Congestion

[Taff]

How do I deal with it?

 

I don't go to work. This morning I had to drive into town at 8.30 to take Mrs Bluejeans somewhere and it was just mental. All these poor bastards doing this every day - it would send me over the edge.

So I work from home, rarely start work before 9.30. I used to drive all over for work, but the final straw came in 2011 when I had to get from Sheffield to Aylesbury, a journey that took five hours. It was just fucking horrific. M1: tailbacks. Try to get off at the M42: tailbacks. Finally gave up and got onto the A5. Massive traffic queues. Where the A5 meets the A43 there is a cafe and I stopped there for a cigarette and breakfast but I sat in the Insignia for five minutes, shaking like a shitting dog with rage and utter frustration. Left at 6 and got there at 11. That should have been 2 hours tops.

 

Trying to get anywhere in this country now without some self righteous cunt sticking to 48 mph on a NSL road or bloody roadworks and Average speed cameras holding you up is so utterly futile I refuse to do it.

 

I passed my test in June 1985 and can still recall how great driving used to be. Now it is just utter shit and misery.

 

I felt exactly the same when I was doing 50k miles a year in a company beamer. get yourself an MGF mate, it makes driving fun again

 

 

 

The other thing about buses and as far as I am concerned the major problem with them is thus - they are filled with other people.

 

Even if they were free I would still rather spend an hour in my own company, in my own space with my own music than on a slightly too small seat next to someone who considers showering daily as massively excessive whilst travelling too slowly to a bus station that bears a rough approximation as to where I actually want to go as opposed to just driving to my destination.

 

Fair point. But don't moan about congestion then.

 

 

 

The firm I work for have an office in Bristol and the boss has recognised that local congestion is an issue and so has introduced "core hours". It's not flexi-time as such, I am still required to be in the office for 7.5 hours a day but I have to be there between 9am & 3pm. At present, I arrive 7:15 ish and head for home at 3:30, work permitting. This suits me, suits the firm and means I generally avoid the worst of the congestion on my 50 mile round trip, which takes 45 minutes or so on average.

I leave for work no later than 6:30am. Any later and I get caught in the snails pace A46 trying to get onto the M4 at Bath. This morning a truck had got a puncture on this road, reduced it to single lane, none of the lemmings could work out who had right of way and as a result I was 30 minutes late for work. Fucking trucks, why can't they put that stuff on a train...

 

Just an addition to our (generally held) view that public transport should be cheaper and more reliable. I mentioned that idea to a mate and he was of the opinion that we (as in, the Great British Public) would probably still use our cars as we are now out of the habit of using public transport.

[Albert Ross]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbOinLtpAbI

[Albert Ross]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkCudF5xcEg

[danthecapriman]

That second video is good, especially the first bit about the Woodhead tunnel project through the Pennines. Closing the Woodhead rail route in 1981 was an utterly stupid and short sighted idea. Only in this backwards country would anyone decide to close and scrap a modernised electrified mainline between two big cities.

The reason BR gave to close it was that the overhead electrification equipment was now non standard (it used very old 1500v DC equipment, the modern standard became 25kv AC instead) all they had to do was convert the supply network to use AC and they would have been good to go! Idiots!

[stillOrange]

How about bringing back and extending the network of...

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail_%28British_Rail%29

[MarvinsMom]

at the time of the closure of the woodhead route, in 1981, the price of scrap copper had reached (at the time) a record high.

 

so all that lovely wires just hanging around doing nothing, it was an accountant's wet dream

 

and also silly and very short sighted, today i think that line would be ripe for reopening to relieve some of the pressure on the M62, but the national grid has decided to use the 1954 tunnel for electric cables as they have allowed the 2 victorian tunnels to fall into such a state of disrepair that one has partially collapsed.

 

wankers.

 

do the french still run motorail trains?

 

i know the lest ones in this country finished 20 odd years ago following the great railway give away privatisation.

 

more wankers.

[garethj]

Infrastructure like trains is so last century, or really the century before that.  It's like turning up to battle with the taliban equipped with a motte and bailey castle.  What we need is a decent computer network so we can have reliable video conferences so lots of people don't have to even travel to the office.  I know that if your job is shovelling cement then doing it over TCP/IP is going to be unlikely, but since the 1980s there's a decent proportion of people who only need a desk, a phone and a computer.  And a manager who doesn't think that you're only working if you're sat at your desk in the office.

[MarvinsMom]

l hate all that teleconferencing and videoconferencing things.

 

what a load of crap.

