I mentioned a few weeks ago how the City Council had started work on the Ring Road while work on the tram extension was massively behind schedule. And this was alongside numerous other incompetently managed schemes involving road closures and traffic restrictions.
Only today, on a lesson with a pupil, we drove the length of the Ring Road. Apart from the road works at the Aspley Lane roundabout, there was massive congestion around the Basford junction. Traffic is being diverted for some reason, and so is being forced on to the Ring Road (I believe it is because they have shut the railway crossing at Vernon Road – which of course is a consequence of them also having closed Nottingham Station for over a month and diverting all rail traffic to the Parkway Station along the A453, which we all know is restricted due to the on-going widening works). Once we left the northern end of the Ring Road and made our way towards Mansfield, we were again stuck in traffic because road works (this time, the signs attribute this to the Bumpkins of County Hall) have commenced near to the roundabout at the junction with the A614. Temporary lights are up, and work is scheduled to last FOUR WEEKS.
That last paragraph mentions – directly or indirectly – around a dozen separate locations where the imbeciles at both Nottingham City and County Councils have instigated road works all at the same time.
And to cap it off, they just sent out another hugely expensive brochure detailing the on-going tram works. In particular, you’d better brace yourself for the worse congestion yet, because from 1 September 2013 they will be closing Wilford Lane for “approximately 4 months”.
Yes, you read that right. Apparently, the extended Christmas those living on Ruddington Lane have experienced while that road has been closed for almost a year, when it was only due to be for “approximately 3 months”, is due to end. And the problem will now be shifted to an even worse location, most probably for an even less reliably scheduled period of time.
As I’ve said many times before, they are complete and utter prats.
A reader wrote asking about the Law relating to the wearing of seatbelts by rear seat passengers. You can read the full legislation here.
The Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) Regulations 1993 says that seatbelts MUST be worn IF FITTED. This applies to both front and rear passengers.
Part II of the legislation says:
Requirement for adults to wear adult belts
5.—(1) Subject to the following provisions of these Regulations, every person—
(a)driving a motor vehicle (other than a two-wheeled motor cycle with or without a sidecar);
(b)riding in a front seat of a motor vehicle (other than a two-wheeled motor cycle with or without a sidecar); or
(c)riding in a rear seat of a motor car or a passenger car which is not a motor car;
shall wear an adult belt.
(2) Paragraph (1) does not apply to a person under the age of 14 years.
There are exemptions. Under these, the legislation says:
Exemptions…
…
(3) The requirements of regulation 5 do not apply to—
(a)a person driving a vehicle if the driver’s seat is not provided with an adult belt;
(b)a person riding in the front of a vehicle if no adult belt is available for him in the front of the vehicle;
(c)a person riding in the rear of a vehicle if no adult belt is available for him in the rear of the vehicle.
So in most modern cars, all occupants are required to wear seatbelts, and there is no distinction between front or rear passengers.
Picture this. After sanctioning multiple (and I mean absolutely dozens of) simultaneous work sites for National Grid Gas to dig up roads and put in traffic restrictions everywhere, the jackasses who comprise the two local Nottingham councils then allowed Morgan Sindall to do the same thing for the electricity cabling. All this started at the same time, by the way. Most of the work – particularly that being carried out by National Grid Gas – is still on-going, and it sprouts a new bud every few weeks, spawning new road closures and restrictions. This has been going on for more than a year with no end in site. National Grid in particular seems to have virtually abandoned many sites, leaving holes with coiled yellow piping sticking out and “safety” barriers around them..
At precisely the same time as all that, work on Phase II of the idiotic waste of money that is Nottingham’s tram system began. There have been multiple long-term road closures and frequent alterations to priorities (sometimes, these changes occur on a daily basis) for the last 12 months at least. Work is already behind schedule – the chaos on Abbey Bridge Road in Lenton has a sign proudly proclaiming:
Work starts here 7 July for 12 months.
