" Gridlock " !

[haymansafc]

I don't think I've ever witnessed a true 'gridlock' but like others, have been in situations which have probably been a stage or two below that – where traffic has been that heavy that it has literally taken up to a couple of hours to get barely more than a mile down the road.

The worst I can remember was about nine years ago when the M53 was closed off in both directions in Ellesmere Port between junctions 8 and 10 because of a chemical spillage just off junction 9 (it wasn’t on the motorway itself…). The motorway was shut for about eight hours from memory. I worked just off junction 8 at the time and saw how the junction basically become a car park after about half an hour. I remember seeing one particular HGV sitting on the same place for getting on for three quarters of an hour because the whole of Rossmore Road East & West (B5463 - which is off junction 8) was at a complete standstill. Traffic lights going through multiple cycles and nothing being able to move anywhere for long periods of time.

A few hours later, I had to join the traffic as it was home time. It took me over an hour and a half to do this distance, before I turned off. In the local news that evening, there were people taking pictures all over town of multiple cars being abandoned up pavements and local people walking. I must admit…I was half tempted to do this myself. There were still two cars left up the pavements the following morning where the owners hadn't gone back to collect them yet...

[SteveA30]

A common cause of the thing we know from earlier posts isn't proper gridlock, is at roadworks. The lights go green, the lorry at the front can't pass a parked vehicle further along*, because of the queue at the other end. The queue behind comes to a halt. The lights go green, the way is blocked, no-one can move.

* Or, a dump truck stops half way along the roadworks section.

[M4Simon]

Then get the service operator to pay for the bridge links to make their services link to more than just the westbound A12 and the southbound M25, if they want to link directly to the other carriageways.

How were you proposing to get the service operator to pay? If it was your house and HE wanted to restrict your access so you had to arrive via the A12 and depart via the M25, would you expect to have to pay £millions to get reasonable access? It's HE's problem so they need to puck up the bill. The reality is that it would be cheaper for HE to buy the service station business and close it.

Cheers,

Simon

[A9NWIL]

Then get the service operator to pay for the bridge links to make their services link to more than just the westbound A12 and the southbound M25, if they want to link directly to the other carriageways.

How were you proposing to get the service operator to pay? If it was your house and HE wanted to restrict your access so you had to arrive via the A12 and depart via the M25, would you expect to have to pay £millions to get reasonable access? It's HE's problem so they need to puck up the bill. The reality is that it would be cheaper for HE to buy the service station business and close it.

Cheers,

Simon

Ah I see so the services would just be closed so that a freeflow junction in all directions could be established.
It would be better than a roundabout even if the A1023 had to just flow into the A12 westbound.

[WHBM]

A timely thread. I had voted for M25 J28 (A12) on the "Next stacked roundabout to be upgraded" thread, and then yesterday morning (3 May) a site meeting in Essex was grossly disrupted because a classic Gridlock had occurred, again, on the signalled roundabout at this junction. Looking at Google Maps traffic (because I had escaped it and was waiting for the others) traffic was backed up for several miles on all approaches, the M25 eastbound back to the M11, M25 westbound back to Lakeside, the A12 halfway back to Chelmsford, etc.

Exactly the same thing has happened again today, reported on the radio this morning. Stated to be a "traffic signal fault". I wonder.

[Rob590]

It's not a full 'gridlock', but since changes to the road layout a few years ago, the one-way loop of the A186 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne near the station along Westgate Road, Neville Street, Bewick Street and Clayton Street can occasionally develop a queue that meets its own tail in a way that would be familiar to players of Nokia's Snake: queues at the different traffic lights build up so that the whole loop is a static line. There are 'outs', however, at various points and my guess is that eventually some drivers must end up taking those and going another way for it to loosen up...

[A9NWIL]

It's not a full 'gridlock', but since changes to the road layout a few years ago, the one-way loop of the A186 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne near the station along Westgate Road, Neville Street, Bewick Street and Clayton Street can occasionally develop a queue that meets its own tail in a way that would be familiar to players of Nokia's Snake: queues at the different traffic lights build up so that the whole loop is a static line. There are 'outs', however, at various points and my guess is that eventually some drivers must end up taking those and going another way for it to loosen up...

It sounds like they made a mistake somewhere, perhaps if some junctions could be redesigned as freeflow it would help?

[Peter Freeman]

It's not a full 'gridlock', but since changes to the road layout a few years ago, the one-way loop of the A186 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne near the station along Westgate Road, Neville Street, Bewick Street and Clayton Street can occasionally develop a queue that meets its own tail in a way that would be familiar to players of Nokia's Snake: queues at the different traffic lights build up so that the whole loop is a static line. There are 'outs', however, at various points and my guess is that eventually some drivers must end up taking those and going another way for it to loosen up...

