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.
However, these days – and particular in places like Manchester – people seem to be sufficiently mentally challenged that they go too far without passing through any of the more traditional intermediate stages first.
Well done Jem, who passed today first time with just 2 driver faults. What with me having another test just before him it was a bit of a rush to get to the test centre, but we made it just in time – albeit with no time to do any practice manoeuvres.
Well done Joe, who passed today first time with just 6 driver faults. He’s been doing a lot of private practice, and being a slightly older driver – in his 20s – he could already drive a bit when I took him on.
The fact is that what ever happens for the rest of the year, the recent hot weather has already gone on for long enough for this year to be genuinely cast as a “barbecue summer”. In fact, it looks like we’re set for it to stay like this until the end of July, if the non-Met Office jet stream predictions hold up. So much for the prediction of 10 summerless summers!