Journey's not long enough for the Motorway.

[darkcape]

I live close to M1 J21 and had friends and relatives living on the north-west Leicester fringes in Groby, Glenfield and Anstey. My dad would always use the local routes whereas I tend to use the motorway - part of the reason I suspect is he was driving those roads for decades before the Leicester Western Bypass was built.

I can understand people avoiding the motorway though is a 5-lane approach, 4-lane roundabout, traffic lights and very congested - for some people its just not worth the hassle.

[Big L]

Several times a year work takes me from home, South Staffordshire, to different sites around South Wales (especially in the 20 or 30 miles around Swansea).

I almost never use the motorway, except sometimes eastbound from the western end of the M4.

Via Bridgnorth to Ludlow then either Leominster/Brecon or Knighton/Llandrindod Wells/Llandovery.

[Johnathan404]

I wonder if you have the journey between M27 junctions 10 and 11 in mind. All traffic on the A32 headed between Wickham and Gosport is sent that way, away from said road, yet it is much shorter to go via Wallington Way which is still part of the A32.

No - I'm not sure there is very much through traffic on that route, given that the A32 is no longer of strategic importance, and beyond Fareham it is a very slow dead end. I do know several people who live/d close to M27 J10, and they would use the motorway to get to the retail parks at J12, but for J11 they would just use the newer bypass.

That is a good example of what the OP is asking about though. If you were in Fareham and you wanted a KFC, your closest branch would be the Fareham branch on the A32. But in normal afternoon traffic it would be faster to junction-hop your way to the one by M27 J12, and perhaps even to the one at M27 J7.

[Marzo]

In 'normal' times, the quickest way from the house to, say, Screwfix or the Royal Mail sorting office in Ellesmere Port is to join M53 at Junction 9 and get off again immediately (and I mean immediately) at Junction 8, but I am far more likely to use the 'old' A5032. Joining northbound at j9 involves a short,relatively sharp, climb up to a D2M with lots of HGVs, on the inside of a curve and with very limited visibility. I'm quite happy to use the motorway on the return journey, though, as the slips are longer and more open.

[FleetlinePhil]

Back when I first started driving in 1980, I would regularly make one-junction hops from Urmston on what was then the M63, now the M60 J10 and J11, simply to get over the Manchester Ship Canal and reach friends who lived in Irlam. It was slightly rarer to make what was then a one-junction journey in the other direction, between the now-closed entry from the B5213 and the A56, but not unknown. My father certainly used this option as the first section for many journeys throughout my childhood - anywhere to the south-east of Manchester in fact.

What did surprise me around that time was being offered a lift by a friend into central Manchester one Saturday afternoon, and him taking us via the M63/M602 and the A57 to park near Liverpool Road station. I would have always gone via the B5213 to Stretford and the A56 into the city centre, but at that time, the longer motorway route was far quicker if you were prepared to drive at full motorway speed (we were 19, so guess ), and I started to use this route myself at off-peak times. In more recent years I would tend to avoid the M62/M602 when driving from Urmston to Salford Royal Hospital (near J2), not perhaps because the ordinary roads were quicker, but as one previous poster said, more to avoid the risk of being stuck on the motorway in the event of an incident.

[ajuk]

I remember for a while after I first got my licence I would avoid using the motorway to go to work, (Avonmouth to Patchway on the M5) no real reason, it it just alien to me to get onto a motorway to go 4 miles, I would go the much longer route.

As an aside, which way did you go? Blaise Castle and Highwood Road (not that you can do that anymore)?

I worked at Cribb's Causeway, more accurately I should have said I got off there. But I did go past Blaise.

[FosseWay]

I wonder if it is connected to the fact that people don't like changing trains or buses, even if it gets them a quicker journey. People tend to be happier when they are following a single 'line'.

As someone who (in more normal times) relied a lot on public transport, I often (not always) favoured longer journeys with fewer changes because a) I often wasn't in a hurry anyway, and b) every time you change there's a lot of potential variance based on when the first service arrives compared to when the second service departs.

... and in my case (c) I use my time on the bus to read. If the difference in journey time between changing and not changing is just a few minutes, I'd rather stay put on the slower vehicle and carry on reading than break off to change. But I do tend not to take the direct bus home from work because it goes via Vladivostok and takes in every speed hump between here and there as well.

When driving, it will depend on the reason for my journey. Even before corona, I drove very little for commuting or other time-sensitive, drudge journeys. I don't have anything against motorways but AP roads tend to be more interesting so if I have time, the weather's nice and there are things to see, I will often take the road less travelled.

When I was a kid, one of the commonest motorway journeys we made as a family was M5 J6-J7 only, to connect the A449 spur to the A44. This was before the A44 and B4084 swapped places (which I hadn't realised had occurred at all until I couldn't work out from looking at a modern map why we'd used the motorway - the layout I remember is now mostly present on SABRE Maps, 1972 layer).

[WHBM]

But I do tend not to take the direct bus home from work because it goes via Vladivostok [/url]).

Ironically, if you go to Russian places Far From The Madding Crowd of Moscow or St Petersburg, you are quite likely to find the local bus is indeed a onetime Swedish one (or German). They seem to buy them secondhand and put them into service with no alteration to the decals or even interior labels, just the big (painted) Russian numberplate on the bootlid, with the Swedish one as well left in position. One we got in the backwoods of Karelia still had paper notices on the inside of the windows, in Swedish, about (I think) some forthcoming route changes in its onetime home city.

[Vierwielen]

OK not a motorway but the same point applies.

To get to the office I could take a direct route using 30/40 mph roads, or use Sheffield Parkway hence making most of the distance in 50 or 70 limits.

The latter would be on average a few minutes quicker but I don't go that way because:

• cost: the extra 4 miles and higher speed uses more petrol

• risk: the direct route averages 40 minutes but is very rarely under 35 or over 45 where the faster route might average 35 but is too often anything from 25 to 60

• cost again: increasing my journey to the office by 4 miles would reduce my expense claim every time I visit a client by £3.60 per day.

Before I retired, I worked on a freelance basis via my own service company. When charging my company expenses for the use of my car, I would base my claim on the distance given by the preferred Michelin route with no preferences switched on. This saved me having to clock odometer readings before and after each trip, made for easy and auditable book-keeping and gave an answer which was realistic. My accountant was quite happy with the process and I coudl state quite honestly that if I took a different route (which I often did), I had no idea whether I was over-stating or understating my expenses. At one site in particular, I would make up my mind at the last moment whether or not to use the motorway by checking the amount of traffic that was already on the M25 (I was on the A30).

[Gareth Thomas]

Not a motorway, but when my partner worked on the Isle of Sheppey he would avoid the current A249 and use the old bridge whilst heading to work, as the traffic was far lighter. Coming home he would take the A2 through Sittingbourne and Faversham as by that time of night it was quieter, whereas he would use the M2 going to work.