M25 roadworks - get a grip

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I'm sorry but anyone who lives or works outside of the "golden sphere" that is the M25 has had to deal with road/motorway closures and sudden changes in route/planning for decades.

Why do we have to be subjected to this as "national news"?

FFS they close motorways every weekend in North West, Yorkshire, Midlands, Wales, Scotland and elsewhere on a regular basis.

YANBU.

I live near M1 junction 10 and they have road works there every couple of year 'improving' this junction and the route to the Airport for at 20 years.

People need to get a grip and just stay at home or leave extra time for traffic.

It was actually pretty good yesterday and today, because, I assume, lots of people had avoided the area. We were out last night and came home late via the A3 south through junction ten and we were the only car on the road. It was actually spooky, like some kind of post apocalyptic scenario. Like, where is everyone else? Literally never been the only car in the A3 😁

Sounds like the heads up worked.

They did something very similar on the M3 a few months ago - it's amazing how quickly they can work when they want to (are being paid enough, I suppose).

I don’t think there will be more accidents, apart from the types who panic whenever they see more than three lanes on a road. If that’s you, then I kindly ask you to take alternative routes when the refurbished A3 opens, and leave the rest of us to enjoy it

To be fair, I don't use the A3 in that direction, I use the M3 and then the M25 to go towards Reigate, Bromley etc. Sometimes we come back via the A3, but we don't see any difficulties.

But what you are actually saying, while having a dig at my driving, for some reason, is that all this money is being spent because people can't drive properly and see what's in front of them. There is no need to be so offensive, all you need to do is say that you disagree and your experience of the junction has been different.

I was reading an article the other day about Covid having caused a minor reduction in IQ. Maybe it has affected peoples driving, as they seem unable to drive properly these days. See also lorries ploughing into the backs of people on "smart" motorways.

Also - the A3 IS a racetrack!

I agree OP it's the same as when it snows in London, it's suddenly national news. It's so boring.

Yep, we had a long-standing arrangement to visit relatives and were stuck in the traffic. It isn't just the traffic, any alternative route is slower and longer so the journey took twice as long, both ways.

Lots of people from the north might travel down to fly on holiday from Heathrow or Gatwick. Lots of people from up north visit the south or work in the south regularly. I guess you’d be fuming if you didn’t know and couldn’t get where you needed to be.

I’m glad it’s been on the national news - it has made people think about their journeys this weekend. I live about a mile away from J10 and the traffic is appalling all the time - if people hadn’t known/listened it would have been an even worse hell than usual. On a bad day the mile to the A3 to get to J10 can take 40 minutes.
you are lucky to be elsewhere in the country - not everyone has the option because of work

Why do people who live further north always think its only the London area mentioned on the news.
Every winter with out a flake of snow in sight us soft southerners watch various northern motorways cloaked in snow and hear stories of nights spent in cars etc. It doesn't affect us in the slightest but I've never thought to moan that because it's not happening to us we shouldn't hear about it.
I also live near the junction and for all the reasons mentioned above it was a huge deal and needed to be well publicised.

There was one winter about 12 years ago when there was snow in Surrey and Sussex. It took my ex-husband 12 hours to get the 40-ish miles home via the M25 and M23.

The bit of the M25 between the A3 and the M4 is so busy that the slightest incident leads to a massive gridlock. I've been stuck on it for over 2 hours a few times, and once for 4.5 hours. I often go cross country from Sussex now, via Woking and Bracknell. It takes a bit longer if the motorways are fine , but it's a pleasant drive and much quicker if there's a problem on the motorways.

We are fairly close to the closed part of M25 and the trains from our local station are on rail replacement bus service today 😆

@squooz FML they were the other weekend too.

I went to Oxford via Basingstoke a few Saturdays ago, trains so rammed people were left standing on the platform.

Quite glad we moved oop North, trains are super shit up here but bus service is great as in a university city. Less taxi duty for the teens!

I wanted to visit a family who is ill in wales but I can't get to him because of his motorway closure. Trains are not available for the return journey. Just because people don't live in the 'golden circle ' doesn't mean it doesn't affect them. You are very selfish op.

That's really sad, is there not any kind of accommodation near the hospital?

Goodness this thread is dissolving into a Monty Python sketch.... "you had it hard......."
Just have empathy for other people for goodness sake. It's a busy area of the country with two airports & a major port that is affected, it IS news!

Should they not report floods that are not near the SE because it's not in my backyard?

Maybe google the population of the places you mention and that of the M25 surrounding area. Have a look on a map and see what a vast area is affected.

Well it is used by 250,000 cars per day.

I came back from Heathrow to Brighton this morning. The diversion worked well and fewer cars meant the journey time was about the same as usual.

Well where I live the road is closed for 6 months between 9 and 5 every day - 6 months! The diversion is 40 mins. It is a tiny rural road/village so you have to drive everywhere and it takes an hour to get to and from nursery in the first place so there's no chance of not having a ridiculously long nursery journey every day. Why isn't our suffering in the news?! Even when the road isn't shut it is full of barriers which you have to swerve round and on a tiny road that means even if you only come across a couple of other cars never mind endless blooming tractors it adds 10 mins on to your journey for a few hundred metres driving.

Seriously, I grew up in the shadow of the M25, hellish and I get why people are worried but it really doesn't feel like it should be national news, it's a flipping road! But then I also wouldn't put on all the endless weather related dross that's passed off as news - flooding everywhere! - etc, except as a piece specifically focused on climate change leading to more extreme weather.

In Scotland there is a road closure that happens regularly when there is very wet weather and landslides, the diversion is about 80 miles and takes about 3 hours. As with most things in London people are oblivious to everything that happens outwith the M25. All cities, towns and villages throughout the UK are the same they are not designed for diverted motorway traffic going on single track roads but the rest of us just suck it up!

"As with most things in London, people are oblivious to everything that happens outwith the M25."

You have any evidence for that? Or are you just, you know, making it up?

What is so hard to understand about it being the scale of things that makes something newsworthy. A lane closed in a rural location is a huge pain for the relatively small number of people it affects. The closure of this particular section of the busiest motorway in the country will affect hundreds of thousands of people, both local and from further afield.
Fortunately, perhaps owing to the advance warnings given, the disruption has been relatively limited. Whether it will be next time remains to be seen if people think it was OK this time so ignore the warnings.

Front page news has stuff about a bear in Slovenia. Are the complainers also irate with Slovenians and suggesting they are oblivious to the rest of Europe?

Why do some people not understand that putting it on the news alerted people and helped manage the volume of traffic? It's not about people's suffering.