It sounds like they made a mistake somewhere, perhaps if some junctions could be redesigned as freeflow it would help?

I'm not familiar with that road at all, but it sounds to me like the 'loop' is more successful and useful than anticipated. Perhaps just the worst couple of junctions could be tweaked a little, the exits made more appealing, and then accept that it's doing its job.

[ThelwallViaduct]

Another anecdote to add - Warrington can become extremely congested whenever problems arise on the M6 (or M62) nearby as it lacks any sort of competent link across the Mersey/Manchester Ship Canal, especially one which avoids going directly through the centre of town. One particular incident which involved an overturned lorry on the M62 during morning peak, which happened to have been carrying a large quantity of live chickens, caused complete chaos leading to a complete standstill on basically every major road in town, making a 20 minute journey a 3 hour one. Unfortunately outside of these incidents there is not a lot of demand for a high-quality crossing of the river/canal aside from potential upgrades in the town centre.

[Alderpoint]

Warrington can become extremely congested whenever problems arise on the M6 (or M62) nearby as it lacks any sort of competent link across the Mersey/Manchester Ship Canal, especially one which avoids going directly through the centre of town.

Similarly for Warwick and the M40/A46 - although I accept that traffic flows there are somewhat lower. They are currently planning to introduce a gyratory in the centre of Warwick: I think this will make things worst as it's going to be anti-clockwise around the town centre so the majority of traffic flows are going to conflict.

[BeenEverywhere]

Our town traffic is often called gridlock but it's more of a cascade where 1 road backs up across a junction, which backs up another, which backs up another... it is only released when the first moves on (usually the level crossing gates) and then the rest slowly unwind through several changes if the traffic lights. It's very annoying when your particular movement is nowhere near the railway but badly affected by it.

Wandering off topic: The problem we have is pretty much every route through town gets dumped in one junction in front of the BT building. My personal theory is if they turned the one way on Double Street round, that would give an escape route for traffic that doesn't actually want to go into town from twin bridges. Although you'd have to do the same on commercial road to give a route down the riverbank in the opposite direction.

Or to get stricter with Network Rail about how long the barriers are closed for. Yeah, I get that they have to close in case the train overshoots the station, but leaving them down while it's sat there with its doors open and people getting on and off is a bit excessive.

[Nuke]

[Gridlock's original meaning was a situation of traffic immobility that required intervention to unlock it.

Gridlock in the true sense of the word is almost impossible in most of the UK as grid layouts are rare.

By PF's definition, how about a simple crossroads with a queue of right-turning traffic both ways stopping each other from turning? Not every cross roads is marked with a box. Depends on what is meant by "intervention" of course, but I have seen such situations only resolved by some shuffling. A similar situation occurs with two parked cars on opposite sides of the road, each 50 yard "downstream" of the other, and each of the two traffic queues to pass them blocked by the tail of the other.

I think "gridlock" is really a reference to the USA tendency for grid-like street layouts, as Bryn says.

[AndyB]

Or to get stricter with Network Rail about how long the barriers are closed for. Yeah, I get that they have to close in case the train overshoots the station, but leaving them down while it's sat there with its doors open and people getting on and off is a bit excessive.

Not how it works - supposing that the barriers did rise as soon as the train arrived, then the barriers would have to fall again immediately for the train to be able to leave as soon as all station business was completed.

The alternative is to move the level crossing signal back along the platform, reducing available length, but as well as having to extend the platform in the other direction, the delays to train services of having to press a plunger, wait for all four barriers to close and for the signaller to check that the crossing was clear would be considerable. New installations have the protecting signal far enough back that a train approaching the platform won't need the crossing closed just for it to arrive - say if it's going to be sitting for several minutes or going back the other way - but normal "stop and go" arrivals tend to be treated as more or less but not quite non-stop for the sake of the minute that would be lost waiting for the crossing to clear.

[Johnathan404]

So:

Taken literally, gridlock is an American term which only works in places with grid road layouts. It is when a queue meets its own tail, preventing the back of the queue from moving.

Roundabouts and gyratories can be "prone to gridlock" if too many vehicles enter them and not enough can leave. The same goes for any similar layout, including a dual carriageway with two busy right turns.

It's incorrect, but I'd say it's fair to use the term whenever you have been stationary long enough to consider getting out the vehicle. (How long that is is for another thread!)

