Category - Roadworks

Look at the bottom of this post for updates… the roadworks are moving around!

I’ve written about this before, but the Kirk Lane/Flawforth Lane junction with the A60 seems to have some sort of cosmic significance as far as major roadworks go.

This time, though, it’s not the gas but the drains they’re fixing.

I don’t know if it was planned (there were no signs warning of major delays, so I guess it is an emergency repair), but it certainly isn’t very well organised.

There are two-way temporary lights about 100m from the set at the junction. I was down there tonight and turning right out of Kirk Lane is almost impossible during rush hour, because the temporary set is not synchronised in any way with the main junction. You end up stuck in the middle with nowhere to go.

On the one hand, at least they’re working outside the period 10am-2pm (plus 2 hours in total for lunch, elevenses, dinner, tea, and so on) – the normal working hours of the British navvy. But on the other, they’ve already been doing this for several days and it looks like a big job.

Avoid the A60. It’s incompetent chaos yet again, no doubt authorised by one of the Nottingham councils (city or county).

Update: As of 28 March, the drain roadworks are STILL causing chaos, and they’re STILL not working nights or weekends to fix it quickly. And now – to make matters worse – Severn Trent have got the bloody road up with temporary lights less than a mile away near Bradmore.

Update: They all seem to have been completed now (as of 2 April).

Update: There are now TWO sets of works (as of 21 May) about 200m apart in Bunny on the A60. There is about a day’s work, which will obviously take much longer because 90% of the activity seems to involve sitting on their arses on the adjacent bench making calls on their mobiles.

These two are causing chaos during evening rush hour (I dread to think what it’s like coming into Nottingham in the mornings).

You know who is to blame – the idiots who sanction these works, then allow the contractors to do sod all for three weeks.

Well, it’s started. The annual roadworks fiesta – which will last all summer – has begun now that the weather has turned nice.

Episode 1

In Nottingham, for some incomprehensible reason the council has allowed the contractor Morrison to dig up Woodborough Road (between The Wells Road and Porchester Road), and keep it dug up for 3 weeks and counting. It features a “three-way traffic control”, which translates to 5 minute waits for a handful of cars to get through each way. However,  these temporary lights don’t take account of the normal Porchester Road set less than 50m away – it would be too simple to synchronise with them, wouldn’t it? – and that means people backed up into the yellow box junction (if they’re prats, causing delays on Porchester Road) or long delays (everywhere else, if they stay out of it).

Morrison appear to be in no hurry whatsoever to get any work done. No matter what time of day you drive through it is quite likely you’ll see no one even present to do any work, let alone do it efficiently. At best, they’re sitting in vans stuffing their faces from one of the numerous nearby greasy spoon or fast food establishments.

They are NOT working evenings, and they are NOT working every weekend. Typically, they’re also NOT working much before 10am or after about 3-4pm, and the short space in between  has lengthy elevenses, lunch, and afternoon tea breaks tucked into it.

It’s got something to do with the gas – new pipes being laid – but the work ethic is appallingly bad. Let’s hope the quality of the work is a little better, otherwise I might suddenly find myself in Colwick when I thought I was intending to go towards Sherwood!

The traffic delays caused by these works are massive – so massive that it is obvious that there is deliberate intent on the part of someone at either the council or the contractor (or both).

It’s sheer incompetence all round. Once upon a time, this sort of job would have been completed in just a few days. Now, it takes a month or more. (COMPLETED)

Episode 2

If you’re coming the opposite way, from Arnold, Plains Road (before it becomes Woodborough Road) has got a set of temporary lights. They’re less than a mile from the ones I just described. They’re resurfacing a 200m stretch of road, and they’ve been doing it for well over a week so far. Years ago, that amount of resurfacing would have been done over a single night. (COMPLETED)

Episode 3

Of course, when you know about this kind of incompetence you look for alternative routes. Depending on which way you’re heading that could mean using Westdale Lane. I tried that yesterday and discovered another set of temporary lights specifically designed to cause delays. They were on the road near a building site where someone has sold a few square metres of land on to which at least two structures – probably pauper flats – are being built. Utilities again.

House builders have just about the lowest right to block traffic out of anyone, in my opinion. They are the only people who will benefit from their house-building – absolutely no one passing by will. They’re just forced to endure huge delays while the usual leisurely British approach to doing any work manifests itself.

Again, they used to be able to build houses very quickly. It now takes much longer – meaning roadworks for the installation of utilities last far too long.

