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“The UK road network is operating at full capacity”


I know a little bit about getting tired of traffic jams. For starters, there are my painful memories of being stuck for a day and night – thanks to an attack by French workers who burned a wall of tires blocking the main, and only, road. , out of town.

Then there was an international incident that I got into while competing in the Paris-Beijing Cycling Tournament and trying to drive out of Kazakhstan for China… like you do! Me and the other drivers in the bonkers event weren’t allowed to cross the remote border until we got our ‘legally necessary’ Chinese number plates. We waited so long to file our paperwork and get our local number plates, our cars queuing up to double our makeshift hotel rooms.

But it got worse. In mid-April and back home, I can honestly say I got into some of the worst traffic jams I’ve seen anywhere on the planet – and I drove nearly a million miles across more than 70 countries on six continents.

Although traveling off-peak on the day before Good Friday was inevitably busy, my plans to drive from the south to the north of England were ruined. How so? Road protesters/anti-oil in and around London, have reported nearly 40 miles of queues on routes to and from the Dover area having been paralyzed (for a month or more) by P&O, plus a closed tunnel in off-grid, hell- Dartford Earth Intersection. I achieved an average speed of about 100 meters per hour. The congestion was so bad, unacceptable, and hopeless that I saw and photographed several people in cars abandoning their cars and continuing to walk.

I? After half a day of burning fuel and getting nowhere because of the mess of biblical proportions, I gave up and went home. Not even the industrial action of France or the red tape of China left me with feelings of despair, disappointment, unwillingness and inability to continue.

It’s time to say it like it really is. As for the quality of the new cars, we’ve never had it this good. But in terms of roads fit for purpose, we’ve never seen it that bad – at least in the four decades I’ve driven.

The cut-off point has been reached. We hit an all-time low. Queues for tens of miles, paralyzed roads, congested roads and unyielding politicians are all the new standards.

The UK network is performing at best at or beyond maximum capacity, and at worst deserves a ‘not fit for purpose’ notice being applied. Transport Minister Shapps needs to stop making embarrassing videos promoting himself and his even better hoodie and sunglasses. Instead, he had to reintroduce words that seemed taboo (to him) like ‘car driver’, ‘car’ and ‘car user’ into his vocabulary. Then he has to arrange the paths.

And if he can’t do it, it’s time for him to turn the job over to someone who can. The likes of Shapps, Grayling, Byers and Prescott have proven that career politicians tend to be lousy secretaries or transport ministers. Maybe it takes a non-politician (be it Branson or Musk) to run our roads, which have been bought and paid for many times over by some of the most taxed drivers in the world. gender. We deserve better.

Click here for our four listings of the best family cars on sale in the UK



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