Traffic, Traffic, Traffic.

Noting the traffic chaos this weekend, I was caught up in it myself yesterday. I was in Kent and needed to  head back home to Bristol. Naively, I thought that setting out at around 12:45 would see me past the worst of the M25 before the rush hit.

Well, I got that wrong… The M25 was clogged as usual from junction 9 right through to the M4. I did as I usually do and pulled off at junction 12 and cut through Bracknell. As I was on the bike – precisely because of this – I  was able to filter for much of the way.

Bracknell was cloggy by the time I got there, but never mind, the M4  would give me a clear run… Ah, no, the world and his wife had decided that as the schools had broken up, they would bundle the sprogs into the car and go and sit on the motorway for hours on end. It never occurring to them that maybe, as they have six weeks to play with, everyone rushing out on the same Friday afternoon is not a good idea.

But it got worse… As we approached the Wiltshire plains, there were matrix signs telling us that the left-hand lane was closed, so everyone had moved into the remaining two. It simply does not occur to motorists to use the empty lane until close to the obstruction and zip-merge, thereby making maximum use of the available tarmac. I did. As I slipped past the clog, I wondered when, exactly, I would come to the obstruction. I didn’t because there wasn’t one. Eventually, everyone else realised they had been had and started drifting left and the traffic opened up a bit.

It all got worse again from Chippenham onward, but on the approach to Swindon, a bad situation was made worse by inaccurate  information. Frankly, no information would have been better (it would have been an improvement on the inane drinking and driving admonitions or telling us that tiredness is dangerous). Surely, it is not beyond the wit of man to take the matrix signs offline when the incident is passed?

Clearly, it is… And for me, despite being on the bike, a three-hour journey became a five-hour one.

12 Comments

  1. Intelligent people like me ignore the signs because we know they’re never accurate. ‘Real time’ seems to be a concept lost on Highways England…

  2. Going to Bath, admittedly, but I used to take the M3, A 303 then up over Salisbury Plain route. Come off just at Stonehenge and then on the back roads. Rather a fun drive…..

    • I sympathise with Longrider. Friday traffic going westbound from London down the M25-M4 corridor is always congested. My choice out to the south and west was to cut round the old ring road past Sutton, then skip out on the old A3 to Winchester, up the A34 to the A303, then pick up the A30 to Exeter. Although in LR’s case I’d duck up the A36 and then cut across the back roads to Thornbury. Longer and slower at peak than the M25-M4-M5, but a much nicer and less frustrating drive or ride on a hot day. Fewer speed cameras too if memory serves.

  3. When ever this occurs, I always stay at home. We have the bloody stupid and damn nuisance Secret Garden Party going off near Abbots Ripton. I wish it was a secret. The roads were awful. But I managed to divert away from it because I know the roads round here very well. These sheeple would have been better served ferrying to the Irish Republic and then on to the Continent.

  4. I always ignore matrix signs, they cry wolf pretty much constantly. On the odd occasion that they report something that is actually real, you can usually see it a mile off so the matrix signs add nothing of value.

    I didn’t have any traffic problems today as I set off From New Ellerby near Hornsea to go to Castle Howard near Malton at five in the morning. No problems on the way home around 4pm as all the cars were going in the opposite direction.

  5. It all got worse again from Chippenham onward, but on the approach to Swindon, a bad situation was made worse by inaccurate information.

    It’s not unlike a Monty Python skit. Quite evocative.

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