London Traffic

[jagracer]

I drive in London for a living and normally start work at 4am and finish by about 1-2pm latest. This week I've had to drive from my home in SE London to Wembley every day to collect a truck and drive back to E London to start work. I'm leaving home at 12 noon daily and the traffic is horrendous even during the day, it took me 2 hours just to get to Wembley yesterday. After about 5pm I've found the roads are gridlocked, I sat in Tottenham for 2 hours on Monday 5-7pm without hardly moving and yesterday was the same in Lewisham area. Even when I was heading back at 10-11pm the traffic is still manic and worse than anything I ever see in the morning rush hours.
As by law my working day starts when I leave home when working away from my own depot I'm losing 3-4 hours a day travelling 50miles.
Is this now the norm, I used to work nights (4pm-4am) about 25 years ago and apart from Thursday and Friday nights being a bit more busy than the rest it was nothing like this week has been. I'll be back on days next week or off sick with stress but if I had to do this regularly I'd have to hang up my HGV licence and retire. How do people commute in that every day?

[croyde]

It's many times worse than 25 years ago. In the 80s I drove in London as a courier and if you came in at 6am you'd be lucky to see another car but now it's full on jams everywhere.

I finish work a lot at 11pm and drive from E London to SW London and there are still jams along the route. Nothing like sitting in solid traffic at midnight after a 12 hour shift.

I'd hate to drive for a living now, especially during the day.

[V1DL3R]

Pretty much. It's funny I can nip around West London at peak times and avoid the traffic areas because I know the roads and the cut throughs. As soon as I need to go somewhere in London which is unfamiliar i use the SatNav, which takes me me the same way as everyone else with a SatNav and I always get stuck in traffic.

[jagracer]

Trouble is I can't use the back doubles, what's left of them as I'm in a 32 ton truck. When on the rare occasions I may have to use a similar route in my car I often forget I can use a lot more roads and still end up in traffic. Strangely enough last Wednesday evening wasn't too bad and I got twice as much work done than the previous two nights put together. Thankfully I'm back to starting at 4am now so all should be a lot better.

[jke11y]

It is definitely worse than when I moved here 5 years ago. This morning it took me 35 minutes to get from Lavender Hill to Battersea park. The thing that really grinds my gears is the lack of regularity; some days my journey is 25 mins, the next day same time can be 1h25, with absolutely no reason visible.

[Shaoxter]

jke11y said:

It is definitely worse than when I moved here 5 years ago. This morning it took me 35 minutes to get from Lavender Hill to Battersea park. The thing that really grinds my gears is the lack of regularity; some days my journey is 25 mins, the next day same time can be 1h25, with absolutely no reason visible.

Traffic dies down noticeably during half term, when all the milfwagons doing 1 mile journeys are off the road.

[jagracer]

There seems to be an excess of roadworks at the moment, must be coming up to April when budgets need to be spent or am I being a cynic? My wife goes from Eltham to Chelsfield every morning returning at about 7am, just recently the traffic on the A20 to FiveWays has been horrendous not helped by M25 closures and overrunning roadworks on the A2/A102 every morning plus the constant accidents at Bexley. As for the latter perhaps the powers that be might one day realise there is a serious flaw in the road layout and change it back to how it used to be instead of the constant lane reductions along that stretch of the A2.

[okgo]

Shaoxter said:

Traffic dies down noticeably during half term, when all the milfwagons doing 1 mile journeys are off the road.

Lavender Hill to Battersea park is under 2 miles... you'd walk it in 30 mins, cycle it in 10, can't see (on the face of it) why anyone would drive that journey.

The real issue with Londons roads is schools. The minute they're off the roads are fine, I ride from SW to the city and the difference between school time and holidays is massive.

[R8VXF]

jagracer said:

There seems to be an excess of roadworks at the moment, must be coming up to April when budgets need to be spent or am I being a cynic?

Don't forget the general election...

[jke11y]

okgo said:

Lavender Hill to Battersea park is under 2 miles... you'd walk it in 30 mins, cycle it in 10, can't see (on the face of it) why anyone would drive that journey.

