'Gridlock & Road Rage' Ch4 tonight 9pm

Crapaud

Wasn't sure where to post this, so put it here because it probably affects commuters more.

It's more to do with motorists but the blurb in the local rag states that...

Millions of drivers find themselves trapped in traffic jams each year. And it's getting worse, with commuting times doubling since 2003. The result is road rage: wasted time, exasperation and frayed tempers. .....

Might be interesting, or more of the same-old, same-old.

Crapaud

I don't think that I've seen a less informative documentary! Total tosh!

Sorry folks. :oops:

dang65

Crapaud wrote:

I don't think that I've seen a less informative documentary! Total tosh!

Sorry folks. :oops:

Same here. It was recommended in the TV guides as well.

The stress coming off those people was sad to see though. Doesn't it occur to them to change their lives??!

In my whole working life (25 years so far) I've never driven to work on any kind of regular basis, just occasional short stints when circumstances dictated. Other than that, public transport or (mainly) bike. And I've worked all over the UK and abroad. I would go completely insane if I had to sit in traffic like that every day, year in year out.

newburb_1968

I saw the first 10mins of it tonight, before I had to go to work and hit the record button.
(I'm usually on a 7am to 3pm shift)
I just saw these people sitting in traffic and then I thought that was me up until a year ago, I used to travel 35miles then switch to a train because I could be bothered to sit in traffic and then crowded out on trains.
Well I changed that I drive 35miles on the motorway and then pull my bike out of the motor and then cycle the reminder of the 15miles in total bliss.
It's actually quicker than the train, enjoyable and less stressful (Unless someone deicied to cut in front of you to take a short cut).
When I do use the train I hate it and just don't attempt to drive into central London anymore, I don't know how I done it for so long and all I know is that I will not go back to doing this. So Dang65 your right "Can't they change their Lives"

prj45

What a load of rubbish.

It even descended into twee territory at the end with "it's bad, but we love it" type stuff.

The two main characters (sweary mortgage salesman and racist ageist truck driver) were obviously playing up to the camera for effect. At one point racist truck driver moaned at other trucks parked on a road (presumably to display anger to the camera) and then said "I mean I do it as well though"

Contentless tripe.

Parkey

I enjoyed it.

The national traffic problem does seem to be a bit of an "elephant in the room" that nobody will admit exists. I mean, 800 more cars on the road every day!

Wouldn't be such a problem if our central government haddn't always given public transport the cinderella treatment.

The Greg

I particularly liked the mother of two teenage kids complaining that she "has no other option" than to drive 15 mile round trip each morning and afternoon to drop/pick up both of the kids at/from different schools and then get herself to/from work.

Obviously it would be far too much of a strain on the little treasures to get their lazy @rses onto a bike and cycle the few miles to and from school - they might even reverse the doughboy chubbyness that already seemed to be taking hold.

Eat My Dust

2 things I loved about it:

1. guy in car, 1 mile in 15 mins!!!!!

2. The big lorry driver with his big girly voice!!!!!

redddraggon

The Greg wrote:

Obviously it would be far too much of a strain on the little treasures to get their lazy @rses onto a bike and cycle the few miles to and from school - they might even reverse the doughboy chubbyness that already seemed to be taking hold.

I'm all for encouraging increasing the number of journeys by bike - but I couldn't have got to school everyday by bike - I played rugby every day, carried a good few books. And I often had 1 hour to get from school to my part time job. At least commuting by bike to work now there's not much I have to carry.

Although I suppose for most lazy school kids cycling to school would be a good idea - but they are called azy for a reason (because they are lazy)ca.

Eat My Dust

When I was at school which wasn't a million years ago, virtually nobody got there by car. When did this change?

Gussio

prj45 wrote:

Contentless tripe.

Couldn't agree more. Depressing rubbish with tedious interview subjects displaying their (very) limited vocabularies.

dirk_van_gently

Eat My Dust wrote:

When I was at school which wasn't a million years ago, virtually nobody got there by car. When did this change?

When I was at school which was a million years ago, nobody got there by car, well not that I can remember. I had slightly less than 3 mile walk each way. Too close to get a bus pass.

