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Not so smart M/ways -


Observer II

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The car broke down, the driver and passenger got out and stood in front of it for 16 (THAT'S SIXTEEN) minutes until an idiot came along and hit it. If the car had broken down and they had pulled onto the hard shoulder (if there had been a hard shoulder) and done the same thing, research has shown that some idiot would have come along and hit the broken down car around 15 minutes later. The advice given is that, if you break down on a motorway, you get out of the vehicle and GET OFF  the road over on the other side of the barrier and await help. Obs, what would you do if you broke down on the motorway, with or without a hard shoulder, stay in the vehicle/get out and stand by the vehicle/get out and get off the road behind the roadside barrier (preferably upstream of the oncoming traffic)? Come on Obs, you've got less than 15 minutes to make your mind up!

A stupid idea from the start? Well what else can you expect from a Labour government?

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Well, the normal response would be to pull into the hard shoulder and stand well away from the car on the other side of barriers etc.  Without a hard shoulder the nearside lane would have to be substituted., again getting well clear of the car.   Now in theory, the central controller would see the incident on his screen and close down the lane,  but several vehicles could have passed the overhead sign in that time, and be well on their way to a shunt with the broken down vehicle;  and that's assuming everyone else has the brains to avoid that lane in response to the overhead closure sign.   So you still get a crash and possible deaths, and if it becomes a multi-lane affair, emergency vehicles can't get past.  This idea was designed to save money on widening M/ways; and clearly forgets that your dealing with people, and some people can be as thick as pig $**t in such circumstances.  Just looking at conventional street traffic lights and pedestrian crossings - how many cyclist do you see sailing through on red, how many pedestrians ignore the green man ?  There are plenty of challengers out there for the Darwinian Award.  ^_^

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Think the darwin awards have been cancelled this year due to there being too many contenders.

There are any number around where i live be it the people who cross the road at it widest part despite being ten feet from a pelican crossing to the ninja cyclists that ride the area at night wearing all black and with no lights. add to that the smartphone zombies and you would be spoilt for choice.

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4 hours ago, Observer II said:

Perhaps if all Governments planned and spent enough on transport infrastructure,  there would be no need for a forth lane; we'd have an adequate road and rail system worthy of the name.  -_-

And perhaps if all governments had kept their noses out of private businesses, took less money out of private enterprises in taxes to spend on their own, uneconomic, pet projects we would have an adequate transport infrastructure. And an education system that taught people how to spell "fourth".

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I've spent the last few weeks driving the hiways here in the US and it's been a real pleasure. The government should send all its road planners over here to see how it could be done. Driven a few thousand miles and havent seen a single acciđent or got held up in any roaďworks.

For me the whole smart motorway thing is a waste of time and money as the deveĺopments in in-car technology will ultimately make it all unnecessary. The car I'm driving just now almost drives itself and woulden't have been capable of crashing into a broken down car.

Bill :) Mojave desert area.

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That is the point I made, the reason why roads are congested is because there's no tolls on them. And of course the rail network is run by Network Rail which was re-nationalised, so is it any wonder that it isn't working well, the government being incapable of running anything well (any industry called British anything).

Quite where private medicine comes into this I'm not sure, but if a small charge (£5?) was made for a doctor's appointment certain people would take a couple of Paracetomol rather than going to the surgery and demanding anti-biotics when they get a cold.

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:D     So, in order to reduce congestion, you exclude people on the basis of price ?  So how do the rest commute to work ?   Rail commuters are already paying huge prices to get to work  on an overcrowded and shambolic "private" rail system, such that, many will be tempted to transfer their essential journey to their car, thus congesting our roads even further. The reality is, there is a clear lack of capacity in our transport infrastructure, which ultimately adversely affects the National economy, an issue that ultimately rests with our National Government.  :ph34r:

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Here we go again with the public good private bad nonsense. The timetabling shambles was caused by the public Network Rail who did not have sufficient capacity to deal with the magnitude of amendments in the timescales mandated for small changes each year. Andrew Haines their chairman said that this week to a select committee. The congestion in Manchester is caused by long distance trains being sent from Victoria to Piccadilly so that services from everywhere can get to Manchester Airport to meet the financial plans and green veneer of the local authorities in Greater Manchester. There is insufficient capacity to let the trains stop at Piccadilly on the two platforms available and delays just build up. Cause politicians from Manchester driving Transport for the North, led by the idiot Andy Burnham. The same idiot also supports the RMT who are striking to save the guards  on Northern trains that the company says aren't going to be removed anyway. The franchise legally requires most of them to be kept! The problem is that there is not requirement in the franchise to cancel the train if there is no guard available. So the RMT are actually striking to preserve industrial power to cause chaos to passengers!!! … the idiots in the North West support them... Turkeys --- Christmas!

