I'm fairly sure I'm not imagining this, but I think incidences of traffic congestion have worsened in direct proportion to the fall in road fuel prices.
I think, I know in fact, that I currently encounter more frequent and more widespread road congestion than I did a year ago.
Maybe every silver lining has a cloud.
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I dont doubt the facts of your observations, but I disagree with your conclusion. As a regular user of the M25 at rush hours, I have concluded that traffic density increases with prosperity and fuller employment. In fact over a period of 25 years I have seen an increase of traffic density in the period before a rise in "the country doing well" and seen it drop off before a crash - its an excellent barometer of future projects (or falling of) - Now that may, or may not, and probably does parallel with oil price fluctuation as a component of economic prosperity.
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 10 Dec 15 at 01:11
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Could also be true of course.
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I meant of course -prospects not projects
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Actually, here's a thing which might support your economic argument. I was working in Ireland last week, both north and south. Miserable traffic congestion and severe lack of available parking spaces in the northern towns and the polar opposite in the southern ones. Belfast and Dublin were both busy as usual but the smaller locations showed a marked difference.
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Wed 9 Dec 15 at 21:42
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'Direct proportion' may be putting it a bit strongly but I'd be surprised if there wasn't some causative link. Think of the effect of school holidays - or even Friday mornings: ten percentish of regular weekday traffic stays off the roads and suddenly the system is at 95 percent capacity instead of 105 and it just works.
Any other factor that depresses car use can have the same effect; over the last few years we've had the long recession and high fuel prices, which have slowed the natural growth in traffic volume. Seems quite possible that decreasing fuel prices are letting the system get to overload point more often.
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Well I've been to Nottingham and back today in one of our pool cars. It's a 2014 VW Golf 1.6TDI Bluemotion. I'm blaming VW. These cars are everywhere, and they come as standard with radar cruise control. Brilliant idea; set it to 72 mph (!!), set the distance from the car in front, which should really be calibrated by nationality...the Italian setting is somewhat challenging to the nerves ;) and off you go. Stress free driving...
The execution however does result in a fair amount of late braking; this is not only disconcerting as the pilot (I hesitate to say driver, when the key actions of accelerating and braking are carried out automatically), but must generate ripples of brake lights culminating in 'phantom' traffic jams all over the place!! It loved barreling up to a queue of traffic at 7x mph, before applying the brakes really quite heavily to drop the speed to 50, 40, 30 or whatever. It wasn't so keen on brisk acceleration, but then, how briskly does a 1.6 TDi Golf accelerate anyway?
However, I am always up for a challenge...it'll happily work from sub 20mph up to 80+, and I managed the M1/M42/M40 right up to the A34 intersection without touching the brakes or accelerator myself. Our pool cars are manual though - 5 speed in the Golf; who knew these were still around? So you still have to change gear if the speed drops too much. But you can change gear without de-activating the cruise, so all was not lost!
So, if even just 5% of the cars on motorways have this technology then the level of stop start traffic can only increase!!
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>>Well I've been to Nottingham and back today...
At least you weren't sent to Coventry...
Ok I know.
;-)
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On our recent trip back to the UK (end of October), there seemed to be a lot more traffic than usual through Germany and Belgium, and we've done the trip often enough to notice. Was also surprised at the volume of traffic on the southern section of the M25, snails pace from the M26 to the M3, taking far longer than usual. OK, it was the Friday at the end of half-term week, but it was only late morning. Not something we've noticed before.
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I get far too much time to think about these things to be honest but what also puzzles me is the sheer volumes of traffic at what used to be regarded as non-peak times.
For example, who were all those inconvenient others on the M6/M5 south bound today at 09.30 and why weren't they already in their offices, shops, factories, schools etc eh, eh?
It's all wrong y'know.
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>> It's all wrong y'know.
Yup, how the Hell can the M25 J16 to 11 jam up on sunday morning? Bin there, seen it and wondered
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Traffic here has been worse the last 6 or so weeks, and not really sure why.
