Autocar - First for car news and reviews

The Highways Agency has published its plan for the next year, with an increasing emphasis on using technology to maximise capacity of the current road network – and with very few plans for road expansion schemes.
New tech includes ‘Active Traffic Management’ – which has already been trialled on the M25 and M42 – plus queue detection systems and a planned increase in the number of message display boards that have already started to proliferate across the motorway network. Indeed, the 44-page ...Read the full article

This government should start spending some of the money us drivers have to give them on proper road improvements and not keep coming up with rubbish like this!

prohibiting lorries overtaking is a great idea.  all too often i see 2 out of 3 lanes clogged with lorries barely crawling past each other and all other traffic bunched into one lane.

 

So the Dept (Dunces) of Transport plans a little road investment by widening a road and completing the Pourtsmouth highway. But it plans to increase useage of hard shoulders at times of congestion. All sounds like a deeply confused Government!!

Increasing road space to ease congestion is good. But increasing the road network (to reduce congestion) is what, bad? Talk about half-arsed, half-baked thinking!

And then we have increasing road signs and cameras and traffic 'control'. To what end, increase efficiency? Has the Government, to clear it's obvious ignorance, ever conducted a study to show if humans are more efficient at traffic management left to their own devices than dullard traffic computers and cameras?

My prediction is that the intelligence of the human brain makes a multi-million pound traffic computer/software control system look like the first sign of a brains development in Cuttle Fish!

Namely humans are considerably more efficient and many times more intelligent (by a factor of 1,000's) at making road and traffic decisions. Politicians are once again waisting vast sums of public money at a system that won't move man forward and that's dumber than ditchwater. I hope Autocar investigate what the trials of these systems actually achieved for all their expense.   

 

i think also take incompetent drivers off the road. i cannot believe how often do i see poeple are unable to do over 50mph on the motorway.

i think they have the right idea, in that they need to maximise the technology out there to give real time information and proper traffic management. However, this should also be done along with road improvements and expansions of certain stretches of the road network.

But you have to draw a line somewhere to the amount of expansion. Do we really need 16 line wide motorways up and down the country?? cause it'll head that way if they kept expanding!

Superstevie - The Government has no intention of solving congestion. The aim is to clogg, congest and annoy people out of their cars onto cruddy public transport. They don't say it 'officially' they have the policy (because they couldn't actually get an official policy through parliament and the House of Lords or past voters) but their deeply disengenuous under the cloak 'unofficial policy' is there in their statements.

This is democracy by stealth and deceipt. Gordon Brown was taken to court over there being no democratic vote (promised in Labours manifesto) for further undemocratically unelected EEC integration. His lawyer stated "manifesto pledges are not a reasonable democratic expectation".   

Then you have the Housing Ministers plans for building new Towns with the expressed intent to drive people out of their cars onto buses and bicycles with 15mph speed limits. Then you have Transport Minister Dr. Stephen in a Feb '07 webchat saying "I promise this is a real debate. If we don't convince the public then road pricing simply won't happen". He has 1.5 million sugnatures in a petition against road pricing but he's rolling out road pricing already.

Dr 'Einstein' Stephen said "We are planning to spend £140bn of central govt money in the 10 years up to 2014/15 on transport...But despite all this we still predict congestion will be 25% worse by 2015." Brilliant! £140bn and his stated aim is to fail miserably. I'd sack this total loser and the entire upper civil service of the Dept of Transport if he came to me with a 'plan' to fail after spending so much money. Anyone anywhere else would sack this idiot too. 

Then you have the Government effectively black-mailing Councils according to some critics with (public) money for public transport if they introduce Red Ken like Con-Zones in their city centres. Hell £250M ripped out of motorists pockets and Ken has completly failed to achieve either lower congestion or lower pollution. And the Govt has waisted £millions more of public (our) money with the heavy capital investment required to start up the Con-Zone scam!

