How trafficky is it where you live?

[Magicpaintbrush]

Genuinely would like to know if there is anywhere in the UK (other than very rural areas) where the traffic isn't a bloody nightmare? (So we can move there!!!)

I live in Kent and there are roadworks absolutely everywhere. Endless gridlock, crawling along bumper to bumper. Diversions that send you off to sit in even more roadworks. Road closures. 50mph speed limits on motorways for tens of miles. Bridge closures. Lane closures. Junction closures. Rush hour is about 4 hours long at both ends of the day so it's frequently really bad. Is there anywhere out there that isn't like this, or is there no escape???

Does anyone have lovely clear roads in other parts of the UK?

Not massively traffic-y, although it seems to be roadworks central at the moment. There's always issues on the motorways though.

Traffic is the bane of my life, and I live rurally.
Dead quiet round here, few cars, you can walk in the road safely, but as soon as I go out on the A roads, it is usually busy. If anything happens to impede the flow all other roads start backing up. There are just too many cars.

Well it's busy here between 7.30 and 9 and 4-6 on the motorway every day, although much less so during school holidays.
The towns get a bit busy at school kick out, and again at 5ish, but I regularly take the dc to school 12 miles away, takes about 20 minutes during "rush hour", the same journey takes about 15-18 minutes any other time. So, no, it's not trafficky here really.
There's plenty of ways round too, so if there's roadworks it's generally easy enough to avoid them.

Whoever designed the roads in Glasgow should be fired. Traffic is frequently terrible but it is no wonder when you think about how they have set out roads and connections!

My estate/ suburb is fine. It's too winding to be a direct through route for many people. The major routes around the city are more congested, mainly at peak times. The middle of the day is usually fine.

One of the great things about my former teaching days was that I tended to commute against dominant traffic flows

I live in a small village. There's a main road that runs through it and it's constantly rumbling with traffic, even at 3am you'll hear lorries and the like.
Around school time it's dreadful, mostly because of the moronic selfish cunts that choose to ignore the huge empty car park and park either side of the road making it near impossible for a bus to get through.
So the road gets blocked, traffic grinds to a halt, which impacts my village and the two either side. But at least the parents saved themselves less than 2minutes walk.
(Bit of a mini rant there.. lol)

Pretty much clear. I'm about a mile off the a-road. Not my children between 11pm and 6am. Snow renders it gloriously silent. School has around 1000 pupils but the drop-off point doesn't get congested and there's always somewhere to park.

I'm less than an hour from 2 major cities too.

Not my children = not much noise

It appears the council have put a tracker on my car and hacked my Google calendar because there are sets of temporary traffic lights everywhere I go at the moment. I see traffic jams everywhere

I'm not sure I'm joking about this as I was in DH's car yesterday and the roads were clear. Today, Tuesday - gridlock.

I moved to my area 2 years ago and it was fine for traffic other than it got a bit busier at rush hour.

For some reason the last 6 months seem to be constant road closures, road works and diversions so it's a nightmare at any time of day.

I hate it.

(Hertfordshire)

No so much the traffic, but we have roadworks everywhere at the moment so it’s taking ages to get anywhere.

I live in a small town, with 2 roads leading out of it. 1 road is closed completely for re-surfacing, the other road also has roadworks. Great fun! Not

I live in a holiday area so we tend to have shit loads of road works, everywhere all winter with diversions and road closures all over the place, then in summer the roads are rammed with all the holiday makers.

Roadworks all over here as well. Someone did a spoof amusing conspiracy theory article about how the government wasn't allowing anyone in or not of the town deliberately. There are times I don't get out of first gear for stretches of road.

Cambridge here, it's horrendous. Bane of my life. Takes over an hour to travel 7 miles to work sometimes.

Horrendous from 0700-0930 and 1600-1845 but can’t afford to live in city centre

Houses on one side of our street and a golf course over the road so the only cars going past ours live above our house and its a spur road the rest of the estate is behind ours but the water board is forever digging up this part of the raod so thats a pain

People are complaining bitterly about a set of traffic lights in my little town which can add 5 minutes to your journey.
Other than that, people talk about rush hour which is about half an hour twice a day when two junctions in town can take a few minutes to turn out of.

I love it here.

Don't move to Leicester...

I have to make a journey this evening that is only 12 miles, and that I know will take in excess of 75 minutes.

On a Sunday morning it would take 25 at the most.

Not too bad here in Wiltshire. Town busy at school times but ok other than that. If you want to go into one of the cities on either side of our town you'll meet plenty of traffic and travelling a few miles will take an age.

The South East of England seems to be terrible for traffic, glad I don't live there anymore, though it does get significantly better weather than almost any other part of the UK.

I moved to Surrey about 18 months ago, and have never seen somewhere so addicted to temporary traffic lights. There is a lot of need for road repairs, but the same roads seem to be hit for months at a time, have a breather and are then coned off again.
They keep approving more housing estates too, so the gridlock only going to get (much) worse as roads already struggle to cope around Guildford.

Before that, it was south Essex, where the A-roads were vulnerable to the slightest hiccup; and the A13/M25 join at Lakeside makes the national news every once in a while.

Before that it was Crewe, where abysmal junction planning turned a 10 min journey into a 45+min journey at the wrong time of day.

Never been anywhere that had enough road to cope with its traffic.

Ummm no not very (mid Suffolk) larger towns might be but no cities in Suffolk, mostly farmland

The actual village where I live doesn't have traffic because it's pretty rural and very small but our nearest big town is awful. It's Reading. Absolutely terrible traffic.

It's not bad up here in the North of Scotland to be honest. People say its bad, but that's because they aren't used to actual traffic. Driving in Glasgow tends to terrify the people around here.

Driving in Bristol I look at the speed limit signs and dream of reaching such heady speed...
We have the Avon ring road... except Avon no longer exists and it doesn't form a ring around the city (it only goes about a third of the way round)

This is really interesting - so Wiltshire and Suffolk sound pretty good traffic-wise, but cambridgeshire, glasgow and essex not so great. I'm well versed in the hell that is the dartford crossing as I go from kent to essex to visit family - it is a special kind of horror.

I live in London and get rage at empty bus lanes during the day while I’m stuck in traffic. Then add a cycle lane.

Why can’t they have cycle lanes above rail lines into Central London. No more fatal accidents and a lot safer for cyclists.