Things You Don't "Get"

[brommy]

Just now, Paddywhack said:

Ah, motorways. I don't think I've driven on one in 7-8 months. I hate motorway driving but it seems quite appealing at the moment.

My 200 mile daily commute became at lot more tolerable, especially during the first lockdown. It’s now back to near pre-pandemic levels so I’m glad to have taken early retirement.

[chrisp65]

As a very regular user of that road, the 50mph works so much better than the 70. On two fronts. the most noticeable one for me being that arsehole car drivers that think you drive by accelerating and breaking, well they have less impact on the clusterfudge that is Newport. The second, is the pollution thing.

How long is that stretch where there are houses either side in close proximity? 3, maybe 4 miles tops?

Dropping the speed to 50 costs what on your journey time? Just over a minute? 

But I doff my cap to any lorry that has ever managed 57mph up that hill, usually they are doing about 30.

 

[brommy]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

Well that's my assumption of what their aim was

Unless they want to kill more of their citizens, I assume the Welsh government would want to decrease air pollution, not increase air pollution.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

As a very regular user of that road, the 50mph works so much better than the 70. On two fronts. the most noticeable one for me being that arsehole car drivers that think you drive by accelerating and breaking, well they have less impact on the clusterfudge that is Newport. The second, is the pollution thing.

How long is that stretch where there are houses either side in close proximity? 3, maybe 4 miles tops?

Dropping the speed to 50 costs what on your journey time? Just over a minute? 

But I doff my cap to any lorry that has ever managed 57mph up that hill, usually they are doing about 30.

 

Yes but its a national policy not specific to that road.

If their aim was to reduce air pollution, 60mph would have been the general optimum to drop it to. Meaning the biggest pollutants carry on at the speed they are poluting the least at and cars at pretty much the same speed. My point is 60mph achieves a lower level of air pollution than 50mph.

Having said that, I don't think I've ever driven on it and the Smart Motorway hasn't been at 50mph or less anyway and usually by the time it lowers to 50. the traffic is crawling at between 10 and 20

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, brommy said:

Unless they want to kill more of their citizens, I assume the Welsh government would want to decrease air pollution, not increase air pollution.

Yes, which is why if that was their aim, 60mph would have been better.

[brommy]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

Yes, which is why if that was their aim, 60mph would have been better.

Your point became much clearer having read your previous post. I originally thought you had confused ‘increase’ with ‘improve’!

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, bannedfromHandV said:

30mph with the braking force of modern cars feels perfectly reasonable to me, you can come to a complete stop pretty quickly at 30mph, or at least, all competent drivers should be able to.

I've done a speed awareness course, me. 

 

[mjmooney]

29 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

As a very regular user of that road, the 50mph works so much better than the 70. On two fronts. the most noticeable one for me being that arsehole car drivers that think you drive by accelerating and breaking

*braking* 

But yeah, you're right. Whenever I've been on long motorway journeys, I've noticed that the traffic flows more evenly when there's a 50mph limit. When it's 70mph, you get more bursts of speed, but also more slow/stopped stretches, as the traffic 'concertinas'. Journey times are generally shorter at 50mph. 

[chrisp65]

14 minutes ago, bickster said:

Yes but its a national policy not specific to that road.

If their aim was to reduce air pollution, 60mph would have been the general optimum to drop it to. Meaning the biggest pollutants carry on at the speed they are poluting the least at and cars at pretty much the same speed. My point is 60mph achieves a lower level of air pollution than 50mph.

Having said that, I don't think I've ever driven on it and the Smart Motorway hasn't been at 50mph or less anyway and usually by the time it lowers to 50. the traffic is crawling at between 10 and 20

That particular specific piece of road is subject to all manner of ideas and trials over the years. It’s the pinch point of the steep hill with a twist at the bottom and the Bryn Glas tunnel. There is some weird driver psychology / fluid dynamics thing that is going on over that couple of miles that they’ve never managed to resolve. But in my experience, making it 50 AND enforcing it with average speed cameras is the nearest thing to a fix that they’ve found.

I do wonder if the ‘environmental’ element is a happy coincidence (although the houses are quite close on that hill).

