Queens Roundabout - Farnborough, Hants

[JonH]

Having seen the back of the chaos of roadworks at Black Dam in Basingstoke, I was pleased to see that the other bane of my life, Queens Roundabout in Farnborough is now almost completely open. (Both over budget, both over schedule etc.)

Pleased that is, until coming to use it.

I work on the aerospace park by the airport, so Queens is almost my only sensible way into and out of work.

First issue. Heading east towards the A3011, there is only one signpost at the side of the road. It had been positioned just feet behind a traffic light and street light, which obscure most of the road identifiers on the sign!

Second issue. The lane markings. Oh how predictable...

First time I used the roundabout yesterday I was intending to head east down the A3011. According to the lane marking approaching the roundabout (there are three lanes) I can use Lane 1 or 2. I chose Lane 1. Luckily, traffic was light so when I moved over the stop line and realised that lane 1 actually heads northbound up the A325, I could cut into Lane 2 without cutting anyone else up. Notwithstanding that, if the lane has been marked A3011 - it should go there! In reality, once you get onto the roundabout, not one but 2 lanes go up the A325, merging shortly after the exit, and Lane 1 appears to have a solid white line separating it out from lane 2! if there are two lanes on exit, surely identifying lane 1 as suitable to go straight on is asking for a crash?

Second time, I was heading a different way, south down the A325. On the approach, lanes 2 and 3 are labelled this way. I used Lane 2. Keeping lane 1 on my left, I head onto the roundabout and end up on Lane 1 of the circulatory. Which, despite the 3 right hand turn arrows on all three circulatory lanes, actually goes off straight on, not right, down the A3011!! Luckily, I am fortunate enough to be able to cut across lanes again and get back into the correct lane!

I haven't used it in any other direction as yet, but on the local news website, a driving instructor has commented on the article celebrating the opening by criticising the lane markings laid out for southbound A325 traffic turning into the Aerospace centre and calling the roundabout "an accident waiting to happen."

Is lane design such a difficult activity that it can be done so badly?? I am gearing up to write to the highways people to complain about poor/incorrect signage and markings again, but am wondering why, as a member of the public not trained in road design, I'm having to do this to people actually paid to do the job. It is really p*ssing me off now!!

I am responsible for exhibition stands in my job, if I did my job the same way the agencies involved in Black Dam and Queens did theirs, I'd deliver my stand a month after the exhibition finished and on its side!! Then say "what are you complaining about, it's done?" (Of course, the reality is, if I did my job the way the Highways agencies did, I wouldn't do exhibition stands anymore because I would have been sacked a LOOONNNNG time ago for incompetence.)

[WheelJack]

I'm a fellow sufferer of both of these over-running, over-budget roundabout projects (plus the M3 shambles in between the two, but let's not even get started on that...). I note that they were both part-funded centrally as part of the Pinch Point scheme, and I wonder if that is a factor in the general balls up we've seen with both?

The Black Dam does at least seem to run pretty well now, although there were problems with the lights in the first few days after opening which caused traffic chaos and a couple of serious collisions with injury. Despite all those countless hours I wasted in queues during the works at Black Dam I can kind of forgive it - it's a key junction from the M3 to Hampshire's largest town that badly needed upgrading, and they ran into major issues with unmarked services that had to be replanned. Anyway, it's done now and it seems to work.

But the Queens... what a mess. How they managed to drag that much smaller and quieter roundabout redesign out to 18 months and 7 million quid is a mystery. With the kicker being that it was never that bad in the first place - most locals didn't consider it to be a traffic blackspot, and even the developers of the nearby multi-thousand home scheme have piled in to call it a waste of money, as their associated road projects will be diverting traffic away from the roundabout, not adding to it.

