Express lane for car sharers on M3

[kendor]

Another diabolical plan to discriminate against the law abiding citizens of this country, all that tosh about speeding up traffic is absolute cr*p! That particular stretch of the motorway is busy normally with the outside lane being taken up by people wanting to use the M25 when there is a sign way before saying to get into lane ( the outside lane is London traffic only)
imagine the chaos for the unfortunate ones like myself who have no one to share on my journey to work being stuck in the jam for all the traffic trying to get onto the M25.
People like myself are being discriminated against simply because we have no one to share the car on that particular journey and the irregular times that I start/finish work means that i couldn't even advertise for someone.
You can be damn sure this will not affect any of the officials that came up with this hair brained scheme!
The traffic will definitely back up way past junction 4 and possibly up to Basingstoke and beyond, the gridlock will affect all the roads leading to the motorway.
At least in America they have a decent amount of lanes to start with.

I call upon all disgruntled motorists who like myself will be stuck in these jams to protest, perhaps whilst being stuck in these 30miles+ jams to blast their horns continuously ( imagine the din from thousands of cars at the same time)and hopefully wake up a few of these idiot officials who think up these stupid schemes.

 

[masona]

100% agreed, the problem is, whoever is in power don't care because they know they are only in government for a short time and let the new party's sort it out. I work in the bitumen market and if the bitumen isn't going out of our gate then the road tax is spent somewhere else. It used to be 25% of road tax invested on our road and I know that's is not happening because we are selling less & less bitumen each year. In the next 2 years we're going to be the only bitumen supplier out of the 3 depot.

 

[kendor]

100% agreed, the problem is, whoever is in power don't care because they know they are only in government for a short time and let the new party's sort it out. I work in the bitumen market and if the bitumen isn't going out of our gate then the road tax is spent somewhere else. It used to be 25% of road tax invested on our road and I know that's is not happening because we are selling less & less bitumen each year. In the next 2 years we're going to be the only bitumen supplier out of the 3 depot.

The Govenrment(whoever that may be at the time) are experts at what they do.....Bullsh*t it's only when you get evidence from people like yourself to show them for what they are, that you find out how much BS they spout.
I can honestly say that out of all the schemes/ bright ideas from their thinktanks in the past 20 years or so, not one has been advantageous to the public but merely invented to line the pockets of the members of the elite.

 

[pipme]

How much more proof is needed to convince everyone that we have one of the most predjudicial countries in the world ?
Whilst carrying out policies of positive discrimination, our children, those that can read, are slowly being brainwashed against .. the motorist via state sponsored discrimination ... Even tho' they themselves are discriminated against .... removal of school bus passes .... being told that their exams are not worth tosh .... then being cast into a debt culture for Uni fees ..... pity our kids in 2006, higher fees .. same old facilities ... there should be a time limit on Unis' upping the quality of their offerings, once they on the gravy train.

By the way I entirely endorse the speed limiter ideology as recently tested in Sweden, a detent applied automatically to the throttle pedal when in speed limited area, (can be overridden) .... Similar test in England, tried recently by a Times reporter ...... He found it quite relaxing ! Surely this is the way to go ?

P

 

[IanDB]

It's all cause and effect really. Why are the bureaucrats now interested in clever fund raising schemes and meddling in the road system? Because we have created an environment for them to do so. As an ex-M25 user I moved out of it and ended up in the fortunate situation of actually being able to cycle to work. Mind you that's after the first company decided to relocate from the south coast back to London, so it wasn't planned that way.

The M3 into London has been getting progressively worse for the last fifteen years. The M25 has had extra lanes built on it but I don't see that making any improvement - just moves the jam round a bit further.

Even the point about US freeways is worth a mention. I've seen phenomenal traffic growth over there as well. What were once free running four lane motorways are now bumper to bumper for miles at a time.

There's just too many cars and you can't get away from that fact.

 

[pipme]

But surely there are too many transports of all kinds at the SAME time, easy, zone the businesses and rotate the start finish times ....
The small city near me has a proliferation of people starting work between 8-30 and 9-15 hence big queues at this time, get the lazy bar stewards out of their pits and contributing to the good of all !!

BTW, trainloads commute 120m to the smoke, they obviously get paid for this, seen the train fares lately ? Whoever they all work for has to find the extra money from ..... the poor old customer !! Great isn't it ?

P

 

[kendor]

The trouble with the talk about using the trains is that it may work for some but there are plenty of people in the situation i'm in where my work dictates ungodly hours and therefore alternative transport isn't an option.
these people who i'm sure get paid loads of money to think up all these ideas should be thinking of all the repercussions of their decisions or has it boiled down to the f**k you jack i'm alright attitude? In which case these people should be kicked out of their cushy jobs forthwith.

Perhaps they should build a memorial fountain down the central reservation of the M3 then we can all canoe into work!

 

[david and julie]

I can remember being in America years ago, the freeways in LA were full of people with blow-up dolls wearing hats and sunglasses sat in the passenger seats! (I can already hear your comments on this)really comical sight. I suppose the police here would use the usual sledge-hammer methods of "enforcing the law" that is collecting more money, if we did the same.