That’s LAST July – July 2012! One look at the state of the work will tell you that they are MONTHS away from reopening any of those routes permanently.
The tram is another council project, remember, and traffic trying to avoid the aforementioned gas and electricity work just gets stuck at the tram works instead. These move around and get worse daily. If you look at NET’s own official timeline it clearly states that Ruddington Lane/Wilford Lane was to be closed for “approximately” three months from the end of September 2012. Again, work there is nowhere near being completed after 10 months. The project is therefore at least seven months behind schedule.
The situation is currently just as bad, if not worse, in Clifton, Beeston, and Chilwell for all the same reasons. In Clifton, the businesses around Varney Road have seen a massive drop in trade. There is no way some of them can possibly survive, and the ones that do may never recover (one of the fast food outlets has noticeably cut back on portion sizes, and that will inevitably push more customers away). It is bound to be the same for those along the Chilwell High Road – in spite of the pathetic yellow signs declaring “businesses open as usual”. All of this is entirely the fault of the Council for the incompetent management of an ill-conceived idea, and the shopkeepers in Chilwell who held a “staying open” street party might well be laughing on the other sides of their faces in 12 months’ time.
I have never used the tram, and I cannot see that I ever will, so until a few days ago I had no idea how much it cost to travel on it until a pupil told me. She said that they’d put the prices up so that it was no longer cheaper than using the bus (and in any case, since trams run on rails – like trains do – unless you want to be somewhere near a stop you’re still going to have the inconvenience of a walk or a separate bus journey). For most people it would now be cheaper to drive, and certainly a lot more convenient. In spite of all the gushing claims, far fewer people use the tram than the Council would have you believe. I rarely see it anywhere near full – you get train after train of empty seats every ten minutes for most of the day. There is no way that even the original tram can remain financially viable under these circumstances, let alone with the additional cost of Phase II on top. And add to that overhead the un-budgeted cost of the compensation the Council is apparently having to pay to businesses it has ruined, the picture of the future looks even worse.
Anyway, bearing in mind that every single on-going project I’ve already mentioned is massively behind schedule, and major routes are therefore still closed, traffic is being forced to use the Ring Road. So it beggars belief that the City Council has now begun work on “improving” the Aspley Lane junction along that road. The mind boggles over precisely how the Council thinks it can “improve” this junction – so much so, that you start to wonder who they’re actually “improving” it for. You see, the rest of the Ring Road is only two lanes wide, and Aspley Lane itself is only one lane wide. Council brains being what they are, it is possible that the concept of fitting a square peg into a round hole is one they are able to grasp (but I wouldn’t put money on it), but they have clearly overlooked the fact that they could make the Aspley Lane junction ten lanes wide if they wanted, but it wouldn’t make the overall flow along the Ring Road any better. Deceit is something councils are pretty good at, and the fact that Aspley Lane runs into Strelley and Broxtowe, combined with the fact that there is a school about 100 metres along from the junction, would make me strongly suspect that the “improvements” are not aimed at motorists, but at a species which occupies a far lower rung on the evolutionary ladder. The Nottingham authorities have a penchant for spending lots of money on areas which couldn’t possibly appreciate it.
No doubt the original “plan” was to start this work after some of the other jobs had been finished. However, as I have already pointed out those jobs are all massively overdue, and this latest debacle is now running concurrently with them all. Even though they have only properly restricted traffic on weekends so far (with flow down to a single lane), the actual effect on queues along the Ring Road is already quite dramatic. Pallets of barriers have been delivered and stacked two high right up to the roundabout on both sides. This means that traffic approaching the island now has to slow down much more than it had to previously because it can’t see properly. Slowing down more means having to stop more often, so the tailbacks are horrendous even when traffic is lighter during the day. It is a Health & Safety nightmare, but since it is only the motorists’ health & safety at stake, no one seems to give a flying fart about that. I imagine it would be a lot different if any of the Council’s own muppets was put at risk, though.