Do you think it will actually help with traffic at the aerospace park at peak times, as I've never used that exit myself? I can't see it helping capacity anywhere else - nothing is being done to relieve the A3011 Lynchford Road link to the A331, which is a notorious bottleneck, and I would have said that the roundabouts on the A325 further into Farnborough, and those back towards Farnham in the other direction, were worse and more worthy of investment. And the two roundabouts that bracket Frimley Park hospital further along the A325 are atrocious - they were much more deserving of being light-controlled, I'd say, although I think they're just into Surrey, who seem to be markedly worse than Hampshire on road matters.

The council argument all along has been that they had to move quickly to secure funding from the Pinch Point scheme or lose out, and that this project was the only one eligible. But having skimmed the guidelines for the scheme I can't work it out - surely there were plenty of 'pinch points' around the area that could use investment?

I've used the new and improved Queens for the first time today - coming from the Farnham direction on the A325 and turning right to Lynchford Road - and I'm seriously unimpressed. It feels like too small of a roundabout to have so many lights crammed onto it, and the lane markings are definitely questionable. I suspect that your letter may well be required - I bet the construction company involved are keen to distance themselves from this project now so I doubt they'll be doing anything voluntarily!

[M19]

Cynic hat on.

I suspect chasing after (penny) pinch point funding is keeping highway engineers from redundancy under local government cuts. Now that would be a good thing if the schemes being delivered would actually work. But many are very much watered down versions of projects that they should be and soon will prove to be false economy projects.

Perhaps this is why many high quality bypasses become "development or regeneration routes". Maybe this allows for different traffic modelling assumptions that can be used to justify a poor scheme.

Maybe its the modelling that ends up with a design with poor lane markings, because the traffic will only flow optimally that way. In the real world, it doesn't work like that. I've seen a lot of proposed layouts that just look wrong, and sure enough you have to sharpen your defensive driving skills to anticipate near misses and avoid accidents.

The A43 Round Spinney Roundabout is a case in point. Heading north people always use the left most lane, thinking it will lead onto the A43 north exit, then perform a panic lane change on realising it heads off to Moulton Park. I avoid the middle lane on the approach and go for the right approach lane which exits onto the A43 but then ends suddenly with a merge. Hence, you need to pick a space to merge into. Most times this is fine, certainly better than having near misses with panic lane changes. Some numpties do however have a problem with you trying to merge, thinking you're gaining an advantage, but that is the lesser of two evils on this nasty scheme.

I do not see the point of spending millions on schemes that are designed to fail, even if the traffic modelling is massaged to suggest the opposite. It plays nicely into the anti road lobby's hands and it's "more roads, more congestion" cliche.

If it can't be done right, don't bother and wait until the political climate favours doing it properly!

[JonH]

Do you think it will actually help with traffic at the aerospace park at peak times, as I've never used that exit myself? I can't see it helping capacity anywhere else - nothing is being done to relieve the A3011 Lynchford Road link to the A331, which is a notorious bottleneck, and I would have said that the roundabouts on the A325 further into Farnborough, and those back towards Farnham in the other direction, were worse and more worthy of investment.

The main help for traffic leaving the aerospace park will be just that, leaving the aerospace park. Once out, we'll just get stuck at the next gridlock - most of which you have correctly identified already!

Regarding the letter, I have written to the local highways authority and already one correction has been made concerning the lane markings on exit from the aerospace park, you can now go from the left lane at the exit onto the left hand lane on the central part of the roundabout. I walked by the roundabout at lunch today and noticed that the traffic light phasing is a mess, going red where there is traffic approaching, going green where the road is totally clear.

What is bizarre is that the approach from Farnham is still coned off - no idea why!

On Black Dam - it does seem to function reasonably well, but there are problems with light phasing at peak times - seems to be a total lack of synchronisation - and the illogical lane markings which lead to some poor driver behaviours.

[Boring82]

On Black Dam - it does seem to function reasonably well, but there are problems with light phasing at peak times - seems to be a total lack of synchronisation - and the illogical lane markings which lead to some poor driver behaviours.

I haven't seen any issues with phasing at peak times, I use it during both peak periods. I'm unsure what illogical lane markings you mean either, again I haven't noticed any?