The whole business is like a military operation. EVERY route is impeded. There is no sensible alternate route you can use to bypass the area. (COMPLETED)

Episode 4

If you have any lessons or business across the other side of the city, think again if you expect a clearer run. On Broxtowe Lane there are yet more utilities works, with temporary lights, characterised by no one actually doing any work for most of the day. It’s fun and games during the school run, given that there are about six schools within a 2-mile radius (not to mention the fact that we’re talking about Broxtowe, here).

Episode 5

West Bridgford also has a carefully placed set of 3-way temporary lights on Musters Road at the junction with Eton Road. This particular site is characterised by absolutely NO ONE doing any work whatsoever since the hole was dug two weeks ago. It’s perfectly situated to cause maximum inconvenience to motorists – particularly as there is a school about 500m away, which is frequented by a lot of typical West Bridgford mummies and daddies involved in the school run (i.e. bad drivers, big cars, usually going to Asda or one of the West Bridgford car parks once they’ve dropped off or picked up their kids, etc.). Late afternoon is chaos.

Episode 6

Out of town is no good, either. On a longer run through Ravenshead, there are utilities works (and temporary lights) along Longdale Lane. These are dismantled at weekends (well, they were last week) and only erected weekdays, so there’s no desperate hurry to complete the work. The only purpose of the lights appears to keep the workers the correct Health & Safety-approved distance away from traffic in the brief periods during which they are working.

Episode 7

The Bunny-East Leake/Gotham road is completely closed. Alternative route to Gotham is via Costock and East Leake.

Forthcoming Attractions

Yellow signs giving advanced warning of works are also going up in various places. I love the wording, and how it says “delays possible” or “delays expected”.

In other words, “we’re going to make sure you ARE delayed – and for as many weeks as we possibly can”. God help us when they start building that waste-of-space tram extension to Beeston. That’ll last a year!

They’re resurfacing the road on the A60 near to the Kirk Lane/Flawforth Lane junctions in Ruddington. Temporary lights, long queues. The lot.

Three bloody weeks!

That’s what they are saying. Three weeks to resurface a few hundred metres of road. What is the world coming to?

When I was young, they could build a motorway across six counties in that time. So why does it take so long now?

Maybe it’s got something to do with all the workmen standing around thumbing texts into their mobile phones? Maybe it’s to do with the fact they don’t start work until 10am or later, then pack up at 3pm? Maybe if they got on with it – like worked nights to finish it quickly – it wouldn’t take anywhere near as long as three weeks.

And the work is bound to cause problems with the knackered gas mains on that junction, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they have to dig it up again in a few months for a gas leak.

Update: Incidentally, I think I discovered one good reason why it is taking them so bloody long. There’s no one working on it at all today.

Another update: Yep! They dug it all up last weekend, didn’t do ANYTHING all week, and have been back on it this weekend (in fact, they’ve been pratting around in Ruddington centre all week resurfacing exceedingly minor roads – go figure that one. So the three weeks’ duration is actually three weekends. Just think how quickly they could have done it.

Instead, we’ve had people driving at 20mph through the milled road all week.

I’m getting a lot of hits on this search term at the moment. Not a big surprise, really, given the total hash the Councils are making of all roadworks in Nottingham since the start of the year.

In Ruddington, along the A60, they decided that all the bus stops needed the kerb raising by a few centimetres. No doubt, this is so that the thousands upon thousands of wheelchairs and pushchairs who use the buses in Ruddington each day can get on and off more easily. Naturally, it was a case of “sod the motorist” over the months it took them to modify the dozen or so stops, with idiotic road closures and whole weeks with little or no attempt to complete the work – and which, naturally, overran by weeks.

I would point out that the average bus driver is incapable of stopping within 2 metres of a specific target even under test conditions, and when you have people pratting about with shopping and pushchairs on board it is even less likely. Around here, they also frequently stop wherever they bloody well want (picking up their mates outside one of the City depots at traffic lights, or dropping people off “nearer to home” – even if it IS blocking the road when they do it).

Also in Ruddington, they are due to commence – or I should say “re-commence” – work near to the Wilford Road/Clifton Road junction. So far, they have widened a footpath (just in case any passing 747s might need it to do an emergency landing), erected a load of posts with those segregated pedestrian and cycle route signs for the local residents to park in between (half on the pavement and half off), and for cyclists to ignore totally in their ongoing quest to cause hold ups to traffic during rush hour, and partially dug up the existing pedestrian islands at the end of Clifton Road. A big yellow sign warns of impending chaos starting on Monday, I think.