But it gets even worse. The idiots have also sanctioned further road closures all over the city, mostly due to road resurfacing from what I can gather (though Severn Trent is now eager to get in on the act). Yellow signs are already up gleefully announcing week long closures, where once upon a time the work would have been completed over a couple of nights (and still could be if anyone with any sense was involved). I have seen them warning that Station Road in Plumtree is shutting for a week, as is Somersby Road in Mapperley (and there are several more). They’re not primary routes in the normal sense of the word – but they are when you’re trying to avoid the chaos caused by all the other crap the council has instigated.
And we’re still not done!. The County bumpkins have got the road up yet again in Ruddington on the A60 at the junction with Kirk Lane and Flawforth Lane. Over the last couple of years that junction has been dug up more times than a dog’s bone. This time, it’s the County Council’s favourite job of replacing traffic lights which are perfectly functional, and taking a week or more to do it. Naturally, it is essential that 4-way temporary lights be set up while this needlessly long work takes place.
Then there is the current vogue for changing speed limits without any obvious advanced warning. The 30/40 change on Lougborough Road in West Bridgford has now moved about 300 metres up the road – meaning that every car travelling away from the city will have to use more fuel as it reaches Wilford Hill and has to use a lower gear in order to accelerate harder in order to be able to change up on the hill itself when the 40mph limit kicks in. This goes hand-in-hand with the 20mph limits which have appeared all over (my favourites have to be the ones they’ve put up in Sherwood on narrow side roads which have speed bumps and lots of parked cars on them already – anyone who did more than 20 on those will still do it, signs or not. It’s a total waste of money.
But it’s still not finished. Nottingham Train Station is now closed for a month while they carry out signal work. All passengers are being ferried out to the Parkway – some 10 miles away. Of course, on paper that would only be a 20 minute ride by bus – unless you factor in road works. According to the local BBC news it is taking more than an hour and people are missing their trains, but even more significant is the fact that they are using 750 extra buses to move people to and from the Parkway. That’s 750 extra vehicles on the A453, a road which has just had a 40mph limit imposed on it as – yes, you guessed it – road works begin on widening one of the busiest and most congested routes in the country.
The examples above are still only a sample of all of what is going on. When you add the numerous restrictions resulting from house building, tree-felling, verge maintenance… it is beyond a joke.
Nottingham is currently the absolute pits. The council – that is, both City and County – are intent on ruining it completely. They just don’t have a clue.
This story from the BBC confirms the disruption that the Ring Road “improvement” will bring. It is due to be completed in Summer 2015 – the same time the A453 widening work is due to finish. Aspley Lane will be closed to normal traffic from August. The story doesn’t say how long for.
If everything I wrote above wasn’t enough to convince you about the incompetence of the City and County Councils, surely this will.
It means that every possible route both into and out of Nottingham will be blocked or impeded – deliberately – for normal traffic for a period of two years from now (assuming they don’t overrun, of course).
And anyone using the Ring Road also needs to be aware that “Bridge Repairs” are scheduled for Clifton Bridge from the start of August (these were originally started and then discontinued a couple of months ago). You couldn’t make this level of sheer incompetence up if you tried. It just has to be deliberate.
Oh, and I neglected to mention an unreported side-effect of the month-long closure of Nottingham Station. It is being used as an opportunity to do work at the various level crossings and at the time of writing (24 July) the road through Sneinton is closed, and the one in Netherfield has temporary lights installed.
I just saw this on the BBC news website. It reports that a 17-year old female cyclist (later reports, and the BBC’s updated one, say that she was 20) riding one of those hired “Boris bikes” has been knocked off by a lorry and killed.
London is one of the busiest cities in the world, and has some of the most congested roads in the world. Something like this is always highly likely when you add bikes to the mix. To make matters worse, if you consider what it says on that Wikipedia page, 49% of those hiring Boris Bikes only took up riding in London because of the facility. Since the company has 8,000 bicycles, that means an extra 4,000 bike riders are out on London’s streets who wouldn’t have been otherwise.
