Local nonsenses

[GordonT]

Is there a feature in particular within the locality where you live or somewhere that you have visited that strikes you as being patently absurd, or lunatic even? Mine is a car park in the town where I live which has spaces for 80 vehicles and which lies totally empty as the local council impose "town centre"charges whereas an identical local council car park 50 yards next door to it is free with no time limit for users and naturally is very heavily used.

 

[PeterC]

The Chiltern hill top village where I live is actually three hamlets joined by later development and spanning the medieval parish boundaries. The CofE carved out a new parish in the 19th century but the civil parish boundaries were unchanged. Because I am on the town side of the boundary I have to go into Chesham to vote rather than walk round the corner to the village hall while others, nearer the town pass my house in the opposite direction.

Until recently my heirs would have had to pay extra to have me buried in my parish churchyard as the burial ground is maintained by Latimer civil parish.

 

[zero]

Where I last lived in the UK was at a 4-way junction, where only 3 of the approaching roads had a pedestrian crossing.

To get from my house to my nearest postbox required crossing the road with no pedstrian crossing. Unsurprisingly everyone who wanted to go that way just waited for gaps in traffic and rushed across directly, rather than going in a U or C shape via 4 pedestrian lights (there is one traffic island too).

To cross by the direct route, you need to look at the lights for cars instead of the lights for pedestrians, so you can work out when cars won't be coming towards you. What's worse, the timings are poorly synchronised with upstream junctions so at each of the pedestrian crossings, when there are red men no cars are coming, and when there are green men cars are coming and must stop.

I made a plan to improve the timings of the lights but nobody was interested.

 

[Falcon1200]

Where I last lived in the UK was at a 4-way junction, where only 3 of the approaching roads had a pedestrian crossing.

There is a junction very like that in Oxford, where, despite a recent, expensive (and overrunning) remodelling, one route across a busy road has no pedestrian crossing; And this is a route used by many elderly locals to reach a bus stop! Quite why this facility was omitted, only Oxford City Council will know (and understand, because no-one else does).

 

[spyinthesky]

If I am to use public transport, I have to catch a train to my local station!

 

[dangie]

I’m sure others have experienced this as well.

On the estate where we live there are quite a few ‘Close’s’ or ‘Squares’ where the houses are set around a large patch of green. Look quite nice. The planners in their wisdom put footpaths around the outside of the green. I suppose it looks good on the drawing board.

However human nature means people will take the shortest route possible and instead of walking around, will walk diagonally across, thus creating an untidy usually muddy mess.

I wouldn’t have thought it impossible that planners would know this and thus added a straight across footpath in the first place.

 

[Purple Train]

My favourite is a footbridge constructed over the motorway, which originally led to a very straight path that connected at a T-junction with a different path leading to the sewage works, which, as you can imagine, are a very great attraction to the local populace and a fantastic day out at weekends. If you, for whatever reason, wished to avoid the sewage works, taking the connecting path in the other direction would eventually lead round to an excellent riverside walk. All peaceful and bucolic so far. However, the time came for the original footbridge to be condemned, or in some other way demolished, and a replacement to be built in a non-Brutalist fashion. When the new footbridge opened, however, the straight path was closed, blocked off, fenced off, and generally stripped of its duties as a path. This necessitated those who wished to partake of the peaceful riverside walk to, after crossing the footbridge, make a 180 degree turn to drop down to the level of the motorway, walk alongside it for longer than is strictly necessary across a derelict wasteland, and then turn 90 degrees to make the second side of a rectangle to meet the original path. All this is to be performed on something that, while undoubtedly a right of way, does stretch the definition of "path" in several exciting ways. This situation could have been remedied, but I wouldn't know, because I have no reason to inspect the situation now that there is no longer a pleasant path on the other side of the footbridge!

My second favourite is the (severely impoverished) local council's big plan to improve a major road - by closing it for some rather excessive length of time while they install new road features that nobody will understand, such as a set of sensor-operated traffic lights for cyclists to stop them using the footpath, which half of them will ignore, and forty-nine fiftieths of the remainder will carry on using the footpath, and a "continuous footway" scheme across the mouths of all the cul-de-sacs, which will just mean that people take less care crossing the road and have a greater chance of getting run over! To be fair to the council, there are two big problems with the road in question, but given neither of them can be solved without increasing the magnitude of the other one, I don't see the need for a massive and disruptive plan to make little, if any, difference!

