Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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traffic-light-man
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

Post by traffic-light-man »

I recently had a spell on Universal Credit, where DWP told me that I was expected to travel up to (IIRC) 90 minutes each way, each day for work, and if I couldn't manage that, I had to give justification as to why not. They didn't specify how that commute was done, just that they considered that time average and reasonable. Having never been in a position to do a regular commute at the same time and to the same location, I remember firstly being quite surprised at that 90 minute figure, and then afterwards thinking that kind of commute must be fairly standard. Admittedly, being in the position I was in, of course I would do that commute in order to secure a job, but I certainly wouldn't enjoy it. That's just me, though.
Chris5156 wrote: Mon Feb 15, 2021 21:05My concern is that having everyone work from home is fine in the short and medium term, when the people working from home are in established teams, with working relationships and personal connections already in place. Having new people join those teams having never physically met anyone in them, and having no office or base to attend where they can get to know their new colleagues and learn the culture, is a completely different proposition. I know anecdotally of several cases where someone has been recruited to a team who are currently working from home, and working very well; have failed to get to grips with the team or the work; have failed to find a way to fit in; and have left again a few months later. And really that isn't surprising. You don't learn a job by email.

I strongly suspect that some amount of time spent in a shared work space with your colleagues is a more important than these companies currently appreciate, and I expect that in a few years' time many of the companies who sell off all their office space will be finding that the productivity of a workforce working entirely from home has not stayed nice and high. That doesn't mean that we all need to go back to the nine to five, but I think predictions that the pandemic marks the death of the commute are rather overstated. People will work from home more than they did before, but that will be the furthest extent of the change.
That's my situation at the moment, having been able to (thankfully) make a career change fairly recently. I've been to my new office once, which was to set-up and collect my IT equipment, and to meet my new manager at a distance, of course. I've still not managed to put faces to any names with the exception of my manager, the department manager and the engineer who I'm working alongside on a current scheme, who is also in a similar boat as me.

We do a lot of phone calls and screen sharing however, so the whole experience hasn't felt quite as distant as I'd expected initially. It's early days yet, but I don't feel like WFH is having a particularly negative impact on me and I feel like I'm settling in well. Having said that, I would wholly understand someone feeling as you've described, and once office work is 're-allowed', I wouldn't mind doing a hybrid of office and WFH, just to get to know a few more colleagues beyond the email inbox!
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trickstat
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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I have read quite a few newspaper articles where it says that quite a lot of people regard 90 minutes as an upper limit as a potential commute. However, I do think this is largely referring to those with well-paid jobs in London.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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trickstat wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 23:03 I have read quite a few newspaper articles where it says that quite a lot of people regard 90 minutes as an upper limit as a potential commute. However, I do think this is largely referring to those with well-paid jobs in London.
I remember that one of the 'stars' of the BBC show Airport commuted daily from Clacton to Heathrow, a five hour round trip.

Five hours travelling to do an eight-hour shift. Madness.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

Post by fras »

In the 80s, my job in BR involved travel daily to the "Kremlin" at 222, Marylebone Road, from my address in Rugby. Luckily, I had a free pass. This involved starting walking from our house to Rugby Station at 0700, catching the 0723, arriving at Euston an hour later, then walking to Euston Square Underground station for the short journey to Baker St, then a walk to the HQ. I did this for many years. Journey home was on the 7.30 from Euston, finally getting home at about 1900.
I always used to joke to friends that I had a 12 hour day, but only got paid for 8 of them. There were lots of people on those two trains, and I once saw Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer waiting on the platform.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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trickstat wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 23:03 I have read quite a few newspaper articles where it says that quite a lot of people regard 90 minutes as an upper limit as a potential commute. However, I do think this is largely referring to those with well-paid jobs in London.
Even in the case of areas with fast electric commuter trains the reality is that 90 minutes door to door is far from unusual in the south east. That is about the time it took me from a village in South Cambs to our office on London. broken down as follows