Furthermore, the Boris Bikes are ridden on “Boris Routes” – dedicated lanes, often painted blue. Just take a look at the picture on the left to imagine the potential risks (you’ll have to imagine the tens of thousands of cars and lorries that would otherwise be on the road at peak times on weekdays – the picture is strangely devoid of them, though the length of the cyclists’ shadows and the greenery suggests this was taken very late or very early in the day, and I would guess at a weekend).
The circumstances of the accident are not known. Later reports say it happened on Friday evening at around 6.30pm, which is right in the middle of London’s Friday night rush hour, and one with a forecast super-hot summer weekend ahead of it. Obviously, it is a huge tragedy.
But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: roads are primarily intended for motor vehicles, not bicycles. Creating a false belief that it is otherwise – either through reckless bike hire or the continual green/political pro-bike lobbying – just increases the chances of something like this happening.
Everyone is eager to point out that this is the first fatality involving a hire bike since the scheme began in 2010. However, the BBC article clearly states that Transport for London is anxious to “further reduce” collisions involving cyclists all over London. Or in other words, cyclists having accidents (or very near misses) is not at all uncommon. Other reports mention two cyclists being killed on the same route in 2011 – though they weren’t on Boris Bikes, hence the TfL comments.
I’ve mentioned oxymorons before, so seeing the phrase “personality test” in the same sentence as “Scottish” did initially make me do a double take.
The article itself is even more amusing. Apparently, Edinburgh tram drivers will have to take a personality test to identify “risk takers” and weed them out. Reading between the lines (no pun), you can only conclude that Edinburgh’s current crop of drivers are wont to put their foot down, start doing doughnuts, and basically drive to places that are different to where the tracks are supposed to take them.
Lothian Buses (who operate the trams) refused to comment. I’ll bet they did. And the reason for that is because only someone who works for the council would be able to say the following line with a straight face – and probably even believe it:
[The recruitment process to] build an enthusiastic and skilled team to operate the service is progressing well.
He said the tests were standard across the rail industry and “considered good practice”, adding: “It ensures we have safe and competent people driving Edinburgh’s trams.”
Please don’t vomit all over your keyboard, people. This is what modern business deals with – and the bigger the business the worse the crap is that they spout. Councils simply take it to the next cringe level and beyond.
Don’t think that it is cost-effective, either. They’ve got to employ bouncers to keep people off the trams while the tests are being conducted (so they’re not written tests – they’re based on observation). I have a feeling that the source may have got its wires crossed here (or written its story poorly) and be talking about a separate kind of testing (i.e. of the carriage, not the driver), because for some unexplained reason (I guess you’d know if you were a tram driver), further additional staff are to be employed, tasked with:
…sitting in on test runs through the city centre as trams stop at each of the 16 stations and open their doors to ensure the mechanisms are working correctly.
You couldn’t make it up. Why make something so simple so complicated? The answer, unfortunately, is contained in the word “council” which – by definition – means using 10 or more people where one would suffice.
Circus acts? The big question has to be: who are the real clowns?
This BBC story reveals that Bristol has introduced a “car-free Sunday” scheme, where certain city centre roads are closed to traffic. Bristol Mayor, George Ferguson – trying hard to look casual by not wearing a tie and sporting horrendous green trousers – appears proud of his “Make Sunday Special” initiative.
Apparently, it works in Bogota – a city with one of the worst traffic congestion problems in the known universe. And in Bordeaux – an ancient city which is somewhat closer to the equator, and which has wall-to-wall sunshine most of the year. So it just has to work in Bristol, right?
Instead of cars, Bristol’s streets are being turned over to jugglers, a few more jugglers, acrobats who can juggle… oh, and then some more jugglers. Proving clearly that George Ferguson hasn’t got a bloody clue. Believe me, juggling gets old very fast indeed. Once you’ve seen one dreadlocked hippy juggling, you’ve seen them all, and the idea that the average juggler is going to keep performing for free while you pretend Bristol is the same as Bordeaux is just silly. It isn’t something you want in your way when you’re trying to get to the bloody shops to buy some milk and bread.
