LATEST MOAN FROM YOU AND ME - 2021

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussion' started by ARMANDII, Jan 1, 2021.

  1. pete

    pete Growing a bit of this and a bit of that....

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    Why do they spend months "upgrading roads", and causing absolute chaos in the process and achieve nothing.
    The roads are just a joke and they are just playing catch up.
     
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    • Plantpot

      Plantpot Gardener

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      I was, marigolds with surgical gloves under them, that is YELLOW marigolds before anybody asks, I only use the pink ones for washing my socks ;)
       
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      • Fat Controller

        Fat Controller 'Cuddly' Scottish Admin! Staff Member

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        @pete your neighbour got off lightly - £4.50 per bag of soil/rubble, £4.50 per breeze block, paving slab or brick at my local tip. Nice to have to pay for something that I've already paid for.

        Whilst having it free doesn't stop fly-tipping, the fly-tipping used to be done by those trying to avoid trade waste charges, but since the charges were introduced it has become a much worse problem around our way. There was a spate of it in the alleys/garages at the back of our house recently that in all fairness to the council led to the perpetrator having his vehicle seized, but he was one of those that would collect waste and 'get rid of it for a fiver for you mister'
         
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        • Plantpot

          Plantpot Gardener

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          @pete its something to do with councils using up the allocated funds so they can apply for more in the spring or so I was told, now if we built roads properly and planed the services before and didn't use blacktop then all these infernal roadworks that spring up would occur less frequently, but you know, councils and common sense ...
           
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          • Fat Controller

            Fat Controller 'Cuddly' Scottish Admin! Staff Member

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            It is exactly that. It was also proven in London on more than one occasion that it could be resolved and it could be planned to have all the services in at the same time. I was involved in one in Brentford a number of years ago.

            The roads were absolutely awful - potholes everywhere, rough as a badgers bum. There had been numerous burst water mains (really big ones too) over and over and it was at a meeting we had just after one of the biggest ones (houses flooded, the lot); I made the statement that it was hardly surprising that the watermain had cracked again as the road surface was awful and had 15-18 ton loaded double deck buses trundling up and down it every 4 minutes during the day and ever 10 at night, not to mention all the empty ones heading into the nearby garage and of course all the lorries up to 40-ton or so. That would act as a jack-hammer on the pipes day in and day out.

            One of the reps from the Fire Brigade agreed with me wholeheartedly, as did the police and residents reps - - in short, that set a ball rolling to have the entire road from the canal through the High Street lifted in its entirety, all services were called in to check and fix their stuff and remove any dead stuff too, then it was all re-laid. Never been a burst water main there since.
             
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            • Plantpot

              Plantpot Gardener

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              Speak of the devil. we are actually sitting here watching a wheely bin and wheelbarrow being tipped on the park, out of hours for the environmental health who deal with it and the police are not interested, unbelievable !

              Called it in again, Mr policeman will probably drive past tomorrow, well we do have two officers covering this area and the next, years ago we had three police houses at the top of the road and a big station, now we have two people working from a combined police and fire station, lack of funds I am told. That did not stop the council building themselves a new town hall a few hundred yards from the old one tho.
               
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                Last edited: Sep 16, 2021
              • Plantpot

                Plantpot Gardener

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                Our council used to drop skips off at certain points once a year but that stopped about two years ago, if we want the area cleaning then first port of call is our local MP who works her socks off keeping the place in order.

                As for skips, with all the work we have done in the garden and the bathroom we refitted, we noticed the price of skip hire over a year period has doubled, someone is making a killing on this, probably helped by big demand during lockdown when everyone decided to have those long awaited jobs done, supply and demand in action.
                 
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                • pete

                  pete Growing a bit of this and a bit of that....

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                  This is not about road repairs or bodging up the odd pothole, this is a massive 6 month redesign of a junction.
                  During the 6 months it will be total chaos, and after the 6 months it will be no better than the old junction was or even worse.
                  I think they come up with these stupid junction layouts with computer models, they have such a scheme planned near me, it involves knocking down a very old pub in order to create a roundabout, there was actually a roundabout there25 yrs ago before they changed it traffic lights.

                  So the old pub has to go, but not to make space for the roundabout, its to make some gardens and a seating area.:biggrin: Who in their right mind wants to sit next to a busy traffic roundabout.

                  And I give it a year before they put traffic lights on the roundabout, for two reasons, one line of traffic will always be dominant and it will create long tailbacks and the other reason is because they dont like traffic flowing freely because it causes long tailbacks in bottlenecks, rather than a series of smaller jams in more places which traffic lights produce..
                   
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                  • Fat Controller

                    Fat Controller 'Cuddly' Scottish Admin! Staff Member

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                    They do, and it can waste a fortune when they get it wrong. Richmond Council made two howlers a few years ago, at either end of the same road. The first was redesigning this bit of road to add in the right turn filter lane. Hardly anything ever turns right there, but for whatever reason they felt the need.

                    upload_2021-9-16_20-10-38.png

                    Only.... when you look at it from the other side, it doesn't work, or at least not in traffic peaks.