15 minutes to drive to Sandy and park up, 1 hour 15 minutes by train to Liverpool Street and walk to office, that is assuming I made all the connections. I did this infrequently but my neighbour did it every day. The reason he did it was simple, he could buy a 4 bedroom detached house in a peaceful village for the price of a small flat in London. I know which he prefers in the current lockdown, its hereabouts.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.15051 ... 312!8i6656


The shortest commute I had in London was about 30 minutes door to door and that was from Queensbury to an office near Wembley Stadium. There were real long distance commuters in that office. One came in by train from Bristol and another drove every day from Ringwood in Hampshire. We had a good flexitime system so he was in the office by 7 AM and left at 3 PM
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

Post by AndyB »

And it’s not at all unusual in NI either. People literally drive the length of the A4 and A6 to get to their jobs in Belfast, and even if their employer (such as the NICS) has offices in their local area, they are dead man’s shoes jobs.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

Post by matt-thepie »

I commute to work using my bicycle not my car. For two reasons, one, it's actually faster due to the congestion on the roads and I don't need to faff about looking for parking, and two, I would rather that those who really need the spaces (disabled, people with kids, people who live far away) had the spaces.

However, the amount of abuse I get from motorists, with alarming regularity, is unacceptable. This is usually caused by cars passing me, then me naturally passing them in the bike lanes by red lights, then them getting frustrated trying to pass me again further down the road, then repeat the cycle. The concept of average speed is entirely lost on them.

Similarly, the hostility towards making more space available for cycles (making cycling safer encourages others to cycle instead of drive, making the roads emptier for those that need to use them) by the general public is really depressing.

We really do need an attitude shift moving forward. The air pollution levels on certain arterial routes in Portsmouth is so bad that the council have been told to take "drastic" action to reduce them. This is likely having serious effects on the health of the children of the same people that oppose any improvement to the infrastructure for cycles etc.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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matt-thepie wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:37 I commute to work using my bicycle not my car. For two reasons, one, it's actually faster due to the congestion on the roads and I don't need to faff about looking for parking, and two, I would rather that those who really need the spaces (disabled, people with kids, people who live far away) had the spaces.

However, the amount of abuse I get from motorists, with alarming regularity, is unacceptable. This is usually caused by cars passing me, then me naturally passing them in the bike lanes by red lights, then them getting frustrated trying to pass me again further down the road, then repeat the cycle. The concept of average speed is entirely lost on them.

Similarly, the hostility towards making more space available for cycles (making cycling safer encourages others to cycle instead of drive, making the roads emptier for those that need to use them) by the general public is really depressing.

We really do need an attitude shift moving forward. The air pollution levels on certain arterial routes in Portsmouth is so bad that the council have been told to take "drastic" action to reduce them. This is likely having serious effects on the health of the children of the same people that oppose any improvement to the infrastructure for cycles etc.
IIRC aren't there only 3 roads that take you on or off Portsea Island?
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

Post by matt-thepie »

trickstat wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 11:41
matt-thepie wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:37 I commute to work using my bicycle not my car. For two reasons, one, it's actually faster due to the congestion on the roads and I don't need to faff about looking for parking, and two, I would rather that those who really need the spaces (disabled, people with kids, people who live far away) had the spaces.

However, the amount of abuse I get from motorists, with alarming regularity, is unacceptable. This is usually caused by cars passing me, then me naturally passing them in the bike lanes by red lights, then them getting frustrated trying to pass me again further down the road, then repeat the cycle. The concept of average speed is entirely lost on them.

Similarly, the hostility towards making more space available for cycles (making cycling safer encourages others to cycle instead of drive, making the roads emptier for those that need to use them) by the general public is really depressing.

