Motoring News » Traffic

Building business parks will cause traffic meltdown

Alan — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 03:43:41 +0000

According to the Campaign for Better Transport, the Government proposal to ease the difficulty of building business parks in close proximity to motorway intersections will create more congestion and major traffic jams, similar to those experienced on bank holidays.

The prominent green group has expressed fears that the creation of more business park developments will lead to an additional traffic build up. Motoring groups have voiced concern at the growing number of office parks close to heavy traffic routes. This concern has been heightened by a draft from the Government, the National Planning Policy Framework, which encourages office parks to be built in urban areas as opposed to city centres.

The Campaign for Better Transport has estimated that each new business park development will produce an excess of 8000 extra motor journeys a day. As an example of traffic build up, a journey from St. Albans, near junction 8 to junction 47, The Leeds turn off, could take almost an hour longer than the current time of 3½ hours because of traffic joining and exiting the motorway.

Research has shown the Government proposal could damage the economy, rather than assisting economic growth because of the increased congestion caused by these large office parks on main roads and motorways, according to the Chief Executive of the Campaign, Stephen Joseph. People do not want to be held up in a bank holiday type traffic jam twice a day while on their way to work.

New development must be encouraged but not at the expense of the already heavily burdened motorist. This was agreed by RAC Foundation Director, Stephen Glaister, who says problems already exist in the congested intersections and with the estimated increase of 9.5% in population growth, the situation would become worse.

AA spokesman, Andrew Howard has pointed out that local people will find it difficult to work in local businesses and this may increase junction congestion as they travel to their workplace. The Department for Communities and Local Government has defended the proposed plans, adding that only sustainable developments will be allowed and these groups will have to face up to reality.

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No surprise, the most gridlocked country in Europe is UK

Alan — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:22:45 +0000

No surprise, the most gridlocked country in Europe is UK

TomTom reveals Europe’s 50 most congested cities for 2011; Brussels is still the number one most congested city, while the UK sits at the top of the most congested countries list .

The most gridlocked country in Europe is the UK according to TomTom’s latest traffic study that reveals some of Europe’s most congested spots. There are 16 UK cities that feature in the top 50. London is in third place even though there was a 0.2% decrease in the amount of traffic. Both Manchester and Edinburgh are in the top ten.

The traffic congestion cost the UK over £8bn a year and it is no surprise that there are many cities from the UK that feature in the top 50 of Europe, said the UK and Ireland director of TomTom, Giles Margerlson.

Those businesses that rely on getting from A to B very quickly can rely on fleet management technology that is available to cut down those journey times by up to 15% by automatically rerouting around the congested area.

Brussels still tops the chart as Europe’s most congested city and it is getting worse showing an increase in traffic since 2010 of 1.2%. But all the news is not bad, since 2010 six of the most congested cities on the continent have reduced traffic significantly.

Wroclaw has dropped by over 2.5% dropping it to fourth out of 50. France’s Toulouse reduced their congestion by 1.9% and they are in fifth place with over 30% of the city roads congested.

Where to escape the traffic

In comparison, the German city of Cologne sits at the bottom of the top 50; only 18.9% of its roads are congested. But Germany still features six times in the overall list.

The data shows that you’ll have the most stress-free trip in Spain, Switzerland, Norway, Hungary, Ireland or the Czech Republic, each of which has only one city in the top 50.

The most positive change of all has been made by Ireland. While Belfast still sits at number 12, there has been a reduction of 2% in traffic congestion over the last year. And Capital city Dublin has reduced its traffic by a staggering 9.7% since 2010 – although at 24.2%, it’s still got some way to go to beat traffic-efficient Cologne.

The complete list of top 50 most congested cities 2011 is as follows.


Europe
1	BE	Brussels
2	PL	Warsaw
3	UK	London
4	PL	Wroclaw
5	FR	Toulouse
6	FR	Lyon
7	UK	Edinburgh
8	FR	Marseille
9	FR	Paris
10	UK	Manchester
11	UK	Bradford
12	UK	Belfast
13	UK	Oxford
14	IT	Milan
15	UK	Birmingham
16	CH	Zurich
17	NO	Oslo
18	IT	Rome
19	UK	Aberdeen
20	IT	Naples
21	NL	Amsterdam
22	NL	Rotterdam
23	ES	Barcelona
24	IE	Dublin
25	DE	Munich
26	HU	Budapest
27	AT	Graz
28	IT	Genoa
29	UK	Nottingham
30	FR	Montpellier
31	AT	Vienna
32	DE	Hamburg
33	UK	Southampton
34	IT	Turin
35	NL	Utrecht
36	CZ	Prague
37	DE	Bonn
38	DE	Stuttgart
39	PL	Kraków
40	NL	Haarlemmermeer
41	UK	Bolton
42	UK	Guildford
43	UK	Wakefield
44	FR	Nice
45	UK	Leicester
46	BE	Antwerp
47	UK	Liverpool
48	UK	Cambridge
49	DE	Essen
50	DE	Cologne

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Tighter drink driving rules on the way

Alan — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:41:35 +0000

A proposal to lower the legal limit of blood alcohol for U.K. drivers would cut the existing limit almost by half, from 80mg to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. The proposal is being “closely considered” by coalition Ministers and the Department of Transport.

The proposal, drawn up by Sir Peter North as an independent consultant, has the backing of motoring groups including AA, the British Medical Association and, according to numerous surveys, at least 60% of the British public.

Under the proposed changes to the drink-driving law, more than one pint of beer or a fairly large glass of wine would put quite a few people, especially women, over the legal limit.

Other changes proposed in Sir Peter’s recommendations included a new drug-driving offense for any illegal substance found in the blood that could impair driving ability. Tests would include saliva analysis in police stations and random breath testing, with police having the right to stop motorists at any time.

Sir Peter said that this does not constitute a total ban on drinking and driving, but could effectively cut the number of traffic deaths due to alcohol or drug impairment. Recent reports show an average of 430 deaths a year in England and Wales attributed to alcohol, and about 60 to drugs.

The suggestion is that this number could be reduced by almost half with the enforcement of the proposed new laws. If the U.K. does make the changes, it would be joining at least 15 other countries in Europe with similar or even more stringent limitations.

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1cm of snow causes massive traffic disruption in the UK

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:08:33 +0000

As a tiny amount of overnight snowfall in the South East caused traffic chaos, TomTom’s HD Traffic service were able to record that on the nation’s roads there was some 1935 miles of traffic in this morning’s peak rush hour on major roads, with the longest queue delaying drivers for nearly 2 hours on the M1 between J14 Milton Keynes and J10 Luton Airport.

The chaos included 896 traffic incidents on major roads, with the longest traffic incident causing some 2 hours of delay in longest traffic incident. These figures do not include local roads, which from our local experience here in South West Surrey is likely to have seriously underestimated the overall impact of the snow which seemed to immediately to turn to a thin layer of ice as it hit the roads following an overnight frost.

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