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.

No not a lack of understanding but frustration re the lack of awareness re what the rest of the country goes through as a normality. Where we are in the SW we live with permanently massively pot holed roads everywhere that are ignored, continual roadworks and delays into cities and looooong diversions though tortuous lanes. All with a completely broken and often non existent public transport system.

Just because something doesn't matter to you, doesn't mean it's not going to massively impact other people. YABU

Do you think other parts of the country don't have pot holes? We do too in Hampshire! They do in Surrey! And the fact is that the volume of traffic being diverted in to nearby roads near the Wisley Interchange will make the road surface worse as well!

Looks like it's not possible to do on overnights sadly because this one involves demolition of a key bridge - a job you can't just start doing overnight, then leave for a day (opening the road while the bridge is halfway demolished) before going back to the next night.

There have been a few overnight closures on this stretch already so pretty sure if they could have kept it to overnights, they would have. It's not exactly in National Highways' interests to unnecessarily fully close this section for a weekend!

You have a public transport system that is usable and has a lot more money pumped into it. In our area our public transport system infrastructure is pretty much non existent and continually getting worse. Families struggle to get their children to school and you absolutely can’t use it to get to work.

It’s interesting that because it’s Surrey and the SE that are inconvenienced it’s an outrage but when it’s the rest of the country nobody in the same area gives a shit.

Actually no, I don't. As I said, I live in Hampshire, in a town actually that has one bus route which serves a couple of very small towns/villages, rather than the more major ones. We also don't have a train station as it closed decades ago and has since had a new road built where the line was. This is about a 20-30 minute drive from the Wisley Interchange by the way so not an awfully long way away!

Some of the immediate towns do have train stations with varying services, but that's not really the point. The stretch of road is a major route that many pass through to go further afield. It's not really about local people, hence why it is on the national news. If I was flying from Gatwick this weekend and didn't know that stretch was closed I would be in a pickle. If I was driving up to London, I would want to go a different route. If I was going up the Midlands as I did last weekend, I would want to know as I have three small children in the car and it would be a nightmare.

Your bus route serves you, ours doesn’t.

There are plenty of ways to check traffic and road works on routes which the rest of us manage to use regularly.

I live 40 miles from London and my son can’t even get a bus to school as the first bus leaves the village at 9.15 so we have to drive him there (8 miles) every day. Central London has great public transport but not the whole of the SE. If I wanted to use public transport to get to Heathrow it would take me 4.5 hours. It’s 1 hour 15 in the car…unless there is traffic…I dread to think how long the journey will be today.

This is me too! Six miles to the school my children are at. If our car was to break we couldn't get them there. The junior school is nearer to 10 miles. The secondary is closer but still no bus to get them there, at least not without a mile and a half walk first.

We had about 4 years of weekend closures on the M4 whilst it was converted to a smart motorway. It also ŵas major junctions and a busy area (Heathrow/M25/Slough/Reading) and we live on the division route. It was chaos but I don't remember being so hysterical.

😂Loving the way an 8 mile journey due to no public transport is a hardship. Some of us live with far bigger journeys with no means of getting there for all members of the family. State schools( not indies), work, hospital - the lot. And what public transport there is is extortionate and unaffordable.

I also live in the North, in an area that rarely hits national news for anything. So I can understand the feelings.

However, I don’t mind that this is making national news. The M25 being closed doesn’t impact me, no. But then a large amount of the news doesn’t “impact” me.

this clearly a massive deal for the area, and the population in the region is huge. It’s really important people know about this closure in advance. I can’t get worked up about the news rightly pointing out how difficult this is going to be for the region.

and when you hear stories like the one a PP of the impact on a local hospital then I think the fewer people travelling the better. And the national news is a great way to spread the word.

As a Northerner living in the SE I am bemused by all the people that think we have shit hot public transport. In the Northern town that I grew up in it’s still possible to get a very reasonably priced family house five mins from the train station on a line between two major cities. If only that was the case where I live now…

Which hospital? I bet someone on here could offer her a bed. I will, if it's one near me.

Do you actually use the M25 op? J10 has been in chaos for months with the A3 works. Trying to divert everything off the M25 and around this already stressed section is going to cause carnage.
I have to come off at J10 CW then A3 SB tomorrow, planning to leave before dawn in the hope of not getting caught up in it all.

Well my son goes to a state school. If he was at an indie it wouldn’t be a problem as they have their own transport. The point is that I live in the SE close to London and the public transport is shit. One bus every two hours starting at 9.15. Not exactly great for commuters. Oh, and my Grandad was a crofter so I am quite familiar with remoteness.

Five miles from Heathrow but not in the sticks and it would still take near two hours on (next-to-non-existent) public transport. It is really poor once you’re outside of the London zones.

As others have said, I hope there are robust emergency services plans in place.

We’re not remote. All are towns, city and surrounding areas have shit to non existent extortionate public transport.

I'm not sure if that was a reply to me but my bus route doesn't serve me, as I said!

And yes, there are plenty of ways to check traffic. But if for example you were driving to Gatwick for a flight and you check on the morning of the flight and discover your journey will have an extra three hours added to it due to diversions that day, it wouldn't really help, would it?

We have family in Surrey and your public transport system is a dream in comparison to ours.

There are plenty of ways to check road works which we all have to use as nobody gives a shit about the rest of the country outside of the SE.

Oh that's so sad. Poor lady 😔

Well I don’t live in Surrey and the public transport in the suburb of the Northern city that I grew up in is far superior than where I am now. Don’t make this a SE thing because it isn’t.

What you seem to be failing to see is that a lot of us are the same in the south east too! If my car breaks tomorrow, my journey to work would by 2 hours 55 minutes one way (by foot, bus, train and then foot again). I would arrive 1 hour and 25 minutes after I typically start. The journey is 32 miles. Public transport central, we are not! Funnily enough, the south coast city I would be commuting to would also not have public transport that would serve near my office.

It's a massive deal - 2 international airports in the vicinity and a gateway route for large swathes of the country to reach other parts of the country - the diversion route is really not straightforward and it will be awful for the residents and traffic and tourists and anyone really.

It's not comparable.

And no, I don't live there or even have to use it regularly. I do know the section reasonably well as have used it to visit family ( them off m40 me south coast) over the years.