So what does the Government do with this massively costly failure in London? It plans to throw more public (our) money at Councils to roll out the Con-Zone (Economic Failure Zones) nationwide. Abject failure of test to achieve anything whatsoever in London - let's roll out and repeat this financial and failure nationwide - genius these politcians!

Anyone any idea why Labours books look bankrupt and Britains living standards (because of higher and higher taxes to pay for more and more public spending on less and less economically viable/pig-ignorant dead-ends) have gone down the pan?   

JJBoxster:

Superstevie - The Government has no intention of solving congestion. The aim is to clogg, congest and annoy people out of their cars onto cruddy public transport. They don't say it 'officially' they have the policy (because they couldn't actually get an official policy through parliament and the House of Lords or past voters) but their deeply disengenuous under the cloak 'unofficial policy' is there in their statements.

This is democracy by stealth and deceipt. Gordon Brown was taken to court over there being no democratic vote (promised in Labours manifesto) for further undemocratically unelected EEC integration. His lawyer stated "manifesto pledges are not a reasonable democratic expectation".   

Then you have the Housing Ministers plans for building new Towns with the expressed intent to drive people out of their cars onto buses and bicycles with 15mph speed limits. Then you have Transport Minister Dr. Stephen in a Feb '07 webchat saying "I promise this is a real debate. If we don't convince the public then road pricing simply won't happen". He has 1.5 million sugnatures in a petition against road pricing but he's rolling out road pricing already.

Dr 'Einstein' Stephen said "We are planning to spend £140bn of central govt money in the 10 years up to 2014/15 on transport...But despite all this we still predict congestion will be 25% worse by 2015." Brilliant! £140bn and his stated aim is to fail miserably. I'd sack this total loser and the entire upper civil service of the Dept of Transport if he came to me with a 'plan' to fail after spending so much money. Anyone anywhere else would sack this idiot too. 

Then you have the Government effectively black-mailing Councils according to some critics with (public) money for public transport if they introduce Red Ken like Con-Zones in their city centres. Hell £250M ripped out of motorists pockets and Ken has completly failed to achieve either lower congestion or lower pollution. And the Govt has waisted £millions more of public (our) money with the heavy capital investment required to start up the Con-Zone scam!

So what does the Government do with this massively costly failure in London? It plans to throw more public (our) money at Councils to roll out the Con-Zone (Economic Failure Zones) nationwide. Abject failure of test to achieve anything whatsoever in London - let's roll out and repeat this financial and failure nationwide - genius these politcians!

Anyone any idea why Labours books look bankrupt and Britains living standards (because of higher and higher taxes to pay for more and more public spending on less and less economically viable/pig-ignorant dead-ends) have gone down the pan?   

I've only just joined up here, but I like you already mate!

 Is it true that Red Ken doctored traffic lights in London to create congestion, just so he could bring in the congestion charge?

Where i live in Worcester, the (Labour) council are on about congestion charging on one of our main roads IF we reject their plan of putting a bus lane on this (narrow as it is) road.

I too hate the fact that Gordon Brown wasn't elected by us, but yet he and his cronies are making life worse in the UK. More people now than ever are moving abroad to escape this lunacy, just as well - it makes more space for the illegals.

Prodigy - It's not only the Con-Zone that's a miserable failure (motorists money thrown down an economic pit - well into the Labour Party donating Champagne Charlies at Capita Plc to be precise who run the scam).

Traffic light proliferation around the country. Traffic lights costs £10's of thousands to install. The Government have never done a single analysis in 40 years to establish if they improve safety or improve traffic flow (I know they don't improve traffic flow and I very much doubt there's any safety benefits).

Speed Cameras - Cost £1,000's and the new Digtal one's cost £25,000 a pop. They have not improved safety one iota and do not address 96% of accidents (on urban roads) and 99% of accidents (on motorways) which are nothing to do with speed.

Road Humps - total b*ll*cks.

