Where are Britain's worst traffic bottlenecks?

[jackal]

Interesting article in the Torygraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09 ... t-traffic/

[KeithW]

It looks very biased towards the capitals to me. No mention of horrendous traffic problems in the West Midlands and the North of England and NI. London has been getting the cream of the investment capital for transport for decades this looks like justification for more of the above.

An alternative look is at http://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2015/04/01/ ... in-traffic

If you look Delay Per year at the evening peak London comes well down the list below Belfast, Edinburgh and Manchester

Having lived in London for many years I would like to see a separate breakdown for North and South London. Roads south of the Thames are almost uniformly terrible with little improvement since the 1930's inside the M25. The South Circular is probably the most congested, polluted and dangerous ring road in the UK being just a collection of suburban streets.

[M19]

It just goes to show that even when you throw endless amounts of money at huge public transport projects in London, this needs to be balanced with some spending on highways to deal with the residual need for travelling by road.

It doesn't take an idiot to work out that other European capitals have more extensive and consistent urban road networks that have more free flowing designs and a good degree of tunnelling to tackle more trickier bits.

In London, and other major cities, it is certainly true that it would be impossible to build enough capacity. However, it cannot be ignored that better designed, smoother layouts would go a long way to reduce off peak congestion. It also provides scope for streets but suited to high traffic volumes to be made more attractive for vulnerable users.

Yet, we think that hatching out lanes for cycling, buses, or just for the sake of reducing capacity (designer congestion schemes as I put it) does not make traffic vaporise into thin air. There's only so much modal shift that can be achieved, which leaves the rest to be dealt with.

[Bryn666]

Is there an objective criteria for a bottleneck?

On a subjective level, spending 40 mins on a Sunday afternoon stuck in Mottram suggests the eastern end of the M67 has serious problems outside of peak hours. I dare say Mottram is one of the worst, if not THE worst, un-bypassed settlement in England.

[rhyds]

Is there an objective criteria for a bottleneck?

On a subjective level, spending 40 mins on a Sunday afternoon stuck in Mottram suggests the eastern end of the M67 has serious problems outside of peak hours. I dare say Mottram is one of the worst, if not THE worst, un-bypassed settlement in England.

It did feel a bit like running the M53 or M56 in to Welshpool high street...

[AndyB]

NI's congestion figures are skewed because our off-peak is actually pretty good.

They are also skewed by perceptions of public transport - always late (due to cars on the road) and expensive (because they've never got the bus or train in GB for a similar distance in rush hour to discover how much cheaper it is here!)

[owen b]

Interesting article in the Torygraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09 ... t-traffic/

What on earth is it getting at here? :

The southbound stretch of the M25, between junctions 21 and 21a, suffered 13 traffic jams in September 2016, but each one lasted around four and a half hours.

From the table, excuse formatting :

Rank City Location Duration (mins) Length (miles) Number of Jams Cost by 2025
3 London M25 S between J21 (M1) and J21A (A405) 273 13.78 13 £425m

Really?

[fras]

Essentially we've spent almost nothing on roads for over 30 years whilst most of Europe has just got on with it. Indeed the last Labour government sloughed-off a large percentage of the strategic road network onto councils and gave them no money to keep them in a good state or even to develop routes across county boundaries; all this stopped decades ago. Basically governments of all shades have failed this nation on transport. It was Kenneth Clarke, when chancellor in the Major government who said "we are not going to build any more roads, they just fill up with traffic". It was also that government that dropped the "predict and provide" principle too. However, having said that, there was plenty of prediction but not much provision !

Having done nothing for so long it is going to be mega-expensive correcting the situation. Traffic is not going to go away; ICEVs may be replaced by EVs but they all need roads to drive along, even autonomous cars.

[cb a1]

Really?

No.

Someone asks you how much you would be willing to pay for an extra 5 minutes in bed in the morning and you say 10p.

INRIX take that figure and assume that you would then be willing to pay £6 for an extra 5 hours in bed in the morning. [there is also another level of complexity to all of this, but it's late and I need to go to sleep]

Why? Because it gets them the headlines. Whoever can come up with the highest cost of congestion is most likely to get their name in the media. INRIX have a business to run and free advertising is not to be sniffed at. Very year INRIX and TomTom publish their 'congestion' hot-spots and there's not much correlation between the two.

