Gridlock in Greater Manchester

[Robert Kilcoyne]

The Manchester Evening News is reporting that drivers are experiencing very severe delays (and indeed even having to turn around and abort journeys) as a result of long running roadworks on the A57 Regent Road in Salford.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... e-15381921

The issues with traffic congestion in Greater Manchester have received some publicity recently as a result of the problems which Manchester United players and officials have experienced when travelling from their pre-match hotel to Old Trafford for Champions League games. On the first occasion, United arrived late at the ground after travelling less than three miles from the Hilton Manchester and the game had to kick off late. Before the game against Juventus, the United coach was held up in stationary traffic and Jose Mourinho found it quicker to get off the coach and walk to the ground.

In addition to Regent Road, which places are the worst pinchpoints for drivers in Manchester, Salford and Trafford?

[WHBM]

We have had a microcosm of this recently here in the London Docklands on a local route. Inefficiently managed works sprang up with even more inefficiently staged 3-way TTLs which spent most of their time having nothing signalled past the works at all due to excessive intergreen timing, and the minor road joining (which has an alternative exit to the main road) with the odd car given the same green time (because I stopped one day last week and stopwatched it). All led to extremely gross delays, and wrecked the bus timetable. Was taking 15 minutes to do 400 yards.

Sent TWO complaints to the web portal on the Borough highways team website, never even got an acknowledgement, seemed to make no difference.

Contractors opened up on Friday 26 Oct though they only received plant, using the carriageway as a plant yard for the portaloo etc, excavations only started sometime on Monday. Works completed it seemed by Friday but odd plant left there until today, Wednesday 7 Nov. For more than one day the TTLs operated guarding nothing at all apart from themselves until the hirer came to pick them up.

If highway authorities make no effort to oversee works on their infrastructure are being done in an efficient manner then work gangs will just please themselves how they organise. I'm sure the signals hirer was pleased that what could have been a 5 day hire of 2-way signals became an 11 day hire of 3-way ones. Maybe 3 times the revenue on their Schedule of Rates.

[Berk]

Another frequent complaint is that where there are pavements on both sides of the road, but the works are happening off road, or close to the pavement, rather than close one pavement for the duration of works, access is maintained by narrowing the road - with 4-way TTL’s (even when one arm is a cul-de-sac.

This being set up on a Friday afternoon for a 5-day occupation over the weekend, when the job is pretty much finished by end of Friday. How can authorities get away with paying for 5 days plant hire when a job actually lasts just a few hours??

Outrageous.

[Berk]

The job in question was replacing a streetlight column, because the power cable had failed and not been repaired for a year.

And in a country area, with few of any pedestrians. I dread to think what the repair bill cost.

[WHBM]

This being set up on a Friday afternoon for a 5-day occupation over the weekend, when the job is pretty much finished by end of Friday. How can authorities get away with paying for 5 days plant hire when a job actually lasts just a few hours??

For utility contractors they are on a Schedule of Rates. Some of these are effectievly "cost-plus". So the more cost you put into it the more margin (profit) you make. 2-way TTL cost £20 a day, charged at £25. 3-way cost £30 a day, charged at £38. So 5 days of the 2-way makes you £25 profit, 11 days of 3-way makes you £88 profit. You are on a fixed schedule price for the actual utility repair, but the TTLs are on top, because the TTL requirements are whatever the worksite needs. Multiply this up by everything else on the job as well.

Now of course the client's engineer should be on top of all this. But we all know the engineer spends Friday afternoon in the office pulling all the documentation together, so won't see digging has not started. Most plant is hired on a 5 day week, not charged weekends, but because TTLs are actually working they are charged on a 7 day week, so are good profit adders.

The local authority highways bod could come round to check and report an inactive site which will cause trouble. But we all know the LA has stopped paying weekend overtime to cut costs, and nobody is on weekend checks any more.

[Bryn666]

This project is to add an extra lane to the A57 and reconfigure an entire junction in a constrained site. There are stats diversions, carriageway works, and entire islands to be removed. The only way to do these works were with lane closures.

These were publicised weeks in advance, you had to be living under a rock to not realise these works were going ahead.

I have adapted my journeys and not suffered any ill effects, but the terminally hard of thinking still insist on driving the exact same way to work even though there are numerous alternative routes and indeed methods of travel across the city.

Ultimately I have little sympathy, these people have all had the same advance warning as the rest of us. Suck it up and stop moaning.

[Berk]

Had any thought been given to having a series of 48-hour weekend occupations?? Rather than weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of lane restrictions and multiple TTL’s??

Something that would be imaginative, and try and remove the potential disprution - for buses, and other road users, not just motorists y’know??

And despite having been ‘trailed widely in advance’, not everyone stays glued to roadworks.org, or the public ads in their local paper (like I do). Even then you can find unexpected ad-hoc lane closures, when the route online is ‘clear’ before you set off.

And it can be hard to see advance warning signs on the road when you’re driving past. Particularly if a lorry or bus is blocking your view.

[Johnathan404]

Ultimately I have little sympathy, these people have all had the same advance warning as the rest of us. Suck it up and stop moaning.

I think it's worth adding that delays are annoying, and nobody would deny that. But they are part and parcel of driving in a city, just like rail commuters sometimes wake up and find there is nothing running and bus commuters regularly find their vehicle breaking down.

It's not good but it's not unexpected.

Had any thought been given to having a series of 48-hour weekend occupations?? Rather than weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of lane restrictions and multiple TTL’s??

Something that would be imaginative, and try and remove the potential disprution - for buses, and other road users, not just motorists y’know??

