M3 11 hour closure

[SteveA30]

Although it happened on Saturday, it is still the top story today, being the lead item on both ITV and BBC local news.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-41385139
I was following progress on the maps, as shown in Fig. 1 below. Winchester was clearly out of bounds but, Romsey was jamming up as in pre M27 days and, I was going there when local radio announced the reopening of the n/bnd side so, I decided to take a look at the epicentre instead. I've never seen the M3 so quiet in the middle of the day, more like 5am on a summer Sunday morning. Although now an hour since the n/bnd reopening, few seemed aware of this and it was a country lane.

At J9, the s/bnd chaos was all too clear. Queue well past Winchester services. Doors open, people sitting on the grassy bank or, the barriers. A31 and A34 solid. Also, on the map, Stockbridge had queues, something I've never ever heard of before. Some more alert drivers taking the A3057 from Romsey and then north or east from Stockbridge. A33 was no good, because it just dumped you at the start of the closure at J9.

Police have come in for lots of criticism for vague explanations and HE for not warning, although some viewers said their were warnings before J8 and some said there weren't. Probably many just ignored them or didn't even notice them.

After ambling north past Winchester at a pleasant 40 on a nearly empty M3, I carried on to Andover for a weekend A303 closure through Weyhill on the old A303, now A342.

[SteveA30]

1. The A34 queue was much longer than normal, because J9 was jammed with those heading into Winchester and coming off the A31, when the n/bnd closure was still on.
2. The J9 closure
3. Winchester services was chocko, with cars parked on the off slip, as the place was full to bursting. Nice day for a picnic by the motorway though.

[Big L]

Closure caused by a 'mysterious flammable but not explosive material, following on from Tuesday's M1 closure, caused by (maybe) Hydrochloric Acid. Any connection?

[Keiji]

Absolutely ridiculous.

These police are morons. People stuck for 11 hours, due to an incident in which not a single person was hurt, purely because the police were too stubborn to just turn people around. We've been having fatal accidents causing people to be stuck for upwards of 8 hours for years, and every time I have said it does not take that long to turn people round and the responses I have had are "in a fatal accident the police must prioritise investigation and not destroying evidence" and "there aren't enough resources to turn people round". Those responses won't work here, and this proves what I've been saying all along, that the officers that are responsible for handling these incidents do not give two about the general public.

I am a big fan of our police in general, I think we have the best police officers in the world, but there is absolutely no excuse for this.

Prove me wrong.

Maybe we should have a law stating the police must turn round all traffic within 4 hours otherwise the army shall be sent in to dismantle the central reservation barrier to let traffic turn round that way?

[M4 Cardiff]

It will sadly probably take the death of someone in a vehicle, (more likely if this happens on an extremely hot, or extremely cold day) or someone, for example an elderly relative, of a person trapped, who would otherwise have been visited in time before the police take evacuation of trapped traffic more seriously.

If it were a terrorost attack, having thousands of people trapped and immobile would be a recipie for mass casualties.

[fras]

Management of enormous traffic jams like this has been sloughed-off by the police for many years. We have "traffic officers", a recent Labour government invention, but I suspect they are seriously under-resourced. To evacuate traffic by U-turning at a removeable section of the central barrier needs a lot of staff and practice in how to do it. As it is an infrequent occurence, you would have to rely on on-call to get sufficient numbers of people out for the job. Not an easy problem to solve, I fear.

[Berk]

Exactky so. Why on earth can’t the police shut the motorway two junctions before the incident location?? That way the traffic can’t get so concentrated.

And actually, yes, I believe only a death would make police realise they are accountable to the public, and should stop being so stubborn. In my own opinion, they should stop building road traffic prosecutions primarily on forensic evidence, if you can convict on ‘lesser evidence’ (e.g. witness statements).

If it’s good enough for assault cases (for example), why not RTC’s??

[Berk]

Management of enormous traffic jams like this has been sloughed-off by the police for many years. We have "traffic officers", a recent Labour government invention, but I suspect they are seriously under-resourced. To evacuate traffic by U-turning at a removeable section of the central barrier needs a lot of staff and practice in how to do it. As it is an infrequent occurence, you would have to rely on on-call to get sufficient numbers of people out for the job. Not an easy problem to solve, I fear.

No, we don’t have ‘traffic officers’, we have HETOs instead. Does that mean traffic management has been decriminalised?? Mind you, I’ve never seen a HETO (but I don’t drive on motorways much).

And I think taking the attitude that ‘it’s too difficult’ is the wrong answer. Why is setting up a temporary contraflow so difficult to imagine?? Surely the presence of parked vehicles near the crime scene would make it confrontational?.

[Keiji]

Exactky so. Why on earth can’t the police shut the motorway two junctions before the incident location?? That way the traffic can’t get so concentrated.

My mother suggests this exact same solution every time I bring up this topic.

Junction closest to incident is used to release traffic stuck between it and the incident. Next junction back is used to release traffic approaching the incident. Simples.

Something else I forgot to point out in my previous post:

The motorway was closed shortly before 04:00 BST and fully reopened by about 15:30.

The motorway was closed around 4am.

How many vehicles are out and about in the early hours? Would a motorway closure at that time really cause a queue of that size to build up? Surely if a motorway is closed at 4am, only a small amount of traffic will be stuck before the cones are put out (cones WERE put out, right?!) and thus can easily be released?

