LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

I have been talking to people recently about the new high-speed train we are planning to build.  It will, depending on who you believe, either provide essential fast links between London and the North, particularly for business, at a time when travel by other means has become congested and when migration to the south has become an increasing problem, or it will cost taxpayers a vast amount of money and increase the noise pollution in beautiful open countryside, providing an additional train service which no one wants and no one will be able to afford.  Whatever.

I am also conscious of the effects of the new A3 Hindhead tunnel that is just 18 months old.  The official figures seem to show that traffic flow along the A3 is no different from before the tunnel.  But these figures take no account of the hold-ups at Hindhead that plagued the road before the tunnel was opened.  Yes, the traffic flow is the same, but it now flows without delay.  The statistics also ignore the fact that about 25% of the traffic tried to avoid the Hindhead bottleneck by turning off the road before Hindhead, driving past my house and then onto the A3 again.  Most of that traffic has now gone and the effect outside my house is certainly noticeable.

And that's not to mention the ease with which walkers can now cross the A3.  The footpath runs right across the road and it was always tricky emerging onto a crowded 2-lane road and trying to cross.  Now, the road has gone!  I posted this pic recently.  That's the old A3, as it is today, running round the valley.

 

But one has to remember that for every group of residents who welcome the advent of the quiet, safe diverted road through the tunnel, there is likely to be some who feel the opposite.  There is a beautiful Elizabethan house near here on the edge of Hindhead.  Here it is

and here it is from the other side.

When it was built, I imagine the owners loved its isolated position in the quiet rural town of Hindhead, away from the noise and dirt of the road, yet just a short carriage ride to the main stagecoach route to London and Portsmouth.  The grounds boasted extensive woodland and a private drive off the road to the front door.  But the tunnel access road has taken away much of that woodland and sliced a chunk too out of the hill on which the house once nestled.

So zoom out and here's the house today.  It's now literally on the edge of Hindhead.

 I expect there will be houses like this along the high-speed train route.

NO SIGN OF GETTING UP TO SPEED

There has been a bit of a debate here about speed limits on Britain's roads.  We're not like Texas, where an 85mph speed limit has just been approved on one road, since we don't have long, straight, undeveloped stretches of road of that sort.  But we do have Motorways which are built to accomodate fast driving.

The national limit (on Motorways) is 70mph.  This limit was decided at a time when many cars only just managed 70mph.  The Motorways were also half empty.  I remember driving up the M1, the first Motorway to be built here, soon after it opened, just to try it out.  I did manage a little over 70mph, but then I hardly saw another vehicle.  Nowadays, very, very few drivers take any notice of the 70mph limit.  I recently drove round part of the M25, at speeds rarely under 80mph, and I was overtaken continuously.  But we now have seat belts, disc brakes, obstruction sensors, collision control, engine braking systems, and many other safety devices which make driving at high speed much safer than it was in my young days.  Drivers are far more likely to have an accident from not paying attention (usually because they are on the telephone or playing with their GPS or trying to break one finger off a Kit Kat), than they are from speed alone.

One proposal being discussed in Government is that the limit on Motorways now be raised to 80mph.  This may ease congestion.  But, frankly, all it will probably do in reality is recognise the actual average speed of modern drivers.  The police don't pay too much attention to speeding these days, unless some other element makes it dangerous driving or unless the driver is fleeing a crime scene (such as the Lamborghini-powered Audi the other day that was outrunning a police helicopter at speeds of up to 200mph).  The Deputy Prime Minister is in favour of this change, but many in his own party even are against.  We don't know what the Conservative part of the Coalition thinks about this (if it thinks about road speeds at all at the moment).

I have complained before about frequent changes in the speed limit on certain roads.  The limit is normally 70 on a dual carriageway, 60 on a single carriageway and 30 in towns (occasionally 20).  Vans, buses, goods vehicles, etc have different restrictions.  Occasionally, the limits are reduced because the road passes an area where there might be slow traffic or pedestrians.  In Findon, for example, there is a long stretch of dual carriageway where the speed limit is 60mph because there are slip roads into and out of a school.  I have never understood how 60 is safer than 70 passing a school, but there it is.  And there are 13 changes between here and Petersfield, a 20 minute journey I undertake often.  One minute there is no limit, then suddenly it is reduced to 40mph in a village, then 50 again up to the next village, then 20 for the centre of a small town en route (another proposal has been for all town centres to be restricted to 20mph; the Lib Dem part of the Coalition likes this, but I'm not sure it carries much weight otherwise), then back up to 70 for a short rural stretch, etc.  Needless to say, many drivers either don't understand or don't take any notice.  It is a confusing hotch-potch.

But the main point about these speed limits, which doesn't yet seem to be recognised officially, is that each is accompanied with large signs on both sides of the road, in an attempt to inform and warn drivers.  That's 13 sets of signs on a mostly rural Hampshire road.  And, where the speed limit exceeds 30mph, there will be 'repeater' signs at intervals to remind you of the higher limit.  In some villages, where there is no street lighting and therefore no lamp posts to tell you this is a built-up area, there  will be regular repeater signs right through the village.  That's some 20 sets of signs, or 40 signs in each direction, or 80 signs altogether, on a 20 mile stretch of road.  The entire country is littered with speed restriction signs, 'no limit' signs and repeater signs.  Not to mention signs announcing other road restrictions, warnings, directions, etc.  This is the now famous stretch of the A3 just up the road from here.

Note the speed camera in amongst that lot, as if you'd spot what the speed limit is, as you drove past.  Now consider the improvement if large numbers of these signs were removed.  This is far more important than faffing around with changing speed limits (and presumably adding new signs accordingly).

So, here's my proposal.  You can have it for nothing, Dave and Nick.  Make all Motorways and dual carriageways 80mph, all other main roads 60mph, all rural and minor roads 40mph, and all town centres 20mph.  No exceptions.  There are always signs anyway saying 'pedestrians' or 'hospital' or 'school' or even 'elderly people', so we don't need those backed up with another sign saying 'that means you should drive slowly; ie 40mph'.  In other words, let's take ALL the speed signs away.

As you enter a Motorway, there are signs telling you that there is no speed limit (ie 70mph).  Why?  There are no exceptions on any Motorway in the whole country.  Take them away!  Under my scheme, if there's a main road, no need to post signs all the way along it to remind you of the speed limit; it's 60mph.  If there are likely to be young or especially elderly pedestrians, you are more likely to see the single sign warning of that and to slow down, than if the sign is lost in a sign forest or if you have sign fatigue and have begun to ignore them.

Meanwhile I shall continue to floor the accelerator and let the car's onboard computer do the driving.  In fact this post has been entirely written by the car's onboard computer and not by my driver at all.