How far can you get in an hour

[SteamyTea]

Interesting bit on the Beeb about commuting.

OK it is done by a GIS company to sell there software.

But shows that road traffic is really not that bad.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_friday_night_rush

[ProDave]

There is an electrian on another forum who was complaining it regularly takes him an hour to do 10 miles from one side of Birmingham to the other.

 

We once (never again) set off from Oxford to the Highlands on the August bank holiday Friday after work.  We gave up and went to bed (in the caravan we were towing) at Shap.  I calculated we had averaged 30mph from Oxford to Shap.

 

 

[Onoff]

I miss the days when you could get somewhere 70 miles away in an hour (or less ). 

 

Took me 7 hours from Norwich to Dartford once!

[SteamyTea]

Yes there are always exceptions.  But the thing is, it really is not as bad as people make out.

I regularly used to travel the motorway network when I worked for Welcome Break.

I only once had a terrible journey (stationary for a total of 7 hours).

Some of my work colleagues used to not leave the office until about 8:30 in the morning and then just sat on the M1 going nowhere.

I used to leave earlier and never had a problem.

[joe90]

Well I have been belting up and down the M5 for the last two years and mostly the 130 mile trip took two and a half hours but this was because I timed it right, late at night or very early. I have only been caught out a couple of times, the worst was 6 hours ( two lorries crashed and the motorway was shut) it took me 3hours just to get out of Bristol that day. 

 

Down here in Devon,  if they have to queue for 15 minutes it’s a big holdup ?

Edited December 8, 2017 by joe90

[Jeremy Harris]

I'm not sure if it's just me getting older and entering the realm of "grumpy old gits", but there does seem to be a heck of a lot more traffic jams around now than there used to be.  I can well remember the infamous Okehampton Bypass many years ago, that used to grind to a halt with summer traffic, but it seems that traffic levels everywhere have increased massively over the past ten years.  Salisbury has always been congested, as it doesn't have any effective bypass, but with all the new peripheral housing developments it's now got far, far worse. 

 

The biggest problem, by far, are the two school run times every weekday.  It seems that every child has to be driven to the school gate, irrespective of age, now.  Back when I was at school no child was driven to school, they either walked, cycled or got the bus.  I cannot believe that the real (rather than imaginary) risk to kids has increased so that driving them to school is the only safe way to get them there.  If anything, I suspect that the risk from perverts and the like hasn't changed at all, and may even have decreased, in the intervening years.

 

One local school has instigated a "walking bus", which seems like a good idea, but the other schools don't really seem interested in doing likewise, for some reason.

 

 

[RichS]

3 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I'm not sure if it's just me getting older and entering the realm of "grumpy old gits", but there does seem to be a heck of a lot more traffic jams around now than there used to be.  I can well remember the infamous Okehampton Bypass many years ago, that used to grind to a halt with summer traffic, but it seems that traffic levels everywhere have increased massively over the past ten years.  Salisbury has always been congested, as it doesn't have any effective bypass, but with all the new peripheral housing developments it's now got far, far worse. 

 

The biggest problem, by far, are the two school run times every weekday.  It seems that every child has to be driven to the school gate, irrespective of age, now.  Back when I was at school no child was driven to school, they either walked, cycled or got the bus.  I cannot believe that the real (rather than imaginary) risk to kids has increased so that driving them to school is the only safe way to get them there.  If anything, I suspect that the risk from perverts and the like hasn't changed at all, and may even have decreased, in the intervening years.

 

One local school has instigated a "walking bus", which seems like a good idea, but the other schools don't really seem interested in doing likewise, for some reason.

 

 

 

I very much agree with you on the school run traffic, it's equally as bad up here. But I think the cause of this is fewer schools with larger pupil numbers, the problem of the fewer schools means kids have far further to travel than we ever did and obviously the larger numbers just makes everything worse.

