They now reckon the Beeston work will finish at the end of May 2014. It should have been done by last October! In the meantime, traders are complaining that “compensation” is inadequate (I put that in inverted commas, because for it to be true compensation it would have to make good all shortfalls in earnings caused as a result. And it hasn’t). Chilwell Road has been closed since March 2013 – so more than a year by the time it reopens.
Project director for Taylor Woodrow Alstom, Michael Anderson, said: “We understand it’s very difficult for traders but we were unable to do the work in a different time frame. It’s very regrettable that it’s taken so long.”
Isn’t it just? And the article adds a couple more months by concluding:
All roads in Beeston should be fully reopened by July, the firm said, with trams running to and from Nottingham by the end of 2014.
So they’re still clinging to the end of the year, are they? I’ll ask what I asked previously: if you can still finish by the end of 2014 as originally planned, HAVING LOST SEVEN UNFORESEEN MONTHS IN BETWEEN TIMES, why the hell did you PLAN to cause the disruption for so long in the first place?
Nottingham’s tram is a monumental waste of money. It isn’t green. It is destroying lives and businesses. It is destroying this city. And it will continue to do so.
I was thinking the other day about how the results of driving tests seems to go in cycles. It’s a bit like a comet, where your better abled pupils get stripped away in the tail, and although you add to the comet’s head by acquiring new pupils, the less abled ones who are ready for test comprise the rocky core. Periodically, it’s only those who are part of that core who are going to test – and that’s where most of the fails come from.
I was struck by that one not long ago, when one particular pupil failed his second attempt. The examiner had told him after he failed the first time to put in for his test again straight away, and he interpreted that as not needing anymore lessons. Most of my pupils take a few more lessons on the run up to their next test. However, on the day of his second attempt it was clear that he’d gone off the boil a little more than most.
The thing is, you can’t force people to take lessons (especially if they can’t afford them). But anyone who has failed a test once already needs to be aware that it can be a false economy to not take any further ones between tests. At the very least, you need to keep driving and practising – and if you don’t have access to a car for private practice, then lessons with your instructor are the only sensible option.
In this guy’s case, he’d paid an extra £75 for a weekend test – but now he realises he will have to pay for another, and some extra lessons.
I was talking to another pupil today who has failed a test already. She’s a student, and I asked her how she normally revises coming up to an exam. You see, when I was at university, I never felt right unless I was actually sitting outside the exam room cramming for stuff I already knew. I realise that not everyone is like that, but equally I am certain that no one stops revising weeks before an exam. So why approach the driving test any differently?
This is an old article. The tram still causes problems, but this was related to its construction phase.
I had a lesson with a pupil in Long Eaton yesterday. Getting down there for 1pm was no problem but coming back at 2.30pm was a nightmare. Traffic was solid along Queens Road West heading through Beeston – and this was a good 2 hours before the rush hour. And the reason?
The halfwits responsible for phase II of the tram system – that total waste of money that is currently putting people out of business and ruining lives by over-running and creating constant noise and access problems – have ripped out the roundabout at the end of University Boulevard and replaced it with a traffic light-controlled junction.
I heard on the BBC local traffic news this morning the glib comment:
There is queuing traffic in Beeston because of temporary lights and a new road layout.
That doesn’t tell even half of the story. The reason there is queuing traffic is solely because the Council and NET are a bunch of Neanderthals who are too stupid to even organise a piss up in a brewery. Between them they are destroying Nottingham. The only people who are ever likely to benefit from the tram are those who are either too poor or too old to drive cars – and that’s only in theory, since the tram is too expensive for even poor people to use too often.
The vast majority of the rest of the population – motorists – can go hang, as far as the Council is concerned.
At the time of writing, Aspley Lane has been turned into a nightmare by the removal of a roundabout. All the signs are that the Crown Island is going, too. Three roundabouts have been removed in Clifton because of the tram. The Council has sanctioned traffic light replacement at several sites – most notably in Mapperley, where there are lane restrictions.Also in Mapperley are temporary lights just before the Spring Lane roundabout. Work is on-going on Middleton Boulevard (the shit hasn’t hit the fan yet, but it will). And a big, flashy sign proclaims impending work at the Forest Road roundabout at the junction with Mansfield Road.
Nottingham City Council is trying very hard – and succeeding – in destroying this place.