All this private rail chaos stuff is just left wing propaganda, railwaymen are relatively better paid in the private system it carries more passengers and is cleaner and safer. Where public ownership and control intervene it falls to pieces. The lefty position is not in touch with reality and is mostly propaganda.

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10 hours ago, Observer II said:

:D     So, in order to reduce congestion, you exclude people on the basis of price ?  So how do the rest commute to work ?   Rail commuters are already paying huge prices to get to work  on an overcrowded and shambolic "private" rail system, such that, many will be tempted to transfer their essential journey to their car, thus congesting our roads even further. The reality is, there is a clear lack of capacity in our transport infrastructure, which ultimately adversely affects the National economy, an issue that ultimately rests with our National Government.  :ph34r:

People who really have to use their cars to commute would have to pay for the privilege of using the motorways, those that don't really have to use the motorways can either pay the price or use another method. You're the one moaning about the transport infrastructure but haven't got any solution other than "don't use the hard shoulder as another lane". Not my problem as I rarely drive on the motorways or use trains. In the past you have suggested that people should get jobs nearer to home or even move to somewhere closer to work. Have you changed your mind?

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Not at all, the present shambles merely reinforces my view that new ways of moving people around or better still, reducing the requirement for them to move around will be required to relieve the congestion. We are of course a small, over-populated Island.  Only Governments are in a position to stimulate this.  I'm not a scientist or engineer, but they need to be employed in the search for solutions, eg: whether it's feasable to double capacity with double decker trains or M/ways; whether, with advances in communications, folk can work from home or locations outside major cities.  Whether the "just in time" system of relying on dispersed supply chains, rather than self contained factories, that rely on armies of air polluting HGVs,  are sustainable in terms of transport infrastructure. The ball in all this lies at the feet of Governments; I'm not saying that the private sector can't be a part of the implimentation, but HS2 and Liverpool Hospital offer no reassurance.   Getting back to the original topic, removing the safety of a hard shoulder on M/ways doesn't cure the overall problem, merely provides a short term sticking plaster.   :ph34r:    btw: Hasn't this "Tory" Gov just removed the franchise from a "private" sector company ? Or was that fake news !  :D

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On the last point only - Virgin Trains East Coast , (which was 90% owned by Stagecoach and 10% Virgin Rail) had the franchise which was due to deliver a large premium payment to the government. From memory there are only two premium paying franchises. The plan they had assumed that there were improvements in speed and they were able to add capacity. That needed work from Network Rail and the new Azuma trains. All of which are late. The franchise revenues did not grow as needed for the business plan with the effect that the payment of the premium was coming from the rest of the Stagecoach group and not just East Coast Trains. That was putting strain on the ability of Stagecoach to run bus services all over the country and to support East Midlands Trains. As a consequence Stagecoach asked the government to terminate the franchise early. Eventually the government agreed. The result is that the franchisee of last resort took over using exactly the same staff as before but with a lower premium and that is now LNER. This is fairly clearly a franchising failure.

You must decide for yourself if the way you chose to report the facts gave a reader who did not already know those facts a false impression that poor performance and incompetence meant that the VTEC franchised was nationalised to sort it out. The smile said you knew what you were doing!

PS Double Deck trains (a won't fit on the loading guage of our old design railway routes and (b) take much longer to load and unload passengers and would make us able to have less trains with a net reduction in capacity not an increase.

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You can't put double decker trains on a network designed for single deckers without raising the height of practicably all the bridges crossing the lines. I think I've mentioned before that governments of any hue are incapable of running anything more complicated than their holiday plans.

Did you get frightened by Thomas the Tank Engine when you were young Obs?:D

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20 minutes ago, Observer II said:

That's why they didn't proceed with electrification: however, such issues depend on what is the bigger problem at the end of the day - the bridges or the congestion ?   Don't know what Thomas TE has got to do with anything ?  :rolleyes:

What is? Do you use the railways much Obs? Or the motorways for that matter? I get the impression that you get your opinions based on the Daily Mail readership.

Sorry, was the Thomas reference too subtle for you?

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