town is gridlocked between 330 and 630 every weekday

[badtraffic]

The answer is to build more homes.

I could cry.

I would love to use public transport or ride my bike. But I can't do that if I want to drop off/pick up my daughter & be at work on time. No option of flexi-time either. And quite frankly, the cost of public transport is ridiculous. I have 2 jobs - one 25 miles away so no public transport option for that either (unless I want to spend about 1hr 45 minutes travelling as opposed to 35 minutes).

It's just not feasible for everyone to walk, get a bus or ride a bike....

Colchester is huge pain the arse, even in the outskirts. In the town I work in, the first road I take to get home, there are crossroad traffic lights one end and a round about leading to and from a major A road.

Before anyone suggests a bus, they are every hour, stop nowhere near work and dont start before 8am which is when I need to be at work.

Bike is out of the question as its 8 miles down some dodgy country roads, where several cyclists have killed.

OP do you live in the same small city as me, currently crippled because every main road has roadworks?

How often do you hear about gridlock at 8pm? That's quite common here!

Same here. Large town run by perhaps the worst local authority in the country.
They just keep approving new houses but the infrastructure is crumbling

The things that make a difference to traffic - eg if there's a big new housing development, there needs also to be a new primary school built on-site (a condition of a development local to me) - come about because people campaign for them, write or ring their councillors, suggest them, make them happen.

The primary school on-site instantly means there are not 60 families driving across the area to drop their darlings off at a primary miles away.

If you want your locality to change for the better, you have to get involved.

If there is gridlock every single day, then clearly roads/public transport or whatever are not working and these issues need to be addressed.

The solution is not to stop houses being built though.

Sounds like Cambridge/Cambridgeshire ... yet we really do need more home. Problem is, we won't get the infrastructure we need to go with it properly.

I think this is a problem everywhere. New houses being thrown up but no new roads/schools/gp surgeries etc etc.

Yes to Cambridge traffic being horrible! It's almost unbelievable.

It's called overpopulation. Everyone stop having so many kids.

Yes. Always gridlocked here. We are lucky we walk everywhere and DS can cycle to school.

It doesn't help that there's 3 park and rides, and about 500 buses, each of which carry about 1 person each

Used to live around london before though, and the joys of the M25 were permanent gridlock

When I worked just 10 miles from work but my should be short journey of 30 minutes by car, would take 90 minutes by bus.

There are too many cars. Neighbour has one, husband has one, she has company car, he has company car, son has one, daughter has one, and daughter's boyfriend has one. 7 cars in one household and they all fucking park down this road and there are never any spaces

Wanted to go to Manchester today from Preston. Trains always crowded/overbooked. Tried to book coach. Three changes taking nearly 2hrs 45 mins. They scrapped the Mx61 from Blackpool via Preston. It was a fantastic link. I'm sure it's added to congestion. Travelling to Manchester is a nightmare now.

My sympathies.

I think the key to getting other forms of transport used is to make them the cheapest and most convenient form of transport for a sizeable group of people. It won't work for everyone but if you at least accommodate the people that would like to use the option it will get cars off the road. It's 3 or 4 miles from here in each direction to the nearest train, quite cyclable except the roads are narrow, hilly and extremely dangerous. There is however space for a separate cycleway, but no money or drive to build one despite local campaigns from time to time. So everyone drives and parks all over the place around the stations. Crazy.

You must live near me op! Public transport is shockingly bad. Council have just approved another 3000 houses. They've already built 2500 in last 4 years. Infrastructure is already broken! School run takes 40 minutes to collect kids and get 2 miles home. I have to use my car as I come straight from work 15 miles away (which takes 20 minutes until I hit the edge of my town which is where all the problems start 🙄.

Schools full, doctors full yet more houses 🙄

New houses being thrown up but no new roads/schools/gp surgeries etc etc.

That is true. The surgery where i work and the others in the same town are fit to burst to the point all but one wont take new patients. The local school to me is oversubscribed then they built 400 plus houses. The school in the next village is close to capacity so where do some the kids go to school?

You're not near Brighton are you op?

It's the fucking traffic lights. Cross boxes everywhere and none of them coincide correctly.