[joe90]

+1 on school trips, Bristol is very bad fo this and during the holidays the traffic levels ( at certain times of the day) drop dramatically. My biggest problem down here is getting stuck behind the odd tractor. I just laugh to myself and am gratefull I am not back in Bristol.

[Ferdinand]

Kings Cross to Victoria in under half an hour.

 

Pushbike .

[Bitpipe]

Drove into Soho last night from Maidenhead, 1 1/2 hours leaving at 7pm. Though the way back would be quicker @10pm but didn't count on the M4 elevated being closed so pretty much the same. Pretty drive though with all the lights up, even if I had to play 'dodge the drunk' on the way back...

 

[MikeSharp01]

3 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Kings Cross to Victoria in under half an hour

8 minutes - on the TUBE!

[SteamyTea]

6 hours ago, JSHarris said:

The biggest problem, by far, are the two school run times every weekday

 

6 hours ago, RichS said:

I very much agree with you on the school run traffic

 

6 hours ago, joe90 said:

+1 on school trips

I had a job taking the 'naughty kids' into school (actually the could not care less parent's little shits).

Primary schools often insist that a parent or guardian stays with the child in the playground until called into class by the teacher.  I had to use a 'safe word' when picking kids up without their parents.

There is also the issue that many parents work and drop their children off on the way to work, often going to 2 or 3 geographically dispersed schools.

They days of the local school, with a dedicated bus service are well over in most areas.

 

But the fact that the average distance from that survey is around 40 miles is pretty impressive.

I used to get from Aylesbury to Richmond Upon Thames in 1h 15m, I did leave at 5:45am.

I did manage the 50 miles home in 1 hours on my last day.  I figured that if I got a speeding ticket they would not know who had the pool car

 

But they are exceptions and not really relevant to this research.

 

6 hours ago, joe90 said:

Down here in Devon,  if they have to queue for 15 minutes it’s a big holdup

8 cars waiting to get on a roundabout is a traffic jam down here.  They don't have a clue and insist that Truro is dreadful.  I usually hear that from people that go there by bus or only go there occasionally.

 

[dpmiller]

School's a nice short walk for us- about a quarter mile- and I enjoy being one of the few parents there every mornng (business trips excepted) as at P6 most of the kids are just dumped off.

[Onoff]

I reckon if I finish the bathroom I'll get quite far in an hour... 

[ProDave]

10 hours ago, JSHarris said:

I'm not sure if it's just me getting older and entering the realm of "grumpy old gits", but there does seem to be a heck of a lot more traffic jams around now than there used to be.  I can well remember the infamous Okehampton Bypass many years ago, that used to grind to a halt with summer traffic, but it seems that traffic levels everywhere have increased massively over the past ten years.  Salisbury has always been congested, as it doesn't have any effective bypass, but with all the new peripheral housing developments it's now got far, far worse. 

 

The ever increasing levels of traffic were what made us give up with the SE and move to the Highlands.  Every town or city is expanding it's housing stock, but there are no new roads joining the towns together.

 

30 years ago, I lived 6 miles from my work, a journey I could do in not a lot more than 6 minutes, certainly comfortably in 10. It was rural roads, passing through one hamlet and one village, with the only "obstruction" being 1 roundabout.

 

10 years later when I left that employment, most of the route had a 40mph speed limit slapped on it. The hamlet that had previously had a staggered crossroads just with give way junctions (and no serious queues) had been "upgraded" to two sets of traffic lights, resulting in long queues in all 4 directions. Further compounded by another road in the hamlet being closed off.  My journey now took close on half an hour.

 

It was that sort of nonsense repeated all through the county that led us to realise it was never going to get better, and for the sake of my sanity we had to move.

 

My last job before finally leaving had me commuting daily up the A34 west of Oxford. The only way I could tolerate that was on a motorbike, even in winter. I loathed the days when I got up and there was ice on the road and I had to use the car for work.

 

It doesn't take long when we return to visit, to want to get away again.

