20 February 2006

on 20 February 2006 at 05:00

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.

6 February 2006

on 6 February 2006 at 05:00

Silly limits are just asking for trouble

I commented that the speed restrictions on the A11 approaching Thickthorn roundabout, just outside Norwich, were much too slow for much too long – which meant people did not take them seriously.

This provoked a Little Fransham correspondent to point out similar problems further west in the county. Bruce Carswell, who is a regular user of the A1065 between Swaffham and Barton Mills, writes: “Over the past few years the speed limits have been reduced on several sections, some of which are justified on safety grounds, such as the reduction from 40mph to 30 on departure from Swaffham and the two reductions from 50mph to 40 through Hilborough and Mundford.

“However, the sudden imposition of a 30mph restriction from the southern exit from Brandon to the end of the Lakenheath runway is difficult to understand.”

He adds that although the junction to the Viewing Area is being worked on, “this could not possibly require a two-mile stretch of formerly unrestricted road to have a 30mph limit imposed”.

Similarly, “when the bridge at Red Lodge was being repaired, there was a very long 40mph restriction imposed on a formerly unrestricted section of the A1065, and a ludicrous 20mph restriction over a temporary bridge for 150 yards”.

He asks: “Who is responsible for the imposition of these speed restrictions and what is the justification? Who pays this person, and what is the cost per year of the department?

“Of course safety is vital to all road users, but common sense must also apply.”

The trouble is that common sense rarely seems to have anything to do with it. Slower and slower speed limits are imposed for no apparent reason. It seems quite normal nowadays for perfectly good B-roads to have arbitrary 50mph limits thrown at them.

Another reader complains that on the Lowestoft-Gorleston A12, the 40 mph speed limit on the last half mile of the dual carriageway travelling towards the Gorleston roundabout is “really silly – and the 40 mph limit on the corresponding bit of carriageway travelling southwards is even sillier”.

Not long ago a correspondent revealed how complying with a pointless 30mph speed limit for some 20 motorway miles was “probably the most dangerous piece of driving I have ever done, as lorries came hurtling up behind me”.

Yes, driving too slowly for the conditions is dangerous. And if speed limits are obviously inappropriate, they bring realistic speed limits into disrepute as well, leading to further hazards.

Blindly demanding compliance with too-slow limits, instead of contesting them, is asking for more deaths and injuries as surely as driving at 80mph round a hairpin on black ice.

Confusion over slippery changes

Following remarks about the apparent slipperiness of the A12 in the Lowestoft area, Jeremy Claborn was delighted to notice that “slippery” signs on the road had been amended.

Suspecting the power of the press had improved the road at a stroke, he was prepared to see changes all down the line.

Alas, this was not so. He tells me that the distance on six of the 14 “slippery road” signs has been changed to give an impression that less of the road is slippery. The first one going south, for instance, has been reduced from eight to two miles.

Unfortunately others have not followed suit, and the results are contradictory. Mr Claborn tells me that “the overall message is now that all but 0.6 miles of the north-south route is still slippery, and that all of the south-north route is still slippery!”

He suggests that this is “a job only half (or perhaps one-twentieth?) done”. Being an optimistic kind of guy, I can only hope that the changes are ongoing, and no-one is trying to slip the wool over anyone’s eyes.

Honestly, car-haters should stop making transport policy

Ethics are all very well, but maybe you can take them too far. In Dorset, a councillor left a meeting to discuss plans to improve a holiday park because he had a prejudicial interest: he thought caravan parks were a blot on the landscape and was fed-up with getting stuck behind them in traffic.

If people who don’t like caravans are not going allow themselves to speak, we will soon be inundated with the pesky things. But I’d be prepared to put up with caravan sites if people who hated cars were ethical enough to exclude themselves from transport policy discussions. Fat chance of that.

Newts in bid to oust ducks from Suffolk ponds

The influence of great crested newts is not hard to spot in the latest pronouncement from Suffolk – that ducks are bad for ponds.

Admittedly, such an assertion is not surprising from the county that believes cars are bad for roads, but few normal human beings would try to keep ducks and ponds apart. It is like trying to split fish and chips. What next? Cows are bad for fields? Birds are bad for the air? Water is bad for the sea?

Who could benefit from the removal of ducks from ponds? Clearly, great crested newts, who would be extending their territory further and taking one more step towards the destruction of life as we know it.

“They must be stopped,” said Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago of Erpingham yesterday.

Loving and lovable aunt

Last week saw the funeral of my Aunt Dorothy, whose name you will not have seen in any obituaries, because she was a quiet person who never married, was never involved in scandal, never made much money and never hit the headlines.

She was 90. She had spent much of her life caring for her mother, but she was also known to many boys in the county as matron at Norwich School in the days when it was a boys’ boarding school. In that role, as a loving and lovable Christian, she probably had more influence than many people whose names trip off all our tongues. She will be missed.