Half an hour was added to my journey this morning thanks to a traffic census on an already busy road, in the height of rush hour. A mile and a half of stop start traffic, which was already impacting a minor roundabout, and starting to encroach on one very major one when I joined the queue, all because these muppets had decided to cone off a lane for their makeshift layby. Two traffic officers randomly directing already late-for-work commuters into the layby so they could be held up even further by a team of hi-viz bods with clipboards. Thankfully I escaped (the chap behind me got nabbed).
Has anyone ever completed one of these before? What are these all about? Clearly must be something important to cause local traffic chaos at the busiest time of day. Based on the amount of traffic that road carries, I reckon by the time I got to the front, there must have been an easy two miles of traffic and two roundabouts blocked because of it.
Last edited by: DP on Tue 25 Jun 13 at 11:27
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I remember taking another route to avoid one once... and got stopped anyway on the other route. Only question seemed to be why I was using that road. I told them, of course, it was to try and avoid the chaos they were creating on the main route.
I get the feeling they set them up with a view to major works or new routes.
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>> I get the feeling they set them up with a view to major works or
>> new routes.
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There is often a lot of congestion at traffic census points, clearly demonstrating the need improvements and road widening.
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As a callow youth I used to occasionally do the traffic census (be the censor?) as "summer work" for the local council, although hi-viz hadn't been invented.
We were always told that drivers didn't have to answer anything, and some didn't. I think you had to say "Would you mind answering...?"
We were supposed to record the distance travelled on their journey. My best was ten yards, as the police had kindly stopped a milkfloat for me.
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I did wonder if it was anything to do with the rumoured opening of the hard shoulder to traffic and installation of variable limiters a-la M42, on the M3 between J4a and J2. The stop was pretty much on the J4a roundabout).
I dismissed it in my mind because about half the traffic at the point they were stopping would not have been joining the M3. But I suppose they couldn't stop on the motorway slip itself.
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Traffic Census - ToMoCo
