The government has announced a new road building plan which has included the M1 near Sheffield. From Junctions 30 up to 42. This would mean a four lane motorway. How do people feel about these proposals? Does anyone know how they are going to be able to get four lanes of traffic along either side of the tinsley viaduct? are they planning some supports etc...?

What I imagine they'd do is similar to the A1(M) near Peterboro'
Because that goes from a 2 lane duel carriageway, to a 3 Lane Motorway and on to a 4 lane Motorway, and then back down to a 2 lane duel carriageway.

I think the widening of the motorways is not going to get to the route of the problem... The extra lane is not going to make much diffence to your journey time.

What we need is more reliable trains, extensions of the tram and the only road we need is a proper dual carridgeway to from Sheffield to Manchester. That would get rid of the long journeys via Leeds

It might not make much difference, but its a start :)

A definate YES to a route to manchester from here tho, snake pass is horrid for traffic/speeding cars

yeah i know its always a mission getting back to liverpool

More lanes on motorways is just a botch job really. I can only imagine the trains getting better if they were taken back into public ownership and rather than hiring firms to do maintainance work hire the people who can do it directly. This would save lots of money and make everyone happy. We can then get some more tilting trains and make tracks they can run on. Once that's done we can combat the busses.

The main problem with busses is that its a struggle to find out when and where to get one which goes where you want to go. There is another problem for most places, which is the regularity of the busses. I have another gripe whch is the leg room once your on the bus as well.

I would increase the number of busses and make a national network with new busses and release an A-Z style book for people who want to know how to get about. Bus times should be as straightforward as "Evey 15 minutes from 3 minutes past the hour." All busses would have a map of where they go with all stops marked. There would be more leg room as well. There would also be space under the seats for shopping.

I would charge £20-£30 per month for unlimited travel on any train or bus. There would be a public transport revolution with the car relegated to those who feel that their money is for wasting. Now there are 60 Million in the country - say two thirds were to pay the monthly fee. I'll work on £25 per month. 40million x £25 = £1billion per month. Surely that covers all the costs. Well maybe not, the NHS are spending £50bn a year for the next three years. £12bn a year for transport might just about cover it though.

...unfortunately Richard, the car/oil/petrol lobby is very powerful in this country - hence they closed the railways and made people get into their cars!

Widening them is a start. More roads would be better. Imagine if there was a motorway parallel to the M1 so drivers had the choice of 2 motorways for similar journeys. The traffic would halve instantly and there'd be more capacity for future increases in traffic volume. Also, increase the speed limit from 70mph to 80mph.

I'm sure that during very busy periods, widening roads will help. However, a lot of money, time and effort could be saved if we were to simply educate drivers with regards to correct motorway driving.

I've just spent the weekend in london and found myself frequently slowed down to 50mph or slower just because someone is sitting in the middle, or outside lane plodding along. Driving such as this effectively turns 3 lanes into 2, sometimes 1. Please, please, please overtake and then return to the left lane!! I really think it should be an offence, it encourages frustrated drivers to undertake and wastes swathes of useful motorway space.:evil:

I think that at best, a fourth lane is a short term solution. What the government needs to do is to provide a decent PUBLIC TRANSPORT system so that a larger number of people leave their cars at home. And when I say PUBLIC, that's what I mean.

ie. Re-nationalise the railways, and put the infra-structure back, that has been slowly eroded over the last 40 years. Put buses and trams back in to PUBLIC ownership. The standards of all these services would improve if taken out of private, profit-driven, companies hands. :?

<applause>
I seem to remember the labour party in opposition saying something along those lines.

return public services to public ownership and start subsidising fares to the same amountas these private companies are being subsidised in order to stay afloat

We could of course stop ripping off the motorist, and making him pay for services unrelated to transport. Then more people could afford a car, which lets be honest is the only real method of transport.