We get this on our local fb page all the time. Someone says it's taken them 35min to drive what should be a 3 min journey but gets gridlocked as it's the only route from one side of town to the other. Small market town, not a city. Then there's a hundred comments saying "you're not stuck in traffic you are the traffic" and "just walk then". Can't get through to them that you're not using your car to get to town, you have to get through town to continue to wherever you're going so no you can't walk, or get a bike, and no you can't avoid going to bloody Morrisons at that time because that's not where you're going. Our town has just passed 300 new houses to be built, on top of the 100 built last year , no new facilities and all schools, doctors and dentists over full

Sounds like cambridgeshire roads constantly shut due to road works. More and more houses/flats but not enough schools/doctors etc being built. 10 minute car trips that take an hour on a bus due to the buses not being on time and then because they are late having to stop at every single stop along with the contactless payments messing up.

We completely avoid town due to just how packed the roads/streets are much easier and nicer to shop online in those cases.

Some mornings as I walk DD to school, I think it is possible to hear peoples blood pressure soaring through the roof of the car.
I live in London and am lucky enough to be close to her school to walk.
The traffic is insane and I have seen people mount pavements and behave like twats. Also worth mentioning that the buses are stuck int he same queues.
The roads round here were not designed for the weight of traffic that it carries and there really isn't anyway round it without driving a dual carriage way through a swathe of suburbia. can't see anyway round it

Ihate the 'walk to school / work / you lazy bastards' or 'take public transport' responses that people trot out so casually. DS's special needs school is a 40 minute drive away so we drive to it and I drop him off on the way. We live in a village and the only piublic transport besides taxis is a single bus service to the main town that goes once every 60minutes. If he was to get the school bus that goes to that school I'd have to drive to it. We are so under-served with public transport that a community bus service staffed by volunteer drives is being discussed to get older people out during the day so they can do their shopping.

Recently a 100 house development was approved. It's supposed to be 'affordable homes' but they start at over 300k. Not sure how the two village schools and the one GP surgery are expected to cope, and the council have been silent on that topic.

Please do not assume everyone can use public transport. The nearest bus to me runs every hour to 2 local towns, but not to the city. To get to that bus, I would need to walk a mile and a half on unlit roads with no pavement and a speed limit of 60mph. These roads are single-track with passing places. The closest train station is 5 miles away.

This week, I need to be in the city each evening as I am playing in a show. My instrument does not fit on a bus. I cannot in any case get to the bus for the reasons outlined above. If I did take the bus, I would not be able to get home tonight as the last bus arrives at 6.15pm. The show finishes at 10.15pm. I have no alternative but to take my car. Perhaps if the people who could use public transport or a bike did so, gridlock would not happen.

*I drop him off on the way to work.

It's the same here too.

We are having another 2000 homes built at the edge of our village, doubling the size of the village, and the local town are having around another 1500 on top of that. The main road between - and the one road everybody needs to use to leave said village or town - is also gridlocked and has daily, if not twice daily, accidents due to congestion (and idiots). These accidents often close the road entirely.

Our public transport consists of one bus every 2 hours up until 10pm. This one bus goes nowhere near my work place. In order to take public transport to work, I would have to take 3 buses, an approximate 15 mile detour and an extra 90 minutes. Or I could just take my car for a mile or so along the very busy road & then another 5 miles along a country lane - taking 15 minutes or so in total (road conditions allowing).

Some people who obviously live in cities with excellent public transport clearly cannot comprehend that not everybody has the same options. Plenty of small towns genuinely cannot sustain the huge levels of building going on without also improving the roads too!

I am sure it is shit and I am sure it is a big problem.

It's the 'there is no option for public transport' posts who then tag on 'not without it taking longer or having to wait' onto the end I have a problem with. That means that there is an option for public transport. It's OK not to want to take it, but to say it isn't there is inaccurate.

I work in multiple locations, I get to them all on public transport, and yes it takes longer and yes I have to wait. And yes sometimes 25 mile journeys take 1.5 hours. And you build it in to your day, like many many other people. Just like you build in time for traffic jams, finding parking spaces and having to get back to your car before you go home no matter where you happen to be etc.

Not everyone can get public transport, I understand that. But not everyone has the option to just drive, either.