 

i have found that to get things sorted/decisions made etc then sitting in front of the contractor/client/architect/whatever is the only way.

 

that way ideas can be sketched and discussed or programs and the like shown and amended.

 

an hour meeting can achieve so much more than an afternoon stuck on the bloody phone.

[garethj]

Sometimes, yes you need to be on the spot.  But sometimes I need a poo, doesn't mean I should spend all my time in the bathroom just in case.

[MarvinsMom]

that has been my experience, i work for a steelwork contractor doing structural steelwork so paper is very much part of our world.

 

i do all my design work on paper with a pencil, i have no idea how to work Autocad...

 

the company is a great believer in computers, interweb and CAD/CAM and all that. it has its place and i'm not dissing it completely.

 

but for the last 15 odd years i've been hearing about the paperless office, and if anything i go through even more paper than before!!

 

perhaps in a different industry the interweb will indeed be a real revolution, but not i think in construction. even with things drawn out on an A0 drawing the irish muppet ground workers still cannot get things right!!

[Albert Ross]

I've been caught short a few times. Once I had to shit into a box in a storeroom, wiping my arse on my pants, before locking it up and handing the "key" to the chap on the gate. I had swapped the key for a redundant house door key on my own keyring. I did this to prevent being found out.   P.S.  I was found out.

[MarvinsMom]

DIRTY BOY!

[garethj]

that has been my experience, i work for a steelwork contractor doing structural steelwork so paper is very much part of our world.

I believe you, honestly I do - knock yourself out.  But if 25% of commuters don't need to be in work 25% of the time, that's a saving in traffic of 12.5% overall.  Or it might be 625%, I'm not absolutely sure about the maths.

[MarvinsMom]

now that sounds like probability and statistics, never did quiet grasp either of them.

[plasticvandan]

Surely anyone who wears a suit to work can do it from home? Round here those who work in shops etc are generally too poor to drive so no conjestion there,I use a Honda C90 for my 20 mile round trip through the back lanes to the middle of nowhere unit I work,I never have problems with traffic, lunatic deer's and horses yes,cars no.

[Taff]

Infrastructure like trains is so last century, or really the century before that.  It's like turning up to battle with the taliban equipped with a motte and bailey castle.  What we need is a decent computer network so we can have reliable video conferences so lots of people don't have to even travel to the office.  I know that if your job is shovelling cement then doing it over TCP/IP is going to be unlikely, but since the 1980s there's a decent proportion of people who only need a desk, a phone and a computer.  And a manager who doesn't think that you're only working if you're sat at your desk in the office.

 

yup, agree with that. Although I will say I personally don't like working from home and I would choose the office.

 

that has been my experience, i work for a steelwork contractor doing structural steelwork so paper is very much part of our world.

 

 

 

but as you have said, some industries don't lend themselves to it.

 

I suppose I could work from home one day a week, save a bit of petrol, save a bit of congestion. I might suggest that to the gaffer, actually

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I've been caught short a few times. Once I had to shit into a box in a storeroom, wiping my arse on my pants, before locking it up and handing the "key" to the chap on the gate. I had swapped the key for a redundant house door key on my own keyring. I did this to prevent being found out.   P.S.  I was found out.

 

 

I used a sock once.

[Rover414]

In a country where the government are making cuts left right and centre, good luck getting the buses ran by them again. I work for a small bus company (45 buses) that, with the exception of 3 routes, runs services for Merseytravel all over Merseyside. The vast majority of the services are what Merseytravel would consider 'socially necessary' services and in more recent years, many of these have been combined into other services as a result of a loss of government funding, so I can't see how them being in charge would be different, it would probably be worse. The fleet is fairly modern and you have to factor in that even the smallest Optare Solos are pushing £100k a piece (there are roughly 26 of these on fleet strength at present), after that factor in maintenance, building overheads, fuel costs, wages etc instead of the current system where they pay our company 'X' amount per month to run each specific service, the company is then billed for services that didn't run due to breakdowns and such like anyway.

 

Some might throw up the fact that the London tender process works but for that to work across every city would cost a lot of money. The smaller services that are on the edge now would be lost and the ones that make money would be the ones that would be retained. Sometimes I feel that when you're in a car you forget a lot of people rely heavily on those services, I see it every night, I agree completely too that buses aren't always the best place to be, I try to actively avoid using them myself but so many people don't have a choice.

 

By the same logic that transport shouldn't have to make money, energy companies shouldn't have to make massive profits off the back of you either. The government don't seem to care about that so I doubt they really care all that much about the transport sector either.