I think I would probably got a thick ear if I had asked to be driven to shool.

dang65

Eat My Dust wrote:

When I was at school which wasn't a million years ago, virtually nobody got there by car. When did this change?

How did people get to work in those days though? I think it was the same story, far fewer went by car. At least school run drivers are carrying passengers and school books and games kit etc, and they probably have to rush off to work as soon as possible after they've dropped the kids off.

The sheer weight of traffic in the rush hour is not down to school runs, as is obvious in the evening when the school run is out the way by 4pm but the traffic is just as bad, or even worse, at 5.30 or 6pm. The reason traffic dies down so much in the school holidays is because whole families go away on holiday together, which takes loads of going-to-work drivers off the road all at the same time.

I think that pointing the finger at "school run mums" is massive head-in-sand burying by commuter drivers.

Also, I'd love to see their reaction to the roads suddenly being full of 8-year-olds on bikes in the morning!

Parkey

The Greg wrote:

I particularly liked the mother of two teenage kids complaining that she "has no other option" than to drive 15 mile round trip each morning and afternoon to drop/pick up both of the kids at/from different schools and then get herself to/from work.

Or they could walk, or go on the bus maybe.

Cars seem to have this way of making otherwise intelligent people refuse to allow themselves to entertain the possibility that there might be another way of doing things. They always insist "there's no alternative". No dear, there are always alternatives.

CJ Bill

Dirk Van Gently wrote:

Eat My Dust wrote:

When I was at school which wasn't a million years ago, virtually nobody got there by car. When did this change?

When I was at school which was a million years ago, nobody got there by car, well not that I can remember. I had slightly less than 3 mile walk each way. Too close to get a bus pass.

I think I would probably got a thick ear if I had asked to be driven to shool.

I was just shy of the three mile limit as well and cycled. Managed OK with games kit and books.
Back then (early 80's) you'd get stick if you got a lift to school with your mum... maybe we should bring back bulllying like this {jk}

photons

It is scenes like this on the road where I vouch for communism.

Clever Pun

I watched it for about 5 minutes, where there was a mental truck driver going @peshit at everything.... not wearing a seatbelt in any of the shots he was driving

but he's a very good driver, so it's ok

Parkey

photons wrote:

It is scenes like this on the road where I vouch for communism.

Roads are a kind of communist construct, socialist at least. They are provided by the state, everybody has equal right to use them, and they're free at the point of use. In places where road space is a scarce resource it is rationed by long queues forming.

Given this it's odd how it's usually those on the right who advocate the private car over forms of transport that can be shown to be more capitalist in nature, such as railways where the user pays directly for each journey made and the ticket prices are determined at least to an extent by market forces.

I'm not saying we should privatise the roads, I'm just commenting that when there's increasing demand for something that's in fixed supply we can either have long queues or make people pay more.

The Greg

Dang 65,

These kids were'nt 8 yr olds, they were teenagers - old enough to be let out on their own to get p1ssed on a Saturday night but too fragile to be made to get their own way to and from school.

Without wanting to descend into a Pythonesque 'we had it so tough' rant, when I used to ride to school it would most days involve strapping the cricket gear bag with a bat, pads etc inside sideways across the rear carrier (the one with the hinge-sprung restrainer mechanism) and carrying a backpack with books etc on my back - it was no big deal. On the very rare occassion that I'd catch a ride to school with my mum on the way to work I'd make sure she dropped my off around the corner from school - not cool to be driven by your mum.

During the week my mum worked, my sister and I went to school, played sport etc. We were each responsible for making sure we got to our respective destinations.

I agree that school mums aren't the only problem but in many (often entirely avoidable cases) they are one of the problems.

Siechotic

The best comment made, in my opinion, was when the girl in the control room said, "I closed down a motorway today, not everyone can say that!"

I have a cousin who works for the Yorkshire Highways Agency, she is one of the flourescent jackets on the motorway you see pretending to be the police.

She has told me that they are told by management to act as though they are the police and to regard every driver (broken down or on the road) as an idiot!