Somewhat perversely, some cities used to be able to appear relatively 'light on congestion' because of the methodology used to calculate congestion which is the difference from 'off peak free flow speeds'. It actually works opposite to what AndyB suggested. So, City A traffic signals run 'fixed time plan' 24/7, so you come to a junction at 2am, no traffic but the light sits at red for 90s before you can go. As a result 'off peak free flow speeds' are say 15mph. Contrast this with City B who run dynamic signals and you come to a junction at 2am, it is demand responsive so you barely even drop below 5mph before the lights go green - 'off peak free flow speeds are say 25mph.

AM peak in both cities is busy and City A peak flow speeds are 7.5mph. City B is better managed and peak flow speeds are 10mph.

Which is the more congested city? City B of course because the ratio of peak to off-peak is worse than City A.

Thankfully INRIX and TomTom have since adjusted their methodologies so that they aren't quite so dumb, but you can still get odd outcomes.

If you're interested, rere are some examples of the variation from a few years ago on the total cost of congestion.

In Passing: Just how much does congestion cost the economy?
30 March 2012

Announcing his private sector road plans last week, the Prime Minister said congestion was costing the economy £7bn a year, a figure that appears to be drawn from the 2006 report on transport and the economy commissioned by the Government from Sir Rod Eddington. But wait a minute – the Welsh Government suggested earlier this month that congestion costs the UK £30bn a year (LTT 16 Mar)! And didn’t the CBI say in 1989 the cost was £15bn? LTT this week decided to clear up the confusion once and for all. So here, with the help of Google, is the answer to the question, what’s the cost of congestion to UK plc?

David Cameron, March 2012: £7bn.

CBI, March 2012: £8bn.

Network Rail, undated: “Road congestion costs the British economy more than £10bn a year.”

Claire Haigh of Greener Journeys writing in the New Statesman in February 2012: “Congestion is also a massive drain on our economy with costs estimated at £11bn annually.”

Pteg: congestion costs urban economies alone “at least £11bn a year”.

Transport minister Norman Baker, March 2011: “Congestion can cause delay in urban areas at a cost of around £11bn a year.”

The Automotive Council UK, December 2011: “Congestion costs the UK economy about £12bn annually.”

The CBI, 1989: £15bn.

Staffordshire County Council’s website: “Traffic congestion costs UK businesses around £16bn a year (source: the CBI).”

Freight on Rail lobby group: “Rail freight can help ameliorate road congestion, which, the Freight Transport Association estimates, costs the economy £17bn per annum.”

Friends of the Earth, October 2011: “Congestion costs the UK £19bn a year.”

The BBC, 1998: “Traffic jams are costing firms about £19bn each year, according to the Confederation of British Industry’s publication, CBI News.”

The House of Commons transport committee: “The CBI has estimated that road congestion costs the UK economy £20bn a year.”

The Policy Exchange think-tank, 2008: £21bn.

Hitachi, November 2011: “The Government has previously estimated that congestion costs the economy approximately £22bn a year.”

The British Chambers of Commerce, 2011: “Congestion costs business £23.3bn a year.” (Nice precision – Ed)

Freight on Rail, December 2011: “Road congestion is now costing around £24bn annually, according to the Freight Transport Association.”

Transport minister Norman Baker, writing in Rail Professional, 2010: “Investment in rail will also help reduce congestion, which now costs the economy almost £25bn annually.” (3.5 times the PM’s estimate! Ed)

The Institute of Directors, 2007: “A national congestion charging system … is being considered by the Government in a bid to alleviate the £28bn cost to the economy of traffic jams.”

The Welsh Government, March 2010: “The most widely cited UK-wide study suggests that the cost of congestion to the UK economy is around £30bn per annum (Goodwin 2004).”

Are there any other ‘bids’ from LTT readers?

[owen b]

Really?

No.

Sorry, I obviously didn't make my point clear .

The article claims that "The southbound stretch of the M25, between junctions 21 and 21a, suffered 13 traffic jams in September 2016, but each one lasted around four and a half hours." The supporting table says that the stretch of road in question is 13.78 miles long. Have you tried to find that stretch of road on a map? It's about 1km long and is on an east-west alignment. It can't possibly be the case that there were 13 jams on that very short stretch in one month each lasting four and a half hours. Some mistake surely.

Interesting point about the various numbers bandied about for the cost of congestion. It reminds me of the frankly fanciful justification for HS2 which was driven largely by the very high value of time savings for business people as I recall.

[Osthagen]

I don't use the road frequently enough to know, but apparently the Haudagain roundabout on A96 is supposed to be a bad one.