The main problem there, in my ‘umbrella opinion, is car drivers trying to go as fast as they can with zero sense of anticipation, so then jabbing the brakes, then lane swapping because the other lane is going 1.4mph faster. Followed by people then seemingly taken by surprise that there is a tunnel so having a little pause to look at it before they go in.

’Slowing’ the traffic costs 1 minute and 20 seconds, in theory. In practise, I reckon it’s made it slightly less bad than it previously was. 

The tories believe they’ve got the solution, they want a whole additional motorway through the nature reserve and wetlands. Because more road always solves traffic problems.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, mjmooney said:

*braking* 

But yeah, you're right. Whenever I've been on long motorway journeys, I've noticed that the traffic flows more evenly when there's a 50mph limit. When it's 70mph, you get more bursts of speed, but also more slow/stopped stretches, as the traffic 'concertinas'. Journey times are generally shorter at 50mph. 

I’m genuinely calling out this absolute **** monster of an ipad that thinks it knows better than me.

It’s a constant struggle to spell correctly, then check the ipad hasn’t uncorrected it, then check again as sometimes it does some weird retrospective second fix even when i try to over rule it.

You have no idea how difficult it is to persuade it i really do mean Bryn Glas and not Bryan Glass. It’s actually Brynglas but it basically just refuses to accept that unless prepared to have three or four goes at it.

But you know the most irritating thing? If it’s so **** clever, why doesn’t it capitalise the i in the paragraph above?

 

 

[fightoffyour]

15 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I've done a speed awareness course, me. 

 

What I got from that is if you drive at 30mph then the bloke doesn't have to wait an extra 3 seconds before it's safe for him to cross the road. 

[bickster]

12 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

That particular specific piece of road is subject to all manner of ideas and trials over the years. It’s the pinch point of the steep hill with a twist at the bottom and the Bryn Glas tunnel. There is some weird driver psychology / fluid dynamics thing that is going on over that couple of miles that they’ve never managed to resolve. But in my experience, making it 50 AND enforcing it with average speed cameras is the nearest thing to a fix that they’ve found.

I do wonder if the ‘environmental’ element is a happy coincidence (although the houses are quite close on that hill).

The main problem there, in my ‘umbrella opinion, is car drivers trying to go as fast as they can with zero sense of anticipation, so then jabbing the brakes, then lane swapping because the other lane is going 1.4mph faster. Followed by people then seemingly taken by surprise that there is a tunnel so having a little pause to look at it before they go in.

’Slowing’ the traffic costs 1 minute and 20 seconds, in theory. In practise, I reckon it’s made it slightly less bad than it previously was. 

The tories believe they’ve got the solution, they want a whole additional motorway through the nature reserve and wetlands. Because more road always solves traffic problems.

My journeys along the M4 in recent years usually involved me turning off at Celtic Manor just as the Smart stuff started but I'd be well aware that I'm likely to be in a queue from anywhere after Caldicot to that junction, so I pretty much stuck to the left hand lane at that point because you really can't see that far ahead on most of that stretch. The last time I was there, I made the mistake of "I'll go the other way for a change." 

[bannedfromHandV]

47 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

As a very regular user of that road, the 50mph works so much better than the 70. On two fronts. the most noticeable one for me being that arsehole car drivers that think you drive by accelerating and breaking, well they have less impact on the clusterfudge that is Newport. The second, is the pollution thing.

How long is that stretch where there are houses either side in close proximity? 3, maybe 4 miles tops?

Dropping the speed to 50 costs what on your journey time? Just over a minute? 

But I doff my cap to any lorry that has ever managed 57mph up that hill, usually they are doing about 30.

 

 

14 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

That particular specific piece of road is subject to all manner of ideas and trials over the years. It’s the pinch point of the steep hill with a twist at the bottom and the Bryn Glas tunnel. There is some weird driver psychology / fluid dynamics thing that is going on over that couple of miles that they’ve never managed to resolve. But in my experience, making it 50 AND enforcing it with average speed cameras is the nearest thing to a fix that they’ve found.

I do wonder if the ‘environmental’ element is a happy coincidence (although the houses are quite close on that hill).