[Roger440]

12 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Yes there are always exceptions.  But the thing is, it really is not as bad as people make out.

I regularly used to travel the motorway network when I worked for Welcome Break.

I only once had a terrible journey (stationary for a total of 7 hours).

Some of my work colleagues used to not leave the office until about 8:30 in the morning and then just sat on the M1 going nowhere.

I used to leave earlier and never had a problem.

 

I know you live in the back end of nowhere, but up here in the "arc of prosperity" it truly awful now.

 

Buckingham town centre is in a virtual state of gridlock most of the day. When i moved here, you could drive there no problem. Impossible now. But its 30% bigger then it was and most families have at least 2 cars now. When i started working in Aylesbury back in 92, took me 20 mins to get to work for an 08:30 start. By the time i left  in 2005, it was a 50-55 min journey with a 7:30 start. Dont even want to think whats its like now.

 

But, its down to the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about. Population increase, and increased mobility. 

 

By comparison, i drove down to Liskeard on monday afternon, and back tuesday evening. It was a pleasure frankly, no hold ups, no real traffic and i rolled into devon at 5:30.! Shame i was in the mundano!

 

 

 

 

[Roger440]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

 

It was that sort of nonsense repeated all through the county that led us to realise it was never going to get better, and for the sake of my sanity we had to move.

 

 

 

You have no idea how much i wish i could

 

Though it would have to be west, not north! To damn cold!!!

[Jeremy Harris]

17 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

You have no idea how much i wish i could

 

Though it would have to be west, not north! To damn cold!!!

 

We moved North to Dumfries and Galloway.  Very little traffic (except on the A75 when the ferry disgorged a load of cars and lorries at Stranraer) and I don't think we ever had a frost in the five years we lived there.  There were palm trees growing all around the village it was that mild.  We did have about half an inch of snow one Christmas Day, which fell whilst we were driving to a local hotel for lunch, but it had melted by the time we drove home later.  That was the only time I ever saw snow there.  The climate was very like that in the South West of England, mild, wet and a bit windy around the autumn and spring equinoxes.  Summers were often very sunny, but not too hot, because of the sea breeze.

 

When we moved from there down to West Sussex it was November and the first thing I noticed was how cold it was, far, far colder than Portpatrick.

Edited December 8, 2017 by JSHarris

[Roger440]

21 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

We moved North to Dumfries and Galloway.  Very little traffic (except on the A75 when the ferry disgorged a load of cars and lorries at Stranraer) and I don't think we ever had a frost in the five years we lived there.  There were palm trees growing all around the village it was that mild.  We did have about half an inch of snow one Christmas Day, which fell whilst we were driving to a local hotel for lunch, but it had melted by the time we drove home later.  That was the only time I ever saw snow there.  The climate was very like that in the South West of England, mild, wet and a bit windy around the autumn and spring equinoxes.  Summer were often very sunny, but not too hot, because of the sea breeze.

 

When we moved from there down to West Sussex it was November and the first thing I noticed was how cold it was, far, far colder than Portpatrick.

 

Hmmmm, i remain unconvinced

 

The west country feels a lot more like home than scotland..........................................................

[NSS]

I once drove from Southampton to Plymouth on the Bank holiday weekend at the end of May (1988). It took 26 hours and 57 minutes. Granted I went via London, Norwich, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Carlisle, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol. Total mileage was 1,570 at an average of just over 58mph 

 

No chance of repeating that these days.

 

Edit: To clarify, three of us shared the driving.

Edited December 8, 2017 by NSS

[SteamyTea]

So are you lot saying that this survey was a load of bollocks then.

[Gone West]

10 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

We moved North to Dumfries and Galloway.  Very little traffic (except on the A75 when the ferry disgorged a load of cars and lorries at Stranraer) and I don't think we ever had a frost in the five years we lived there.  There were palm trees growing all around the village it was that mild.

Were you affected by the biting bugs in the summer?

[Jeremy Harris]

3 hours ago, PeterStarck said:

Were you affected by the biting bugs in the summer?