There are only two pubs within a fairly large radius. Naturally, they are right next to each other.

 

[Springs Branch]

On the estate where we live there are quite a few ‘Close’s’ or ‘Squares’ where the houses are set around a large patch of green. Look quite nice. The planners in their wisdom put footpaths around the outside of the green. I suppose it looks good on the drawing board.

However human nature means people will take the shortest route possible and instead of walking around, will walk diagonally across, thus creating an untidy usually muddy mess.

I wouldn’t have thought it impossible that planners would know this and thus added a straight across footpath in the first place.

I once read an explanation of town planners' motives for this sort of thing.

The theory is that whatever you think people's preferred walking routes will be at the planning stage, you can never predict this with a high degree of accuracy ahead of actual habitation. Certainly, some footpaths will be used as planned. Others which seemed obvious at the time will hardly get used at all, whilst there will be different routes the planners never thought about which will actually be popular and result in an 'untidy, muddy mess'.

The solution is - as mentioned - to build paved footpaths just around the edge at the start. Then come back after a year or so, look where the muddy tracks have been worn into the grass and send in a gang of workmen to lay proper tarmac footpaths along those routes.

However, I suspect this may be an urban myth / excuse as I've seen plenty of locations where the untidy, muddy messes have been in place for donkey's years. Probably when it's time to come back and review where the permanent footpaths should be built, the planners/developers have moved on to the next shiny new development and forgotten. And all the money for that project has run out anyway.

 

[Cloud Strife]

I wouldn’t have thought it impossible that planners would know this and thus added a straight across footpath in the first place.

These are called "lines of desire" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path

It's very, very common that people planning such things fail to take them into account.

My wife is a local councillor, and they've just been presented with next year's budget by the directly-elected mayor. He wants to spend a huge amount of money on renovating a bridge to nowhere, while ignoring other important needs. Fortunately, her party has a strong majority and the budget will be rejected, but it's a textbook case of local nonsense where the mayor wants to do something that completely conflicts with the needs of the vast majority of residents.

 

[alxndr]

If travelling south on Eglinton Street in Glasgow you cannot turn right onto Cook Street. You must instead do a loop around Coburg Street and Bedford Street to approach the junction from the east. It makes no sense to me why this is the case.

 

[zero]

If travelling south on Eglinton Street in Glasgow you cannot turn right onto Cook Street. You must instead do a loop around Coburg Street and Bedford Street to approach the junction from the east. It makes no sense to me why this is the case.

Presumably so that northbound traffic only has to stop once per cycle as there is no right turn from Eglinton St northbound because Bedford>Cook St is one way. But as an occasional visitor (as I have a supplier located nearby) the entire road system in Tradeston confuses me, especially that unfinished motorway junction - I don't spend long enough there to figure out how it works and I forget what I learnt by the next visit.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

There is a junction very like that in Oxford, where, despite a recent, expensive (and overrunning) remodelling, one route across a busy road has no pedestrian crossing; And this is a route used by many elderly locals to reach a bus stop! Quite why this facility was omitted, only Oxford City Council will know (and understand, because no-one else does).

Which junction?

 

[Falcon1200]

Which junction?

Cherwell Drive and Marsh Lane, Marston.

 

[Snow1964]

I know a new local housing estate where the site plans all showed a footpath leading to an existing footpath towards the town centre and school, but within months of building the path, a fence was built across it at site boundary, causing all the school children to have to exit housing estate other side where and take a longer walk alongside a busy distributor road.

 

[Tracked]

My local station, Bentley (SY), is next to a level crossing which is frequently down for several minutes at a time. It has no footbridge, the nearest way over the line when it's down would involve a 10-15 minute walk to get to the other platform.

Three minutes away, Adwick, has three different bridges over the line; the original road bridge with a path, a footbridge next to it, and a separate bridge on the platform.

Service is the same frequency at both.

 

[GordonT]

If travelling south on Eglinton Street in Glasgow you cannot turn right onto Cook Street. You must instead do a loop around Coburg Street and Bedford Street to approach the junction from the east. It makes no sense to me why this is the case.

Doesn't address your point but whenever Cook Street crops up I automatically think of the propensity of high vehicles to have bashed the railway bridge time after time.

 

[dangie]

My favourite is a footbridge…..

