Holy Roads!

THE POTHOLE SITUATION HERE IN GLASGOW CITY IS TERRIBLE, APPARENTLY DUE TO THE RAVAGES OF THE SEVERE WINTER ON OUR BELOVED TARMACADAM.

Imagine my surprise, however, to spot a sign at Blythswood Square that simply warned me to expect more potholes!

[Please click on the photograph to enlarge image]

Things are getting worse when the council will spend money on signs instead of repairing the roads.

Vanishing Road

ACCORDING TO THE SIGNS AT THE RECENT ROAD WORKS, DEANSTON DRIVE VANISHES.

If the road was closed, they would have used a “road closed” sign, a “No Entry” sign or “Diversion” sign. If the road was blocked off from the left, then they would have used the narrowed from left sign, and if the road was blocked off from the right, then they would have used the narrowed from right sign.

To use BOTH the narrowed from left sign AND the narrowed from right sign, effectively closes a two lane road, yet the road was open on both lanes. Even the turn off to the left was open.

To add even more confusion, there’s a “bear left” sign!

With the naked eye, no road works were taking place whatsoever, and this remains as it has always been — even though all these signs and fences have been removed since the photograph was taken.

Things are getting worse when the road department store their equipment on roads. It is the only explanation for all this fuss — the only other explanation being that the road is pinched from both sides and vanishes!

My 1st Traffic Jam Puzzle

MY FIRST TRAFFIC JAM PUZZLE.

That’s what it says on the box.

Yes, things are that bad, and getting worse it would seem. Is there a grand plan to prepare children for inevitable traffic jams in later adult life?

Is there a grand plan perhaps to sell children a series of traffic jam puzzles? This is MY FIRST traffic jam puzzle — and that suggests the possibility of a second, third and who-knows how many more.

On further consideration, it is possible that the puzzle is “why have we got traffic jams”?  How much fun would it be to consider all the options to transport and travel for the 21st century. Yes, what a fun toy!

I don’t know about you, but this – whatever it is — does not immediately strike me as an absolutely brilliant idea for a children’s toy or game.  Things are definitely getting worse when someone can successfully pitch their idea about a puzzle for children based on traffic congestion.

Looking again at the box, I see that it could be that the entire reason for the traffic jam could be the child driving the big green tractor.  How hilarious! The child can play at being responsible for road rage and disgruntled commuters for the FIRST time! My, oh my; what kind of monsters are we trying to create here?

Bollards

BOLLARDS ARE SOFTER THAN YOU THINK.

The council put bollards up to try to stop cars being parked in particular areas, but it is not working on account of the fact that bollards are made from cheap soft plastic rubbish!

The moral of the story is to drive slowly at the bollards to bend them out of your way, allowing you to park wherever you want.

Council tax money well spent!

Car Parking Twist

IN GLASGOW’S IRONICALLY NAMED PARK AREA, CARS ARE PARKED AT AN ANGLE TO THE PAVEMENT.

The entire enterprise seems to be to narrow a wide road to aggravate drivers and perhaps slow them down.

There can be no other explanation; if the cars were “normally” parked in a parallel fashion to the pavement, there would be just as many cars parked, but the road would be much wider for cars and vans driving past.

Consider the diagram above.  Fig 1 shows the current angled parking. Fig 2 shows normal parallel parking, and the top figure shows both combined.  Hopefully, this diagram shows that the cars take up the same length of kerb regardless of the angle of parking.  The only difference is how much car is sticking out into the road.

Not only does this restrict a perfectly wide road, but it creates a couple of new dangers: cars parking in like this often touch the very high kerbs at the offside bumper, and parked cars have to reverse into oncoming traffic to leave the parking space.

Each bay is a pay-and-display earner for the council.  It would make no financial difference whatsoever to change the angled bays back to normal parallel ones.  It would widen the road for vans, improve road safety and reduce bumper scrapes for car owners in icy conditions.

