RE: Billions for new roads. Maybe

[Mr Whippy]

nickboazracing said:

Foggy748 said:

Politicians eh? Do we need them?

No. We definately need a North Korean style regime. That's a much better way to go.

Or just smaller locally responsible and accountable groups should take control of local issues.

Central government should look at the big picture. If their gaze falls onto things smaller than entire regions then they have micro-managed too far.

Dave

[GTR Cook]

ArmaghMan said:

Dear Sir,
Welcome to your new home. We would be grateful if you could buy lots of bottled water, and a garage full of batteries.
We will endeavour to supply you with water and electricity in a few years once the road has degenerated.
In the meantime you and the rest of your tax paying, rate paying neighbours can use your gardens as temporary lavatories.
Best regards
Selfish motorist

Would it be so hard to inform the utility company's of the road works and if they are planning any upgrades or work on the existing network including possible extensions they should do it before a nice new road surface is put down.

Surely Building companies have to file for permission for new builds, I believe the council deal with this as well as the road works. Surely some planning and foresight could be employed. And at worse, they should be billed to relay enough of the road so it lasts.

Hardly requires neighbours deficating in each others garden!

I guess your happy wasting tax payers money!

[dublet]

k-ink said:

Indeed our small island is massively over populated. Still, the borders are wide open and people continue to have loads of kids so it will continue to get far more crowded. In the future we will have to travel at night to get anywhere.

It's not. Outside of the the south east, the UK is massively barren compared to many other countries in the EU. Only 15% of the UK is developed land, 71% of it is agriculture with another 10% as woodlands, with another few percentage of miscellaneous.


The borders are not wide open and the birth rate is almost half what it was in 1960.

If it wasn't for migrants, you'd be paying much more tax to pay for pensioners.

But of course, this is an empty promise.

[grumpy52]

Best way of improving the southern section of the M25 the M20, M2, M26, M23 M3 and probably the London end of the M4 ?
Build a south coast motorway from Dover along the coast to Plymouth .

[MattCSLnut]

Every time I read or hear these empty promises being made this is what I visualise



They might as well be promising us a super highway to the Moon

[r129sl]

We need less not more.

Too many cars. Too many people. Too many utterly pointless journeys. Too much st you don't really need or want.

Economic growth is no good for most of us: unless you own the company, it just means more work for less pay (that's the definition of an increase in productivity).

Living in Northumberland, the last thing I want is a dual carriageway A1: I've been to the south east before and it is fking horrible.

[j_s14a]

250GTE said:

Can anybody imagine how "anti car" a labour or lib/lab coalition government will be?

It doesn't bare thinking about My local Labour council (York) hate cars. So much so that they have insisted I have a cycle store at my house, and have made planning permission for a driveway as difficult as possible.

Then there was this farce: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2690448/Co...

[fatboy18]

Don't worry, they have just announced they are going to raise the price of public transport again, so it looks like people will still carry on using cars

[daytona365]

Much the same as with houses, we don't need more roads, just less people and cars. But that pillock has known this, as we all have for at least from say, oh 1997.

[daytona365]

''No. We definately need a North Korean style regime. That's a much better way to go''...........Break away the candy coating, and that's more or less what we have.

[mybrainhurts]

PH said:

We're still awaiting that 80mph motorway speed limit we were assured was about to happen several years ago, for a start

Wake up PH, that was officially dropped long ago.

Government caved in to hysterical screams from BRAKE. Incompetence and ignorance rule OK.

[wst]

Increasing road capacity does not positively improve journey times for a bunch of reasons.

"We conclude that an increased provision of roads or public transit is unlikely to relieve congestion."

[sisu]

The lorries on the motorways are your own making. All container trucks that enter the UK have to go to the Midlands. Then they are dispatched to where ever you live. Sounds as stupid as it is.
There was/is a plan to build a container port with a rail system to the local areas.

But all of these plans including roading involve spending money within your country.

This will be the ethical challenge

[bimbeano]

thatdude said:

I would rather see the money being spent on improving the quality of the current road network. The M25, for example, has some terrible patches which are worse when experieinced on a motorcycle. other roads are also very bad.

Eeeeerrrr ... ever driven in Belgium ? I don't think UK has many bad roads, they're not brilliant but i think Belgium must be the best country to wreck your suspension, whenever i cross the border coming in to Holland there is a huge relief and often disbelief as they probably have the best road surface in the world ....

[dcb]

grumpy52 said:

Best way of improving the southern section of the M25 the M20, M2, M26, M23 M3 and probably the London end of the M4 ?
Build a south coast motorway from Dover along the coast to Plymouth

Excellent idea, which would solve a lot of problems and promote
economic activity, but never going to happen.

I've been waiting 20+ years for the Arundel bypass to be done.
That's only about 1% of what you propose.

The NIMBYs have won in the UK.

[bimbeano]

mybrainhurts said:

Wake up PH, that was officially dropped long ago.

Government caved in to hysterical screams from BRAKE. Incompetence and ignorance rule OK.

In Holland they 'upend' the speed limit from 100 and 120 to 130 on several highways ... works perfect ... but i can assure you that highways in Holland are extremely boring.

[cookie1600]

When I was a kid I was assured that we'd all be in flying cars by now?



In the highly unlikely event we see any increase in spending on our roads in the future, can we start with the A27 please? Enough people have been killed and enough years wasted in queues just trying to make the daily journey to and from work for millions of people. If I promise never to drive beyond the A27, can the Government ensure all the money I pay for road tax, fuel duty, VAT, insurance tax etc etc is spent locally???

Two hopes....

[bri_the_fly]

k-ink said:

juk said:

' "biggest, boldest and most far-reaching road improvement programme" for 40 years. ' = more motorway speed cameras.

Sounds about right.

The financial pages say 5 more years of EU austerity and spend how much on roads? Exactly right I'd say, put more cones down, put a sign up saying 'road improvement plan', install cameras and not a digger in sight!

No government, anywhere in the world, wants to make road traffic more efficient. If govts start to make big improvements, BIG OIL is gonna come along and tell them not to do it as how are they gonna sell all that fuel without traffic jams burning fuel going nowhere.

[Mr Whippy]

r129sl said:

We need less not more.

Too many cars. Too many people. Too many utterly pointless journeys. Too much st you don't really need or want.

Economic growth is no good for most of us: unless you own the company, it just means more work for less pay (that's the definition of an increase in productivity).

Living in Northumberland, the last thing I want is a dual carriageway A1: I've been to the south east before and it is fking horrible.

A fair point.

Do we really want to turn these nice quiet and clearly sustainable (if not hugely economically active) areas into those very things that are despised?


I think finishing the by-pass routes to alleviate towns and villages of traffic would be a better spend.

Make places nicer where traffic already exists in too high quantities for the road networks in place, but not encourage more traffic to them with enhanced trunk routes.

Northumberland might be served better as a region by a DC, but flooding those local roads with more traffic wouldn't be a nice thing at all!

Dave

[Piglet15f]

At the moment David Cameron would kill his own mother to stay in power and promise us the world till he is elected then normal service will be resumed. I know a lot of these roads need major work but what about the existing road network the roads here in Essex are a patchwork of poor repair potholes and lumpy sections of tarmac left in the wake of utility repairs.....