The study of British and Irish roads - their construction, numbering, history, mapping, past and future official roads proposals and general roads musings.
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(Don't think we have a dedicated thread for this one yet)
Central barrier works are ongoing, mostly complete to the northern end of the works, while between Sandbach Services and J16 there are no works and no restrictions, they haven't made it that far south yet!
There is a short stretch northbound (possibly southbound too, but couldn't tell) between J18 and J19 where traffic has been shifted off the hard shoulder to the right 3 lanes to enable work to start on the verge aspects.
Traffic through these works in particular have been horrendous. At least during the 10A-13 works it was tolerable, but these are at a standstill near enough daily and accidents seem to be very common. Does 16-19 have much of a higher flow compared to 10A-13?
One of the things that has really annoyed me (and it may surprise you to hear that I'm annoyed by a speed limit ) is Holmes Chapel Road, where they have erected the site offices, it's been reduced to 30 for near enough a mile past the site. I can't see how this is remotely justified tbh, and I'm usually fairly easy going when it comes to speed limits! (Perhaps I should call the Daily Mail )
My Mum moved to Sandbach last summer and I'm spending a lot of my time dashing across the border from Staffordshire to go and visit her (hence my silly signature!)
I find the M6 between 16 and 19 to be badly managed ALL the time and the roadworks haven't helped at all. This section seems to be heavily used because I think a lot of people work in the South Manchester area but live in Cheshire (because its cheaper).
I have had to start using the A50/A556/M56 as my preferred route to visit friends in Manchester because the M6 is busy virtually 24/7 (even on Sundays) and often closed at night. When I went to Menorca in June I managed to pick the one night/morning that both the M6 and the M56 were closed. Yes I made my flight but the stress probably knocked years off my life...
This section should have been widened IMO.
Living my life on the edge......of two counties!
Formerly known as Roverman
Still driving a British built car, made in a former Rover factory......
My bad, I only went back a few months in search because I figured if there was a thread then someone would have posted in it since work began.
A search for M6 smart motorway just returns hundreds of posts from the same old people pointing out how smart motorways infringe their civil liberties and such like. Forgive me for losing the will to live when sifting through all that
I hear of accidents daily on the radio for this section and there has been some nasty ones as recently as last week with the lorry that overturned at J19 causing 4 hour delays. I think there is another year to go...but if they haven't even started between Sandbach and J16, that doesn't sound promising.
Hopefully once this is all over that journeys will significantly improve along here. I'm sure this will make much bigger improvements than the J10A-J13 works which was always busy but really is quite a small section in comparison.
I doubt there will be any significant improvement. 3 saturated lanes to 4 extremely busy ones !
Only until new motorway standard roads are built to take some traffic off the M6 will improvements appear. The fact is that councils have beavered away with what were once trunk roads and reduced them down to country lane standards. Just look at the East Lancs Road, and there are others, of course. So everybody wanting to get from south to north in any reasonable time has to use the M6. As somebody once said "there is no alternative".
brummie_rob wrote:I hear of accidents daily on the radio for this section and there has been some nasty ones as recently as last week with the lorry that overturned at J19 causing 4 hour delays. I think there is another year to go...but if they haven't even started between Sandbach and J16, that doesn't sound promising.
Hopefully once this is all over that journeys will significantly improve along here. I'm sure this will make much bigger improvements than the J10A-J13 works which was always busy but really is quite a small section in comparison.
The works are 3 miles off 16 now from what I could work out coming north the other week. Seems to be progressing "gradually" which is frustrating because any incident and it spills out all over the local roads and causes chaos.
I doubt it's going to do anything in the long term, considering the lands available most sides all the way shame they didn't put some proper new lanes in..
From Jan 30th they will be installing TM down to J16 which will mean 20 miles of TM, apparently so they can start work quicker and finisher quicker (end date still March 2019 though).
This may be off topic, but why does motorway to smart motorway involve so much work? It always seems to need a new central barrier replacing a perfectly adequate existing one and when one drives down a finished section the electronic signs overhead seem the main visible differences. What am I missing.
Incidentally I'm likely to drive up the M1 and across the Peak District somewhere in future, I cannot see it being slower after my last Brighton to Lancaster drive. I'm glad I only do it for leisure nowadays.
a_c_skinner wrote:This may be off topic, but why does motorway to smart motorway involve so much work? It always seems to need a new central barrier replacing a perfectly adequate existing one and when one drives down a finished section the electronic signs overhead seem the main visible differences. What am I missing.