The question is who gets this extra money? The road charging scheme in London was supposed to pay for public transport improvements. Last I heard it was costing that much to manage, and collect the fees, that there was hardly anything left. What sort of salaries are these people on, indeed who are these people?

As pipme says, you don't need nearly everybody starting work at the same time.

 

[AdamW]

zone the businesses and rotate the start finish times ....

They already do. It's called flexi-time. I used to bike in to London every morning, and out again in the evenings along the A316 (what the M3 turns into at Sunbury). As soon as more companies started introducing flexi-time the queues diminished significantly. OK, I still wouldn't have driven a car in it though!

I was reading some figures on vehicle proportions. Apparently in the 1970s the traffic in London was a lot better, there were many more motorcycles and scooters than there are now. People were happy to "make do" with a bike. Now everyone wants a car. It just seems daft. They sit in their car every day, watching hundreds of motorbikes filter past them. And they never think "perhaps I should get on 2 wheels, and have an extra hour in bed".

I have a car now, but a bike wouldn't get me to work any quicker (legally).

 

[masona]

How much more proof is needed to convince everyone that we have one of the most predjudicial countries in the world ?

No wonder 52% of us in the UK want to emigrate according to the recent survey.

As mention before I work in the bitumen market, sadly we will be the only company that will supply bitumen from the whole of south of England and up to half way up north in the year 2007. We are very near the M25 and that mean extra road tanker coming to us for collection. At present we're loading approx 50-60 per day and in the year 2007 we will loading approx 180 a day, this is just bitumen alone without petrol tanker which at present is over 600 delivery a day which will also be increasing. Next door to us a refinery is flatten down to make way for a container port, the biggest in the UK creating 10,000 extra job and a extra 250,000 roadtanker per year jamming up the M25. On top of this the fat controller Prescott has give permission to build over 300,000 new home in essex alone without improving the road or drain/flood problem. I can see a time when everything will come to a stand still and I will be one of them thinking about emigrating.

 

[IanDB]

I used to bike in to London every morning, and out again in the evenings along the A316

Well, I used to work at the place that is now occupied by Homebase just up from there. They relocated up to High Wycombe so all the employees had two options, quit, or commute - more traffic on the M25. I packed it in in the end as I used to live locally and the nightmare drive round Britains biggest car park every day got to me in the end. What a waste of life. It's taken me 10 years to get back to a situation where I can work locally to where I live but I suppose I have to count myself lucky on that point. Mind you in order to get anywhere else it's a long drive.

Going back to the M25 - flexi-time never helped me much there it was solid between the hours of 0700 to 1900 anyway (maybe a bit quieter at lunchtime!!)

Wot a depressing thread! Pass me the happy pills.

 

[AdamW]

Flexi time doesn't really help the M25. I live and work in Herts, my parents live in Surrey. I find that if I want to stay at my parents Sunday night, I have to leave about 6am on Monday to do the 1 hour journey in about 90 minutes to 2 hours.

And to get to Heathrow from mine, it takes a good 2 hours from 5am until 10am. After that it lightens a bit until 4.

The M25 is overused. I remember some survey they did a few years ago where they asked a random selection of people on the M25, where they were going. People were doing stupid journeys that didn't require going anywhere near it! But, you look on a map and there is that big blue ring, winking at you. It makes journeys easy, but not quick!

Did you know that despite the US being a lot less densely populated than us, and several times the size, a greater percentage of their land area is covered by roads?

And JP wants to build millions of houses in the Home Counties: what about the whole North/South divide? Surely it would be improved if we stuck all these houses in Wakefield or Doncaster? It would be difficult to persuade people to move there at first, especially seeing as you can't really FORCE someone to move away from their family and friends to get a job. But those are the problems we pay the politicians to solve. Good to see we are getting our money's worth

 

[masona]

I remembered watching a programme on BBC 2 some time ago regarding the drawing plan of the M25.

The M25 drawing plan passed before the World War 2 and when the war finish it was out of date then when it was built. It was design for long distance journey and heavy goods delivery and soon clogged up with the local rat & run journey causing the bottleneck problems, that was then !

 

[pipme]

Apparently Somerset is now part of greater London .... in yer dreams 2Jags, you just keep piling 'em up down in the usual corner of our unfair land !

Ah AdamW, not much over an hour to heathrow (M4) from here, 1.5 hrs to Chessington cross Sals' Plain, M3 and a smidge of M25 ... not rush hr tho'
Such is life down on the farm !!

Flexy time? - I am thinking more along the lines of mandatory time slots, not knee jerk reaction, could surely put some organisation into the current chaos.

P

 

[pipme]

......And JP wants to build millions of houses in the Home Counties: what about the whole North/South divide? Surely it would be improved if we stuck all these houses in Wakefield or Doncaster? It would be difficult to persuade people to move there at first, especially seeing as you can't really FORCE someone to move away from their family and friends to get a job. But those are the problems we pay the politicians to solve. Good to see we are getting our money's worth

Are they the only reasons ? We don't want more people up there, we'll have to subsidise them in our bloated council taxes !!!
there we go more discrimination .... Britain reeks of it !!

P