date.
Spokesperson Meera Rambissoon said asking the regions was a good idea in principle, “but without proper guidance they have been trying to make a cake with no proper recipe to follow”.
No prizes for guessing exactly whose guidance the regions were lacking, and what kind of cake might have resulted.