                    Here is the view the other way:

                    upload_2021-9-16_20-13-2.png

                    You can just see the bus lane there where it widens back to two lanes. Each morning and evening, when traffic queues back from the roundabout (out of sight) it now queues all the way back up to the lights, can block the junction (this is a crossroads) and no bus can get into the empty bus lane because it's path is blocked by cars.

                    They ran out of money to fix it when they realised that they had dropped a clog.

                    This one was a beauty...
                    upload_2021-9-16_20-23-6.png
                    That building on the left is a Lidl store, right next door to that is a bus garage (a fairly big one); all buses running into that garage for a couple of weeks had to go about a mile or so in a different direction because the council closed the left turn to re-align the pavement.

                    When they reopened it, we had a raft of drivers complaining that they were having to stop and shunt back and forth to get round the corner, and the only way to do it successfully was to take the right hand lane and turn left from there. Clearly no good. We had a meeting with the council, the officials told us that they had tracked all sizes of vehicles round the corner and that it must be our drivers... we offered to get a bus and show them, which they agreed. Whilst getting the bus, a Class 2 lorry took the left turn and completely wiped out the traffic light pole with his nearside and tore the kerbstone out with his back wheel. The road closed there and then and was closed another couple of weeks whilst they put it back the way it was originally.
                     
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                    • Plantpot

                      Plantpot Gardener

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                      They don't use computer models,I have it on good authority that they bring in a group of 5 year old kids, chuck some toy cars and lego at them then leave them to it, the best effort is the one used, we have a few constant redesigns here, all of them involving changing layout, adding more junctions, constantly replacing traffic lights, it never ends, switch island at the end of the M57 here is one example, its in constant flux and nothing ever works, there are still huge tailbacks and its still an accident hotspot, mind you some of those accidents are caused by drivers eating breakfast with both hands while steering with the knees or the office type putting in her makeup at 70mph, the morning drive is a wonder to behold !
                       
                    • Fat Controller

                      Fat Controller 'Cuddly' Scottish Admin! Staff Member

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                      The very best of the lot was the 'traffic engineer' who tried to tell me that there was sufficient space in a set of roadworks (Kew Bridge) to get a bus through and turn left. There absolutely wasn't. After arguing with me for ten minutes, watching me have to move cones and literally walk backwards guiding a bus through (roughly 38ft long), he said he still didn't believe it was wrong as he had modelled it all. I asked him what the largest vehicle was that he had driven.....

                      He hadn't driven anything more than a bicycle. Nothing. But this guy was allegedly a fully qualified traffic engineer and had the cheek to be lecturing me how a bus should fit through a gap. I suppose I had only been driving them 15 years at that point.....
                       
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                      • Plantpot

                        Plantpot Gardener

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                        @Fat Controller driving a bus is stressful at the best of times but combine that with a so called 'traffic engineer' and you must have been pulling your hair out, I know its not allowed but sod it, I would have got out of the cab and told him to drive it himself, or words to that effect, but you cant, one wrong word and the official would be on the phone faster than I can mess up a forum account :whistle:
                         
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                        • Fat Controller

                          Fat Controller 'Cuddly' Scottish Admin! Staff Member

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                          I was garage manager at that point, so not driving them every day, but yes - it can be stressful. Part of the problem is self-made I think... my licence is expired now (health reasons) but in my time as a driver we would make it look too easy to the untrained eye. I did lates/nights most of the time, and we would fairly shift on quite often with little more than a cig-paper between us and an obstacle or colleague coming the other way. I suspect folks got used to that and thought we could do things we couldn't. I do have a lot of stories I could tell from that job though - met some proper idiots along the way, but mostly some wonderful people and had some right belly laughs.
                           
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                          • Plantpot

                            Plantpot Gardener

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                            @Fat Controller one of my friends was a bus driver doing routes around Liverpool to St Helens, after a few years of that, especially the late runs he moved down to Devon, still driving buses but without the city stress.

                            Many years ago, when he up here I was coming back with my 7 year old son, we had been to the local beach and my lad had a bucket with a few dead crabs in it, this amused my friend so much he told every boarding passenger not to sit on the back seats because we have crabs. So yes, you can have a laugh, it passes the day but the stress at other times does take its toll.

                            I came out of the forces and landed a job driving road cranes so know only to well what its like on the road and what officials are like, gave that up and spent the rest of my working life as an electrician, that way I had the temptation to drive over officials taken out of my hands.
                             
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                            • john558

                              john558 Total Gardener

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                              I was a member of a Monkton Parish Council for over 15 years.
                              The nearest Train Station was over 3 miles from Monkton.
                              When we asked the District Council & Kent County Council for street lights for people who lived in my village we were told that the people of Monkton should get off the train at Monkton.

                              We took great pleasure in informing the Councils there was no station in the village, so it would be difficult, no impossible.
                               
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