[JonH]

On Black Dam - it does seem to function reasonably well, but there are problems with light phasing at peak times - seems to be a total lack of synchronisation - and the illogical lane markings which lead to some poor driver behaviours.

I haven't seen any issues with phasing at peak times, I use it during both peak periods. I'm unsure what illogical lane markings you mean either, again I haven't noticed any?

I use it every evening, coming in on the A30 from Hook to head up the A339 Ring Way East. This causes me to pass 3 sets of lights; set A where the A30 meets the roundabout, set B on the central section where it meets the main northbound carriageway and set C where that northbound carriageway meets the eastbound A30 crossing. When set A turns green, set B is still on red and remains so for a number of seconds, preventing traffic from clearing. The delay frequently means that even with just 3-4 cars in front of me, I cannot get through on one phase. When set B goes green, it seems to be pot luck whether set C is red or green as there is no consistency.

Traffic at set A is often blocked by traffic backed up at a further set of lights heading to the westbound A30, Ring Way South.

On a similar vein, when heading south to the M3, I have often seen the lights on entry remain on green, and the lights on the exit turn to red, disrupting the flow of traffic (for those who chose to stop when witnessing red lights - an increasing minority in Basingstoke!)

As for illogical lane markings, that is very simple. The section for the westbound A30 to cross the roundabout and head north up the A339 is two lanes. It exits onto a 4 lane section which comprises 2 lanes to the Town Centre and 2 lanes for the A339. To a simple minded soul like myself, it would make sense for that two lane approach to have both lanes available for the A339 and for town centre traffic to use the left lane and move over once on the main carriageway. Yet, the approach has the left lane dedicated to Town Centre only and the right lane dedicated to the A339. Result, those who obey road signs and want to use the A339 queue up in a long line in the right hand lane (and get caught in at least 2 changes of the lights described above, whereas those who care not for signage, other users etc, simply queue jump in the left lane and push in further up. (and woe betide you if you are upset by them cutting you up!) This arrangement is replicated on the eastbound A30 entry to the A339 also.

Such deliberate capacity constraint is illogical when you consider that the southbound approach to the M3 has THREE lanes and the westbound exit to the A30 also has 3 lanes, when both then have to merge down into 2 lanes. Surely enabling the main traffic flow to use the maximum lanes possible reduces the overall queue on the road?

[WheelJack]

I suspect chasing after (penny) pinch point funding is keeping highway engineers from redundancy under local government cuts. Now that would be a good thing if the schemes being delivered would actually work. But many are very much watered down versions of projects that they should be and soon will prove to be false economy projects.

I suspect that you're not far wrong there. The idea of the pinch-point scheme seems sound to me - a chip-in from central government funding to encourage local authorities to get useful projects done and help keep traffic moving on key routes. But something may have gone wrong in the way it has been implemented that means we're getting rushed, bodged-up compromises that will prove to be false economies in the near future.

From comments I've seen elsewhere the Black Dam 'hamburger' is a cut-price compromise of the work that should have been implemented - grade separation to link the M3 to the A339, which seems justifiable given the population and traffic density, the amount of high-value business and industry in the M3 corridor, and its role as a link route between the M3 and M4.

And the Queens scheme is a case of the local authority doing something - anything - in a panic bid to get a slice of funding for the area rather than miss out... although in hindsight most locals would rather they had missed out! The planning was so poor it came in shockingly late, it's wildly over-budget with a large chunk of the excess having to come from the county roads budget (could have fixed an awful lot of potholes with that money), and the press has been full of fury about the unprofessional way the contractors carried out the work, with even the local MP putting the boot in.

[WheelJack]

Regarding the letter, I have written to the local highways authority and already one correction has been made concerning the lane markings on exit from the aerospace park, you can now go from the left lane at the exit onto the left hand lane on the central part of the roundabout. I walked by the roundabout at lunch today and noticed that the traffic light phasing is a mess, going red where there is traffic approaching, going green where the road is totally clear.

What is bizarre is that the approach from Farnham is still coned off - no idea why!

