First World Problems

Common sense is not so common

I know they say ‘if you’re the traffic, you shouldn’t blame the traffic’, and I get the sentiment behind that. Still, allow me to have a rant about something that impacts all of us just trying to get through a day’s work.
Infrastructure work. Quite apart from the lots of lovely building materials that it uses up, the sale of which benefits this sector, it’s what keeps us moving around. Except in a great many cases it doesn’t.

Roads need repairing. Gas mains need repairing and replacing. Phone cables, power networks, water and sewerage pipes all need maintaining and replacing. New housing developments need their access roads, drainage and pavements installing, as well as the millions of miles of cabling to allow residents to function in the modern world.

You can probably guess where this is going….why is there no system of ensuring that all this essential work happens efficiently?

Take my, admittedly overcrowded, car-centric south east hometown. There are two main trunk roads that run through the town, offering, if you like four entrance and exit points. On a few days last month there were three and four-way traffic lights on all four of those points. ALL FOUR. Not only that, but there were similar hold-ups on many of the alternative routes.

Then, glory of glories, the worst culprit disappeared over the Easter weekend, and the traffic flowed, everyone could get where they needed to be with a minimum of grumbles.

Guess what? A week after the schools returned, so did the four-way traffic lights, with no notice. The traffic backlog on Tuesday morning was three miles in one way, and at the back it was interfering with the flow through the lights at the other end of town.

There is a massive hole in the road in exactly the same place there was three weeks ago, the only difference is that, this time, it’s the power cables being replaced, not the gas pipes.

I know it’s not as simple as just doing all the work at the same time, that these works take a huge amount of time and planning, that materials and personnel all need to be in place, and that installing a power cable probably can’t be done at exactly the same time as a new HDPE drainage pipe.

Maybe even a phone call – remember those? – to the local Highways planning department “Oh, you want to dig up the A123 at the Majestic Wine junction to do the drains? Well, there’s power network work going on that week, maybe we can tie it in with that?? Or just tag your work onto the end? Yes, oh that’s fine then. I’ll sort the paperwork and confirm by email”.

Just a thought.

As an aside, anyone old enough to remember this? Now that’s what I’m talking about.