However, common sense does not prevail in councils, and so the people who have to suffer are the ordinary tax-payers.

Break The Law

THE POLICE ARE CRACKING DOWN ON US AGAIN. They have been out and about all week causing traffic congestion for shoppers.  It is the three old chestnuts — parking, speeding and drink-driving.

Something is wrong with a society when ordinary everyday citizens are more concerned with getting caught by the authorities than by criminals.  I have seen grown men brought to tears by parking wardens, simply because their ticket at the meter bay expired ten minutes ago.

Things are getting worse.  Yet, what I do not understand is why it has to be that way.  Sure, it brings in an awful lot of money — it is all a hidden tax after all — but I think it is too high a price to pay, for the downside far outweighs the income.

For example, instead of putting money in a meter, you could just swipe your credit card and settle up at the end of the day.  The argument about short-stay periods is nonsense; just have a different rate for long stays.  That would mean that no person would be criminalised, stressed and angry — the NHS would see the benefit, and we’d have less road rage and a general lifting of mood.

Speed cameras are bad, and speed limits are silly.  Drivers panic when they see a speed camera, and speed limits cannot be taken seriously because they do not account for traffic jams, bad weather, late night driving and so forth.

Why are we putting up with this silliness? Speed limiters exist — see the photograph.  If no car could speed, this would free up the police to catch people driving dangerously or carelessly under the effects of drink or drugs.

The state pretends to be nannying us, protecting us, keeping us safe — but the truth is that we live in fear of the state — they are not there for us, they are out to get us, to take our money and ruin our lives — either by the consequences of human mistakes or by making us so paranoid and stressed out that we cannot actually live our lives freely.

Happy New Year!

Pot Luck on Roads

THE ROADS ARE IN A DREADFUL STATE.

However, it seems that the council’s new LLCs would rather spend our tax-quids on speed cameras and speed humps in parking bays than fix the pot holes!

It is no exaggeration, and there is often no opportunity to avoid driving into them because of cars parked either side of the road.

These photographs were taken at the Battlefield monument right outside the Victoria Infirmary (one of the two southside hospitals in Glasgow city).  I pity the occupants of ambulances that have to deal with these pot holes on a daily basis!

Mind you, according to a news story I read, the repairs are never done very well. It’s all one big money-spinning racket. We’re going to pot (holes) — and, yes, things are still getting worse!

Inconsiderate Car Parking

SOMETHING SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT INCONSIDERATE CAR PARKING.

In the photograph, the car is parked inconsiderately; it is blocking a service lane — which is not merely blocking access to rubbish and recycling bins, but also blocking emergency access to electrical, water, sewerage, and gas utilities, and to the fire service.

This may come as a surprise to our regular readers in consideration of all our posts on the subject of parking.

We here at GW see a difference between being considerate and being legal, and we back being considerate in the hope that restrictions get changed, and laws revised where required. It really is just a common sense approach. So it is just a fluke that the car parked in the above picture is both inconsiderate and illegal!

Being considerate is about thinking less about letter of the law, and more about people and health-and-safety.

You’ll know from older posts that I have no problem with cars parked up on the kerb to allow utility and emergency vehicles to use the roads.

When a car is parked up on the pavement, pedestrian pavement access may be restricted — but this is quite often the (partial) fault of the overgrown hedges or dumped rubbish.

In a traffic calmed area, filled with speed cameras, fences, one-ways, speed bumps and zebra crossings, pedestrians can move about a lot more safely than if the traffic was fast and heavy flowing.

That’s the compromise — we have reduced the amount of through traffic, reduced the speed of the traffic, insisted that rubbish be dumped on the pavement, allowed residential hedges to take up a large part of the pavement area, and let people away with dog fouling. This simply means pedestrians have to weave a bit through the obstacles of cars, hedges, dog mess and rubbish.