As you’d expect, Bristol’s motorists aren’t particularly impressed. And who can blame them.
And frighteningly, the report claims that “other councils” are watching closely.
I have long held the belief that councils are far more interested in their finances and petty one-upmanship against the motorist than they are in serving the people who elected them. For example, I recently reported that in the wake of impending changes to legislation, whereby police will be able to issue penalty charges (PCNs) and licence points to people who demonstrate careless driving, Nottingham City Council (NCC) announced that it is prepared to spend taxpayers’ money sending out a camera car to try and catch more of them in the act. It’s worth pointing out that they already have such a car, and they use it around the City Centre to patrol bus lanes and no stopping areas, though this doesn’t mean that they’d not willingly buy a fleet of the damned things were they to go ahead with this vendetta.
It’s hard to see what benefit this could have to NCC, since they themselves cannot gain financially, nor can they actually issue PCNs. In fact, it would cost an additional fortune for them to report any videoed instances and hope that the police followed it up, and quite frankly I doubt that NCC and the police have quite the same ideas about what constitutes sufficient infringement – particularly if the motorist appeals to the courts. And as I also mentioned in that previous article, NCC continues to completely ignore one of the biggest sources of bad driving – taxis – in order to further penalise the common driver. That’s because taxis are a major revenue stream for the council (i.e. they have to buy licences to operate), whereas motorists aren’t… yet. NCC has no interest in getting bad drivers off the road. If it did, it would target taxis (and all forms of bus) immediately.
Bus lanes are separate problem. I wrote recently about what to do if an emergency vehicle comes up behind and there’s a bus lane in operation alongside you. Any organisation which was staffed by at least one or two normal human beings would explicitly state in all its FAQs that you could drive in the bus lane to allow the emergency vehicle to pass. To be fair to NCC, it actually does say this on its website. However, Nottinghamshire County Council and numerous others around the country are all extremely careful not to say anything about it at all – thus leaving the door open to increase revenue from PCNs if they so choose. Some have absolute zero tolerance policies. And yet having (or not, as the case may be) an explicit statement concerning bus lanes is a matter of immense safety importance, often involving life or death situations. You’d expect it to be Item #1 on the FAQ list, yet these vile vultures carefully avoid addressing it so they can milk money from motorists in order to line their own pockets.
Of course, most of the foregoing might be seen as just a personal opinion. So it was interesting to see this article on the BBC website. Apparently, councils plan to install even more CCTV equipment at black spots in order to milk still more money from their victims.
One example in Basildon tells how the monkeys running the council have turned one particular road into a buses-only route. Buses don’t run on a Sunday, but cars still can’t use it. The idiots in charge reckon that they’d review the times if “the local community supported it”. Like I say: idiots.
Reading Borough Council (RBC) is apparently the worst county for issuing tickets. One clown who got voted into power says:
This allegation that somehow we put in cameras to raise money is nonsense… We put in cameras so that buses… run on time and the bus lanes do what they say.
Complete bollocks. The number of buses held up by cars using 24-hour or in-operation bus lanes can be counted on the fingers of one hand, figuratively speaking. And the difference between what it was like before Fascist-like enforcement and after would be smaller still. The idiot quoted would have us believe that until RBC started enforcing it, everyone drove in bus lanes. They didn’t – and those who did still do.
Bristol City Council (BCC), along with RBC, is seeking to gain extra powers so it can harvest money via other trumped-up infringements.
There is a particular box junction in London with CCTV, and this has snared 29,000 motorists in the year to March 2013. Do they really believe that 29,000 motorists are career criminals, or is it maybe a case that the policing of the junction in question might be a little over zealous?