Bus and Car Sharing Lanes - this removes a public asset paid for by 100% of motorists and reserves it for (private) bus companies already heavily subsidised by motorists. As for the car sharing scam I saw a news report on the scam where 1 lane was rammed with rush-hour traffic and the car sharing lane was empty. The occasional 'cheeky' car driver 'took the opportunity' for this vacant, under-utilised, waisting away piece of public road he'd paid for and was stopped by a police bike to be warned or fined.

Take a close look at the M4 VIP bus lane scam (or any other round London or the country). 2 lanes rammed with cars because of tail-backs (probably created by a Govt motorway traffic light, speed camera or 'traffic management scheme' somewhere down the road) and 1 vacant economically wasteful red bus lane for the occasional half-empty bus full of further motorist subsidised half-fare green backpackers in a VIP lane London to Heathrow. It's a scandallous waste of a public resources.

No doubt Brown, Darling, Red Ken and other Govt a*seholes use it in their Jaguars and visiting UN VIP (Very Ignorant Pricks) eco-extremists.

Not sure about the traffic light sequences being changed in London pre-Cone-Zone to create congestion but it wouldn't surprise me - put a light in anywhere and congestions created anyway!

 

Prodigy - It's not only the Con-Zone that's a miserable failure and a fraud (motorists money thrown down an economic pit - well into the Labour Party donating Champagne Charlies at Capita Plc to be precise who run the scam).

Traffic light proliferation around the country - Traffic lights costs £10's of thousands to install. The Government have never done a single analysis in 40 years to establish if they improve safety or improve traffic flow (I know they don't improve traffic flow and I very much doubt there's any safety benefits).

Speed Cameras - Cost £1,000's and the new Digtal one's cost £25,000 a pop. They have not improved safety one iota and do not address 96% of accidents (on urban roads) and 99% of accidents (on motorways) which are nothing to do with speed. The Govt claim they've saved lives but after their introduction road deaths increased. At best the stats' are static which proves the Govt are lying through their teeth.

Road Humps - total b*ll*cks.

Bus and Car Sharing Lanes - this removes a public asset paid for by 100% of motorists and reserves it for (private) bus companies already heavily subsidised by motorists. As for the car sharing scam I saw a news report on the scam where 1 lane was rammed with rush-hour traffic and the car sharing lane was empty. The occasional 'cheeky' car driver 'took the opportunity' for this vacant, under-utilised, waisting away piece of public road he'd paid for and was stopped by a police bike to be warned or fined.

Traffic Management Systems - I've not seen a single study but if a computerised robot couldn't organise getting itself from my lounge to my kitchen to make a cup of tea and back within 2 months what chance it can improve on the human brains efficiency and intelligence at driving 23 roads to get to work and back!!!! 

Take a close look at the M4 VIP bus lane scam (or any other round London or the country). 2 lanes rammed with cars because of tail-backs (probably created by a Govt motorway traffic light, speed camera or 'traffic management scheme' somewhere down the road) and 1 vacant economically wasteful red bus lane for the occasional half-empty bus full of further motorist subsidised half-fare green backpackers in a VIP lane London to Heathrow. It's a scandallous waste of a public resources.

No doubt Brown, Darling, Red Ken and other Govt a*seholes use it in their Jaguars and visiting UN VIP (Very Ignorant Prats) eco-extremists.

Not sure about the traffic light sequences being changed in London pre-Con-Zone to create congestion but it wouldn't surprise me - put a light in anywhere and congestions created anyway!

superstevie:

But you have to draw a line somewhere to the amount of expansion. Do we really need 16 line wide motorways up and down the country?? cause it'll head that way if they kept expanding!

 

I think what's needed are roads that take people from A to B without forcing them to go via C and D. It doesn't have to be motorways (they should only be built in areas where there is a need for that kind of road and there isn't one already). Dual carriageways and decent smaller roads that actually go where people travel would ease congestion. I know that bypasses cost a lot of money, but they do mean people who are forced to commute through towns (since there is no reasonable alternative) stop gridlocking them. Build sensible, safe roads that allow people to minimise the travelling time - then you will reduce the traffic.