TomTom fail....

[pappajohn]

Drove up to Durham at the weekend.

Bluetooth tethered satnav to my phones web connection for traffic updates.
as i set off it flagged up delays on the A174 at Middlesboro so kept an eye on it.
20 mins later the flag disappeared so carried on assuming the hold up had cleared.....1-3/4 miles from the A174/A19 junction it flagged again........100 yards from the back of the stationary traffic.
no option to reroute on the dual carraigeway so had to sit in traffic.
30 minutes to go 1-3/4 bloody miles.
Road filtered into one lane a mile before the junction and as some of you may know, that junction is an underpass roundabout.....with traffic lights.

No sign of works until i got to the roundabout.......why do they need a lane closure so far from the works ?

 

[MJG1959]

Drove up to Durham at the weekend.

Bluetooth tethered satnav to my phones web connection for traffic updates.
as i set off it flagged up delays on the A174 at Middlesboro so kept an eye on it.
20 mins later the flag disappeared so carried on assuming the hold up had cleared.....1-3/4 miles from the A174/A19 junction it flagged again........100 yards from the back of the stationary traffic.
no option to reroute on the dual carraigeway so had to sit in traffic.
30 minutes to go 1-3/4 bloody miles.
Road filtered into one lane a mile before the junction and as some of you may know, that junction is an underpass roundabout.....with traffic lights.

No sign of works until i got to the roundabout.......why do they need a lane closure so far from the works ?

They are 'improving' the junction between the A19 and the A174 and have been for months. Due to fully open 'Spring 2015'.

Enjoy till then........oh hang on what season is it?

 

[GJH]

There was hell on one day a week or two ago with some people doing U turns on a slip road and driving the wrong way up it. I think they tend to close more of the road at the weekend because of some works taking place then rather than during the working week. It seems very patchy though. Sometimes they work Sundays and sometimes there appears to be nothing happening at weekends.

On the western side of the A19 they are dualling a single carriageway road and introducing a new entrance to the industrial estate but, other than tying that road into the junction, I haven't a clue what they are doing on the eastern side. We use the western side a couple of times a week coming back from Jill's Dad's but tend to avoid going the other way with the works on, using an alternative instead.

I think it's all supposed to be finished in a couple of months.

The story does confirm my experience of so-called traffic alerts on both TomTom and Garmin though. Garmin cost us 4 hours after saying the delay was 7 minutes once.

 

[pappajohn]

They are 'improving' the junction between the A19 and the A174 and have been for months. Due to fully open 'Spring 2015'.

Enjoy till then........oh hang on what season is it?

Improving for the sake of improving.....never had a problem either eastbound or westbound in the past.

 

[MJG1959]

Improving for the sake of improving.....never had a problem either eastbound or westbound in the past.

It regularly got clogged up with traffic on the a174 going west that then wanted to go north on the a19. Mainly am rush hour. Traffic on the 174 would often tail back to the coulby interchange.

To try and resolve this they are adding an extra approach lane westbound on the 174 and adding a lane to the roundabout to spread the flow around and North to the a19.

We shall see though.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[pappajohn]

And then there's still only two lanes on the A19 slip to take an extra lanes worth of A174 traffic on the roundabout..

No logic sometimes.

 

[GJH]

To try and resolve this they are adding an extra approach lane westbound on the 174 and adding a lane to the roundabout to spread the flow around and North to the a19.

Ah, that's what they're doing is it? Presumably that will result in one lane for A19 southbound traffic, one westbound traffic to Ingleby Barwick/Thornaby and two for A19 northbound traffic.

And then there's still only two lanes on the A19 slip to take an extra lanes worth of A174 traffic on the roundabout..

No logic sometimes.

Those two lanes currently also cope with traffic from Ingleby Barwick (the road which is being dualed) going north on the A19 and it appears that an improved slip road is being put in to ease that.

Having said that, the A19 between the A174 and the Tees Flyover and between the Tees Flyover and Billingham was widened several years ago (with subsequent widening of the A66 west of Middlesbrough) completely ignoring the bottlenecks which are the two lane Flyover and the A19/A66 interchanges.

 

[JJ]

I do not believe that building bigger and/or "better" roads will solve congestion.

(Sorry... off topic as usual.)

JJ