How to get poorly laid out road markings changed? (Essex)

[FatboyKim]

What is the process for changing road markings or drawing the council's attention to a road with poorly thought out lines? Contact the council? Write to my MP? Embark on a long-winded publicity campaign leading to nothing being done?

The road concerned is New London Road in Chelmsford, Essex. Fellow Chelmsfordians will be familiar with this road, but 2 lanes head south west and 1 lane travels north east, with regular dashed lines dividing all the lanes.

https://goo.gl/maps/xWuCJ7zEPttqy4Gu8







It's a fairly regular occurrence for cars driving on the single lane (headed SW) to think that they have access to 2 lanes because there is a dashed line they can cross rather than say, a double solid line. Other times, lazy and ignorant motorists headed SW simply begin driving in the middle lane halfway along with the intention of joining the filter lane turning right at the crossroad with New Writtle Street, before the small hatched diagonal area which finally changes the lanes (seen in picture 1 above). Recently there have been a couple of head-ons, a motorcyclist knocked off, and countless near misses.

I would imagine a double line dividing the 2-lane and 1-lane directions would solve the problem?

Edited by FatboyKim on Wednesday 19th January 14:21

[Lozw86]

I don't know the answer to your question but I do often wonder whether the people that work in the relevant council / highways departments actually drive on local roads themselves and see how stupid, poorly designed, poorly maintained or ill conceived some of the road network is. Or perhaps they get the train to work each day and are completely oblivious

[ingenieur]

FatboyKim said:

What is the process for changing road markings or drawing the council's attention to a road with poorly thought out lines? Contact the council? Write to my MP? Embark on a long-winded publicity campaign leading to nothing being done?

The road concerned is New London Road in Chelmsford, Essex. Fellow Chelmsfordians will be familiar with this road, but 2 lanes head south west and 1 lane travels north east, with regular dashed lines dividing all the lanes.

https://goo.gl/maps/xWuCJ7zEPttqy4Gu8







It's a fairly regular occurrence for cars driving on the single lane (headed SW) to think that they have access to 2 lanes because there is a dashed line they can cross rather than say, a double solid line. Other times, lazy and ignorant motorists headed SW simply begin driving in the middle lane halfway along with the intention of joining the filter lane turning right at the crossroad with New Writtle Street, before the small hatched diagonal area which finally changes the lanes (seen in picture 1 above). Recently there have been a couple of head-ons, a motorcyclist knocked off, and countless near misses.

I would imagine a double line dividing the 2-lane and 1-lane directions would solve the problem?

Edited by FatboyKim on Wednesday 19th January 14:21

Write to your councillor/s and the councillor/s responsible for the area. They are your local representatives for an issue like this. Writing to the council itself is pointless as they'll be working from home and won't give a flying fig... they'll just ignore you, do nothing and wait for you to get bored. But the councillors should follow it up and keep tabs on it if they're anyway half decent.

[GreatGranny]

That kind of road layout occurs all over the country without incident.

I suggest instances of drivers getting into the wrong lane is not any more frequent than other cities and towns and it's just drivers not concentrating.

There are specific specifications and regulations for road markings set out in TSRGD 2016.

So you can have a look in there and if it's not marked to those regulations then raise it with the local HA.

[oyster]

OP, surely those travelling on the single lane do indeed have access to the other lane, if it's clear and they're overtaking? No different from any other road with dashed lines in that regard.

Whether or not such allowance should be available in that location is another question.

But it might be dashed lines to allow drivers to overtake cyclists for example.

[kowalski655]

Isnt Opulent Bob of this parish in charge of roads in that area? IIRC its certainly some part of Essex

[xx99xx]

I recently got a painted arrow changed by just submitting a request to the council via their standard 'report it' facility online. To be fair, it was a freshly painted incorrect arrow (straight ahead arrow in a right turn only lane) so not very contentious. I think they even did it within 2 days of me making them aware.

I'd advise:
1st stop - council highways team
2nd stop - your local councillor
3rd stop - the councillor with responsibility for highways

[stogbandard]

I don’t know why but double white lines only seem to be used where there are specific circumstances.

Look to Europe and more widely and solid lines are used to help define opposing flows of traffic on multi lane sections. You can understand in this context why the US uses yellow lining to separate opposing traffic flows.

[LunarOne]

Report the issue on fixmystreet. I reported a local issue and my council got back to me to say when they would inspect the issue I reported. They agreed that there was a problem, and they carried out the works on time and kept me informed throughout.

https://www.fixmystreet.com/report/new?longitude=0...

Edited by LunarOne on Thursday 20th January 00:10

[alfaspecial]

As others have said report to Council.

If no joy.......

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/pothol...

[Monsterlime]

Nothing really constructive to add, but I grew up and lived in Chelmsford for 30+ years. I now live in Falkirk and honestly, some of the road/junction design up here is unbelievable.

Roads are generally quieter here, Chelmsford is usually horrific (especially at rush hour or weekends etc), but the Edinburgh bypass (A720) is probably worse than the A12 to travel on when busy and the M9 Junctions 1A and 1..WTF were they thinking with that, I'd love to know who thought that was a good idea (and I've seen it repeated in Scotland a few times, but not in England, of course that doesn't mean it hasn't been).

[FatboyKim]

As an update, I wrote to the head of the city council (as it wasn't particularly clear which councillor would be best placed to deal with a highways issue) and she replied within an hour to thank me, and to confirm that she too has experienced the poor driving here, and agrees that there is definitely 'scope for improvements'. Specifically what those improvements involve, I don't know, but I imagine we'll end up with lots more directional arrows on the lanes.

Monsterlime said:

Nothing really constructive to add, but I grew up and lived in Chelmsford for 30+ years. I now live in Falkirk and honestly, some of the road/junction design up here is unbelievable.

Roads are generally quieter here, Chelmsford is usually horrific (especially at rush hour or weekends etc), but the Edinburgh bypass (A720) is probably worse than the A12 to travel on when busy and the M9 Junctions 1A and 1..WTF were they thinking with that, I'd love to know who thought that was a good idea (and I've seen it repeated in Scotland a few times, but not in England, of course that doesn't mean it hasn't been).

It's one of the main reasons I bought a motorcycle. In school holidays and half terms there are no issues whatsoever, and I can get home in about a third of the time.

stogbandard said:

I don’t know why but double white lines only seem to be used where there are specific circumstances.

I wonder if double solid white lines can't be used here because the single SW-headed lane already has a narrow width, and emergency service vehicles technically can't cross a double white line, even on a call. All three lanes here regularly have traffic backed up to the previous junction.

Edited by FatboyKim on Friday 21st January 10:41

[Steve Campbell]

I doubt they'd go for double white lines as the solution as indicated above, but a couple of white arrows indicating the direction of travel in that 2nd lane wouldn't go amiss to make it clear which way is "right" for that middle lane.

[outnumbered]

You'll probably get a two lane road with extra cycle lanes