The real Biffo:
The bosses have obviously seen the comments etc made about these roadworks, and have made a short “youtube” video to answer the questions.
it’s here;… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnolKc6Cz5Q
What a load of bollox.
And I’ll bet my house that when this umpteen billion pound “project” is complete and running it will make zero difference to the journey times through that sector. All it will be used for is to inform us :
- Gritting in progress
- Tiredness can kill
- Don’t drive and drive
- Check your seatbelt
- Queue Ahead with 40s flashing across all 4 lanes at 1am, then nothing on the next ones and no sign of any traffic.
I’ll tell you what would instantly solve most of the congestion problems along that stretch and none of it needs any gantries or fancy electrics, just some road paint :
Eastbound : remove hard shoulder between 25 and 26 and make it a proper lane for J26 only with the ‘new’ lane 2 being J26 or M62. Stick in a few emergency refuges into the verge to compensate for the loss of h/s. This then doubles the available road space for J26 exit which is a large part of the congestion problems from 24.
Hard shoulder as normal over Chain Bar, then on the slip ramp up from 26 remove the pointless 2+ lane and let all traffic us it round the bend at Chain Bar from the 606 to save congestion at the lights there, then continue that into the hard shoulder all the way to 27 so it’s 4 lanes wide, stick some refuges in again, and again you are relieving the bottleneck that’s caused by doubling the available road space for 27 exit where lane 1 becomes J27 only, lane 2 becomes J27 or M62, lanes 3 and 4 M62 only.
Westbound : only really needs 4 lanes between 27 and 26. This is the bottleneck on that stretch and goes back to 29 on a bad day. You’ve got everything coming off the M621 barging their way in, then everything already on the 62 wants to be in lane 1 for 26. Just bin the h/s along there, give em some refuges, make the ‘new’ lane a continuation of lane 1 of the M621 so no need to merge immediately, and then mark it up to be J26 only with lane 2 J26 or M62, lanes 3/4 M62 only.
You could do the same the other side of 26 as well, just continue the slip into the h/s which then becomes Hartshead only, but the traffic rarely backs up there from mergers anyway.
It’s a piece of ■■■■ to sort and it would work. Remember what 29 used to be like before they split the lanes up on the M62? Everything would be backed up in lane 1 back to Tingley wanting to get off for the M1 - same the other side in the mornings, nearly back to Whitwood, but now look at it. Lane 1 (or 2) approaching 29 from Tingley always runs at a min of 56mph even in rush hour, and the only thing that changed was altering the lane markings on the overhead gantries and a dash of paint on the tarmac.
The whole thing could be sorted out in ONE WEEK tops if they got their fingers out of their arses.
. Tbh the bit around the M1 has never been a problem with accidents either most peeps know what they’re doing or it’s going too slow for anything major, the problems seem to happen between J28 & J26 as peeps come roaring up the slips or cutting everyone up to get off, BTW only seen one Eastern European truck in lane 3 on that stretch.
