Has anyone else noticed how shopping and business estates seem increasingly choc-a-bloc of late?
Poor planning could amount to “unable to deal with the economic upturn caused by the weaker pound”…
I don’t know how much of the incoming traffic to retail parks happens to be from Foreign shoppers or newly-affluent local people
but..
it seems apparent that these places were not designed with the amount of coming-and-going traffic that they now must endure.
Medway City Estate, Gallions Reach, Canning Town, Westfield, Colney, and plenty of other places I notice seem to be having worsening traffic flow problems…
Situations like this can only get more severe as we move on imho…
What is the situation in other parts of the UK when it comes to Retail Parks? 
Its not just the retail parks its all roads, every scrap of land is being built on, either retail parks (with the obvious attraction of usually free parking for shoppers) or diy outlets or hundreds of thousands more houses to cater for those fleeing the cities as they gradually change, how shall we put it, demographically.
Thing is when you’ve increased the number of people and their transport by a sizeable number and done nothing but add more junctions and sets of lights to control the vastly increased traffic all trying to fit on the same already inadequate roads that were struggling before…well it doesn’t take too many boffin,s analysing the results gained by teams of uni types ticking boxes in traffic census’, to work out what the problem is.
Country already full? solution import 1/2 a million more each year, suppose we could have an inquiry ■■■■■■■ £millions of pounds up the wall which will fail entirely to come up with the answer any bloody fool half ■■■■■■ down the pub could have told them for free 
, however said inquiry would give a semi retired judge or three a bloody good trouser pocket thickening and keep a few learned wig’s Bentleys in fuel, so we really should go ahead, kerching.
Yes sorry it turned into a small by my standards rant, but everywhere you go soon as they open another retail park or bung another 500 houses up, the surrounding roads which could barely cope before are then gridlocked.
I love the new houses near Shrivenham (A420 near Swindon), bloody indentikit estate called Meadow View or some other crass title, maybe there was a meadow to view before they stuffed row after row of identical barracks on said patch of green, just like thousands of other patches of green they’ve concreted over as they gradually and painfully destroy this once fine country, that was once a Jerusalem among countries.
Hmm, as an aside though its years since i’ve driven through a traffic census, have they finally realised the country is all over bar the shouting, its gone so far now that precious little can be done about the congestion.
Same in most areas,big named stores are moving out of city centres and onto retail parks mainly because the rent on units is half the cost of one inside a shopping centre.
In the last year local to me Sports Direct,B&M,Marks & Spencer & Next have all done it,closed the store in the city centre and moved to a retail park,this is where all the extra traffic comes from.
Was told years ago that our ‘then’ local Asda (another one near has opened since), that each of their parking spaces were worth £100 an hour EACH! So I’m guessing they designed the car park first - then the entrance and exit it roads around them. Thus causing twisty / bendy, poorly flowing roads around it…
Housing…? Round here, prime building land (farmland basically) is worth ‘around’ £1MILLION and acre! As of a few weeks ago, they started on the farmers field right outside our front window! 192 houses on the planning application I think it is…
Honestly. .
Foreign shoppers? Causing traffic problems?
I thought UKIP was finished??
^ don’t read into it something I wasn’t saying. Newly affluent people don’t need to be foreign - or do they?
I’m talking on-topic about how our trading estates are not designed with explosive growth in retail allowed for in the traffic planning designs. 
On a sideline note, - It still makes me laugh how £50k 4x4 drivers queue up to get into the local Aldi where they might save a fiver on their shop there, but spent over a tenner running their fuel-thirsty vehicle in there in the first place.
Winseer:
Has anyone else noticed how shopping and business estates seem increasingly choc-a-bloc of late?
it seems apparent that these places were not designed with the amount of coming-and-going traffic that they now must endure.
Medway City Estate, Gallions Reach, Canning Town, Westfield, Colney, and plenty of other places I notice seem to be having worsening traffic flow problems…
Situations like this can only get more severe as we move on imho…
I worked on Medway City Estate for a while and it’s a nightmare at half 8 and 5, but it’s understandable cos it’s a trading estate. Don’t get me started on North Farm though. Continued expansion with the same access roads. And school holiday time, forget it
Juddian:
Its not just the retail parks its all roads, every scrap of land is being built on, either retail parks (with the obvious attraction of usually free parking for shoppers) or diy outlets or hundreds of thousands more houses to cater for those fleeing the cities as they gradually change, how shall we put it, demographically.