The contracts include a five Year maintenance free period and bringing the current infrastructure up to modern design standards. This includes visible stuff like central barriers which now need to be concrete with flows above 35k daily and construction of emergency laybys. What the general public don't see are things like bridge repairs, moving carrier drains from under the existing hard shoulder (which will be lane one), fixing geotechnical problems, new or upgraded communications infrastructure, new drainage infrastructure that fix life long issues and resurfacing the carriageway, which sometimes means more than just a top layer. Trust this helps.
Interestingly this happened to the concrete barrier this morning on the M1
And this is what's left of the truck that did it...
I'd argue a barrier defect, but the point remains, had this been a typical steel barrier, the truck would have continued onwards into the apposing carriageway and wiped out several vehicles, probably resulting in a fatal - that's why steel barriers are not generally "perfectly adequate".
I have to agree about the concrete central barriers. When these first started to be installed the HGV weight limit was 28 tonnes ! Now it is 44 tonnes. Also, I think the central reservation gets narrowed for these concrete barriers thus freeing up lateral space for the four lanes, but I may be wrong on this.
Yes, there are a lot of accidents on the Jn 16 - 19 section. This was and is one of the heaviest trafficked sections of the M6 and accidents were pretty regular, going back to when we moved up here in 1995. Now there is a 50 mph speed limit whilst the works progress, but unfortunately this has the effect of bunching up the traffic. A lot of HGV drivers are guilty of tailgating, and I have also noticed a lot of foreign trucks breaking the 50 limit as they know they can't be found out. Maybe if they were tracked and then impounded, it might stop this dangerous practice.
Anyway, the quadrupling of each carriageway will give some relief, although I still have doubts about the lack of hard shoulder. Based on the D4 section south of Stafford the refuges will be few and far between, and many vehicles won't make it as far as an emergency refuge. This will cause severe congestion when a vehicle stops thus negating the capacity of the extra lane. There do need to be many more refuges on sections like this and the Cheshire Plain topography means they would be fairly simple to provide.
There was a crash on the D4 section south of Stafford a couple of months ago with a pair of vehicles stuck in lane 3. I don't think the spacing of refuges would have made any difference.
How would you like your grade separations, Sir? Big and complex.
Haydn1971 wrote:fixing geotechnical problems, new or upgraded communications infrastructure, new drainage infrastructure that fix life long issues and resurfacing the carriageway, which sometimes means more than just a top layer. Trust this helps.
Wonder if the "uneven surface" signs around Knutsford (?) services will finally be able to go - they must have been there for getting on 30 years now?
My mother is convinced someone will die on a 'Smart' Motorway sooner or later as a result of not having a hard shoulder because one of the following will happen;
1) broken vehicle rammed by moving vehicle, passenger hurled through windscreen because they took their seatbelt off to try and leave the car.
2) no clear route for emergency vehicles prevented a trapped passenger from surviving
3) pedestrian mown down whilst trying to walk to the 'haven' from their broken down vehicle
4) innocent motorist, nothing to do with the crash, dies from having been stuck on the motorway for 8 hours because there was no way to get trapped cars off
This country is going backwards.
Living my life on the edge......of two counties!
Formerly known as Roverman
Still driving a British built car, made in a former Rover factory......
roverman wrote:My mother is convinced someone will die on a 'Smart' Motorway sooner or later as a result of not having a hard shoulder because one of the following will happen;
1) broken vehicle rammed by moving vehicle, passenger hurled through windscreen because they took their seatbelt off to try and leave the car.
2) no clear route for emergency vehicles prevented a trapped passenger from surviving
3) pedestrian mown down whilst trying to walk to the 'haven' from their broken down vehicle
4) innocent motorist, nothing to do with the crash, dies from having been stuck on the motorway for 8 hours because there was no way to get trapped cars off
This country is going backwards.
There are various other threads discussing the pros and cons of smart motorways. This thread is specifically about the current M6 works.
roverman wrote:So presumably you've sent similar messages to other posters in this thread?
I've just read back through *THIS* thread - no-one had previously enunciated these fears on this thread, Roverman.
"Thank you" to those who have posted the visual evidence on this thread.
Mike
Mike Hindson-Evans. Never argue with a conspiracy theorist.
They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
"Thanks" but that wasn't my point. Other comments, that could be considered a derivation from the original them were made, why pick on mine?
If Jeni wants to PM me and say sorry I'm happy to accept it, I'm also happy to accept gentle criticism if my post did drift away from the original theme. However I will not tolerate attitude or rudeness.
Living my life on the edge......of two counties!
Formerly known as Roverman
Still driving a British built car, made in a former Rover factory......
) is Holmes Chapel Road, where they have erected the site offices, it's been reduced to 30 for near enough a mile past the site. I can't see how this is remotely justified tbh, and I'm usually fairly easy going when it comes to speed limits! (Perhaps I should call the Daily Mail 
)
