{"id":13360,"date":"2013-07-23T01:31:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T00:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=13360"},"modified":"2013-07-23T01:31:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T00:31:26","slug":"what-kinds-of-fool-are-the-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=13360","title":{"rendered":"What Kinds Of Fool ARE The Council?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GasPicture 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 \u2013 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 \u201csafety\u201d barriers around them..<\/p>\n

At precisely the same time as all that, work on Phase II of the idiotic waste of money that is Nottingham\u2019s 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<\/strong> \u2013 the chaos on Abbey Bridge Road in Lenton has a sign proudly proclaiming:<\/p>\n

\n

Work starts here 7 July for 12 months.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s LAST<\/strong> July – July 2012! One look at the state of the work will tell you that they are MONTHS<\/strong> away from reopening any of those routes permanently.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s own official timeline it clearly states that Ruddington Lane\/Wilford Lane was to be closed for \u201capproximately\u201d 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 \u2013 in spite of the pathetic yellow signs declaring \u201cbusinesses open as usual\u201d. 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 \u201cstaying open\u201d street party<\/a> might well be laughing on the other sides of their faces in 12 months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d put the prices up so that it was no longer cheaper than using the bus (and in any case, since trams run on rails \u2013 like trains do \u2013 unless you want to be somewhere near a stop you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

Anyway, bearing in mind that every single on-going project I\u2019ve 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 \u201cimproving\u201d the Aspley Lane junction along that road. The mind boggles over precisely how the Council thinks it can \u201cimprove\u201d this junction \u2013 so much so, that you start to wonder who they\u2019re actually \u201cimproving\u201d 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<\/strong> possible that the concept of fitting a square peg into a round hole is one they are<\/strong> able to grasp (but I wouldn\u2019t put money on it), but they have clearly overlooked the fact that they could make the Aspley Lane junction ten<\/strong> lanes wide if they wanted, but it wouldn\u2019t 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 \u201cimprovements\u201d 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\u2019t possibly appreciate it.<\/p>\n

No doubt the original \u201cplan\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019 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\u2019s own muppets was put at risk, though.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re not primary routes in the normal sense of the word \u2013 but they are when you\u2019re trying to avoid the chaos caused by all the other crap the council has instigated.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019re 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\u2019s bone. This time, it\u2019s the County Council\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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\u2019ve put up in Sherwood on narrow side roads which have speed bumps and lots of parked cars on them already \u2013 anyone who did more than 20 on those will still do it, signs or not. It\u2019s a total waste of money.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s 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 \u2013 some 10 miles away. Of course, on paper that would only be a 20 minute ride by bus \u2013 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<\/strong> to move people to and from the Parkway. That\u2019s 750 extra vehicles on the A453, a road which has just had a 40mph limit imposed on it as \u2013 yes, you guessed it \u2013 road works begin on widening one of the busiest and most congested routes in the country.<\/p>\n

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\u2026 it is beyond a joke.<\/p>\n

Nottingham is currently the absolute pits. The council \u2013 that is, both City and County \u2013 are intent on ruining it completely. They just don\u2019t have a clue.<\/p>\n

\n

This story from the BBC confirms the disruption<\/a> that the Ring Road \u201cimprovement\u201d will bring. It is due to be completed in Summer 2015<\/strong> \u2013 the same time the A453 widening work is due to finish. Aspley Lane will be closed to normal traffic from August.<\/strong> The story doesn\u2019t say how long for.<\/p>\n

If everything I wrote above wasn\u2019t enough to convince you about the incompetence of the City and County Councils, surely this will.<\/p>\n

It means that every possible route both into and out of Nottingham will be blocked or impeded \u2013 deliberately \u2013 for normal traffic for a period of two years from now (assuming they don\u2019t overrun, of course).<\/p>\n

\n

And anyone using the Ring Road also needs to be aware that \u201cBridge Repairs\u201d are scheduled for Clifton Bridge from the start of August (these were originally started and then discontinued a couple of months ago). You couldn\u2019t make this level of sheer incompetence up if you tried. It just has<\/strong> to be deliberate. <\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,117,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-roadworks","category-transport"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}