Good on you Jon. My own peeve with it so far: if you come from the Farnham direction and want to turn right to Lynchford Road (A325 to A3011) you'd assume you want to get in the right-most lane, as there's only that one right turn available unless you're planning to go all the way around the roundabout and come back on yourself. But that lane puts you in a short merge lane by the time you reach Lynchford Road, so you're actually better using the middle lane unless you want to jostle for position on exit. And worse, if you do use the right lane you've got a higher chance of getting blocked from exiting by traffic queueing on the roundabout itself now that they've crammed a set of lights on there just past the Lynchford Road exit. So the right hand lane that you used to logically use for turning right has become rather pointless, unless you're lost and doing a U-turn back onto the A325 southbound

There's been such an uproar about this scheme that the county council have agreed to hold a review. I'll be interested to see what conclusions they draw, as the man responsible for the scheme has quit his post and I'm sure they'd prefer the whole thing was quietly forgotten now...

[WheelJack]

As for illogical lane markings, that is very simple. The section for the westbound A30 to cross the roundabout and head north up the A339 is two lanes. It exits onto a 4 lane section which comprises 2 lanes to the Town Centre and 2 lanes for the A339. To a simple minded soul like myself, it would make sense for that two lane approach to have both lanes available for the A339 and for town centre traffic to use the left lane and move over once on the main carriageway. Yet, the approach has the left lane dedicated to Town Centre only and the right lane dedicated to the A339. Result, those who obey road signs and want to use the A339 queue up in a long line in the right hand lane (and get caught in at least 2 changes of the lights described above, whereas those who care not for signage, other users etc, simply queue jump in the left lane and push in further up. (and woe betide you if you are upset by them cutting you up!) This arrangement is replicated on the eastbound A30 entry to the A339 also.

Such deliberate capacity constraint is illogical when you consider that the southbound approach to the M3 has THREE lanes and the westbound exit to the A30 also has 3 lanes, when both then have to merge down into 2 lanes. Surely enabling the main traffic flow to use the maximum lanes possible reduces the overall queue on the road?

It sounds like we do much the same journey, but tend to I hit the Black Dam from the A287-->A30 just before rush hour so the traffic isn't too bad. Still, there is always a queue in that right-hand A339 lane off the A30, while the left Town Centre lane is invariably empty. I agree with you that this could have been better implemented and they should both feed to the A339 - there's plenty of time to slip off to the Town Centre further along. The lanes don't match the traffic flow at all so it really encourages bad behaviour and aggressive lane jumping.

[Boring82]

It sounds like we do much the same journey, but tend to I hit the Black Dam from the A287-->A30 just before rush hour so the traffic isn't too bad. Still, there is always a queue in that right-hand A339 lane off the A30, while the left Town Centre lane is invariably empty. I agree with you that this could have been better implemented and they should both feed to the A339 - there's plenty of time to slip off to the Town Centre further along. The lanes don't match the traffic flow at all so it really encourages bad behaviour and aggressive lane jumping.

I do the same journey two days a week in the morning, the queue is the other way round then with a queue to the Town Centre and only a couple of cars in the A339 lane.

[JonH]

Regarding the letter, I have written to the local highways authority and already one correction has been made concerning the lane markings on exit from the aerospace park, you can now go from the left lane at the exit onto the left hand lane on the central part of the roundabout. I walked by the roundabout at lunch today and noticed that the traffic light phasing is a mess, going red where there is traffic approaching, going green where the road is totally clear.

What is bizarre is that the approach from Farnham is still coned off - no idea why!

Good on you Jon. My own peeve with it so far: if you come from the Farnham direction and want to turn right to Lynchford Road (A325 to A3011) you'd assume you want to get in the right-most lane, as there's only that one right turn available unless you're planning to go all the way around the roundabout and come back on yourself. But that lane puts you in a short merge lane by the time you reach Lynchford Road, so you're actually better using the middle lane unless you want to jostle for position on exit. And worse, if you do use the right lane you've got a higher chance of getting blocked from exiting by traffic queueing on the roundabout itself now that they've crammed a set of lights on there just past the Lynchford Road exit. So the right hand lane that you used to logically use for turning right has become rather pointless, unless you're lost and doing a U-turn back onto the A325 southbound

There's been such an uproar about this scheme that the county council have agreed to hold a review. I'll be interested to see what conclusions they draw, as the man responsible for the scheme has quit his post and I'm sure they'd prefer the whole thing was quietly forgotten now...

