To be fed up of being trapped between 8-9 and 3-6?

[islandsandshores]

Roughly speaking! The traffic in my town is gridlocked at peak times and 10 minute journeys can take anything up to 2 hours.

Yet new houses are constantly being built

How do other towns cope with this? It's actually making me miserable.

Other towns don't cope either.
I need 50 mins to do a 5 mile journey to work, to start at 8.30.
The same journey takes 10 mins any other time.
It's pants, isn't it.

Madness!

If it's only a 10 min/5 mile journey, have you considered cycling or using a scooter?

Walk/cycle/use buses if you have bus lanes. Or move to the country!

Cycling is possible I suppose, although I hate it

We certainly have no bus lanes. Bus journeys are horrific.

suggest some bus routes to the bus companies and contact the schools to suggest that kids walk to school - it's surprising how many people drive such short distances when the kids can walk.

The buses take forever.
really what we need are trains

could there be a survey to see what the reasons for driving at those times are? I bet a lot of it is for schools from people in walking distance and that can walk to school

It's a major reason why my house has gone up for sale. Add 3000 new houses to a village where the main access to the city is a single track road.....

The village is gridlocked now every late afternoon yet still they build.

Get an e-bike? They're fun, they make cycling a breeze, they don't have parking issues and they don't get stuck in traffic jams.

However they're less fun in the rain and it's more difficult to drop kids to school while you're on the way to work if you're cycling.

What we need to are employers to embrace flexible working, allowing people to travel at different times.

To be honest cafe it's always been a badly designed town, traffic wise. But over the years more and more people have moved into it and slowly but surely this ridiculous situation has arisen.

Bike is not a bad suggestion, except when I'm going to work myself I often have heavy books/laptop and so on and also I do like to nip into the supermarket. And also it would be nice in this warmer weather to go to country parks, the beach even, nature reserves, in the evening, but you can't, as you can't get anywhere!

I suspect there are 2 things that will solve this problem:

1. Making a lot of roads one-way and using half of the road as a cycle lane that is separated from traffic. We need to prioritise people who are walking and cycling much more than we currently do, leaving cars for those who are disabled, elderly or frail.
2. The advent of the automated electric car, which will massively speed up journey times and improve air quality.

That's a fab idea tenforward!

I have a new bike with baby seat and basket. It's scary out there on the roads and I've had a few people nearly hit me (once with the baby on the back) but sitting in the traffic just now reminds me of why I use it. Plus I get my exercise out of the way for the day which means I actually do something.

I know a town like this and it is a nightmare at the rush hour/school times. People drive such short distances to school and the local shops. I don't know why people just don't walk when it is possible. I'm sorry that you are stuck in this.

Yanbu. What ten said about flexible employment. Not everyone should have to cram in for 9am or leave at 5pm.

And more off road cycle lanes would help.

Its like this where I live, a new access road was built for a new supermarket and the amount of traffic it created causes gridlock every day. New estates with only one entrance create queues of traffic where people sit like ants waiting to get into line.

And parking on these new estates, there are never enough parking spaces, the roads are narrow or laid out all curvy so that no one can actually get parked and drives are tiny..... hence a few parking threads which I love

YANBU, it's like this where my mum lives, especially in the summer. More than one occasion I've had to abandon the journey.

Get your bike out, get a panier rack or something so you don't have the weight of your laptop etc on your shoulders.

E bikes are now becoming available on many cycle to work schemes too. Lots of suppliers are making them available at the £1k max price point, but I have seen adverts saying there is also some government green initiative that does not have a limit = might be worth looking into?

(I know not why actual bikes have a limit but bikes with not-green batteries don't, but there you go...)

My city is like this too. It's ancient, built on a series of hills, has a river, a huge park and two train lines, so the number of roads from one side to the other are tiny and all the traffic gets funnelled onto the same ones. The ring road is horrendous too and in peak times doesn't save any time at all. Its the same story everywhere I think - particularly in the crowded southeast. Our city council, in its wisdom, is currently building a new 200-unit development, on one of the busiest roads in town. So that's another 200 vehicles, at least, going to be added that already heavily congested area

my husband goes in at 7:30 for this very reason. plus he gets more work done that early on. although to be honest it's not toooo bad here.

I feel your pain - we already often have grid lock in our village and we have building developments all over the place, one a 'new town' of 10,000 homes on existing crappy infrastructure. The largest 'A' road is being upgraded but considering this should have happened at least 15 years ago, I am not sure that even the upgrade will cope with the amount of extra traffic, our village certainly can't. Our village is growing as well, so much so that they are building a new primary school yet, we still only have one doctor's surgery, our village is turning into a town.

On the other hand, there are lots of jobs here and we are quite "rich" as a community. The school is ridiculously middle class and that means the educational standard keeps going up and the schools (despite being in one of the lowest funded school areas) deliver increasing results as the demographic gets more and more educationally minded.

I cycle to work into the proper "town". It's a 30 minute journey by car and a 20 minute journey by bike.

In some respects we are extremely lucky but it has changed the face of the village - though we still have our duck pond :)

Walking bus or cycling to school and work.

I'm all for the chaos that traffic causes at rush hours because it demonstrates the necessity to think about how we are travelling, why we are travelling and the impact that travel has on child health and the environment.

island Look at some panniers for cycling, or, a bike trailer... I'm just about to buy the latter for similar reasons (that and to take to the market on market day). I've used panniers for the last few years though.

Our estate is a nightmare, one single lane road that's jammed, leading to a dual carriageway that's just as jammed and a section of motorway that's usually part closed because of accidents!!

Like sups DH, I used to start an hour early as it was a difference of about 15mins leaving time to get there an hour later. Then I'd finish an hour early. As it was inside regular working hours (I did a shorter day than others) it didn't count as 'flexi' working