The alternative would be to allow “proper pedestrian pavement access“, meaning more restrictions and red tape — residential hedges would have to be regulated, dog-fouling enforced (CCTV?), rubbish would have to be dumped in back lanes again, and cars would have to be parked completely on the road — impeding emergency vehicle access, utility vehicles, delivery trucks and vans and so forth.

I think that this is why police and wardens turn a “blind eye” throughout  Shawlands, and quite right too!

Let’s face it; the high density of residents in block of flats means that emergency and utility vehicles must have access at all times.  The sheer number of resident means that car numbers will be high — and people need to park near their flats (they may be disabled, elderly, infirm or have shopping, babies and toddlers to contend with).

That’s why we can say that the car in the picture is in our opinion parked disgracefully, but that cars parked on pavements and between bollards is OK.

Rain Drain

TRAFFIC CALMING MEANS NARROW ROADS. Narrow roads mean widened pavements, which in turn mean new drains that do not work. Drains that do not work mean puddles, and this makes for even more traffic calming. Genius!

Click on the picture to enlarge — can you see the new drain under the puddle? You may also see where the new pavement widening starts (along with new but redundant double yellow lines). Parking there might require a pair of Wellington boots or a good sense of balance and a deftness in the skipping department. No wonder people prefer to keep their brakes dry and park on the pavement – it’s safer all round.

Sometimes, the drain is sited in a random daft location. What is the point of a drain that is NOT at the lowest point?

For such a rain-soaked country, I am amazed at the inconsistencies in managing rainwater. Just look at this picture of TWO drains, side-by-side, on a pavement (not even on the road), that is next to rain-absorbing grass! At the very least, you have to ask why there are two.

However, then you may notice the paranoia the designers clearly faced on the ill-fated “squinty bridge” or Clyde Arc . I have taken the trouble to number the drains on the picture — just click on it to enlarge for a better view. You will note the closeness of each drain to the others, but note too that the entire bridge is sloped in every possible way — is this not drain overkill? Could they not have just used holes to let water through and down to the river below?

Yep. Things are getting worse!

Network Fail

LET’S FACE IT: RAILWAYS ARE RUBBISH.

I recently watched with horror as an elderly man with a stick tried to cope with the stairs down to an east-end railway station, and I just wondered how any mum with a pram would be able to manage to use this so-called “public transport” service.

Railways are definitely for able-bodied people only — and they seem to be required to additionally be reasonably fit and healthy too; getting the train is not for the faint of heart, let me tell you.

Buses often have a low step to help people get on and off, quite a lot also have wheelchair access, and all have provisions for prams. The newer bus stops have raised kerbs too.

When are we going to own up to the fact that the era of the train is over? They do not have staff, the costs are high, it is risky and frightening, and completely the opposite of “user friendly”. To improve things, they would have to completely redevelop the stations at massive expense, and I just don’t see that happening in a million years.

Presently stations are dark, dank, stair-filled, exposed places — a place for winos and druggies, neds and yobs. The picture to the left shows Pollokshields East station’s stairs on a bright, sunny afternoon — a massive and steep flight of steps takes you to a landing where you can head off to the right or left under the bridges where the pigeons and starlings live and shit. It is too dark to get a picture even during a sunny afternoon, and the lights merely cast scary shadows against the blackened, mossy dripping wet Victorian walls.

Stations are always either sited a lot higher or a lot lower than the entrance from any road, so this is typical — imagine dealing with a pram! If that is bad, a pram and a toddler would be too scary to bear thinking about. A zimmer or crutches is impossible, as would be any form of wheelchair.

For goodness sake, it is bad enough trying to cope with high heeled shoes!

The railway network is denied to a massive number of people, this is a serious prejudice indeed. If we cannot fix the problem, we ought to either shut them down and turn the tracks into roads, or at the very least, own up to the truth.

The first step of which would be to stop including trains in discussions about public transport, particularly about viable alternatives to the car!