We really do need an attitude shift moving forward. The air pollution levels on certain arterial routes in Portsmouth is so bad that the council have been told to take "drastic" action to reduce them. This is likely having serious effects on the health of the children of the same people that oppose any improvement to the infrastructure for cycles etc.
IIRC aren't there only 3 roads that take you on or off Portsea Island?
Indeed, yes - the M275, the A3 and the Eastern Road (A2030). Even worse, there's no particularly safe cycling route once you cross onto the island, you have to fight down London Road, Northern Parade or Copnor Road. On the Eastern road you have to cycle on the shared use pavement, which is narrow and quite rightly full of pedestrians. A cyclist was killed a couple of years back on that route so I don't tend to use it.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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matt-thepie wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:37 I commute to work using my bicycle not my car. For two reasons, one, it's actually faster due to the congestion on the roads and I don't need to faff about looking for parking, and two, I would rather that those who really need the spaces (disabled, people with kids, people who live far away) had the spaces.

However, the amount of abuse I get from motorists, with alarming regularity, is unacceptable. This is usually caused by cars passing me, then me naturally passing them in the bike lanes by red lights, then them getting frustrated trying to pass me again further down the road, then repeat the cycle. The concept of average speed is entirely lost on them.

Similarly, the hostility towards making more space available for cycles (making cycling safer encourages others to cycle instead of drive, making the roads emptier for those that need to use them) by the general public is really depressing.

We really do need an attitude shift moving forward. The air pollution levels on certain arterial routes in Portsmouth is so bad that the council have been told to take "drastic" action to reduce them. This is likely having serious effects on the health of the children of the same people that oppose any improvement to the infrastructure for cycles etc.
This is fine where it is possible but for many people , especially those in the South East that is simply not possible as I am sure you realise. I lived in London from 1984 to 1996, in that time I worked for 3 different employers in different parts of London. My house was in Stanmore and my last employer was in Colliers Wood. Thats the best part of 20 miles each way, fortunately that was a relatively easy journey by tube on the Jubilee and Northern Line. The one before was in Sunbury, again 20 miles by the shortest route but going round the M25 halved the journey time from 90 minutes to 45 minutes but doubled the distance. Trust me you really wouldn't want to drive or cycle around the North and South Circular during the rush hour.

The roads are a shared place, that's just how it is, by all means call for better cycle routes but blaming drivers is no more helpful than blaming cyclists. Telling someone a road is being reduced in capacity to allow for better cycling provision is never going to be popular.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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fras wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 00:02 ... I once saw Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer waiting on the platform.
... who was the MP for Blaby so not an entirely surprising journey for him.
matt-thepie wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:37 Similarly, the hostility towards making more space available for cycles..
If it was always done competently so it actually did encourage cycling and make it safer, rather than often being a vindictive anti-car move, perhaps there'd be a bit less hostility?
Bryn666 wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:00 but all we really need in congestion terms is to knock out about 10-15% of trips by solo-occupancy cars and many of our problems will be lessened if not resolved outright.
As demonstrated regularly in school holidays.
BF2142 wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:42 IMO the medium and long-term economic changes from the pandemic will be immense.
As Arthur C Clarke observed, humanity usually vastly over estimates change in the short term and vastly under estimates it in the long term (see railways, internal combustion engines, television and the internet for good examples). I predict the same inaccurate predictions here!
BF2142 wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:42 When you can be just as productive at home, why would you waste time/money doing that?
In the unlikely event that the pandemic ends and the government restores democracy, will my employer continue requiring default home working to save on office costs? Or will it look at how much longer every assignment has taken, some disasters caused by communication failures and the lack of progress made by trainees, and summon everyone back to the office? Or will it be sensible and allow staff to make sensible decisions about where they need to be? I've no idea and very much doubt my employer has a clue yet either. I suspect the same applies to many other employers.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

Post by qwertyK »

