Roadworks In Ruddington

I’m getting a lot of hits on this search term at the moment. Not a big surprise, really, given the total hash the Councils are making of all roadworks in Nottingham since the start of the year.

In Ruddington, along the A60, they decided that all the bus stops needed the kerb raising by a few centimetres. No doubt, this is so that the thousands upon thousands of wheelchairs and pushchairs who use the buses in Ruddington each day can get on and off more easily. Naturally, it was a case of “sod the motorist” over the months it took them to modify the dozen or so stops, with idiotic road closures and whole weeks with little or no attempt to complete the work – and which, naturally, overran by weeks.

I would point out that the average bus driver is incapable of stopping within 2 metres of a specific target even under test conditions, and when you have people pratting about with shopping and pushchairs on board it is even less likely. Around here, they also frequently stop wherever they bloody well want (picking up their mates outside one of the City depots at traffic lights, or dropping people off “nearer to home” – even if it IS blocking the road when they do it).

Pedestrian/Cycle Lane

Also in Ruddington, they are due to commence – or I should say “re-commence” – work near to the Wilford Road/Clifton Road junction. So far, they have widened a footpath (just in case any passing 747s might need it to do an emergency landing), erected a load of posts with those segregated pedestrian and cycle route signs for the local residents to park in between (half on the pavement and half off), and for cyclists to ignore totally in their ongoing quest to cause hold ups to traffic during rush hour, and partially dug up the existing pedestrian islands at the end of Clifton Road. A big yellow sign warns of impending chaos starting on Monday, I think.

And then – at the moment – there is yet another gas leak at the end of Kirk Lane, where it crosses the A60 on to Flawforth Lane. This must be the fourth or fifth leak in as many years in that exact same spot. It is slap in the middle of the crossroads – ironically, resulting in the same four-way traffic control the councils had in for a week when they recently repainted about 10 metres of lines along the A60. The gas people appear to be ex-Council workers, because once they’d erected the lights yesterday, then stood around in groups of three (tch! Health & Safety, eh?) holding those electronic gas sniffers (they’d identified the gas leak last week and put cones up, and been down a manhole), they packed up and went home well before 2.30pm and left the chaos (and traffic lights) behind.

EDIT 13/04/2010: I drove down the A60 early this afternoon and it is bloody gridlocked on all four roads. So much so that rather than come back that way, I took a detour through Gotham. Surely there must be some legislation that says these people have to fix faults quickly? Because there should be.

EDIT 15/04/2010: They’ve still got the 4-way lights in as of 2pm this afternoon, and a small digger – so it looks like it won’t be fixed this week. This has been going on for the whole week already (the leak was first ‘visited’ this time last week).

I went to pick a pupil up from Tollerton this evening and the knock-on effect is that the junction of Main Road in Plumtree with the A606 is also virtually gridlocked – it’s not easy to get out of there at the best of times, especially to turn right towards Cotgrave, and people were taking big risks. Basically, the only way to avoid the roadworks is to take a very long detour or just get stuck in heavier traffic (actually, both those things). And at 8pm tonight they were not doing any work, but the lights are still up.

It’s appalling that National Grid are allowed to get away with this.

EDIT 18/04/2010: Went that way tonight and they are finished. At last.

EDIT 29/04/2010: I’m still getting a lot of hits for this. There are still roadworks in Ruddington around Wilford Road, but these are to do with resurfacing the road and farting about with the pavements (putting in “pedestrian peninsulas” – I just made that term up – and widening them so that cyclists of the prattus spandexius variety will have more space to ignore as they cause hold-ups during rush hour). To be fair, the delays due to the works are minimal, so I wouldn’t worry about them. They aren’t far away from finishing, by the looks of things.

EDIT 04/05/2010: Still getting a lot of hits for this, which makes me think I must be missing something! The resurfacing work around the Wilford Road/Clifton Road is almost finished and isn’t causing too many delays (far fewer than those elderly drivers – or the mentally impaired owner of that mini-supermarket – who insist on parking on yellow lines right on the corner of Easthorpe Street/Church Street and causing a total blockage). There are also roadworks on the A60 in Bunny during the day, with delays dependent on the volume of traffic (these are down to Le Cirque Du Nottingham County Council putting in a driveway to a field they appear to have given planning permission for building on. As usual for them, a task which ought to take a couple of days has “at least three weeks” written all over it). Thankfully, since it is the council handling it, work starts late mornings and ceases very early in the afternoon, so disruption is minimal.

EDIT 05/05/2010: They’re also doing some resurfacing work on the A60 between the Nottingham Knight island and Kirk Lane – but only in the evenings. This is scheduled to last two weeks. Was there tonight and you need to be careful coming off the roundabout because the way it is being managed is resulting in congestion back on to it.

EDIT 17/05/2010: Still getting hits for this. The resurfacing between the Nottingham Knight and Kirk Lane appears to be over and done with. Not a bad job, either, with congestion restricted to evenings and weekends.

They still appear to have some lines to paint (and some footpaths to put chicanes into) on Wilford Road towards the Golf Club, but this isn’t causing any congestion at all during the day – and I go through there quite a lot.

The gateway they were installing in Bunny appears almost complete, and no sign of the totally unnecessary (it was Le Cirque du County Council, after all) temporary lights and lane closures for the last week. God help us when they start doing whatever it is they’re going to do on that field, though.

EDIT 19/05/2010: Spoke too soon! The bloody road is up outside the petrol station, and temporary lights are installed. Absolute chaos coming towards Nottingham from Bunny at 4.30pm this afternoon. And they were doing something at the Kirk Lane lights (again) yesterday (down to one lane). Looked like something to do with the light sensors, but no doubt it will disturb the gas line under there, and we’ll have another leak before long.

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