M25 roadworks - get a grip

[crumblinecentral]

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.

So, the millions of people living in the south east and beyond (a fair proportion of those affected by this closure live far afield) can't be informed about a fairly significant motorway closure because traffic is also bad on the M6 further north, even though that is not being closed this weekend?

I don’t think Surrey and the SE are “on a par” with the rest of the UK as regards shit roads @Tilkyghg6366 .

I KNOW we have more traffic - because the statistics tell us so.

Go and Google the busiest road sections in the UK. Actually you don’t have to - I posted it earlier in the thread.

4 out of the 5 busiest sections of Britain’s motorway are on the M25 .

That’s factual.

You can tell us till the cows come home about how your unspecified area of the UK is the busiest and has the most potholes etc.

The facts are the facts when it comes to the M25.

I know you’ll continue to ignore them to promote your pity Olympics. Which is why I’m out.

It's not @AIstolemylunch making the ridiculous posts on here.

Have you driven in Surrey recently? Or tried to get a bus? No, thought not. And I couldn't afford to live in Cornwall, or Cheshire, so what? Surrey isnt paved with Gold you know. Millionaires in Cheshire or Chelsea or Cobham might have it easier in terms of well maintained roads, and probably don't take buses, but normal people in Surrey, or anywhere else, certainly don't.

I repeat my question, do you ever use Heathrow? In which case this work affects you as much as any other people who don't live locally.

Having lived through a weekend closure of one of the quietest stretches of the M6 that was not well advertised (understatement) it was chaos people stuck for 11 hours this is major news.

I used to live on the stretch the local traffic on weekends could be tail backs without partial closures!

Locals will not be able to go anywhere.

I grew up in a village rural Wales, we had one bus a week that took us to the nearest town, it left at 9:00 on a Friday and returned at 12:00. No other buses unless you walked over 3 miles. Your public transport system sounds great in comparison!

As a kid I grew up resenting the London centric-ness of the country when we had to wait a month of summer holidays before Why Don’t You appeared but this is definitely worth knowing about regardless of where you live.

I think I remember that ... was that in Lancashire? Just after The Queen passed away? If so, that is a great example of how too much publicity for a major motorway closure is better than not enough!

I'm going to nominate the M4/M5/A38 interchange at Almondsbury near Bristol as a horrendous place when there's road closures, particularly if you are trying to get to South Wales and both Severn crossings are also shut. The diversion takes you up to Gloucester where the next bridge is.

Love a good roadworks / potholes / national news thread!
I do actually live in Surrey, right by this particular issue, but try not to frequent Junction 10, because it's so painful now. I queued for over an hour on the M25 to get onto the A3 a few weeks ago. £317 million.
Our ds2 has a football game in farnborough tomorrow and we have all discussed how to travel there. We are going to try an A30 route.

YANBU. I’ve just Google mapped Heathrow to Gatwick and it’s currently 1 hour 10 minutes. Hardly a crisis 🤷‍♀️

I’ve also googled and found that it will be closed again 19-21 April. The remaining dates haven’t yet been announced.

(haven’t read the full thread (yet) so apologies for potential duplicate post)

It’s a total clusterfuck.

If the only way it affects you is by mildly irking you for taking up ten minutes of the news, count yourself very lucky.

No train and an unreliable bus? Luxury! I have only Uncle Herbert and his donkey cart once a fortnight!!

@Hernameisdeborah yes it's was J33 south Lancaster/The uni to Preston - one of the main weekends for students to return to uni.

There was no publicity locally in Lancaster/Morecambe etc let alone further north. We only found out as a business on the A road has been sent a letter and posted it on the Preston FB group - so total chance really. Didn't show up on Google maps as shut!

They had put up signs on the M6 on the weekdays leading up to it completely oblivious that most locals only use it at the weekends!!

Funnily enough the one A Road couldn't cope, just like it can't when it closed to an accident.

They cancelled the future weekend closures as they finally calculated there just aren't alternate routes that stretch serves Heysham port and all the lorry traffic to West Scotland 24/7.

The roads would be relatively quiet at this time of day anyway (on a Saturday). It may well heat up later.
Although hopefully, thanks to the media channels highlighting the potential issues (not seen any hysteria anywhere), those who can will amend their plans.

We used to dream of having a donkey to pull our cart.....

@ClairDeLaLune that's great let's hope all the publicity on NATIONAL news has done its job and people are not travelling unless it's an essential journey and they can make a wide diversion.

Goodness knows what will happen if there is an accident on the diversion.

@quantumbutterfly you had a cart? You were lucky. We had a plank of wood with square wheels once a year to get us out of the live minefield we lived in...

The hackneyed cliche about the news being London/SE centric irritates me. It may once have been the case but in recent years I've noticed a major shift in coverage.
For instance, we've been bombarded recently about several forecasts of "300 mile wall of snow" to hit. Nothing to do with the SE but I didn't object.
But one also has to bear in mind the sheer population density in this region. A small amount of snow in an area housing many millions of people is going to be more newsworthy than a larger amount in the highlands of Scotland where it's a more regular occurrence.
In this M25 scenario, you also need to consider that many thousands of cars are "passing through" en route to elsewhere and if it had only been reported on local news, there would have rightly been complaints.

We had to travel from Pyrford to Terminal 2 a couple of hours ago. No traffic (it was early enough thankfully) but our cab driver mentioned that he’s mostly concerned about his customer who take shorter trips, so elderly people who need lifts to the doctor’s or shops. Something that would usually cost them a few quid for a 5 minute drive will become a 30minute plus trip and simply too expensive. Likewise, there’s a real concern about access to the local hospitals during the closure. Imagine an emergency vehicle trying to get past on one of the super narrow and now grid locked roads. Not great.
ETA: national news coverage is definitely helping avoid a lot of the unnecessary traffic this weekend. Rush hour Friday night on the A3 (so just by the junction of the M25 where the roadworks are ) was already a nightmare and a typical 10 minute journey took us just over an hour because the roadworks were already redirecting some of the lanes.

We were evicted from our cart. We only had a lame labrador to carry us to school, and when we got there, we were thrashed with a belt!

We had a plank of wood with square wheels

Wheels? I guess you lived in Islington with all the other London Centric media types.

Well we called it a cart.....

As for potholes, our potholes have their own social media...it's call r'sholes.

Some people resent the South East so much it completely warps their perspective. Yes, in the South East free buses run every 2 minutes and the roads are paved with gold... We just don't realise because we're all such spoiled bastards.