On the walking to school thing, when I was younger (so long ago now ) my parents both worked long shifts, starting 6am finishing 6pm, so myself and two younger brothers had to get ourselves ready in the mornings, sort our own breakfasts, and then walk the 4 miles to school. I don't want to sound like I'm playing a little violin, but kids these days do has it too easy. There may be some reasoning behind it what with the (apparent) sudden increase in peados, but they must have been around back when I was a kid?!
We were more street savvy though, we didn't have PCs, Game Consoles etc, we actually went out and played football, cricket, tennis (my nephew who is 8 thinks he is going to be a champion tennis player, just because he can beat the Wii tennis!), we rode our bikes for miles and miles, disappearing for hours on end.

Please don't mistake me for a bleating old fart, I'm only 40.

Maybe the problem is the way that the media get the news so quickly reported today from all areas, 30 years back you would never have known that the local post office in Bognor Regis had been robbed, unless you lived in or near Bognor, or that a teenager had been stabbed/killed in a town miles away.

How many stabbings have been reported in the past week? Four to my knowledge, and that's from just watching one news programme.

Apologies for sliding off on a tangent.

dang65

The Greg wrote:

Dang 65,

These kids were'nt 8 yr olds, they were teenagers - old enough to be let out on their own to get p1ssed on a Saturday night but too fragile to be made to get their own way to and from school.

Were they? I didn't catch their ages, but I heard the mother say they were at two different schools, so presumably they weren't technically old enough to go out and get p1ssed yet. But if they were older students at college or something, then at least that would count as a car share wouldn't it?

What I mean is, if we're going to target drivers for using cars when they could easily use an alternative, then there are several types of driver who should be ahead of school run mums on the list. i.e. Those that drive completely on their own to work each day, those that drive to the local shops to buy the paper and 20 fags, those that drive to the gym (duh!), those that drive to the local park to walk their dogs (double duh) etc.

Primary schools these days open their gates at 08:40am. They won't allow kids into the school grounds before that time, and they make an awful fuss if you leave kids on their own outside the gate. So, parents that work often have to get their kids to school no earlier than 08:40, and then get to work for 09:00.

That may not be a good thing, but it seems to me like more of a justification for using a car than someone who has to be at work for 09:00, but could leave home two or three hours earlier on a bike or bus if they could be bothered. And it's those very people that make the biggest noise about the school run!

Crapaud

Siechotic wrote:

The best comment made, in my opinion, was when the girl in the control room said, "I closed down a motorway today, not everyone can say that!"

The best comment, IMO, was Dr. Peter Marsh of the Social something Research Centre:

"Driving in London is a very expensive form of lunacy."

The Greg

Dang65 wrote - "Those that drive completely on their own to work each day, those that drive to the local shops to buy the paper and 20 fags, those that drive to the gym (duh!), those that drive to the local park to walk their dogs (double duh) etc. "

Can I also include those who drive to the local park and unload their bike from their car in order to go for a ride.
:roll:

Eat My Dust

dang65 wrote:

The sheer weight of traffic in the rush hour is not down to school runs, as is obvious in the evening when the school run is out the way by 4pm but the traffic is just as bad, or even worse, at 5.30 or 6pm.

I could agree about this in the evening but not in the morning. I pass a lot of schools on my 13 mile commute and during any school holiday the roads are almost empty in the morning. When the schools are in it's gridlock!!!

dang65

Eat My Dust wrote:

dang65 wrote:

The sheer weight of traffic in the rush hour is not down to school runs, as is obvious in the evening when the school run is out the way by 4pm but the traffic is just as bad, or even worse, at 5.30 or 6pm.

I could agree about this in the evening but not in the morning. I pass a lot of schools on my 13 mile commute and during any school holiday the roads are almost empty in the morning. When the schools are in it's gridlock!!!

Yeah, but as I pointed out previously, that's because whole families go away on holiday together - which takes large numbers of work commuters off the road at the same time, including relatives of people who don't drive to school at all.

I think that if you only removed school run car drivers from the roads then you'd see little difference in the rush hour weight of traffic.

cee

surely if the kids are going to two different schools 15 miles away from their home, then that is a personal choice made by the parents (or the local education authority if the kids are baduns!).

