Odd traffic patterns

Traffic through Stourport of a morning has been quite odd for this and the past week. Instead of the usual hold-up in town caused by the third lane of Vale Road leading to Gilgal it's being delayed by the first lane up to the lights and Minster Road.

Now the effects on traffic in town are pretty much identical, but it's the effect on traffic joining from Mitton Street that I find interesting, because that's being held-up too.

Now in principal traffic from this direction should just enter the second lane and continue up to the lights and continue over; in practice the middle lane is rarely used unless clear because of the poor road layout.

The middle lane also acts as a right-turn to the church and there are no markings to allow vehicles to wait to turn so they tend to block the lane; there's not much traffic this way, but it means getting stuck.

If that's not the case then you have to blast your way past the traffic in the first lane because without warning the two lanes merge into one. Except you can't do that because they've put up a speed camera half-way along it.

So the second lane gets used to pass traffic queuing to turn left down the slip, a queue that often extends down into the first lane, or you have to rely on the queue of traffic letting you in before your lane runs out.

Laid out like that it sounds like a dumb set-up, but it was never meant to stay like this. The two lanes weren't supposed to merge into one before splitting back up at the duel-carriageway they were meant to run from the lights all the way to Birchen Coppice.

It just never happened. Either there were complaints that it would run next to a school, or the owners of the houses that would have to be removed complained, or the council ran out of money; or all three. Either way we're left with this half-arsed system that jams up whenever we get extra traffic our way.