One motorist who got mugged by the council at this junction put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request asking for email exchanges within the traffic department responsible to be handed over. What he received makes very interesting reading. There was reference to financial targets, and comments such as:
Another record for us…
The late shift penalty charge notices helped matters so well done everyone…
A worrying start [to the financial period] as penalty charge notices seemed to reduce…
It is obvious that these vultures don’t want safety or congestion improvements. That second one reeks of “teamworking” – trust me, I’ve been there. I know how this will have been briefed to staff. Of course, the pond scum running the councils claim that all this was “office banter” – which is more bollocks. The “well done” comment is clearly from higher up, and the other two are not exactly something the average traffic warden would say.
And if you’re still not convinced, the reporter in question did an experiment where he put up signs on lamp posts warning drivers to obey the box junction rules. This caused a 25% reduction in drivers stopping in it. But of course, that meant a 25% reduction in revenue for the council – so Hammersmith and Fulham told him to remove them.
Yes. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt (an error on my part some years ago). Some councils even have mobile cameras in vans to catch you doing it (or other “road offences”).
This story in the news feed reports on how shop traders in the town of Crewkerne in Somerset are having their businesses destroyed by the local council.
There is a 30-minute parking limit – stupidly short in the first place – and yet wardens are parking for up to TWO HOURS while they hurry meet their quotas and try to ticket as many people as possible each day.
The Somerset County Council appears to be staffed by the usual crop of idiots. A spokeswoman says that wardens are “following the rules”.
Yes. That would be the rules set by the council, and which the council could change in the blink of an eye if it so wished. But it doesn’t want to change the rules, because that would cut revenue from PCNs. She adds:
There are circumstances where wardens are permitted to park in limited waiting zones and other restricted areas in order to carry out their duties.
So in other words, one rule for the council, and another for the common people. She doesn’t explain how the dire consequences of a member of the public overstaying their time is in any way less dangerous or inconsiderate than a spotty-faced oik employed by them would be.
It was exactly the same up this way when the Nottinghamshire County Council took over responsibility for parking tickets. The day it began, wardens were queued up like a pack of hyenas outside the now-defunct West Bridgford test centre trying to ticket people using the test centre.
Even today, most of them ride around on L-plated scooters as they scour every side road and alleyway, and they frequently ride like complete lunatics. I suppose you have to if you’re going to meet your weekly quota for people who have to be screwed out of their money on behalf of the Council.
Steven Hammond, the Transport Minister, gives a brilliant demonstration of why he should just talk plainly and clearly, and not try to be so clever when he says:
You are about to see from this Department a big piece of work going out to consultation on some ideas, and the meat and drink will be around people aged between 17 and 24.
What the hell does that mean? Why couldn’t he just have said “we are putting out a number of possible considerations to public consultation”? In any case, the last announcement of this kind involved driving instructors being able to take learners on motorways, and I think we all know how far that one got. But back to this particular set of nonsense, Hammond states the obvious, whilst simultaneously implying that he though of it first:
There is some interesting evidence that suggests we ought to have a period of time between gaining your provisional licence and taking your test, so you gain experience of the road.
I’ve been saying that for years, and so have a lot of others. It’s not a major new discovery – it’s just common sense. But he then says:
When we put the consultation document out, we’ll leave that [the timeframe] open to some people’s suggestions, but I’d suggest somewhere between six to nine months is appropriate.
So, the only people who will be affected will be the ones likely to pass quickly anyway. With official statistics putting the average number of training hours before test at around 45 hours, and with more and more people only able to average 1½ hours per week, many people are already taking 6 months or more to learn, so it would be no change. (Yes, I know that some do it quicker – I already said that, so don’t write in about it). He adds:
Other suggestions being considered include insurance premium reductions and looking at how young drivers use cars once they pass their test.