 

 

Not at all, for some reason midges only start to appear further North.  I used to have to travel up to Loch Goil, around 2 1/2 hours North of Portpatrick, a fair bit, and midges were certainly an issue there.  There seems to be a line, roughly from Glasgow to Edinburgh, that defines the Southern boundary of midge territory, I think.

 

Portpatrick is pretty far South, about the same latitude as Newcastle and only about 20 miles from Belfast, plus it's on a coastal peninsula, so strongly affected by the surrounding sea, which keeps the area warmer than you'd expect.  There's a botanical garden just down the coast at Port Logan, and look at what's growing there will give an idea of the local climate: http://www.rbge.org.uk/the-gardens/logan

Edited December 9, 2017 by JSHarris
typo

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

So are you lot saying that this survey was a load of bollocks then.

 

With the husk off, then, @SteamyTea, rather than an attempt at an amusing diversion. It is a bit long - sorry.

 

I think this piece was an exercise in churnalism - the only difference being that the Press Release was perhaps especially written for the BBC to swallow. It was the kind of spacefiller / clickbait listicle I would expect in say the Independent or the Huffington Post, or perhaps on Buzzfeed on a really bad day.

 

If it was a data journalism article written in an environment with either a competent journalist or a competent editor, one or the other would have made sure that the article should have:

 

1 - Identified its purpose and the questions to be answered, and *why* these are important questions.

 

2 - Profiled the source. Discussed Data sources and the relationship. Was this specified by the BBC, or data that just happened to be around in the media department etc? Why was *this* data selected? Why is "maximum distance possible" a good statistics to choose (suspect median distance to the 60 minute the perimeter would be better rather than a masimum)? Why is 3 times on a Friday a meaningful investigation? 

 

3 - Explained the method used for deriving the claim. I think it was probably a Monte Carlo Method or similar simulation based on the company's routing software. We just have "x provided the data".

 

4 - Provided the context so that we can relate the data / claims to our experience.  Is this real-world data? It is presented as representing such, and you interpreted it as such.

 

But the BBC have not even told us what "typical" means - eg what about roadworks that are normally present at some time of the route, or school holidays when traffic is lower etc. As we all know, that makes a massive difference.

 

5 - Provided some analysis and produced some conclusions as to the implications.

 

6 - Given that it is the BBC, I would expect Cardiff or Swansea, and perhaps Belfast, to be in there.

 

7 - As an absolute minimum included a sanity check to match the data to reality, so they don't end up looking like right Charlies when/if it doesn't match. Dead easy to do; all they have to do is to get some staff going home at these times to measure their journey length. A couple of dozen would show whether the simulated data fits reality.

 

As it is I can do my own personal factcheck. I have done the journey from Central Nottingham north up the M1 half a dozen times in the last 2 years after lunch with a friend or visiting my letting agent. The claim for Nottingham is that at 4pm on a normal Friday you can travel by road North as far as Barlborough or beyond. I know that if I am not away by about 3.15pm, then nothing like the claim is possible, and I come from a mile my side of the centre. They are probably about 50% out imo.

 

As it is, I think there is probably a systematic error in the data wrt the real world. Comparisons are perhaps meaningful - absolute claims with no context except "typical" are not.

 

What I have seen of their "data news" stuff really is of very poor quality - a comment I would also make for much of the contemporary Online and News 24 output.

 

I have no idea what they are playing at, but I can see the raw simulated numbers being picked up by some of the more stupid of the highly intelligent people who write for our newspapers, and quoted as 'established fact' to support their view of whatever issue they wish to harangue us about this week. I could see Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee, or perhaps even Monbiot, or any number of data-illiterate millenials using this as fuel for a trip on the outrage bus. and a demand that therefore investment must not be made in road transport.

 

My view.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited December 9, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Roger440]

4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

So are you lot saying that this survey was a load of bollocks then.

 

Yep!