Yeah that'd be a great way to get the complaints coming in! Think about how enraged people get just by the concept of closing a few city centre streets on Sunday morning (which Bristol managed to make quite a success off, in my experience).

[Berk]

I was thinking more in a targeted way, for the length of the works project. Besides, what could be more disruptive - day after day after week after week of solid congestion 7am to 7pm, or two days per week for about 4 to 6 weeks of having to find alternative routes??

I think it may come down to contractors and the way project works are managed - by the contractors and the authority themselves. We touched on this before - if plant hire firms can charge more, they will do so.

It should become prohibitively expensive for works to stretch on for weeks and weeks, unless there are truly exceptional circumstances (sinkholes, explosions, the unpredictable).

[nowster]

I tend to find that the Moston Lane and Victoria Avenue junctions on the A664 Rochdale Road cause several mile tailbacks in the rush hours, even into the evening (7pm). Add roadworks, and things get even worse.

Sometimes it's much quicker to use the A62/A663 route. And don't even think of using the A56/M60 or A576 routes instead.

This is why my usual work hours are 10am-6.30pm.

[Bryn666]

Had any thought been given to having a series of 48-hour weekend occupations?? Rather than weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of lane restrictions and multiple TTL’s??

Something that would be imaginative, and try and remove the potential disprution - for buses, and other road users, not just motorists y’know??

And despite having been ‘trailed widely in advance’, not everyone stays glued to roadworks.org, or the public ads in their local paper (like I do). Even then you can find unexpected ad-hoc lane closures, when the route online is ‘clear’ before you set off.

And it can be hard to see advance warning signs on the road when you’re driving past. Particularly if a lorry or bus is blocking your view.

There were giant VMS placed on all approaches to this junction in June, advertising the 29th August start date. It was on the radio. It's been on Twitter, Facebook, and TfGM website.

There are no TTLs. The lane closures are needed because there are stats diversions and kerb works taking place. There is nowhere to store plant and materials because this is a city centre location with minimal verge width. The cost of taking all this away every week would be astronomical and mean probably 2 years of total weekend closures instead of 12 months of lane closures. When the Mancunian Way has been closed of a weekend the city centre has ground to a bigger halt than these roadworks cause.

If you block access for pedestrians and cyclists and those who have a legal right to the highway instead of licensed access you will end up in the High Court. Simple as.

[Jeni]

Sometimes it's much quicker to use the A62/A663 route.

You'll be surprised how often this was the quickest route to STOCKPORT!

[Bryn666]

Sometimes it's much quicker to use the A62/A663 route.

You'll be surprised how often this was the quickest route to STOCKPORT!

It's often the quickest way for a lot of journeys in and out of the city.

The biggest cause of the congestion on the A62 beyond joining the hopelessness that is Great Ancoats Street are the short and disconnected bus lanes as everyone filters into a single lane. This surely delays the buses as well as they're stuck in the queue to form a single lane before skipping past the better flowing single lane bit. Bad design to tick a box rather than resolve a need.

Incidentally that type of half-assed design is what led to Liverpool binning most of their bus lanes.

[mikehindsonevans]

Ah! Another mention of Liverpool dumping bus lanes a year or three back - how did that work out?
Mike

[Bryn666]

Ah! Another mention of Liverpool dumping bus lanes a year or three back - how did that work out?
Mike

In general there was a minor increase in journey times for all modes but overall it wasn't deemed to be all that negative. In the end four bus lanes were retained in the city centre.

[roadtester]

Shouldn't this be "Congestion in Greater Manchester"?

Gridlock describes a specific type of jam peculiar to street systems arranged in a grid pattern - therefore, by definition, Manchester cannot be gridlocked however busy or slow the traffic!

Gridlock is a form of traffic congestion where "continuous queues of vehicles block an entire network of intersecting streets, bringing traffic in all directions to a complete standstill".[1] The term originates from a situation possible in a grid plan where intersections are blocked, preventing vehicles from either moving forwards through the intersection or backing up to an upstream intersection.

The term gridlock is also used incorrectly to describe high traffic congestion with minimal flow (which is simply a traffic jam), where a blocked grid system is not involved. By extension, the term has been applied to situations in other fields where flow is stalled by excess demand, or in which competing interests prevent progress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridlock

Or am I being too pernickety?

[Jeni]

Because of the massive failures of public transport (Northern Fail) in the area, I've found myself driving in to the office now - there's no gridlock and everything is fine and dandy.

Now if we want to talk about incompetent traffic wardens however...

[Berk]

Or am I being too pernickety?

A little. I think our friends in Australia and the US tend to cling to that definition - because their cities largely follow grid systems.

But by extension, our cities work in a similar way. If a main artery is congested, so will the branches running off it, and those off them also.

[Bryn666]

Because of the massive failures of public transport (Northern Fail) in the area, I've found myself driving in to the office now - there's no gridlock and everything is fine and dandy.

Now if we want to talk about incompetent traffic wardens however...

Are you travelling to work at 6am? In my experience Great Ancoats Street is a car park for much of the am peak. I actually just make do with the trains, which are bad but still have got me to work quicker than dealing with the A6, A580, and A57.

[boliston]

Another frequent complaint is that where there are pavements on both sides of the road, but the works are happening off road, or close to the pavement, rather than close one pavement for the duration of works, access is maintained by narrowing the road - with 4-way TTL’s (even when one arm is a cul-de-sac......

surely if a pavement is closed then they would legally have to fence off a small part of a carriageway to allow pedestrians to get past safely