Oh, yes. And on my way through Beeston I noticed a billboard which carried a big photo of the tram and the banner, declaring “Thanks for bearing with us during the tram works”.
No one had any choice – including those who have gone out of business (or who will do) as a result of the tram.
Driving: The Essential Skills (TES) is the official DVSA guide to driving. Under the heading “Separation Distance”, it says the following:
The two-second rule
In good dry conditions an alert driver, who is driving a vehicle with first class tyres and brakes, needs to be at least two seconds behind the vehicle in front.
In bad conditions, double the safety gap to at least four seconds or even more.
The Highway Code (HC) says the following:
126
Stopping Distances. Drive at a speed that will allow you to stop well within the distance you can see to be clear. You should
leave enough space between you and the vehicle in front so that you can pull up safely if it suddenly slows down or stops. The safe rule is never to get closer than the overall stopping distance (see Typical Stopping Distances diagram, shown below)
allow at least a two-second gap between you and the vehicle in front on roads carrying faster-moving traffic and in tunnels where visibility is reduced. The gap should be at least doubled on wet roads and increased still further on icy roads
You will note the use of the words “at least” and “or even more”. Neither publication (nor the DSA) is advising people to drive at precisely two seconds behind the driver in front all of the time.
On lessons, it is common for pupils to get too close to the vehicle in front at some stage of their training. It is also common for them – when asked how big a gap they should leave – to answer “two car lengths”. They do not mean that: it is just an answer with the number “two” in it, and if they actually thought about it (which some do) they would realise that two car lengths is a ridiculously short distance. The bottom line is that they have some vague recollection of the two-second rule, but not enough to recall it correctly.
As an aside, they also often give a nonsense answer when you ask them how far ahead they should be able to see before using their fog lights. Answers of “two metres” or “ten metres” are common (at which point I usually comment that I wouldn’t even walk outside, let alone drive, if visibility was that bad). They also commonly give nonsense answers to the tyre tread depth show-me-tell-me question based on a vague memory of having read it while studying for their Theory Test.
The simple fact is that the Theory Test is complementary to their lessons. It is the ADI’s job to help them apply the theory to the practicalities of being out on the road.
Instructors should be careful about making up their own rules about separation distances, especially if they don’t understand the topic as well as they think they do. Trying to leave too large a gap could easily lead to a candidate driving too slowly, and apart from the obvious problems this can cause in terms of the outcome of the test, it is guaranteed to encourage other drivers to overtake in frustration. TES and HC say you should leave “at least” two seconds in good weather. This does not automatically mean that ten or twenty seconds would be OK in free moving traffic (unless it is icy), because people would overtake and drop into the gap, and the learner would then have to slow down even more to open up the artificially large gap again. A “two-second rule” sized gap discourages all but the biggest arseholes (i.e. Audi drivers) from cutting in because the driver applying it is driving sensibly.
A confident and well-trained driver should be able to maintain a safe distance using the two-second rule without resorting to complicated additional rules. I stress again that when we say “two-second rule” it encompasses the principles of “at least” or “even more” mentioned in TES and the HC.
Measuring the gap is easy. As the car in front passes a sign, a lamp post, or some other feature, just say in a normal voice “only a fool breaks the two-second rule”. If you get to the sign or whatever before you finish saying it then you’re too close. And with a little driving experience under your belt you will know automatically if you’re too close without having to keep doing it.
Why is it measured in seconds and not car lengths?
Referring to overall stopping distances for a moment, if you have to brake suddenly the stopping distance varies depending on how fast you were travelling. At 20mph you can stop in about 12 metres, whereas at 70mph it will take 96 metres – or eight times further. In other words, it is a different number of car lengths for every single speed. Learners have enough trouble learning stopping distances as it is.
Leaving a gap of at least two seconds applies at any speed. It is much easier to apply than individual numbers of car lengths.
Why two seconds?
It’s only a rough rule. At 1mph, a car will be travelling 0.447 metres per second. Therefore, at 20mph it will cover about 18m in two seconds. At 30mph it’ll travel 27m, at 40mph nearly 36m, at 50mph about 45m, at 60mph about 54m, and at 70mph it’s about 62m.
These distances are not the same as stopping distances, and they aren’t supposed to be. Stopping distances are about stopping dead. The two-second rule is really aimed at giving the driver time to react to vehicles in front slowing down. It’s two separate – but related – things.
Does it have to be exactly two seconds?