Was just about to ask whatever happened to the M11 extension to Hull being talked about in late 2018. Seems like I know my answer now :o
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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When I was at university in Buckingham, I used to see a car with a Sussex Ornithological Society sticker on its back window parked in the staff car park. I was a birdwatcher at the time, and was fascinated to know who this was. It turned out that he was a birdwatching friend of a friend of ours, and that he worked at the Clore Laboratory at the university, working on diabetes research. He used to travel up from Bognor Regis just about every day. I've no idea how long that took him. I used regularly to travel home to East Grinstead, and on a good run it took me two hours. I was finding my commute to London (1 hour 45 minutes door to door at the very least if all connections worked) quite taxing by the time I started working from home owing to the lockdown, so I don't know how he found his journey.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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the cheesecake man wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 12:50 In the unlikely event that the pandemic ends and the government restores democracy, will my employer continue requiring default home working to save on office costs? Or will it look at how much longer every assignment has taken, some disasters caused by communication failures and the lack of progress made by trainees, and summon everyone back to the office? Or will it be sensible and allow staff to make sensible decisions about where they need to be? I've no idea and very much doubt my employer has a clue yet either. I suspect the same applies to many other employers.
All pandemics come to an end and the the government has not suspended or abolished democracy, it has introduced emergency regulations that are time limited. The pressure it has to resist is from those who want to end restrictions too soon.

As for what your employer will do you have to talk to them. It will depend on how well it worked but it has been increasing for many years. Before retiring in 2016 my employer had more than 50% of employees working from home in the UK, Europe and North America and was planning to close all UK offices except the London HQ. Managers were given a budget to arrange group meetings in conference centres when that was appropriate. Every employee was provided with a high end laptop, large screen monitor, a high speed broadband connection and if required office furniture.

One interesting study suggested that those home working were actually more productive but that was in the IT industry. Customer facing roles are rather different, you cant give a hair cut or manicure by video conferencing.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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KeithW wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 09:4015 minutes to drive to Sandy and park up, 1 hour 15 minutes by train to Liverpool Street and walk to office, that is assuming I made all the connections. I did this infrequently but my neighbour did it every day. The reason he did it was simple, he could buy a 4 bedroom detached house in a peaceful village for the price of a small flat in London.
Exactly this.

My partner and I have just bought a house and - for exactly the same reasons - my commute now looks very similar, though I'll be coming in to Waterloo. Working from home is not an option in my job. But the fairly stark choice was that we could afford to buy a very nice house with a decent garden 50+ miles from London, or we could afford a small flat in a part of London where neither of us wanted to live. The house we bought is valued about £200,000 cheaper than the one bed flat I used to rent in Zone 3.

The unfortunate truth is that, unless you earn a six figure salary, you can either live somewhere you like or somewhere in London, but not both. As a result long commutes are the norm here - though there's evidently a big disparity compared to other parts of the country, because when I told my friends back in Leeds where my new house was, I may as well have said I was going to be commuting from Helsinki. The idea of commuting for that distance or that length of time was completely unbelievable to them.

