Roadworks planning failure!

[Bill]

I live in the "isle" of Purbeck. It's cut off from most of the country by Poole Harbour and some steep chalk ridges. There are two ways in/on, a road past Corfe Castle and a ferry from Sandbanks in Poole. The ferry goes to Studland which can also be accessed by road from a side turning in Corfe Castle.

The side road to Studland is currently closed for roadworks. And the ferry is on its biannual maintenance break. So all Studland traffic has to go via Swanage.

So far, so annoying.

But yesterday they put traffic lights on the main road in and out just before Corfe Castle. We didn't realise and my wife went out that way and took 30 minutes to get through the queue only to find there was no one doing any work. It looks like they'd set up early, presumably for a Monday start!

So, who should I send a strongly worded email to???

[normalbloke]

30 minutes you say?

[Bill]

IKR! That's pretty bad round here.


Anyway, nothing on the council website but when I tried to make a report it shows a report from the same area. Looks like it's a pothole they're planning to fix.

[scorcher]

Throw the cones and traffic lights in the hedge and let them set them up again when they actually arrive to do some work. They ought to be called ’traffic mismanagement’ companies.

[GranpaB]

Bill said:

So, who should I send a strongly worded email to???

Someone who cares at BCP?

[Bill]

scorcher said:

Throw the cones and traffic lights in the hedge and let them set them up again when they actually arrive to do some work. They ought to be called ’traffic mismanagement’ companies.

I'd be tempted if I needed to go out, but it's a lovely day so I'm pottering in the garden.

[Bill]

GranpaB said:

Someone who cares at BCP?

FPWM...

[Ziplobb]

Bill said:

But yesterday they put traffic lights on the main road in and out just before Corfe Castle. We didn't realise and my wife went out that way and took 30 minutes to get through the queue only to find there was no one doing any work. It looks like they'd set up early, presumably for a Monday start!

So, who should I send a strongly worded email to???

This kind of thing is constantly happening on the Isle of Wight. One of the major routes is closed for works OK so everyone goes the logical alternative but wait Clancys are digging a hole foe the waterboard. no signs no nothing before you venture on the detour. they are the worst because they are unable to resurface there hole for 3 days so we have to endure traffic lights until some one come along with a barrow load of tarmac and a wackerplate. I have noticed recently that motorists are getting fed up and moving the traffic lights out if the way. This the allows drivers to exercise some common send and the hold ups are much less time consuming.

[andy43]

I always like to play spot the hole with temporary traffic lights. Constantly amazed by the number that just have a pile of sand on the road while the hole either doesn’t exist at all or it’s in the pavement.
Most of the snarl ups round here are due to obviously lethal “compromised pavement safety” for the hordes of pedestrians we don’t have, or the texters needing somewhere to park their vans while they lean on them and text people, or they stick some lights up at least a week before they come and start staring at their phones just so they know the lights are bedded in and delaying the traffic correctly.
Although to be fair I’ve seen a real live hole in the road at temporary lights this week. Diggers’n’everyfink. Proper.

[Bobtherallyfan]

The ineptitude of Highways authorities beggars belief sometimes. Recently Hampshire Highways closed a road that’s runs under the main A35 near us for nearly a year while they built a bridge. The reopening was then delayed for a further two months because a blackbird built a nest under the bridge. It’s finally reopened for a couple of months and now it’s closing again, to repair a cattle grid….they had over a year to do it when the road was closed for God’s sake.

[ARHarh]

They are closing a road here tomorrow for the day. Its not the busiest road but has plenty of lorry's and farm vehicles along with normal traffic. The diversion is via narrow single carriageway lanes with a few passing places. It will be gridlock within 20 minutes is my guess. Locals have raised the issue but they are still going ahead with the diversion as the alternative is a 30 odd mile detour. tempted to go and watch the chaos

[Vickers_VC10]

I've always felt sorry for Sandford. Their village periodically gets turns into a traffic jam nightmare.

