That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘traffic’

I was quite pleased to see that noted scientist, economist and government policy advisor* Alistair McGowan has been speaking out about the proposed (and de facto approved) plans to expand Heathrow with a further terminal and runway. I wonder if Mr McGowan has gotten a little carried away with his day job; one where he impersonates people who either know what they are talking about or whose opinion the public cares about. Along with a bunch of other well meaning luvvies, McGowan would rather see an investment in high speed rail links and people being ferried around the country between smaller distributed airports.

The BBC, meanwhile is doing a Have Your Say item in which literally dozens of people who live near Heathrow are complaining that it’s too noisy and they don’t think that there should be an airport expansion. Oddly enough they are quiet about their choice of airport to fly from, one must assume that they trek up to ‘London’ Stanstead or ‘London’ Luton for their flights or down to ‘London’ Gatwick or maybe over to ‘London’ Bristol airport. Maybe they take the tube, bus and walk to the easily accessible London ‘City’ airport which is somewhere in the docklands and great for those who happen to also own a helicopter to get them there.

Heathrow is the busiest airport for a bunch of reasons, most are pretty dull and have something to do with it being a major carrier hub, close to London and well connected on the rail and tube networks. It is, in fact, the only airport in the UK that is within the M25 and connected to both the rail and tube networks so logically it’s the airport of choice for anyone in the south east who does not want to:

The road systems here and all over the world were conceived in an age where people were a lot nicer to each other. These days people are not bound by the same social guidelines and so the law of the jungle often pervades and it is most obvious on the roads. Let’s just deal with that and actually design the roads around the fact that drivers are selfish bastards rather than hoping that people will do the ‘right’ thing.

I was recently driving down some motorway somewhere in the UK and a lane had been closed. Plenty of notice was provided to allow people to safely and courteously merge into the remaining two lanes but there is of course a problem with that… if you merge over into another lane some prick in a BMW or similar will shoot down the empty lane and cut in at the last minute, thus slowing everyone down in that lane as the person cut up by the BMW has to brake hard.

The other thing that happens in these situations is that you might see a large gap to merge into and as soon as you indicate the cock you are pulling in front of accelerates to close the gap in the hope of cutting you out. This normally means that everyone behind him accelerates to close the gaps in front of them and then they all have to slam their brakes on when they realise they are too close. This causes a wave or braking that often extends back many miles.

One thing I like to do is block the empty lane and speed match a car in the lane next to me. That way there is more incentive for people in front and behind to merge over with lots of time to spare and prevents people shooting down the clear lane from behind me (nothing I can do about those in front). It speeds up the traffic flow in front of me because everyone merges early and the traffic flows better. It relies on someone in the next lane over creating space for me to merge into but that’s normally OK if people are smart enough to realise what I am doing and I indicate a lot. Personally I would prefer it if everyone was couteous and considerate while driving but as that’s not going to happen it’s time we took back the roads and made sure ourselves that the roads work inspite of the cocks who ruin it for everyone.

I live not all that far from the M4 which stretches from London to Wales. At the ‘business end’ of the M4 there is a double junction which forms an integral part of the government plan to piss off drivers as much as possible. Junction 8/9 is where the A404 meets the M4 and is a masterpiece in stupidity matched only by the junction at the other end of the A404 where it meets the M40.

These two junctions not only link the M4 and M40 with four lanes of slow traffic broken up regularly with roundabouts, they also link the two motorways in a common misery of traffic caused by two simple factors:

a) the designers were idiots

b) motorists are arseholes

I shall leave the M40 junction because a child of six could take one look at the plans that the highways agency produced to ‘improve’ it and see instantly that it is rubbish and could have been done better. At no point in the very expensive planning and consultation process did anyone appear to have any idea from which direction the traffic was coming and in which direction it was heading; two key bits of information when designing a junction to enable people to get from one place to another.

The M4 end on the other hand is a masterpiece of dumbass misunderstanding of human nature on a scale that I just can’t comprehend. If you take a quick look at the Google Maps shot of the junction from the air you may think that it looks quite simple and you would be forgiven for forgetting the key fact when designing any road system: motorists are selfish tossers.

While I am sure that most people would disagree they would for the most part be lying because I know deep down that even though I try to be a considerate driver I have at least one bad day out of every five where I just want to get there as quickly as possible. Scale that up and you end up with a fifth of the drivers on the road at any one time cutting people up or tailgating and refusing to let people in.

At this point it is worth sending you off to have a look at some research on Nash’s Equilibrium which effectively states that if everyone drives like a knob then everyone suffers. If everyone drives considerately then everyone gets there quicker and if one person drives like a cock and everyone else drives considerately then the one person driving like a selfish cunt will get there quicker at the expense of everyone else.

With that background reading done let’s look at a simple and real world example. If I drive at a steady speed with a lot of space in front of me then I do not have to brake as sharply if the person in front of me brakes. The net effect of this is that there are fewer waves of braking and the traffic behind me, if it follows suit, will use less fuel and everyone will get to work quicker and happier. Unfortunately if I do that in the real world some cock in a BMW M3 will cut in front of me and normally slam on his brakes so that I have to brake. The person behind me will brake a little harder and the one behind him a little harder than that. A mile or so back the traffic may come to a complete standstill because of these waves of braking.

So let’s apply this to traffic at junction 8/9. Traffic coming down the two lane A404 suddenly gets an extra lane to play with so everyone spreads out into a lane in the hope that they may get one car length ahead by cutting in front of someone. After the roundabout those heading into London go down a two lane slip road to merge in with a three lane motorway, that’s five lanes moving in to three, which would be OK if they didn’t insist on pulling right out into the middle or fast lanes while they are still at 30mph and accelerating.

The traffic on the M4 could help things if everyone pulled over into the middle and fast lanes and left the slow lane for the traffic joining at the junction but if you leave a lane clear then some cock will always swerve into it to undertake a few cars and this is precisely what happens. Add to this the fact that there is a two land slip road and you end up with people belting along past the queue in the slow lane and then cutting over at the last minute.

So what’s the solution? The solution is simple of course but it’s two fold. On the one hand you need to redesign the layout of the junction so that the middle and fast lanes of the M4 are kept moving and on the other hand you also need to ensure that there are adequate numbers of traffic officers around to police the roads and fine people for driving like cunts. Rather than having dozens of poorly trained and impotent traffic wombles giving out tin foil to broken down motorists I would rather the money was spent on unmarked police cars out there doing some policing. Forget the speeders, that’s an easy win for a camera, and concentrate on the tailgaters, the cutter uppers and the middle lane hogs. Give them a caution the first time and then three points and sixty quid for each time after that; we’d all get the message pretty quickly and everyone would get to work quicker. As for the junction, let’s use lanes and enforce them. A single lane of the M4 should be dedicated to the junction so people have to get in lane early and stay there. When the lane peels off for the junction keep the motorway at two lanes until after the junction and then feed one single lane back on but let it all get up to the same speed as the motorway traffic before allowing people to change lanes.