No. Less than two seconds is dangerous and is almost guaranteed to get you a fail if you do it on your test. If you are closer than two seconds away from the car in front then you are what people refer to as a “tailgater”. But within reason, more than two seconds is fine.
Is it always two seconds?
No. TES and the HC both refer to doubling the gap in wet weather – so it becomes four seconds. Likewise, they mention that in icy weather it can take ten times the normal distance to stop (which seems vague, but skidding on ice is vague. Believe me).
There’s nothing wrong with a gap of, say, three seconds in good conditions. Four seconds is perhaps beginning to raise the question of adequate progress if traffic is flowing freely. Any more than that in free-moving traffic and other problems – such as people overtaking – becomes an issue. Just use common sense.
Last November I mentioned a news item whereby a woman in America – Cecilia Abadie – had been pulled over for speeding, and then cited for wearing Google Glasses behind the wheel. For anyone still living in the Dark Ages when it comes to technology, Google Glass is a wearable computer with a small display in front of your eye. It also has a camera, which – given that Google is involved – has kicked up a stink about privacy from numerous angles At the moment, Google Glass costs around £1,000!
As I mentioned at the time, in her Google+ profile she describes herself thus:
Geek, Google Glass Pioneer, Self-Quantifier, Transhumanist, Blogger, Speaker, currently playing with fun new ways to a better self…
She has profiles on all the social networks, and finds time to post copiously on all of them – and that’s on top of her blogs. She has a full time job, and she’s married. She likes (and uses) phrases like “paradigm shift” alongside words like “evolution” (anyone who has read a little and knows what a “paradigm shift” is might raise an eyebrow at that. Abadie has taken some sort of vow – honestly, she has – to wear Google Glass 24 hours a day. She is evangelising it beyond the point of obsession, arguing that Google Glass should be taken up by doctors and the agricultural industry.
But cutting through all that, she was caught speeding. She was driving at 80mph in a 65mph zone. – and then found to be wearing Google Glass behind the wheel. She absolutely and definitely broke the Law relating to speed. She is arguing that the Laws relating to distracted driving do not apply to Google Glass.
One thing I know from experience – both as a driver, and as a driver trainer – is that when your mind wanders then you cannot control your speed. It’s quite simple: if you are fiddling with your phone, the radio, the satnav, trying to read directions on a sheet of paper, or any number of other things, then you are distracted. Even if you are looking out of the front window you are not actually seeing things properly because your mind is elsewhere. So your speed can either fall or increase – it depends on the driver and the situation. One thing it is unlikely to do is remain fixed.
If you have a computer-cum-smartphone stuck on your face, and one which in Abadie’s case is likely to be incandescent with incoming texts, tweets, and various other inane communications, you WILL be distracted. And then some. And then some more.
At the time of Abadie’s original ticket, no mention was made (including on her Facebook page, which she delighted in keeping up to date) that her Google Glass wasn’t switched on. Her mantra about technology versus the World was all that mattered. However, now her case has come to court it would appear that all the bravado about challenging the Law – one which bans motorists from watching TV behind the wheel, and therefore a law which doesn’t apply to a computer monitor – is being muddied somewhat by her claim that Google Glass wasn’t switched on at the time. One can only wonder why she was wearing the damned thing if it was turned off.
The worrying thing is that there is every possibility that the judge will end up agreeing with Abadie that the Law in question doesn’t apply to Google Glass, even though it is obvious that it should. And that comes on top of the fact that the DfT over here might be “reconsidering” its original prospective ban on using Google Glass behind the wheel. I love the part where the DfT says:
We have met with Google to discuss the implications of the current law for Google Glass. Google are anxious their products do not pose a road safety risk and are currently considering options to allow the technology to be used in accordance with the law.
What they mean is that Google is anxious not to lose any revenue from sales of Glass. When it comes to money versus safety, Google knows where its priorities lie.
Update: As expected, she managed to get off. True to form, the American judge decided that there was no proof she had them switched on, so there was no case to answer. It isn’t clear if she was still prosecuted for the crime she DID commit of speeding. The chances are she wasn’t.
Abadie will no doubt claim this as some sort of “paradigm”. It isn’t. If it COULD be shown she had them switched on, she would still have been in trouble – or at the very least, the judge would have had to engage a couple more brain cells before letting her off. As it is, the issue of wearing them whilst driving has become moot thanks to this particular judge. The matter has not been furthered or resolved one way or another.