[Jaguar steve]

andy43 said:

I always like to play spot the hole with temporary traffic lights.

So do I.

What happens with utility companies round here is they get a permit to work from the council for a certain number of days and they sub traffic management for road closure or restricted flow for that work out to a third party.

Third party sets up the lights/cones/signs for the entire duration of the permit to work and the utility company rocks up to actually do the work whenever they finish the last job or they've got a few spare bodies with nothing else to do that afternoon.

Cost efficient use of manpower for them but an absolute pain in the rectal area for everybody else.

[and31]

I work for a utility company and my experience with traffic management is the opposite- very often we turn up to do a job and the TM company is late-especially if it’s a night job.very frustrating.

[vikingaero]

Bill said:

scorcher said:

Throw the cones and traffic lights in the hedge and let them set them up again when they actually arrive to do some work. They ought to be called ’traffic mismanagement’ companies.

I'd be tempted if I needed to go out, but it's a lovely day so I'm pottering in the garden.

I did that once on The Highway in London.

Queued for 1.5 hours after they put cones out. No works started. I was so pished off when I got to the cones that I parked after the coned off lane and threw all the cones onto the central reservation. Got back into my car and it was just a massive flow of traffic as the bottleneck eased. Got lot of beeps of thanks for doing it. I was only in my 20's so not even an angry PH'er then (maybe a PH'er in training!)

[cue adenoidal PH with traffic offence to interfere blah blah]

[anonymous-user]

I`m currently enjoying SGNs monthly ritual of digging up Spetisbury to fix the gas leak. Why they couldn't fix the leak on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th go I have no idea

[joropug]

The state of traffic in BCP at the moment is categorically the worst it has ever been. There are roadworks everywhere and bottlenecks on every route.

Wallisdown road shut one way has been horrendous as it is, huge knock on - Now starting today 1 lane of the 40mph section of the Wessex Way is shut in both directions for THREE WEEKS. Also, you can't make certain turns off the Richmond Hill roundabout which will double traffic around as people go the wrong direction to be able to turn back.

Right pain, I'm leaving for work earlier and earlier to try and beat it.

[Zetec-S]

Bobtherallyfan said:

The ineptitude of Highways authorities beggars belief sometimes. Recently Hampshire Highways closed a road that’s runs under the main A35 near us for nearly a year while they built a bridge. The reopening was then delayed for a further two months because a blackbird built a nest under the bridge. It’s finally reopened for a couple of months and now it’s closing again, to repair a cattle grid….they had over a year to do it when the road was closed for God’s sake.

If you're talking about the works at the Burley junction, you're forgetting that they managed to coincide this with the long running lane closures on the A31 at Ringwood, meaning disruption to the 2 main east-west routes across the New Forest

[Mars]

scorcher said:

Throw the cones and traffic lights in the hedge and let them set them up again when they actually arrive to do some work. They ought to be called ’traffic mismanagement’ companies.

This.

This happened last week on the A44 between Evesham and Pershore. Stupid tossers roadworks crew left their temp lights in place after they'd finished with the work, causing an additional 30 mins queue for everyone. By the time I got to them, someone had moved them out of the way and turned the lights to face the hedges on both sides.

[and31]

Mars said:

This.

This happened last week on the A44 between Evesham and Pershore. Stupid tossers roadworks crew left their temp lights in place after they'd finished with the work, causing an additional 30 mins queue for everyone. By the time I got to them, someone had moved them out of the way and turned the lights to face the hedges on both sides.

Reinstatement in the carriageway can take hours and hours to go off.The blokes doing the work will probably have nothing to do with the temp lights.usually a third party TM company will be responsible for the lights,and if they are coming down that day the tm bloke will usually be on site
If the lights are left up,they are left for a reason
And if the lights were moved out of the way and turned into the hedge it was probably the traffic management bloke that did lol

Edited by and31 on Monday 14th November 18:28

Edited by and31 on Monday 14th November 18:41