And then – at the moment – there is yet another gas leak at the end of Kirk Lane, where it crosses the A60 on to Flawforth Lane. This must be the fourth or fifth leak in as many years in that exact same spot. It is slap in the middle of the crossroads – ironically, resulting in the same four-way traffic control the councils had in for a week when they recently repainted about 10 metres of lines along the A60. The gas people appear to be ex-Council workers, because once they’d erected the lights yesterday, then stood around in groups of three (tch! Health & Safety, eh?) holding those electronic gas sniffers (they’d identified the gas leak last week and put cones up, and been down a manhole), they packed up and went home well before 2.30pm and left the chaos (and traffic lights) behind.

EDIT 13/04/2010: I drove down the A60 early this afternoon and it is bloody gridlocked on all four roads. So much so that rather than come back that way, I took a detour through Gotham. Surely there must be some legislation that says these people have to fix faults quickly? Because there should be.

EDIT 15/04/2010: They’ve still got the 4-way lights in as of 2pm this afternoon, and a small digger – so it looks like it won’t be fixed this week. This has been going on for the whole week already (the leak was first ‘visited’ this time last week).

I went to pick a pupil up from Tollerton this evening and the knock-on effect is that the junction of Main Road in Plumtree with the A606 is also virtually gridlocked – it’s not easy to get out of there at the best of times, especially to turn right towards Cotgrave, and people were taking big risks. Basically, the only way to avoid the roadworks is to take a very long detour or just get stuck in heavier traffic (actually, both those things). And at 8pm tonight they were not doing any work, but the lights are still up.

It’s appalling that National Grid are allowed to get away with this.

EDIT 18/04/2010: Went that way tonight and they are finished. At last.

EDIT 29/04/2010: I’m still getting a lot of hits for this. There are still roadworks in Ruddington around Wilford Road, but these are to do with resurfacing the road and farting about with the pavements (putting in “pedestrian peninsulas” – I just made that term up – and widening them so that cyclists of the prattus spandexius variety will have more space to ignore as they cause hold-ups during rush hour). To be fair, the delays due to the works are minimal, so I wouldn’t worry about them. They aren’t far away from finishing, by the looks of things.

EDIT 04/05/2010: Still getting a lot of hits for this, which makes me think I must be missing something! The resurfacing work around the Wilford Road/Clifton Road is almost finished and isn’t causing too many delays (far fewer than those elderly drivers – or the mentally impaired owner of that mini-supermarket – who insist on parking on yellow lines right on the corner of Easthorpe Street/Church Street and causing a total blockage). There are also roadworks on the A60 in Bunny during the day, with delays dependent on the volume of traffic (these are down to Le Cirque Du Nottingham County Council putting in a driveway to a field they appear to have given planning permission for building on. As usual for them, a task which ought to take a couple of days has “at least three weeks” written all over it). Thankfully, since it is the council handling it, work starts late mornings and ceases very early in the afternoon, so disruption is minimal.

EDIT 05/05/2010: They’re also doing some resurfacing work on the A60 between the Nottingham Knight island and Kirk Lane – but only in the evenings. This is scheduled to last two weeks. Was there tonight and you need to be careful coming off the roundabout because the way it is being managed is resulting in congestion back on to it.

EDIT 17/05/2010: Still getting hits for this. The resurfacing between the Nottingham Knight and Kirk Lane appears to be over and done with. Not a bad job, either, with congestion restricted to evenings and weekends.

They still appear to have some lines to paint (and some footpaths to put chicanes into) on Wilford Road towards the Golf Club, but this isn’t causing any congestion at all during the day – and I go through there quite a lot.

The gateway they were installing in Bunny appears almost complete, and no sign of the totally unnecessary (it was Le Cirque du County Council, after all) temporary lights and lane closures for the last week. God help us when they start doing whatever it is they’re going to do on that field, though.

EDIT 19/05/2010: Spoke too soon! The bloody road is up outside the petrol station, and temporary lights are installed. Absolute chaos coming towards Nottingham from Bunny at 4.30pm this afternoon. And they were doing something at the Kirk Lane lights (again) yesterday (down to one lane). Looked like something to do with the light sensors, but no doubt it will disturb the gas line under there, and we’ll have another leak before long.