So there is another way....send your kids to the school in your local catchment area!....then if the distance is over 3 miles, they get a free buspass!

So you don't need to drive the cotton wool wrapped little saps.....either use your local schools, and if you would RATHER that they went somewhere else, MOVE or STOP MOANING. Hell....send them to boarding school!

i also lived just under the 3 mile limit and walked (along with my younger sister) to primary school, in all weathers. Then when I started high school, I used to walk the almost 3 miles to primary school with my sister, then a couple of miles to high school. ON the way home, we would meet in the middle.

there. ranting complete

And Another thing!

Dang....I don't buy the whole families go on holiday together thing.......what? for 6 weeks of the year during the summer......

I know that obviously they wouldn't ALL be going away at the same time, so concede that this would have some effect, but the difference the day before and the day after summer holidays is astounding!

SmellTheGlove

Didn't see the prog so don't know whether the idea of liftshare was discussed.

Being a 2/5 bike commuter I've used the London liftshare.org for about a year to try and track down a likely sharer for two/three regular trips per week - result: stuff all (and I keep my bike habit to myself in that context...)

Obviously I've also done all the other things like asking work colleagues etc.

Even if timings were only convenient for e.g. the morning trip I would have expected someone to bite by now and at least try it out. It might not make a giant dent in the nation's apparent gridlock problem - how could anyone quantify it? - but enthusiasm for the concept seems to be limited even with fuel prices going tonto.

dang65

cee wrote:

Dang....I don't buy the whole families go on holiday together thing.......what? for 6 weeks of the year during the summer......

I know that obviously they wouldn't ALL be going away at the same time, so concede that this would have some effect, but the difference the day before and the day after summer holidays is astounding!

Well, yeah, say that most familes take a week's Summer holiday. It doesn't need for everyone to be away for the whole six weeks. Even if just one sixth of school-age familes are away in any given week, that still lifts a huge number of people off the roads. With shorter holidays, like the current one-week half-term, there's probably even more people away at the same time. It's certainly pretty quiet at the moment, not just during rush hour, but in the shops and out-and-about generally.

The Greg

To clarify, what the mother in the programme was saying was that the round trip (i.e. dropping kid No.1 off, dropping kid No.2 off and then driving to her work) was 15 miles in total.

After departing from her home at ("we can't leave later than or we'll never make it") 8:15am, the clock on her car when she dropped kid No.1 at school showed 8:30am - now given that she was supposedly driving in "horrendous traffic" and one of the other drivers in the programme was shown to have driven 1 mile in 15 minutes, even being doubly generous, kid No.1 would likely live no more than 2 miles from school - 2 miles! That would only take about 20mins to walk!

"I don't have any other options" other than to drive them she says. :evil:

JoeSoap76

dang65 wrote:

I think that if you only removed school run car drivers from the roads then you'd see little difference in the rush hour weight of traffic.

Yes and no. Maybe the volume of traffic wouldn't decrease by much (say 5%) but it always seems to make the world of diffference. I don't have kids and lose track of when the schools break up... but I always know when they have because of the traffic.

If I sat and thought about my (ex-)drive into the city centre, the problems are all caused by junctions which are too close together. I'm queued up at a set of traffic lights but even when they turn green there is only enough of a space before the next queue at the next junction for two or three cars to get through before the lights turn to red again. Same happens at every set of lights and it takes 30 minutes to go 5 miles.

Perhaps even a 5% reduction in the volume of traffic is enough to ease congestion at traffic lights, roundabouts, junctions etc to the point where everything flows along as it should do and it seems as though there must be a 50% reduction in the number of cars around us?

dirk_van_gently

JoeSoap76 wrote:

Yes and no. Maybe the volume of traffic wouldn't decrease by much (say 5%) but it always seems to make the world of difference.

Got to agree, there was a thread the other day. My commute is at odd hours, I start at 7:30, so my commute starts about 6:55, now you wouldn't expect school run traffic to affect me much, and yet I have noticed an immense difference this week. To add to that, it is not as though I am in a big city, I'm out in the wilds of East Anglia.