I'm reminded of the time I was stuck trying to join a signalised roundabout from a minor road. The entry was protected by a yellow box. Every time the lights went green for the minor road, traffic for one of the exits was queueing across the yellow box. In front of me was a bus and every time there was a gap big enough for it to pull out, the lights had gone red again. It waited several cycles before deciding to go through on amber and take a gap which was far too small, blocking the yellow box and receiving many horns from the free-flowing lane which it also obstructed. Had the bus not have done that, I would consider it a "gridlock scenario" as there was no foreseeable chance of us getting out, but I wouldn't called it "gridlock".

[Derek]

Sometime in the late 70's - 1978 or maybe 79 - London did pretty much gridlock onemorning. I was working near Oxford Circus at the time and travelled in from Finsbury Park on my motorbike, so I arrived in work reasonably on time, but lots of other people on my shift didn't. It was a major event at the time and the BBC where I worked went into some kind of emergency mode, well we had to because essential staff couldn't get in.

The news covered the event in a typical jocular manner of sturdy Brits facing the traffic with stiff upper lips, but some real emergencies happened with ambulances stuck in traffic and such like.

I never did find out what caused it and a quick search on google doesn't come up with anything.

Derek

[BeenEverywhere]

Or to get stricter with Network Rail about how long the barriers are closed for. Yeah, I get that they have to close in case the train overshoots the station, but leaving them down while it's sat there with its doors open and people getting on and off is a bit excessive.

Not how it works - supposing that the barriers did rise as soon as the train arrived, then the barriers would have to fall again immediately for the train to be able to leave as soon as all station business was completed.

The alternative is to move the level crossing signal back along the platform, reducing available length, but as well as having to extend the platform in the other direction, the delays to train services of having to press a plunger, wait for all four barriers to close and for the signaller to check that the crossing was clear would be considerable. New installations have the protecting signal far enough back that a train approaching the platform won't need the crossing closed just for it to arrive - say if it's going to be sitting for several minutes or going back the other way - but normal "stop and go" arrivals tend to be treated as more or less but not quite non-stop for the sake of the minute that would be lost waiting for the crossing to clear.

Both ideas could work well to be fair. You only ever get a 2 car train here, which takes less than a quarter of the platform.

It's a bit more than a stop and go here, and the barriers are down for way more than a minute.

[Fenlander]

You only ever get a 2 car train here, which takes less than a quarter of the platform.

Apart from when it's the freight train which don't stop, we often get caught up in the aftermath of the 2 normal trains (1 each way) and the freight train on our way back from school.

[popmonkey]

Birmingham has come close to "gridlock" the past couple of days, after an unexploded WW2 bomb has caused police to keep the Aston Expressway and Lichfield Road closed. This hasnt been helped by muppets who get impatient and block junctions. Seeing pictures of a completely empty A38(M) is quite strange.

[Chris Bertram]

Birmingham has come close to "gridlock" the past couple of days, after an unexploded WW2 bomb has caused police to keep the Aston Expressway and Lichfield Road closed. This hasnt been helped by muppets who get impatient and block junctions. Seeing pictures of a completely empty A38(M) is quite strange.

Very strange indeed. My "home" office is right next to the city end of the Expressway, happily I haven't had to go there in the last couple of days. However, I have had to go to Telford today, and the Expressway would be part of my normal route, so instead I've come via Dudley using A4123 and B4176 among other roads. Yesterday, I had to be in Sutton Coldfield for 6.00pm travelling from home in south Birmingham, so ended up leaving at 4.30, driving exactly the wrong way first, joining M42 at J3 Portway, then travelling anticlockwise, leaving at J9 by Curdworth, taking A4097 to Minworth (not a place you would want to live in when the wind is in the east), then heading into Sutton via Walmley. We made it, just. Other members of the orchestra were somewhat later, and a couple didn't make it for the first half of the concert at 7.30.

[Norfolktolancashire]

Birmingham has come close to "gridlock" the past couple of days, after an unexploded WW2 bomb has caused police to keep the Aston Expressway and Lichfield Road closed. This hasnt been helped by muppets who get impatient and block junctions. Seeing pictures of a completely empty A38(M) is quite strange.

I was driving back north from Devon yesterday, and avoided the West Midlands conurbation by using the A449 from the M5 to the M6. It was slow due to the road passing through Kidderminster and Wolverhampton, but the extra hour on my journey was worth the relatively stress free drive. What I did notice was the cannibalisation of the A449 between Worcester and Stourbridge outskirts involving many hatching out of D2 lanes!