We discussed at work and decided there were probably a couple of factors:-
Number of cyclists drops as the weather worsens, and possibly after the clocks change
After the October half term week people have no annual leave left to take so our office is now fully populated.
Hadn't really considered fuel pricing, but maybe that's tipping people back in their own cars and off public transport. The local bus services here are very expensive - for me the cost is in excess of twice what I pay for the fuel.
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Aren't these apparent patterns usually just caused by freakishly consistent random variation, or do they surface as the knock-on effects of something quite unconnected that's already happened over the horizon?
These are things that come to mind when I read this stuff. It's a complex, writhing planet.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 9 Dec 15 at 23:43
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"freakishly consistent random variation,"
That's a wonderful phrase. I think it it might be the explanation for a lot of things.:-)
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>> I get far too much time to think about these things to be honest but
>> what also puzzles me is the sheer volumes of traffic at what used to be
>> regarded as non-peak times.
>>
>> For example, who were all those inconvenient others on the M6/M5 south bound today at
>> 09.30 and why weren't they already in their offices, shops, factories, schools etc eh, eh?
>>
That baffles me too - get on the M6 South through Cheshire and Staffs mid-morning and it's pretty full of traffic. Where the heck is everyone going? As you say it's too late for work, and they don't look like sales reps or businessmen heading to meetings - many look retired, but there's no obvious shopping destination they could all be heading for.
I honestly think some people drive around for the heck of it, and that's only going to get worse as fuel prices drop.
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The 100's of 1000's of immigrants to the UK o'er the last few years wont lead to a reduction of traffic con-gestion.
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Someone has to work to support all those pensioners.
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Saw a thing in Belfast last week when on one rainswept evening rush hour I was in the the more or less gridlocked city in my car. It was a sign which read 'You are not in traffic, you are traffic'.
I guess we can all ask ourselves if we really need to be there and from my side I was on that occasion able to justify it to myself anyway. I suppose most others would too.
I read somewhere that some clever people had calculated that a huge proportion of car journeys are less than 2 miles. No wonder the population is getting fat.
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Further to above, I ruefully admit that shortly after posting that I remembered that I need to pop to the bank this morning. It's about a mile away, less if I walk across the park, but I automatically grabbed my car keys and was about to sit in traffic for 10 or 15 minutes, pay a quid or something to park, if I can find a space, and then come back sitting in traffic.
It's hissing down but I have a coat. I'm just going out, I may be some time...
;-)
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In Glasgow they built the M74 extension into the other side of Glasgow to take away the traffic from the M8 and the Kingston Bridge.
For the first 9 months or so it was great, I used it to travel to work and the traffic flowed great. In fact the biggest issue was the amount of folk getting done for speeding as it is a 50mph limit but the road was deserted.
Now everyday in rush hour the road is tailed back to Cambuslang, about 4 or 5 miles of stationery traffic.
We now have a huge road project going on with the new M8 road and links to M74 and M73 and it will just be the same again - simply put, it attracts more folk onto the road that would otherwise be using public transport.
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>> it attracts more folk onto the road that would otherwise be using public transport.
you'd think so, but thats not the case, public transport use is at record levels too.
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There is a theory I believe based on an University of Belfast paper that the increase in traffic, i particular commercial traffic is directly related to increased economic activity. Damned if I can find anything on the net though. Heard it on R4 so must be true :-)
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>> There is a theory I believe based on an University of Belfast paper that the
>> increase in traffic, i particular commercial traffic is directly related to increased economic activity. Damned
>> if I can find anything on the net though. Heard it on R4 so must
>> be true :-)
You don't need to be a university graduate to promulgate that theory!
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But you do to understand wot promulgate means
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Probably came from autocorrect. Rats gave us 'viticulture' once.
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When the economy is good people drive more.
And new car sales continue to rise. All those people in the UK getting new cars - they are bound to want to drive them, even just for the sake of it!
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A sort of theory - Zero
