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.