And she was pulled over for speeding, remember. The Google Glass thing has become a smokescreen.
This story in the news today suggests that councils are using car park fines as a “cash cow”. Did anyone ever think that they weren’t?
Last year, I parked in one of the West Bridgford car parks. The ticket machines there used to just print out a ticket when you paid your money, and since you got 2 hours for 50p (later, £1) people were passing them on to each other if they had excess time left. The council didn’t like this one bit, and it introduced new machines where you have to type in the numerical digits of your car’s registration plate just to prevent tickets being transferred.
Anyway, on this particular occasion I accidentally typed “61” instead of “62” when buying my ticket. The fact that the warden had actually seen me pay – I even smiled at him as I passed him (but I won’t be doing that again) – meant nothing. Nor did the fact that I was only away from the car at the bank for about 6 minutes. I was slapped with a ticket which the council refused to overturn on appeal, and which they refused to discuss further (i.e. by ignoring me completely). Even the people who you appeal to after that didn’t respond.
More recently I parked in a council car park in Leeds (just before Christmas when I went to see Status Quo). The park was ANPR-controlled, meaning that they scan your registration as you enter, and confirm it in full at the ticket machine when you pay. I paid using my debit card and was charged £8.50 – the only option available. I was there for just over 4 hours. My bank account was debited two days later. You’d think that would have been the end of it, but no.
Just after Christmas I got a letter informing me of a PCN for “insufficient fee paid”. Since I’m not the registered keeper (I lease the car) the lease agent paid the fine immediately. I am now embroiled in trying to appeal against the fine and get a refund.
What makes this recent case all the more interesting is that on the night of the concert – before I knew any of this was happening – my friend in Leeds told me that his wife had had the exact same fraudulent claim made against her a few weeks earlier in the same car park while she was Christmas shopping. She kicked up a stink and they dropped the claim.
I’m not going to say too much while the appeal is on-going, but if you Google for UKCPS (Car Parking Solutions) a very gothic image starts to emerge of them. Suffice it to say, I only know two people who have used that car park in Leeds, and both have had the same scam pulled on them. So it doesn’t take too much imagination to picture a huge cash cow whereby hundreds of these “fines” are made each day on the premise that 1% of recipients won’t challenge them. And at £60 (going up to £100 if you pay late) a time, the titties on that cash cow up in Leeds must be bloody sore!
Is UKCPS a scam parking operator?
Well, me and my mate’s wife have direct experience of the kind of things they get up to. But take a look at these links:
These are a tiny sample. Try Googling for “UKCPS parking scam” or “UKCPS Ltd parking ticket” and see what you get. There are hundreds and hundreds of people like you who these cretins are trying to intimidate (including disabled people parking in disabled bays that these gutter trash operate). That Responsive link sums it up nicely by pointing out that UKCPS usually backs down at the first appeal – and that’s because they know that they can make money from those who don’t appeal. You don’t need to be a genius to work out if it’s a scam or not.
Is UKCPS a legitimate company?
Unfortunately, yes. However, their business practices appear to be far from legitimate, and councils such as Leeds City Council have washed their hands of the affair to the extent that they are sanctioning this dishonest behaviour.
This story on the BBC website reveals that the prats in charge of Nottingham want a Phase 3 tram line to stretch out to Kimberley. And they now have government backing.
Hope and pray that Labour gets back in at the next election. For all our sakes.
Many years ago not far from me there were plans to build a dirt bike track on flood plain land. Residents were against it on the grounds of noise and the unsavoury types it would attract, and they formed a group to oppose it at the council’s subsequent public meeting. However, it became clear that the “chairman” of this informal group had political ambitions, and he effectively hijacked the group in order to further his own interests. The problem was that he was an idiot – well, maybe it wasn’t that much of a problem for him (he got into local government, as I remember), since being an idiot is high on the list or prerequisites for aspiring politicians, but it certainly screwed up the residents’ action group. Since then, though, I’ve noticed that all “action groups” have someone like this.
So it comes as no surprise to hear Andy Cooper – chairman of the Kimberley Eastwood and Nuthall Tram Action Group (a pro-tram sect) – say the following:
…there are quite a few areas in Nottingham hoping for the next phase of the tram…
…This area is crying out for regeneration – it’s a neglected area…
…Not only that it would cut down on traffic congestion – the Nuthall island on the A610 is a nightmare.