As I type this I am on a nightshift at work with three colleagues who commute in from Shoeburyness, Milton Keynes and Oxford. Others in my team live as far afield as Princes Risborough, Chelmsford, Cambridge, Folkestone and Southampton. Those in my team who do live in London are invariably still renters. The number of people in my 50-strong department who both live in London and own their home is perhaps two or three.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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My sister’s been working from home now for almost a year (entirely laptop & phone based job). She used to do the school run then drive to the office, put her time in then drive home again in time for tea with the family.
Now she can put her hours in mostly when she chooses to and occasionally when she has to (zoom stuff or phone calls). That flexibility means she doesn’t have to do the non-work stuff in strict time slots so if it’s raining for example she’ll work more so that when it’s dry she can spend more time outdoors.
Her company is so happy with the productivity from the home based staff that they didn’t renew the lease on the offices during lockdown, instead they’ve taken a much smaller unit with fewer desks than staff and give staff the option to carry on working from home or come in & use the office when needed with the occasion face to face stuff in the meeting room there.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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the cheesecake man wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 12:50 In the unlikely event that the pandemic ends and the government restores democracy, will my employer continue requiring default home working to save on office costs? Or will it look at how much longer every assignment has taken, some disasters caused by communication failures and the lack of progress made by trainees, and summon everyone back to the office? Or will it be sensible and allow staff to make sensible decisions about where they need to be? I've no idea and very much doubt my employer has a clue yet either. I suspect the same applies to many other employers.
If your employer's expecting to come through this as a viable business and then wants to retain staff going forward I'd very much hope it does have a clue and is making longer-term plans. We've had 2 staff surveys since we decamped from our offices last March asking how we think we've got on, including whether we feel we are more or less productive, have issues with isolation versus not being disturbed every five minutes, etc. and I'm sure this has been compared against our actual productivity already. And based on what is quickly coming up to our one year anniversary of all staff working from home full-time, we've also been sounded out as to how we'd prefer to work in future, with a tentative response from management of a 3 in/2 out arrangement as being a good compromise for most of us. We'll see how all this pans out in the coming year, but I've got to say I'm glad they're being so pro-active in their approach.
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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qwertyK wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 12:50 Was just about to ask whatever happened to the M11 extension to Hull being talked about in late 2018. Seems like I know my answer now :o
The same as happened to the proposal to extend the M11 up the east coast in the 1990s?
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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KeithW wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 18:03 All pandemics come to an end and the the government has not suspended or abolished democracy.
Democracy includes the right to travel where I like in the United Kingdom for any reason, meet anyone I want to meet, protest against any government policy I don't agree with, attend any religious services I choose etc. That right has certainly been suspended.
It has introduced emergency regulations that are time limited.
But could be renewed if the government likes them or just doesn't feel like giving up its power.
As for what your employer will do you have to talk to them.
That's a complete waste of time.
Every employee was provided with a high end laptop, large screen monitor, a high speed broadband connection and if required office furniture.
That would cost money so isn't going to happen.
One interesting study suggested that those home working were actually more productive but that was in the IT industry. Customer facing roles are rather different, you cant give a hair cut or manicure by video conferencing.
Yes, it clearly depends on the job. While there have been some days working at home has been more efficient due to fewer interruptions or distractions, overall almost every assignment is taking significantly longer than previous years due communication failures (eg if a trainee needs assistance it's difficult providing it from 2 metres away, from 20 miles away it's impossible).

For example
One client that did let us attend their premises took me 92 hours, a very similar to every year from 2004-2019.
A job I had to at home took me 62 hours compared to 45 hours in 2007, 48 in 2009 and 45 in 2018.

Debaser wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 13:35 If your employer's expecting to come through this as a viable business and then wants to retain staff going forward I'd very much hope it does have a clue and is making longer-term plans.
So would I but...
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Re: Road Building Plans to be Halted?

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the cheesecake man wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 13:02
qwertyK wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 12:50 Was just about to ask whatever happened to the M11 extension to Hull being talked about in late 2018. Seems like I know my answer now :o
The same as happened to the proposal to extend the M11 up the east coast in the 1990s?

There was no such proposal. Local politicians on Humberside and a newspaper tried to talk one up and failed.
https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... t_Motorway
viewtopic.php?t=21303
https://spatialsynergydave.wordpress.co ... -motorway/


A far better option that might have a chance of actually happening would be upgrading the A1 from Peterborough to Blyth
Some roads at the Northern end such as the A168/A19 and A1 from Ferrybridge to Barton have been upgraded to Motorway or near Motorway standard. Widening of the A19 from the Tees to Wynard is happening right now.

The dualling of the A47 to Peterborough is in RIS 2 I believe.
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/maps-show- ... -a-1515552

From the SABRE Wiki: East Coast Motorway :

The East Coast Motorway was an unofficial proposal brought forward in early 1991 solely by pressure groups, including private sponsors and consulting firms, for a new motorway which would run along the eastern side of England. It is important to note that this proposal was never created or supported by any central Government body, and so should be not treated or implied as such.

It was seen in some

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