I'll give you a clue; it was only part of a journey

Just checked and the gridlock bit that took 35 minutes was 0.6miles. Wasting my life sitting in nonsense like this.

[okgo]

jke11y said:

I'll give you a clue; it was only part of a journey

Just checked and the gridlock bit that took 35 minutes was 0.6miles. Wasting my life sitting in nonsense like this.

Makes more sense.

Do you have to drive?

I get its everyones right etc, but I just can't understand why anyone would.

[jke11y]

okgo said:

Makes more sense.

Do you have to drive?

I get its everyones right etc, but I just can't understand why anyone would.

I do, yes; I was also taking the car to the RR specialist there, I just picked a bad route. Its all for work, so visiting sites and moving furniture/samples/tools so I have no choice.

[croyde]

jagracer said:

There seems to be an excess of roadworks at the moment, must be coming up to April when budgets need to be spent or am I being a cynic? My wife goes from Eltham to Chelsfield every morning returning at about 7am, just recently the traffic on the A20 to FiveWays has been horrendous not helped by M25 closures and overrunning roadworks on the A2/A102 every morning plus the constant accidents at Bexley. As for the latter perhaps the powers that be might one day realise there is a serious flaw in the road layout and change it back to how it used to be instead of the constant lane reductions along that stretch of the A2.

True. I got a taxi back from Stratford, East London to Wandsworth, SW London last Saturday night and it took over an hour. Not unusual you may say as it is 14 miles across London but this was at 1am in the morning.

It was traffic jam after traffic jam plus the driver using his Sat Nav as he didn't appear to know London at all. It would have taken longer but I came to my senses (It had been a long work shift) after we had been motionless for 10 mins waiting to get into Clapham High St and got the guy to U-turn and took him a better way home.

[okgo]

Black cabs are good for that. Uber less so, but they're so cheap I usually accept I might have to direct them.

[jagracer]

croyde said:

True. I got a taxi back from Stratford, East London to Wandsworth, SW London last Saturday night and it took over an hour. Not unusual you may say as it is 14 miles across London but this was at 1am in the morning.

It was traffic jam after traffic jam plus the driver using his Sat Nav as he didn't appear to know London at all. It would have taken longer but I came to my senses (It had been a long work shift) after we had been motionless for 10 mins waiting to get into Clapham High St and got the guy to U-turn and took him a better way home.

I had similar last week, the traffic was bad in the early evening but after about 9pm it got considerably worse as all the night time road works kicked in. Monday night I decided to go east London to Wembley via the North circ, big mistake as they close the Fore st tunnel so I sat there for half an hour waiting for traffic lights to let 5 cars at a time cross. Next night I went via Euston Marylebone rds and it was easier but traffic in the opposite direction was horrendous, this was at midnight. A lot of it is caused by people who are on a night out and with no real objective in life and then there's as you say the sat nav navingators that have no idea where they are or where they're going and they cause yet more problems and frustration.

[jagracer]

I now understand why the roads are busier, I've just been to buy a train ticket and the one day railcard that a few years ago was £5 which went up to about £8 last year is now nearly £13. Why would you suffer travelling by train or bus with people coughing sneezing and generally being in your face when you can use a car you already own for an 8th of that price.

[okgo]

Why don't you read your first post. That's why. And the congestion charge would cost you far far more than train travel. Add to that the lack of parking at most companies then you can see why.

[jagracer]

I see your point, dammed if you do dammed if you don't. Retirement to the middle of France might be a feasible alternative now.

[Dr Jekyll]

okgo said:

The real issue with Londons roads is schools. The minute they're off the roads are fine, I ride from SW to the city and the difference between school time and holidays is massive.

That's because many commuters are parents, therefore take their holidays when the children are off.

[okgo]

Dr Jekyll said:

That's because many commuters are parents, therefore take their holidays when the children are off.

That's a part of it. But the amount of people thy drive their kids to school in London despite it likely being very close is staggering.

Every morning Roehampton Gate of Richmond park is a awash with expensive 4x4 driven often by people with no idea of space, these people can't all be driving from miles away, more school buses needed I feel.