People like Cooper take stupidity to a new level. You see, the Nuthall Roundabout is busy because it is a quarter of a mile from Junction 26 of the M1. In fact, for all practical purposes, it IS Junction 26 of the M1, so you will not cut traffic on it by building a bloody tram line out to it.
The tram – phase I, and the current phase II lines – is a complete and utter waste of money. Even if it were full most of the time it would still only service a tiny percentage of the population. As it is, it is usually empty. So it is laughable to see the additional justification for a phase III posited as servicing 116 new homes, which have recently been given the go ahead.
Those 116 homes would maybe house 400 people at most, which would represent about 0.15% of the population of Nottingham. And on the strength of this they argue that it warrants a third tram line, likely to cost in excess of £570m (that’s the price of phase II).
Three years ago, the bunch of vegetables otherwise known as our coalition government were talking about raising the speed limit to 80mph on motorways. Incredibly, they had cited “improved business travel times” as a justification, even though you would only save about 20 minutes if you could travel all the way from London to Liverpool at a steady 80mph.
So it beggars belief that in todays news that they are now talking about reducing motorway speed limits to “cut pollution”. Even more ridiculous is the RAC citing “negative impact on business efficiency” as a downside. The stretch of M1 involved at this stage is 35 miles long, and the reduction would simply mean that it would take 5 minutes longer to travel the distance – even if you could actually do 60mph at all, which during the rush hour you can’t.
I am against such a move on the grounds that it is just an unnecessary change. Pollution is an absolute and direct function of the area in question – since the first time I drove that way aeons ago I have always been struck by the smell drifting across the road as you approach Sheffield. Any pollution is created from within – not by cars on the M1.
It’s also amusing that the report says:
The normal speed limit would still apply to the rest of the M1, which runs from north London to Leeds.
Obviously – and especially combined with the biased attitude of government when it comes to any sort of dealing with Londoners – London doesn’t suffer pollution and so can keep the more sensible 70mph limit. God forbid that we should upset anyone in London, eh?
All of this is a last minute knee-jerk reaction to European legislation which comes into force this year. Instead of dealing with the issue properly, the government has left it to the Highways Agency to pick up the tab (although the Agency is just an extension of the government anyway). I say again, the areas involved – Mansfield, Chesterfield, Sheffield, and Rotherham – are polluted already and always have been. They are polluted because of the industry around them, and not because the M1 passes through.
The same RAC comedian who said it would impact on business significantly is also quoted:
This very powerfully demonstrates the impact that speed has on emissions and many will be surprised to hear that a reduction of just 10mph can have such a significant effect on improving air quality.
Yes, they most certainly would be surprised to hear that. Actually, they’d be surprised to hear that you can go faster than 60mph in the first place, especially during peak hours – where less than 30mph is common. But what about the emissions themselves? Take a look at this document from 2006. On page 2 there is this graph.
The authors of that document (and anyone supporting this change) glibly speak of how many “million tonnes of carbon” will be cut by lopping 10mph of the speed limit. Anything with the word “million” is carefully crafted to sound dramatic. But let’s look a bit closer.
Emissions are calculated from fuel consumption, It’s no more scientific than that, so you can stop imagining a car with lots of wires and special sensors stuck up the tail pipe. A car is at its most efficient when driven at 55mph (published mpg figures always use that speed), and the car is 3% less efficient than this at 60mph and 17% less efficient at 70mph.
Just for the record, it’s 28% less efficient at 80mph – the speed the jackasses were going to up limits to three years ago.
The problem is that mpg figures are always just a starting point. You may well get the published 50mpg (for example) at a steady 55mph, but you are unlikely to be able to maintain a steady 55mph under day-to-day driving conditions. Much of the time you will be stationary – how do you convert that to mpg when your engine is still running? Well, you don’t. You just accept that the average mpg will be less than the theoretical published figure as a result.
Referring back to the graph, above, there is another problem. It’s all very well talking about the emissions per se when the scope is the entire world, but as soon as you cut that scope to a smaller area, such as a county – or a specific 35-mile stretch of road – the transit time becomes significant. In other words, you don’t get the full advantage of the reduced emissions by dropping traffic speed, because said traffic will be there for longer as a result, which pushes the emissions the other way again.
Let me try and illustrate this in a different way, because some people seem unable to grasp the importance of transit time in the proposal.
