Rat Running

OK, I have started a new job in Rickmansworth, and so I am having to drive there each day. This means, of course, I have been working to find the easiest and quickest route to get there. And, of course, that means that I am taking routes through more residential areas, finding the really good rat runs.

And, of course, I do feel a little bad about it. I don't race through them, but I do take these shortcuts, and I understand that those who live in these areas must get sick of it. But it is not entirely my fault - it has shown me more clearly some of the problems of this particular area of the South East.

You see, I can get to work on the motorway, and out of peak times, that is a good route - I can make it into work in some 25 minutes. But at peak times, it can easily take me 30-40 minutes to get onto the motorway, and there is a good chance that there will be delays on the motorway as well. This is the core problem - we have a significant 4-lane motorway, that is not doing the job, because it gets too full. The answer is not to expand the motorway more, because the bigger it is, the more traffic is attracts.

The next option is to take some smaller main roads, taking a route around these main roads (something which is a challenge, as there are motorway spur roads, and feeder roads, all of which suffer many of the same problems as the motorway). I did this for a while, but the problem is that places like Watford get congested, which blocks up the surrounding roads. There were also roadworks, which cause significant extra hold-ups. The problem is that the main towns and cities have queues into them, and this means that these are other spots to avoid, because they are also too busy and also delayed.

So I have had to take back roads and rat runs to avoid the problems and the traffic around the area. I don't do it just to annoy people, I do it because I cannot spend 90 minutes each way to get to work. Especially when it is only 15 miles. So I use whatever roads I can to get me around these problems.

But the core issue is not my driving route. The core issue is that we have too much traffic, to many people driving to places, which has two justifications: firstly, we are actually very poor at allowing people to work from home, or hubs near their home. So many people travel because they are told they have to be in an office. Secondly, the public transport system is not up to scratch, because of neglect for decades.

On the first one, I did look for roles from home. there are a few, but not many, not enough. Within IT, which should be at the forefront of technological development, this is not good. I suspect other areas of business see that IT feels it is not practical, and so don't even try. We should be leading the world in this, because we have a small country, we have national broadband, and we have some of the best technical people in the world.

On the second, I would love to go by train, but the train system doesn't work to get me from home to there. There is a station in Rickmansworth, but I cannot get to it from home, except by going a long way into London first, with all of the cost that involves. It would also take a long time. For my daily commute, it is not practical, and the same appies to many others who are not travelling into London.

I was reading recently a description of motorways, the sort of thing you get in most driving books, that they are "fast roads, enabling you to get places quickly". this may be the case in some parts of the country, but around the South East (Milton Keynes and South, Oxford and East) this is not so - in particular in peak hours. They are usually slow, very busy, and to be avoided if at all possible. they are the only sensible route for some journeys, but where they are not, I want to avoid them. As such, they are failing to improve the traffic around and through the area.

So my conclusion is that our road system is broken - and the solution is not more roads, it is more radical. Our motorway system is not helping any more - it just attracts traffic, and when there is a problem on them (a weekly occurrence), it simply causes more problems around the other roads.