Thing is when you’ve increased the number of people and their transport by a sizeable number and done nothing but add more junctions and sets of lights to control the vastly increased traffic all trying to fit on the same already inadequate roads that were struggling before…well it doesn’t take too many boffin,s analysing the results gained by teams of uni types ticking boxes in traffic census’, to work out what the problem is.
Country already full? solution import 1/2 a million more each year, suppose we could have an inquiry ■■■■■■■ £millions of pounds up the wall which will fail entirely to come up with the answer any bloody fool half ■■■■■■ down the pub could have told them for free , however said inquiry would give a semi retired judge or three a bloody good trouser pocket thickening and keep a few learned wig’s Bentleys in fuel, so we really should go ahead, kerching.
Yes sorry it turned into a small by my standards rant, but everywhere you go soon as they open another retail park or bung another 500 houses up, the surrounding roads which could barely cope before are then gridlocked.
I love the new houses near Shrivenham (A420 near Swindon), bloody indentikit estate called Meadow View or some other crass title, maybe there was a meadow to view before they stuffed row after row of identical barracks on said patch of green, just like thousands of other patches of green they’ve concreted over as they gradually and painfully destroy this once fine country, that was once a Jerusalem among countries.
Hmm, as an aside though its years since i’ve driven through a traffic census, have they finally realised the country is all over bar the shouting, its gone so far now that precious little can be done about the congestion.
Well said Juddian. I’ve got an advantage over you lot because we come over every few years and see the problems suddenly (to us) getting worse exponentially. A similar sort of thing is happening here in south east Qld, but not on the huge scale it is over there.
peterm:
Well said Juddian. I’ve got an advantage over you lot because we come over every few years and see the problems suddenly (to us) getting worse exponentially. A similar sort of thing is happening here in south east Qld, but not on the huge scale it is over there.
Cheers for rubbing it in Peter! 
Nobby_Clarke:
Winseer:
Has anyone else noticed how shopping and business estates seem increasingly choc-a-bloc of late?
it seems apparent that these places were not designed with the amount of coming-and-going traffic that they now must endure.
Medway City Estate, Gallions Reach, Canning Town, Westfield, Colney, and plenty of other places I notice seem to be having worsening traffic flow problems…
Situations like this can only get more severe as we move on imho…
I worked on Medway City Estate for a while and it’s a nightmare at half 8 and 5, but it’s understandable cos it’s a trading estate. Don’t get me started on North Farm though. Continued expansion with the same access roads. And school holiday time, forget it
Luckily, I’ve only worked nights on this estate. With the trees chopped down, and the A21 in bits, - I’d not like to venture over to that neck of the woods at all during the daytime. Even getting to Pembury via Colt’s Hill used to be bad enough, when I was working agency for Tescos. Last time I worked on the North Farm estate itself, would have been up kingslanding way (Fedex) over 2 years ago by this point.
Thanks for the update, anyhow. I’ll carry on steering well clear of what still appears to be a building site. 
Probably wouldn’t recognise the place now, as a schoolboy used to ride me push bike up to the Square Deal Cafe (does it still exist?) at Pembury from where i lived at the time, between Tun Wells and Rusthall.
North Farm estate was bad enough getting in an out of 20 years ago when i used to service car rental sites.
Juddian:
Its not just the retail parks its all roads, every scrap of land is being built on, either retail parks (with the obvious attraction of usually free parking for shoppers) or diy outlets or hundreds of thousands more houses to cater for those fleeing the cities as they gradually change, how shall we put it, demographically.
Thing is when you’ve increased the number of people and their transport by a sizeable number and done nothing but add more junctions and sets of lights to control the vastly increased traffic all trying to fit on the same already inadequate roads that were struggling before…well it doesn’t take too many boffin,s analysing the results gained by teams of uni types ticking boxes in traffic census’, to work out what the problem is.
Country already full? solution import 1/2 a million more each year, suppose we could have an inquiry ■■■■■■■ £millions of pounds up the wall which will fail entirely to come up with the answer any bloody fool half ■■■■■■ down the pub could have told them for free , however said inquiry would give a semi retired judge or three a bloody good trouser pocket thickening and keep a few learned wig’s Bentleys in fuel, so we really should go ahead, kerching.