A car travelling at a fixed speed of 70mph will burn fuel less efficiently than one travelling at a fixed speed of 60mph. If you just talk in terms of overall emissions (i.e. pollution in general) then 60mph is obviously better. However, as soon as you start talking about driving and pollution inside a specific 35-mile long bubble – as the government is doing in order to reduce measured pollution within that bubble – you have to consider the length of time you are in in it.
Imagine that you have a large balloon – one that is 35 miles across – and you are measuring the pollution level inside it. If you have a car on a rolling road driving at 70mph, and you put it inside the balloon for 30 minutes (the length of time it takes to drive 35 miles at 70mph), then it will produce a certain amount of pollution. If you repeat this with another car, but this time driving at 60mph, then you will measure about 12-14% less pollution over 30 minutes. However, if you left the 60mph car inside the balloon for an extra 5 minutes (that’s how much longer it takes to travel 35 miles at 60mph) then it would produce 15% more pollution than it did in just 30 minutes. It’s quite simple: it was inside the balloon for 15% longer.
Relating this back to some real figures, the graph shows that 70mph corresponds to emissions of about 58 gC/km (grammes of carbon per kilometre), and 60mph to 51 gC/km at 60mph. This 12% reduction is equivalent to around 0.4kg less “carbon” emissions per km, and the greenies are obviously all over it.
But using figures from the graph, at 70mph a typical car would produce 3.27kg of “carbon” over that fixed 35-mile range. At 60mph, this would be 2.87kg. But since the 60mph car would be in the range for 5 minutes (15%) longer than the 70mph one, the emissions are emitted for 15% longer – which takes the figure back up to 3.3kg of carbon! It’s a tricky calculation to do, and difficult to get your head around, but it is arguable that a car which is 14% more efficient than another (i.e. the difference between mpg at 60 and 70mph), but which is there for 15% longer than that other (i.e. travelling through a range for which pollution is specifically being monitored) is actually worse than the other as far as emissions are concerned in the enclosed range in question.
In the case of the figures in the above graph, the extra 5 minutes means that the car travelling at 60mph will produce just as much carbon as the one travelling at 70mph within the 35-mile range (technically, slightly more). Of course, stationary traffic would really mess up the figures for you. And the real situation is immeasurably for complicated, with air currents and atmospheric conditions, not to mention volume of traffic, road closures and tail backs, and so on.
I stress that this is very approximate, but it illustrates the point that reducing speed limits to 60mph is a massive red herring – especially when you consider that they wanted to increase it to 80mph three years ago.
Note that this is an old article. iZettle let me down badly and I switched to PayPal in 2015. Apart from that, the comments are still valid.
Back in September I wrote that I had acquired the ability/facility to take take credit and debit card payments from pupils in the car, thanks to my iZettle chip & pin card reader. It has been a real boon, and has saved me a lot of money in various ways. In an earlier article, I explained how I nearly went for the PayPal reader, but sent it back because PayPal couldn’t make up their mind how the system worked, and so convinced me the service was next to useless.
Being able to take card payments was something I’d wanted to do for the last ten years or so, but until this new – and long overdue – series of devices became available the cost was just too prohibitive, and the services far from convenient.
When it comes to taking payments from people, by far the biggest pain in the neck for the sole trader is the cheque. These have been used since the 17th Century (there is evidence that similar systems were in use as far back as 300BC). The problem is that the method of honouring a cheque has hardly changed in all that time. They are cumbersome and – if one bounces – a major headache. For me, the worst part was having to go and pay them in to a physical bank. The fact that it had to be MY physical bank was just as bad, as was the length of time they took to clear.
It made me smile, therefore, when I saw this story on the BBC’s website. There are plans – well, proposals – to allow you to take a photo of your cheque using your smartphone, and send it in electronically. Cheques will clear in two days rather than the current six. The thing is, they COULD make cheques clear in two days right now – something which should have been implemented years ago.
Apparently, this system of using smartphones has been possible in the USA for the last decade. I didn’t know that, and it makes the situation over here even more annoying. Britain seems to deliberately want to keep itself in the dark ages with some things, which is evidenced by the apparent u-turn on abolishing cheques altogether as a result of “public opposition” (read: “from the Luddites”).
Barclays is going to be trialling the service from early in 2014. But there are already rumblings from people about branch closures as a result.
