Rant 319 14/11/12 Subject: Endless side effects of endless roadworks

Rant number 319

According to google maps, my morning commute from door to door should take me 16 minutes. I'm pretty sure I've done it in less when the roads were clear.

On average, it actually takes around 40 minutes to get to work each and every morning - which is fair enough.

Today however, it took me 2 hours and 15 minutes to get to work (including, at one point a .4 mile stretch it took me 3/4 of an hour to cover.)

Early this morning, at around 5.30 - a van broke down on the M62. Theres nothing that unusual about that, people break down every hour of every day of every year. Usually, on the motorway when you realise your vehicle is about to go kaput - you do your best to get into the left hand lane and then into the hard shoulder - which is there to take refuge in.

Except, because they are still fucking about with the motorway after a year so far - that section of road has barriers across the hard shoulder - so that the non-existent workforce are protected from the traffic.

So, when that guy broke down, he had no-where to go.

Another van, then struck the guy and a motorbike - and caused some serious chaos.

We are reliant in this area on the M62 to get about. Its become our main vein. We've put everything into it now, and all the other roads are just not enough to take the capacity.

This morning - the M62 had to be closed for 4 and a half hours, which caused chaos everywhere - and because of those bastard roadworks, the emergency services couldn't get to the accident in a decent time. Why can't they get the fucking things over with?

Because of the M62 being closed - I had to go the long way round. The route with many traffic lights, bottlenecks, roundabouts, yet more fucking roadworks and countless other hurdles. The route is bad enough at the best of times -without the added M62 traffic on it.

I understand these roadworks are important. The process though - seems to be almost preternaturally slow. I'm sure I haven't seen a worker for a month - and I've spent about 25 hours on the M62 in that time.

The traffic chaos, the accidents and broken down vehicles it makes worse cannot be worth it. I just hope the motorways are as magic as they think when its all done.

Rant over.