Friday, April 13, 2007

Vale Road, plus much swearing.

As Popeye would say "I can'ts stands no more". Just why is it necessary to close down two of the three lanes in Vale Road for the footpath work? They shut down the entire length when working on one patch at the top and only now are they starting to move downwards. They've blocked one lane so they've got somewhere to put the heavy machinery and blocked the second for pedestrians to walk on.

It was vaguely understandable when they did it for the other side, with all the residential area around it, but what's on the current side? A couple of garages, a caff for truckers and a supermarket. You want to get to the supermarket from the top of Vale Road you cross at the lights and then cross at the splitter. Easy peasy There are two crossing points on Vale Road top and bottom and for those who'd complain they can't cross from Mitton Gardens - you're not supposed to cross the bloody road there, it's three bloody lanes for f**** sake.


In the name of all that's unholy what the f*** was that all about . I got onto Worcester Road at about 1pm, 50 minutes later I got over the bridge in Stourport. Crash, accident? No police, no ambulance, no fire engines, and traffic coming the other way seemed unaffected. Nothing causing it except the people in the town using the bridge street pedestrian crossing with a higher level of traffic due to it being a Friday lunchtime (I can confirm this as the only cause by coming back the same way and hey look there was the queue again in the other lane - Worcester Road up to Cook's)

Okay I've done this before, but it's worth reiterating. The crossing lights go red, the cars coming into town stop and start queuing. The queue reaches back to the lights on the bridge. The town side changes from red to green. Nobody can get past. Crossing lights change to green (yes it is too bloody long) and the traffic starts moving. The gap reaches the bridge lights just as they turn back to red. Another set of traffic comes over into town and the crossing lights change to red.

Using a map, a red marker, and Roger's Swearing dictionary show exactly how this f***'s up the town when you get a lot of people in the town during oo I don't know a bloody Easter holiday.

Blocked the left side of Bridge Street, blocked the left side of York Street(which automatically blocks the right hand side due to the illegally parked cars there*), blocked left side of New Street and all of Moorhall Lane (from what I could see and Moorhall Lane being in practice one lane wide), blocked left side of Mitton Street, blocked left-side Worcester Road, and blocked left-side of Hartlebury Road. Oh the right hand-side was crystal clear with traffic flowing normally when it could get past everyone else.

Now you can't remove the Bridge Street crossing, but you can set the timer to how it was before it was bloody changed. We need a slightly shorter crossing time, and a longer period between changes just like it used to be At least until the roadworks are sorted out.

2.5miles in 50 minutes and worse yet that can be considered almost normal, if it were a Bank Holiday Weekend in the middle of the day with no roadworks at all. Relief Road nah why would we need one of those?

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