Oh, wow. Another great idea no one has ever thought of before. Black boxes, anyone? So it’s taken the government over two years to catch up. He digs his hole even deeper:
We’re looking at working with the insurance industry in terms of potentially offering some incentives to do a post-test lesson on motorway driving or night-time driving, alongside an insurance fee trade-off. Or if not, how we could encourage people to do it as part of their post-test training.
Brilliant! And we could give it a snazzy name. How about “Pass Plus”? Hammond should really give up on trying to add spice to his language:
There is also an appetite for looking at who is driving and how many people should be in the car in your first couple of years of driving.
We do see tragic accidents quite often where four or five young people in a car all get killed and quite often the driver isn’t over the limit, but is egged on by a number of people who are.
Another unique idea that hasn’t been mooted for at least the last two years, and mangled by his own way of badly wording things.
Hammond is on a different planet (like the rest of his party) – and AutoExpress is clearly flying out to join him by not applying any critical editorial to this story.
Anyone reading this should bear in mind that the consultation has not yet started. You can allow a year from when it does, and another year to implement any changes (bearing in mind that it will require changes to the law). Also allow for the fact that the usual radical groups will be all over it like a rash, and this may create further delay or result in some ideas not being implemented. So we’re looking at at least two years from today for anything to realistically happen. The next General Election is just less than two years away…
So, it will either be a cynical attempt to get votes (started early to see how it pans out) or something to forget and blame on the next party to get in (because there’s a good chance it won’t be the LibCons again).
This email alert just came in. From 11 January 2013 (four days ago), the law has changed such that foreign drivers wishing to exchange their overseas licence for a UK one will have to prove that they have passed a test of comparable standard to the UK one.
This is a DVLA issue and nothing to do with the DSA.
Anyone from any EU member state can drive here and exchange their licence without having to take a test. There are also a number of ‘designated’ countries outside the EU which the UK has an arrangement with (typically, Commonwealth or former-Commonwealth countries, but not exclusively so – Korea is in there, and Switzerland).
But it seems that some of those countries allow foreign nationals from places where driving standards are poor to exchange their licences, and those people then have a shiny licence from a designated country to exchange over here. That’s the loophole that has been stopped by having to provide proof of having completed a test.
The only thing that’s niggling me is how they are going to police and enforce this.
Lying and fraud is second nature to some people and I don’t doubt for a moment that they will use such tactics to get the necessary “proof”. And how will the DVLA check?
numerous other incompetently managed schemes involving road closures and traffic restrictions.
Picture this. After sanctioning multiple (and I mean absolutely dozens of) simultaneous work sites for National Grid Gas to dig up roads and put in traffic restrictions everywhere, the jackasses who comprise the two local Nottingham councils then allowed Morgan Sindall to do the same thing for the electricity cabling. All this started at the same time, by the way. Most of the work – particularly that being carried out by National Grid Gas – is still on-going, and it sprouts a new bud every few weeks, spawning new road closures and restrictions. This has been going on for more than a year with no end in site. National Grid in particular seems to have virtually abandoned many sites, leaving holes with coiled yellow piping sticking out and “safety” barriers around them..
London is one of the busiest cities in the world, and has some of the most congested roads in the world. Something like this is always highly likely when you add bikes to the mix. To make matters worse, if you consider what it says on that Wikipedia page, 49% of those hiring Boris Bikes only took up riding in London because of the facility. Since the company has 8,000 bicycles, that means an extra 4,000 bike riders are out on London’s streets who wouldn’t have been otherwise.
George Ferguson – trying hard to look casual by not wearing a tie and sporting horrendous green trousers – appears proud of his “Make Sunday Special” initiative.
penalty charges (PCNs) and licence points to people who demonstrate careless driving, Nottingham City Council (NCC) announced that it is prepared to spend taxpayers’ money sending out a camera car to try and catch more of them in the act. It’s worth pointing out that they already have such a car, and they use it around the City Centre to patrol bus lanes and no stopping areas, though this doesn’t mean that they’d not willingly buy a fleet of the damned things were they to go ahead with this vendetta.