boreders

I have been getting up 5am every morning this week. I know I should be getting up at that time anyway to get in some writing, but it rarely happens. In this instance, it has been a matter of necessity rather than choice. Someone has ruined my already horrible commute.

I travel about 75 miles every time I go to work. That represents a round trip. In theory that should be 50 minutes in each direction, fair weather and sensible traffic permitting. In reality it can be as much as twice that in bad weather and heavy traffic. Last week someone thought it’d be a good idea to complete work on the Runcorn Bridge and reduce it to a single lane in each direction.

Heading out from Liverpool, four lanes of traffic get on the bridge, so last week that meant a phenomenal amount of congestion. It took me about 45 minutes to travel a few hundred yards at one point. I tried alternate routes, but each seemed to be clogged with congestion all of it’s own. I didn’t do anything less than a 90 minute return journey and in one instance it took more than 2 hours. At the end of a long day, that can be soul destroying… It isn’t as if you have a lot of beautiful scenery to lighten the experience.

This week I hope all will return to normal. Work on the Bridge has been confined to overnight activities, so now there’s just the standard traffic to contend with. I’m done grumbling for the moment…

Driving provides a thoroughly wretched barrier between home and work. I could enjoy my day far easier if not for the 90 minute plus commute (that can balloon to around 4 hours or more on a bad day). In a world struggling to cling on to the environment, where the atmosphere grows thin and thicker in all the wrong sorts of ways, we can do without road trips double or triple in size at the drop of a hat.

Curiosity seems to be a strong factor in the problems on the motorway. Yes, sometimes an accident will strew debris across the whole carriageway; but, more often than not the evidence of an accident gravitates toward the hard shoulder with considerable speed. Efficient emergency services want to get the traffic flowing again, but rubbernecking prevents that from happening. People cannot help but stare wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the smallest evidence of an accident. The chance to spot a drop of gore or a horrifically twisted wreck overcomes the natural sense of urgency that generally grips those doing 100 mph along the outside lane.

You can easily link congestion with rubbernecking just by taking an active part in one of the queues yourself. Having sat on the motorway for an hour covering half a mile, you finally reach the site of the accident – then, as if catapulted by an invisible siege engine, you go from 5 mph to maximum speed in the space of 6.8 seconds. The congestion dissipates in a moment, like a thin morning mist evaporating under the rays of the rising sun. It beggars belief.

Perhaps drivers should be required to wear some kind of crash-sensitive blinker system that prevents them looking left or right when within 5 miles of a pile up. You can see the value of the automatic traffic control seen in the movie ‘Minority Report‘, because taking the human factor out of the driving equation means more time moving toward your destination – and less time staring at insurance write-offs and distressed drivers.