The main problem there, in my ‘umbrella opinion, is car drivers trying to go as fast as they can with zero sense of anticipation, so then jabbing the brakes, then lane swapping because the other lane is going 1.4mph faster. Followed by people then seemingly taken by surprise that there is a tunnel so having a little pause to look at it before they go in.

’Slowing’ the traffic costs 1 minute and 20 seconds, in theory. In practise, I reckon it’s made it slightly less bad than it previously was. 

The tories believe they’ve got the solution, they want a whole additional motorway through the nature reserve and wetlands. Because more road always solves traffic problems.

That’s all fine and dandy but why not operate a flexible system whereby, if you’re using it on a Sunday, at 9pm when there’s very little traffic, the speed can go back up, which is what they had previously. I mean the environmental impact for a low volume of traffic between travelling at 70mph versus 50mph must be minuscule at best.

[bannedfromHandV]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

My journeys along the M4 in recent years usually involved me turning off at Celtic Manor just as the Smart stuff started but I'd be well aware that I'm likely to be in a queue from anywhere after Caldicot to that junction, so I pretty much stuck to the left hand lane at that point because you really can't see that far ahead on most of that stretch. The last time I was there, I made the mistake of "I'll go the other way for a change." 

The maccies on that roundabout - I used to work there

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

My journeys along the M4 in recent years usually involved me turning off at Celtic Manor just as the Smart stuff started but I'd be well aware that I'm likely to be in a queue from anywhere after Caldicot to that junction, so I pretty much stuck to the left hand lane at that point because you really can't see that far ahead on most of that stretch. The last time I was there, I made the mistake of "I'll go the other way for a change." 

I like that the M25 now has about 7 lanes, with lanes 2 to 7 at a standstill and me on my own doing 50 down lane 1 giving it the Mr Bean style V’s.

God bless Londoners and their inalienable right to stay in the ‘fast’ lane.

 

 

[chrisp65]

5 minutes ago, bickster said:

My journeys along the M4 in recent years usually involved me turning off at Celtic Manor just as the Smart stuff started but I'd be well aware that I'm likely to be in a queue from anywhere after Caldicot to that junction, so I pretty much stuck to the left hand lane at that point because you really can't see that far ahead on most of that stretch. The last time I was there, I made the mistake of "I'll go the other way for a change." 

That particular junction, absolutely yes, dedicated left hand lane all the way down, pass pass pass a couple of hundred cars, down the slip road, around the roundabout... and back up the next slip road and back on the motorway! 

It can literally knock 15 / 20 minutes off!

There is a similar one clockwise around about Heathrow.

 

[bickster]

4 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I like that the M25 now has about 7 lanes, with lanes 2 to 7 at a standstill and me on my own doing 50 down lane 1 giving it the Mr Bean style V’s.

God bless Londoners and their inalienable right to stay in the ‘fast’ lane.

 

 

Now the daughter lives in that there Londinium I have occasion to use the M25 between the M40 and the M4, Just that small stretch is full of enough throbbers for me to dislike the road already

[bickster]

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

That particular junction, absolutely yes, dedicated left hand lane all the way down, pass pass pass a couple of hundred cars, down the slip road, around the roundabout... and back up the next slip road and back on the motorway! 

It can literally knock 15 / 20 minutes off!

There is a similar one clockwise around about Heathrow.

 

Doesn't that one chuck you into the Heathrow ULEZ though?

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

Doesn't that one chuck you into the Heathrow ULEZ though?

I’m not sure of what number it is. It’s one of those bits of road where i know it when I’m on it but i couldn’t describe it (if that makes any sense).

It’s not the one right on Heathrow, by the M4 turn off, it’s a junction or two south of that and if you choose the wrong one you’re buggered because its dedicated lane and you can’t do the cheat manoeuvre.

I’d know it if I saw it!

 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

I’m not sure of what number it is. It’s one of those bits of road where i know it when I’m on it but i couldn’t describe it (if that makes any sense).

It’s not the one right on Heathrow, by the M4 turn off, it’s a junction or two south of that and if you choose the wrong one you’re buggered because its dedicated lane and you can’t do the cheat manoeuvre.

I’d know it if I saw it!

 

Only done that stretch a couple of times but I think I know where you mean