Or should I commute 20 miles to Sheffield on a bus :)

Four lane motorways just mean that you have dawdlers in lanes two AND three instead of just lane two. I quite often use the M60 around Manchester and people motor along at 60 and 70 mph in the third lane when the other two are empty.

I think if we educated drivers into moving back into the inside lanes when they have overtaken or there is no traffic would reduce the amount of queues and delays.

I agree that it should be an offence for drivers on the motorway to sit in the middle lane, when it is quite possible for them to return to the left hand lane after overtaking.

This selfish act prevents others from proceeding at a legal speed and causes frustration, resulting in a driver overtaking in the left lane. Multiply this a number of times and you have a recipe for chaos.

The easiest solution would be to allow overtaking in any lane, as they do in the US.

Great A discussion between public and private transport. Problem is not necessarily one of cost. On the one hand we have what we would hope is a cheap, frequent, clean and 24/7 public transport system. On the other, we have a private car, which may be more expensive, but will leave home when we want it to, not force us to walk miles to catch it, and can be as clean, and operate 24/7 as we like.

Governments in ALL countries can, and should, legislate to control fuel prices, and this would go a long way to lessen the burden of both public and private transport. Have you noticed how often fuel prices at the pump rise at the same time that oil prices at the well are falling?

Oil companies are in it for the money, and nothing else. Governments are in it to ...... bloody hell, what are they in it for?

How about nationalising cars? I'm conscious that on some days I use my car to commute to work only. That's 23 hours out of 24 it's either sat on my drive or in the car park at work. If all cars were publically owned then anyone could use any car which wasn't being used at the time. Of course, we would no longer have different cars unless we had some form of charging system. Each car would have something like a taxi meter and each user would have a smart card which would be used to pay for the vehicles use. The longer the journey or more costly the car the more the driver would be charged.

Dream on.

That would NEVER work. The only way to reduce congestion is to widen roads and build more of them. Two roads running parallel would halve the traffic on the 1 road that was on its own previously. Also, lose the bus lanes, the cycle lanes, the speed bumps, the chicanes, etc. Phase out petrol engines in favour of hydrogen powered cars, or at least LPG until the technology is ready and the infrastructure is in place. That would vastly reduce pollution caused by cars.

It's supposed to be illegal to do that in the US according to the Highway code, but everybody does it. So it has become acceptable and the police don't pull you over. You have to watch out for people coming at you from both sides. There are no fast or slow lanes. People don't wait for you to pull over, they just pass where ever they can. As Halevan calls it "a recipe for chaos" Believe me, we have it here. American drivers are terrible and the driving test is a complete joke. American drivers are one of my pet peaves, so don't get me started.
As far as how to fix the problems in the UK, sorry can't help you there. I drove the M1 from London to Sheffield once a month for 2 years and I hated that too. There are bad drivers everywhere, so you just have to be patient. Easy right?? Ha!

Originally posted by Ravenger
The easiest solution would be to allow overtaking in any lane, as they do in the US.

My previous post above was in response to this quote.
Confused? sorry.

Originally posted by maxt The longer the journey or more costly the car the more the driver would be charged. [/B]

That happens already, its the tax on petrol..

Widening the motorway migh help to increase traffic flow, though I can't see how they could do it given the location. Its going to be absolute chaos I fear while they do this though..

The problem in this country is that there is no coherent integrated transport policy. Depending on where I am working I can spend anything up to 3 hours a day driving to and from the office and its a pain to be honest. I'll freely admit to loving driving and cars, but I hate having to use it every day to get to work because the public transport system is so appalling in this country.

My journey time to the office in Leeds would be double if I didn't drive, and at least that when I head west over the peaks. I do use the train occaisionally, but its rare that I can get on with any work on the trains, almost impossible to ensure I arrive on time and a pain at either end to get to where I actually need to be. Compare that to Switzerland where I honestly never needed a car for 12 months, trains, trams and buses etc were clean and on time and linked so that you get off one and there would be another taking you where you needed to be along shortly after.