Over the A460 Western Springs Road in Rugeley there is a footbridge crossing the road. On one side there is a long sloping ramp, making it suitable for pedestrians, prams, pushchairs & the disabled.

However on the other side there are steps! Who the hell designs these things?

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Cherwell Drive and Marsh Lane, Marston.

Oh yuk, yes. The whole Access to Headington scheme is a classic case of "so near and yet so far".

 

[Ediswan]

Over the A460 Western Springs Road in Rugeley there is a footbridge crossing the road. On one side there is a long sloping ramp, making it suitable for pedestrians, prams, pushchairs & the disabled.

However on the other side there are steps! Who the hell designs these things?

In the 1980s, Stevenage removed the the ramp from one end of the shared use bridge connecting the Old Town to the New Town, replacing it with steps. Many years later the ramp was restored with an inferior version which lands in the Tesco car park.

 

[High Dyke]

Local council erected a new village bus shelter, in a cul-de-sac. If you were stood waiting for a bus there, the driver couldn't see you, nor could you see any bus approaching on the main road. The matter was resolved by withdrawal of the bus service through that village.

 

[dangie]

.....The matter was resolved by withdrawal of the bus service through that village.

Just about sums it up.
A few years ago a small car park was built by a local popular beauty spot. Used by people who went walking and by those who walked their dogs. Unfortunately it also got used by youngsters gathering at night. So to solve it the car park was barriered off by concrete bollards and has been out of use ever since. Now people have to park at the side of the road.

We never seem to spend time sorting out the initial problem. Far easier and cheaper to get rid altogether.

 

[route101]

Presumably so that northbound traffic only has to stop once per cycle as there is no right turn from Eglinton St northbound because Bedford>Cook St is one way. But as an occasional visitor (as I have a supplier located nearby) the entire road system in Tradeston confuses me, especially that unfinished motorway junction - I don't spend long enough there to figure out how it works and I forget what I learnt by the next visit.

Is that the M74 - M8 junction. If you want to go between M74 and over the Kingston Bridge and vice versa you have to go around a merry go around on surface streets. For some reason they did not put in flyovers for this manoeuvre.

 

[dcbwhaley]

I’m sure others have experienced this as well.

On the estate where we live there are quite a few ‘Close’s’ or ‘Squares’ where the houses are set around a large patch of green. Look quite nice. The planners in their wisdom put footpaths around the outside of the green. I suppose it looks good on the drawing board.

However human nature means people will take the shortest route possible and instead of walking around, will walk diagonally across, thus creating an untidy usually muddy mess.

I wouldn’t have thought it impossible that planners would know this and thus added a straight across footpath in the first place.

One of my technicians - an ex army man - told me of the time he was tasked with putting down the footpaths in a new camp. He stalled for a month then had the paths put down where people had walked across the grass

 

[Bevan Price]

One nonsense that seems to have diminished is the pedestrian subway. It took many years for some councils to recognise that many people would prefer to risk crossing busy roads, rather than use dark, dingy subways, often with blind corners where you might encounter potentially "undesirable" characters.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Epsom and Ewell Borough Council allows blue badge holders free parking for an hour.

The trouble is, it's the third hour of the parking which is free - the first two hours are required to be paid for at the full rate...

 

[alxndr]

Is that the M74 - M8 junction. If you want to go between M74 and over the Kingston Bridge and vice versa you have to go around a merry go around on surface streets. For some reason they did not put in flyovers for this manoeuvre.

It’s near there but not those roads specifically. That is another nonsense though. They did begin building a ramp, the “ski slope” is still there.

 

[DM352]

Over the A460 Western Springs Road in Rugeley there is a footbridge crossing the road. On one side there is a long sloping ramp, making it suitable for pedestrians, prams, pushchairs & the disabled.

However on the other side there are steps! Who the hell designs these things?

Never knew that. They could have avoided the steps part if they built the overbridge bit a few metres further north to extend the slope. The mentioned A460 road segment itself, as heard from family, was built as a "bypass" for Rugeley that went to the town centre!

Still in Rugeley to add, the newer "bypass" is having yet another new developer roundabout added just a few metres from a previous new one. It will soon be quicker to use the old town centre road to cross town.

On a plus for Rugeley, the rail service has grown from the skeleton Stafford - Coventry used to ride as a kid when it wasn't cancelled!