[skiddaw05]

Obviously the map only shows the HE network but there must be plenty of other congestion hoptspots on non-HE roads

[Chris5156]

The article claims that "The southbound stretch of the M25, between junctions 21 and 21a, suffered 13 traffic jams in September 2016, but each one lasted around four and a half hours." The supporting table says that the stretch of road in question is 13.78 miles long. Have you tried to find that stretch of road on a map? It's about 1km long and is on an east-west alignment.

It also lists the "M60 N" at junction 1 as being a "hotspot". It's borderline nonsense.

What exactly is a "hotspot", anyway, and on what objective basis are there 12,776 of them in London? The DfT's road length statistics say there are only 9,217 miles of road in the whole of the London region, including every residential cul-de-sac and back alley. That gives London a ratio of 1.3 mysterious "hotspots" per mile of road. Perhaps one for every set of traffic lights and one for every other Give Way line?

Further evidence, if it were needed, that this is non-news spun from a press release based on guesswork and ludicrous extrapolation!

[owen b]

The article claims that "The southbound stretch of the M25, between junctions 21 and 21a, suffered 13 traffic jams in September 2016, but each one lasted around four and a half hours." The supporting table says that the stretch of road in question is 13.78 miles long. Have you tried to find that stretch of road on a map? It's about 1km long and is on an east-west alignment.

It also lists the "M60 N" at junction 1 as being a "hotspot". It's borderline nonsense.

What exactly is a "hotspot", anyway, and on what objective basis are there 12,776 of them in London? The DfT's road length statistics say there are only 9,217 miles of road in the whole of the London region, including every residential cul-de-sac and back alley. That gives London a ratio of 1.3 mysterious "hotspots" per mile of road. Perhaps one for every set of traffic lights and one for every other Give Way line?

Further evidence, if it were needed, that this is non-news spun from a press release based on guesswork and ludicrous extrapolation!

Sounds about right for the Telegraph, by a considerable margin the worst of the "quality" papers in the UK in my opinion.

[firefly]

It doesn't take an idiot to work out that other European capitals have more extensive and consistent urban road networks that have more free flowing designs and a good degree of tunnelling to tackle more trickier bits.

Other places in Europe simply have a big urban core with a large stock of multi-storey and multi-unit houses. This kind of housing allows a significant portion of the population of those cities to live nearly or even entirely car-free. British cities lack such an urbanity. Brits live in suburbs instead, which results in longer commutes and more congested roads.

[WHBM]

For me, the worst congestion points have to be those where a SINGLE set of traffic signals/merge at the head of the queue regularly cause delays of 1 hour or more.

Contenders :

Mottram (especially westbound)
North Circular, Bounds Green
North Circular, Finchley
Birmingham, M5 merge with M6

I haven't done the last for some years. Is it still as bad ?

[lefthandedspanner]

For me, the worst congestion points have to be those where a SINGLE set of traffic signals/merge at the head of the queue regularly cause delays of 1 hour or more.

Contenders :

Mottram (especially westbound)
North Circular, Bounds Green
North Circular, Finchley
Birmingham, M5 merge with M6

I haven't done the last for some years. Is it still as bad ?

Or, for that matter, the A650/A651 junction on Tong Street, south-east Bradford (which I assume is the 'A650 W' listed on the map in the Telegraph's article).

Many years ago I used to commute that way on the bus, and it could take anything from five minutes to nearly two hours to get through that junction in the morning peak. The most infuriating thing was how inconsistent it was from day to day.

[GrahameCase]

Definitely A720 and M8 between junctions 1 and 4 - and non trunk the A8 in Edinburgh - sometimes in morning and evening peak it's a car park - especially around gogar / airport junction

[jaco]

Savoy Circus on the A40

[Scratchwood]

For me, the worst congestion points have to be those where a SINGLE set of traffic signals/merge at the head of the queue regularly cause delays of 1 hour or more.

Contenders :

Mottram (especially westbound)
North Circular, Bounds Green
North Circular, Finchley
Birmingham, M5 merge with M6

I haven't done the last for some years. Is it still as bad ?

The North Circular at Bounds Green was at number 7 in that Telegraph report. Somewhere where the proper upgrade plan was cancelled and a cheap replacement done instead...

Incidentally, the actual data with its slightly confusing descriptions comes from Inrix, the Telegraph merely reproduced it
http://inrix.com/press-releases/inrix-r ... xt-decade/