It will sadly probably take the death of someone in a vehicle, (more likely if this happens on an extremely hot, or extremely cold day) or someone, for example an elderly relative, of a person trapped, who would otherwise have been visited in time before the police take evacuation of trapped traffic more seriously.

The responsible bodies should NOT wait for someone to die from their negligence before they do anything about it, but they are going to do so anyway (and even if someone does die they'll probably do nothing about that either). They know full well that they are making the public fed up, angry, dissatisfied and jaded with their actions and they have no sense to actually set anything right about it. All they care about is their own PR, protecting their own interests.

Has nobody in authority ever learned that if you keep disgruntling the public, the protesters will eventually turn violent?

[Big L]

... We have "traffic officers"...

No, we don’t have ‘traffic officers’, we have HETOs instead...

May I ask what you think the T and O of HETO stand for?

[Bryn666]

Being caught in the delays from an incident is infuriating but talk of targets for releasing traffic or summon the army to dismantle barriers?

Really? And we're going to keep a reserve squadron to hand just in case are we?

There are limited resources; wait it out and accept poo happens sometimes.

[Berk]

... We have "traffic officers"...

No, we don’t have ‘traffic officers’, we have HETOs instead...

May I ask what you think the T and O of HETO stand for?

The earlier post implied they were part of the police. They aren’t, they work for HE.

[andrewwoods]

I think it's deliberate. The thousands of vehicles parked on the motorway are not causing congestion on surrounding roads. It's an ad-hoc Operation Stack, but without the support and resources, and (mostly) not in vehicles that have facilities for rest and food.

Andrew

[mikehindsonevans]

There are limited resources; wait it out and accept poo happens sometimes.

Sorry Bryn, I disagree with the point which I think you are trying to make (I do agree, we don't need the army because we already expect Plod/HETO to look at the problem and implement a competent workaround solution - this is why we have dual carriageways). When you gridlock half a county "must do better" becomes your annual assessment rating.

We live just west of M3 J13 (the northern of the two "J13s" when heading south on the M3). We heard about this before heading out to Winchester and avoided getting caught. A couple of hours of delay is reasonable; eight hours is simply unacceptable, especially when an incident occurs at 0400hrs on a late-September Saturday morning.

The M3 southbound from J7 at Dummer should have been closed (easily pushing traffic onto the A303 towards Salisbury, for example), with a simple VMS message across southern England: "avoid M3 BTWN J7 and J11". FFS, there is a highways exit halfway along the long two-lane stretch on both sides of the carriageway north of Winchester services in the forest - a simple point to get traffic off and sent back north.

As stated up-thread, this cock-up incident has done NOTHING to enhance the reputations of Hampshire Plod, HCC Roads nor the "hardworking" HETO team. No-one whom we pay to manage our roads did a good job on Saturday morning. This event has caused real anger across Hampshire and has undone years of carefully built "just-about-OK" reputations for competence. This isn't "poo happens" - this is incompetence and a lack of bottle/forethought. The numpties responsible do clearly care about "their PR" - because none of them were prepared to put anyone up for interview yesterday to start recovering their shredded reputations (even if Saturday was unfortunate, Monday was a definite own-goal).

Anyone for a petition?

I have never seen Winchester look like this:

M3 closure 2017-09-23 Sat ROMANSE.pdf

(215.77 KiB) Downloaded 113 times

Some form of "upper time limit before HETO start reversing the cars" ruling is now overdue; don't call out the Army, don't dismantle the barriers; just use common sense (inside a formed policy) and get people turned around and off the motorway before someone dies of heat stroke. And no, at low speeds there would be bog-all chance of a head-on collision on a closed motorway carriageway during the evacuation (in case someone tries the "elf & safety" get-out).

Mike

[WHBM]

This has come up more than once before. There was a more than 24 hour closure on the M25 some years ago which nobody could justify, which got up to ministerial level who determined that things like this must be done better. Result - no action.

It's always far worse when it happens at the weekend (or at night) when it seems there is nobody around who is "allowed" to make decisions. A generation ago there never used to be these huge closures, things were dealt with by the relevant shift, and on we go.

The relevant procedures for a closure of each section of the network should be all worked out, in detail, as a standard manual. In advance.

[Arcuarius]

There's nothing like a little overreaction is there? The way you lot are carrying on is like the world's going to end because you've been stuck on the M3 for a bit. It's completely out of proportion

[Comstock]

Being caught in the delays from an incident is infuriating but talk of targets for releasing traffic or summon the army to dismantle barriers?

.

Agree about the army. Not necessary at all.

But what is wrong with targets? Most public services have them, so why not here?

[Fenlander]

There's nothing like a little overreaction is there? The way you lot are carrying on is like the world's going to end because you've been stuck on the M3 for a bit. It's completely out of proportion

I wouldn't call 11 hours 'a bit'.

[Chris Bertram]

There's nothing like a little overreaction is there? The way you lot are carrying on is like the world's going to end because you've been stuck on the M3 for a bit. It's completely out of proportion

I wouldn't call 11 hours 'a bit'.

Nor me. And without toilet facilities being wheeled in, the hard shoulder and grass verge are going to be a bit whiffy for a while afterwards.

[Bryn666]

And how many drivers spent the whole 11 hours stuck on the M3...?

Is the answer 0?