People in this country need to get a grip and stop keep rattling on about the past. Banks are a major pain in the backside and always have been. As far as I am concerned, you either put money in or take money out, and that takes a few minutes at the most (which could be a few seconds if banks weren’t so bloody inefficient). But unless you’re the only one in there, every other customer is guaranteed to be a total prat who will keep the cashier occupied for 15 minutes over something stupid.
We should be going for instant money transfer systems, and a merger of individual financial systems so that you can access your account anywhere.
Thankfully, the days of the cheque are gone for me. Anyone who has a cheque book will have a chip & pin card, so they can pay me using that through my iZettle.
I was going to write this article anyway, but I notice from my logs that someone found the blog on the following search term:
Is traffic worse now on the ring road in Nottingham since the Aspley Lane junction was changed?
The junction was re-opened this week. The clowns responsible have removed the original roundabout and turned it into a light-controlled junction instead. It has been chaos in the several months during which access to Aspley Lane has been for buses only. The council gleefully installed cameras to make absolutely, positively, and definitely certain that it would benefit financially if anyone tried to get down there. Lord knows how much money they’ve ripped out of motorists as a result.
The ironic part is that traffic was at a virtual standstill most of the time during the work, and it wouldn’t have hurt to have allowed access to cars from the Ring Road. In fact, it would have eased congestion dramatically. But the closure was of a punitive nature – it simply satisfied some dickheads in the council, that’s all, and it served no useful or logical purpose otherwise.
Oh, wait. There was one logical reason. Buses.
The temporary lights that were put in at Aspley Lane during the protracted works were set to automatically change to red on the Ring Road if a bus came within half a mile of the junction. Indeed, and for comparison, they were as biased as the lights outside County Hall at Trent Bridge, whereby absolute priority is given to council employees wanting to get into and out of the County Hall car park, and where even a foil sweet wrapper blowing over the road sensors will trigger them to change. And that’s on top of the separate bus lane lights on the opposite side which trigger automatically if anything is in the bus lane (which often includes a car transporter delivering to Sandicliffe or a taxi stopped on them), and which buses skip out of if they’re behind schedule and speeding. It’s always a case of screw the motorist, all hail the bus.
But back to the original question: is the Aspley Lane junction better now?
Well, I’ve noticed a couple of things. First of all, the new permanent lights there are still set to trigger if a bus gets off a ferry anywhere in England. Or if a pedestrian wants to cross the road (and the junction is right next to that bloody school). Or if a cyclist approaches them. Or if anyone is waiting to come out of Aspley Lane (again, it’s right next to that school). To that end, I would say that for 90% of my journeys north along the Ring Road this week I have had to stop because the lights have been on red – and that’s even with me purposely avoiding going anywhere near them after 3pm.
Secondly, I have had time to notice during my frequent stops that the green light doesn’t stay on long. As I say, priority is given to Aspley Lane traffic, which is quite bizarre when you consider the meaning of the term “ring road”. In all honesty, I suspect that some prat somewhere deliberately decided that Broxtowe and Strelley should be favoured – in much the same way that they spent a fortune on “connecting the East Side”, where “east side” means St Ann’s; and in the same way that the tram seems to deliberately go to the same sorts of places, and avoids the posher areas completely. In other words, priority and preferential treatment is doled out in places where you’d think some sort of border control would work better.
Thirdly, every time I have travelled north through the junction, there has been a queue of traffic on the southbound carriageway stopped at the lights and extending back to the A610 junction. And I’m talking about mid-morning and mid-afternoon, here – not the rush hour.
You see, the problems on the Ring Road have always been due to the volume of traffic combined with bottlenecks. The Aspley Lane roundabout was never a significant bottleneck – the main ones were the Crown Island, the A610 junction at Bobbers Mill (which goes to the M1), and Basford. And this is still the case. Why? Because they are light-controlled, and because no matter how many lanes you add the traffic flow is governed by the narrowest point.
And now, Aspley Lane is also light-controlled it has been turned into a bottleneck.
So the answer is yes, the Ring Road is much worse now that they have “improved” the Aspley Lane junction.
you got 2 hours for 50p (later, £1) people were passing them on to each other if they had excess time left. The council didn’t like this one bit, and it introduced new machines where you have to type in the numerical digits of your car’s registration plate just to prevent tickets being transferred.
card reader. It has been a real boon, and has saved me a lot of money in various ways. In an earlier article, I explained how I nearly went for the