Yes sorry it turned into a small by my standards rant, but everywhere you go soon as they open another retail park or bung another 500 houses up, the surrounding roads which could barely cope before are then gridlocked.
I love the new houses near Shrivenham (A420 near Swindon), bloody indentikit estate called Meadow View or some other crass title, maybe there was a meadow to view before they stuffed row after row of identical barracks on said patch of green, just like thousands of other patches of green they’ve concreted over as they gradually and painfully destroy this once fine country, that was once a Jerusalem among countries.
Hmm, as an aside though its years since i’ve driven through a traffic census, have they finally realised the country is all over bar the shouting, its gone so far now that precious little can be done about the congestion.
Haven’t you heard? There’s a housing crisis in this country you nimby ■■■■■
Maybe if we hadn’t left the floodgates open it wouldnt be a problem
Where’s ND when you need him…
Juddian:
Probably wouldn’t recognise the place now, as a schoolboy used to ride me push bike up to the Square Deal Cafe (does it still exist?) at Pembury from where i lived at the time, between Tun Wells and Rusthall.
North Farm estate was bad enough getting in an out of 20 years ago when i used to service car rental sites.
You’d be in for a surprise then. The hospital has been closed down,left derelict for donkeys years, demolished and rebuilt since then 
SuperMultiBlue:
Haven’t you heard? There’s a housing crisis in this country you nimby [zb].
Maybe if we hadn’t left the floodgates open it wouldnt be a problem
but but they say the housing shortage is the fault of buy to let landlords, or old people living in houses they don’t deserve…this only applies to working class people of course, the more equal than others have different rules applied to them.
the state of the NHS is old people’s living too long who presumably should do the decent thing and top themselves
schools crisis and so many other problems the fault of so called austerity, which we haven’t seen cos they’ve been borrowing £billions years in year out to prop up the whole ponzi scheme, and the game’s about up.
you could go on through all the problems we have in this country and no one in govt will state the blindingly bloody obvious nor tell the truth that the country is swamped with probably 10 to 15 million too many people, we’re up crap creek without a paddle and no one standing for election now or over the past 25 years in particular has had the ■■■■■■■■ to offer to close the bloody door…maybe bar the nationalist parties and Farage who’s gone rather quiet of late.
UKIP are, sorry to say, about buggered.
Where are all these future tax payers we apparently need going to work, where are the jobs that are going to pay enough for all these people to be net contributors going to come from?
Will we need another 15 or 20 million imports another 20 years down the line just to pay for the upkeep of the present imports as they age.
What about that lot, we can’t kick the can down the road for ever.
nimby be buggered, do you want to see the whole bloody country concreted over?
The borders were left open because the electorate voted for people who said they would deliver exactly that (please don’t say actually anyone believed Home Sec May when she promised to reduce immigration last time if they did then the people are even more gullible and stupid than even i thought), and they’re about to do the same again, though to be fair there isn’t likely to be a choice of anyone worth voting for this time.
Anyone who thinks chairman May is going to deliver a real Brexit of controlled borders, reclaimed fishing grounds, and proper border and internal forces charged with hunting down foreign criminals and illegal immigrants and kicking their arse out the door is going to be sorely disappointed, but no matter how bad Brexit proves to be they’ll still vote for more of the same next time.
I’m unsure whether the worse treachery will come from the house of ill repute or from those about to put their crosses against the names of the same bunch who led us to exactly where we are today.
Wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see Blair stand for Labour leader again when Corbyn loses and then mince victoriously into 10 Downing Street in 2022, thats how much faith i have in the electorate.
I can’t wait to see the depth of the riposte! 
Nobby_Clarke:
Juddian:
Probably wouldn’t recognise the place now, as a schoolboy used to ride me push bike up to the Square Deal Cafe (does it still exist?) at Pembury from where i lived at the time, between Tun Wells and Rusthall.
North Farm estate was bad enough getting in an out of 20 years ago when i used to service car rental sites.
You’d be in for a surprise then. The hospital has been closed down,left derelict for donkeys years, demolished and rebuilt since then
Probably be as well if i never see the place again then, i have fond memories of my years there, lived near Hadlow for a while too.
when it became apparent we were unwanted…she’s Latin from the Med so fuse approx 0.0000001 amp fitted.