Yes, I got an invite to the review, sadly I am away with work so cannot attend.

[Micro The Maniac]

On a similar vein, when heading south to the M3, I have often seen the lights on entry remain on green, and the lights on the exit turn to red, disrupting the flow of traffic (for those who chose to stop when witnessing red lights - an increasing minority in Basingstoke!)

What I don't understand is that the three lanes squeezes down to two approaching the M3 junction 6 roundabout, whilst a hard shoulder appears!

It would, IMHO, have made much more sense for the left hand lane to be a dedicated filter onto the lefthand lane of the M3(E) slip, leaving two full lanes to enter the roundabout proper.

Given how few vehicles are likely to pass this entrance to the roundabout (only M3 westbound performing a U-turn, or eastbound off-and-on-ing) making all lanes "give way" is unnecessary

[Johnathan404]

What I don't understand is that the three lanes squeezes down to two approaching the M3 junction 6 roundabout, whilst a hard shoulder appears!

Was the third lane not provided as part of the ‘low budget, tiny vision’ government project circa 2015?

The M69 does exactly the same thing for the same reason. It goes from three lanes to two and then back to three within the space of a few hundred yards. It has a hard shoulder which could be re-painted overnight. The widening works were to cover the roundabout and evidently they will only cover the roundabout.

[JonH]

What I don't understand is that the three lanes squeezes down to two approaching the M3 junction 6 roundabout, whilst a hard shoulder appears!

It would, IMHO, have made much more sense for the left hand lane to be a dedicated filter onto the lefthand lane of the M3(E) slip, leaving two full lanes to enter the roundabout proper.

Given how few vehicles are likely to pass this entrance to the roundabout (only M3 westbound performing a U-turn, or eastbound off-and-on-ing) making all lanes "give way" is unnecessary

Back to the subject of Black Dam, two issues here. I challenged Highways England over the plans when someone accidently sent me the full CAD plans for the redesigned Black Dam that included the full length of the spur road and revealed the merge on the back down to two lanes M3 bound. This piece of information was carefully concealed from the public in all official publications and at the consultation. (At which I asked "will there be three lanes all the way to the M3?" - answer "Yes") The response I had fobbed me off with something about "we cannot run two lanes to feed traffic to the eastbound sliproad as the sliproad cannot support two lanes of traffic." Which is odd as the east (London) bound slip road is identical to the west (Southampton) bound sliproad and the junction provides two lanes all the way round to that....

The other issue is your comment about how few vehicles pass that entrance, well there are plans afoot for a MSA on J6 which would absolutely increase traffic and have a significantly negative effect on traffic flows. Although traffic frequently slows to a near halt in the rush hour as three lanes of traffic jockey to fight their way into the single lane they actually need. Worth noting that taking the hard shoulder and hatchings into account, there absolutely is space for 3 lanes.

A couple more roundabouts have been remodelled in Basingstoke and just completed on the A33 - as a result I have a further reduction in confidence in the ability for UK Highways engineers to deliver junction designs that are safe and logical to use.

I - the untrained member of the public - spotted an potential issue with the layout of one of these roundabouts (Binfields) and highlighted it to Hampshire Highways. I received a frankly condescending and dismissive response to my concerns - "drivers are responsible for ensuring they are in the correct lane" - so your design and implementation has no impact? So when said concerns were proved 100% correct as a crash occurred for exactly the reason I raised on day 1 of the new lights being switched on, I was not surprised. And conflicts are occurring daily for the same reason. I guess - as usual - a fatality will be needed for anything to be changed.