24 November 2003

on 24 November 2003 at 08:00

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.”

10 November 2003

on 10 November 2003 at 08:00

Time to be realistic about roads

There is no end to the arguments against building new roads. One of the most popular – and most bizarre – is that new roads attract more traffic.

I don’t know why, but in these congested times I somehow can’t see people dashing out in their cars as soon as they hear a new road has been built, just for the sake of driving along it. Well, maybe once, to see what it’s like. But not on a regular basis.

The idea that we will all abandon public transport and head for the new road like lemmings is truly ludicrous. If public transport is available for the trip we have to take, if it turns up on time often enough and doesn’t cost too much, then we will continue to use it. Why not?

But in reality it is very often not available. And not only is it unavailable, frequently there is no realistic way of making it available, because the journeys that people have to make are so diverse.

I would love to see public transport used more often, but I don’t see it happening, as long as leaves can stop trains and buses fail to turn up for no reason at all.

Once we accept that people will continue to use cars and that they are not the devil’s spawn, we can begin to work out sensibly how to cope with them. That is what most people want.

The ironic thing, of course, is that if people didn’t use a new road, it would all of sudden become a strong argument that we shouldn’t have built it. So if we use it, it’s wrong; and if we don’t, it’s wrong too. Handy, if you’re an anti-car fanatic.

Meanwhile, the powers-that-be continue to plug the railway – and quite right too. But you need to be careful in responding to attempts to lure you on to trains.

On the A11 for instance, not far from Attleborough, is a sign inviting you to travel by rail from Eccles (actually Eccles Road station). And why not?

Say you’re heading for Norwich, and you think it might be nice to leave your car at Eccles. You locate the charming little station, whose car park has room for about five cars and was, on the day I visited it, full.

Say you arrive at 9.30am, lock your car and head for the platform. Just to be sure, you check the timetable. Next train due? No problem. It’s 7.18 – the next morning. So, just under 22 hours to wait, then.

I’m not saying Eccles should have a more frequent service. I’m just wondering if that A11 sign might come under the heading of misdirection.

One country to the right

Judging by the number of television programmes promoting home-buying abroad, this country is full of people who want to be elsewhere.

Even senior staff members of the EDP have succumbed to the lures of sunny climes like France and Catalonia, despite the obvious charms of living in Norfolk and working for a newspaper of this quality.

At the same time, a surprising number of people want to move to this country, often from much more exciting parts of the world. It seems that this dissatisfaction with the country we are living in is an increasing problem, but a Wicklewood man has come up with a solution.

“I suggest that we all stand facing north, then move one country to the right,” he said. (He wishes to remain anonymous.)

This would clearly solve a large number of problems at a stroke. Admittedly, it might be hard to fit everyone from the United States into Ireland, though it worked the other way round. Welsh people would have much more space in England, and Yarmouth people would do well on Scroby Sands.

I am not so sure about other parts of the world, though I have high hopes for the Middle East. All we need now is a television programme to sort it out.

Keep putting the clocks back

My wife has been reluctant to move the clocks back an hour this winter. She maintains that British Summer Time seems “more natural”, and I can see what she means. I am more natural in summer.

On the other hand (that would be the minute hand), since moving the clocks back an hour gives us an extra hour’s sleep, I would be reluctant to pass it up. A colleague believes we should go further and move the clocks back an hour every Saturday night. He writes recklessly: “I have no notion what effect it would have. Perhaps it should be optional.”

According to Professor V A R Scheinlich, an expert on time distortion, such an experiment was launched at Hingham just after the last war, and was “quite successful for a time”. But it was not long before things got out of hand, and it is widely thought that the bizarre temporal anomalies that now afflict the Autonomous Republic of Hingham are a direct result of it.

Undercover here (or not)

Warning signs are a dime a dozen nowadays, but I was intrigued to stumble on a new one as I walked innocently down Rouen Road in Norwich recently.

Plain clothes police, I was informed, were operating in this area.

Now I may be wrong about this, but I thought the whole point of plain clothes police was that you didn’t know they were there. The only reason I can think of for the Rouen Road notices is that there really aren’t any plain clothes officers there (possibly for financial reasons), but they would like you to think there are. You may find this reassuring.

Cards not travelling well

I have received a letter from a respected and long-term Norfolk resident that I feel I should pass on.

It reads: “Sir. I wish to protest. When I were a lad most Christmas card illustrations depicted horse-drawn coaches and gentlefolk passengers struggling through the snow, which I thought very tasteful indeed. “Reminded one of tradition, open fires, gentlefolk, holly, lanterns, mufflers. That sort of thing. In recent decades, however, I have noticed that cards showing coaches in snow are becoming very, very rare indeed.

“Last year I did not receive a single one! And in a shop I went in today, amid the many dozens of available Christmas cards, there was but a single sad example of the aforementioned meteorology and traditional mode of transport.

“Is this blatant discrimination against stagecoaches and snow? The public needs to be told. And if so, something must be done, otherwise we shall all end up with pictures of mobile phones and speed humps on our lounge walls.”