We are better off in Sheffield than a lot of places I've lived in the UK, but I can't understand how we get it so wrong in the UK when others seem to have worked it out..

Well lets face it, we get a lot of things wrong in this country and in general don't seem to be that good at anything, whether its traffic management, competitive sports, or anything else.

Can we please hurry up and change the spelling of DEFINTELY it really annoys me to see that mistake.

I agree Kittykat but you missed a letter out!! Kinda ironic maybe...

It's definItely.

Emma

Incidentally, everyone get rid of your cars.

Walk, take a tram, take a bus, take a train. There are loads of options.

So, you have to walk a bit to the bus stop? So, it might be raining? Get a grip!! There are millions of worse things happening to millions of people all over the world! If that's your biggest worry then to be frank I envy you.

Get rid of your car. Stop poisoning the earth. Think of others and future generations. Get some exercise in the bargain!

The world wasn't designed to rotate around us and our desires. Don't think the world owes us a living cos it doesn't!

We are destroying the earth as it is and one of the major factors of that is car driving.

And one of the things that caused thousands of people to die in Iraq was car use.

Think about it, is it worth all that? Think about it, and get rid of your bloody car!

If I ditched my car and opted to walk and use public transport to get to my destinations, my journey times would probably treble. Why on earth should I waste my life away waiting for buses when I could just step into the comfort of my own car on my doorstep? I think an issue is that cars ARE polluting yes, but very convenient and for a lot of people a necessity. The solution isn't to ban them or make things difficult for their owns. The solution is to better accommodate them and create cars less polluting than the gas guzzlers on the roads today. Hydrogen powered cars have already been shown to work. The only pollution they emit is water. I have seen numerous TV features showing their potential and showing prototypes in action. If the motivation was there, I think hydrogen filling stations and cars could be implemented very shortly. I believe that big stumbling blocks exist in the form of large oil companies that don't want to lose most of their turnover. It wouldn't surprise me if these companies were paying to delay such technology from becoming mainstream, in order to make profit on every last drip of oil left on this planet.

Bump

6 years later, Still 3 lanes Anyone know why ?

There would be a public transport revolution with the car relegated to those who feel that their money is for wasting.

You'd need to revolutionize the passengers (or some of them at least).

Although I avoid public transport as much as possible, it's noticeable that "anti-social" (or just plain aggravating) type behavior is getting more common on buses/trams/trains. Using these forms of transport can be a real endurance test at times.

In comparison, a car driver has their own private space, they can just walk over, get in and they're off. No meandering about various estates, just go the direct route. No dealing with surely drivers, no standing at busy times. No worrying about catching a connecting bus. No buses running late. No waiting ages during driver changes as the drivers yakkity-yak with nary a regard for timetables. No sitting next to unwashed chavs, noisy kids or drunken idiots.

I've never owned a car. I can't drive for one thing, but it's not hard to see the appeal of having your own transport. People will sacrifice a lot financially before they give up their cars.

There is a 4 lane stretch between jn 31-32 and there are roadworks well under way all the way down to jn25 at this time where ther are widening the motorway

I remember reading a consultaion document a few years ago about the widening programme on the M1, 4 lanes from south of Nottingham up to Leeds, I know the southern sections are well underway. I thought this idea might have got shelved in favour of hard shoulder running during peak times.
I suppose if they did extend it to a fourth lane and kept the hard shoulder it could facilitate a temporary fifth lane on hard shoulder running in the future.
The ramp metering systems are now in place on the busier junctions and seem to be being used more frequently now.

Wouldn't they have to demolish the Tinsley Cooling Towers in order to widen the motorway at the viaduct.

Can't see that happening, they are an iconic Sheffield landmark.


(just keeping in the mood of this thread from 2003)

..................

If you look on highways agency site it gives dates for the work to start, but not for it to finish!!!

The addition of a fourth lane will be excellent for all those lane hoggers.

Currently they can only lane hog in the middle or fast lane. Soon they will have the choice of an extra lane to practice their art.