To think my colleague is being a bit unreasonable re “ratrun”?

[DizzyPhillips]

Which is a term I hate anyway but that aside...

She lives on what is generally a very quiet street. There are fairly long term roadworks with temporary traffic lights on one of the nearby main roads and the traffic is bonkers in the morning. Bonkers.

So people going to work have taken to bypassing the roadworks by driving down her street and rejoining the main road after the temporary lights.

She is INCENSED by this. Honest to god has not stopped moaning about it.

“It’s a quiet street and it’s being used as a rat run and it’s noisy and busy and I have to wait to get out of my driveway and how dare they and blah blah blah”

I mean i suppose I can see why it’s potentially slightly irritating but it’s a public road! Surely people have as much right to use it as she does?!

I’ve seen people moan about their roads being used as “rat runs” on here before and on Facebook/Twitter and I genuinely don’t get it 🤷🏻‍♀️

I do generally think there are too many cars on the road. The traffic around here at rush hour is chaos and near constant roadworks (badly planned) do not help. Public transport here is not fit for purpose.

But surely it’s not reasonable or realistic to expect drivers to spent 30-40 mins in a traffic queue rather than avoid it by using alternative routes?

It a road and its being used, shes being unreasonable, could you ask her politely to stop mentioning it because its boring ?
I had something similar with a friend who used to moan about cars turning round outside her house.They weren't disturbing anyone and there was no one infirm or young children etc in her house.
She even went round the street asking people not to turn round outside her house.She has not idea how mad she sounded.

I live on a rat run. I don't get irritated at cars as such but I do get annoyed at them driving too fast for the road conditions.

A lot of side roads near me (Birmingham) have become 20mph zones with more scheduled ....

Also, does she drive to work only on main roads or does she use quieter side roads if there is congestion or road works ahead?

Yes, exactly!

Never heard that phrase before, I was expecting this thread to be about some sort of enclosure for actual rats

but ontopic, I'd probably complain non stop about it too but clearly it's nobodies fault, road works are an inconvenience but necessary

My road is a .ratrun' deadend. They come storming up and have to turn round .
It is terrible parking here and I did get ridiculously furious with a silly young man who blocked me in.

I am moving this week hooray and have my own parking space.

I think SIBU - it's temporary. It'll (eventually) end. FWIW we have a notorious (and permanent!) rat run nearby, now made worse by the sound of cars scraping over the speedbumps that've been installed to try slow people down. Unfortunately that road is down in The Knowledge as a shortcut so that's that really. And no, I wouldn't choose to live on there but that's the advantage of the permanence - we know it's there and can choose accordingly.

She sounds like one who actively enjoys having something to moan about but I do see why it's annoying.

The problem of "rat runs" isn't really people using the road, it's that the ones who use it are trying to beat people on the normal route, so they go too fast. Temporary traffic is different though.

Yeah she is generally quite a negative person but this takes the biscuit! I bet you anything she wouldn’t sit in 40 minute traffic herself if there was a route to avoid it 🙄 I’m going to ask her that tomorrow