Post by Dave on Feb 15, 2011 0:05:37 GMT
When you have 380 miles to complete before you can get back in your car and head for home, the last thing you need is holdups on the road. But it’s almost a daily problem and if it’s not a road accident, then its road works. I must confess I only get mad if I’m driving past miles and miles of cones and see no one working anywhere. Or like the situation up in North Devon at the moment, men doing some road patching and two miles of one side of the road coned off and you have to follow that nuttier on the quad bike who loves doing wheelies.
I was ready to leave Toolfix at 5.45am this morning and Weymouth was my first destination. I told myself to cut down the chat today as I needed to get home as early as possible. I had a problem with the brakes on my car and had a mechanic coming to my home when I got home to fix it.
So off I set and as I went past Kenford I saw the signs saying to drive at 40mph. A little further on and a sign showing two lanes of the motorway were closed. Got just a little further and the sign said M5 closed from junction 30 to 28. I wanted junction 29 onto the A30 for Honiton.
Then a good mile or so from junction 30 (Exeter services) I came to a complete stop. Yes all three north bound lanes of the M5 were being taken off the motorway at that junction and then along the road at the bottom of Sowton industrial estate.
Complete utter chaos and that very short mile took well over one hour to complete and where were the diversion signs? At the end of the road it was even more chaos as most drivers thought they could nip up the slip road there and back onto the motorway. WRONG, it was closed off. No problems for me as I’m now on the A30 and most other drivers simply did not know it they should use the A30 or not.
But while I was stuck in the middle of that major jam, my radio set on radio two, went to radio Devon for a traffic report. Now I just assumed they were working on the road surface or something, but a new bridge was being put in place and the whole operation had badly over run its time allocation.
But then the man said that coming up in the news was the residents of Exeter’s angry reactions about the new bridge to nowhere. So I changed channels and started to listen to the story.
First up was some councillor, (don’t you just love them) he was saying “this is a wonderful day for the people of Devon, this new bridge (yes he said it was the bridge) would bring 3500 new jobs to Exeter and two million pounds of investment.
Sounds good even if the bridge at this time is only going into an empty field. But wait before you all get carried away I need to tell you this bridge is only a cycle and pedestrian bridge and has cost nearly five million pounds.
There are plans for the field to be turned into an indusial estate with housing, I do not know at what stage the planning is at, but it seems no one thinks the bridge is needed and most feel it’s a waste of money.
Exeter City Council has to make savings of 50 odd million and they go and spend 5 million on this bridge to nowhere. The reason for the holds up this morning was they had to delay putting it into place with a crane due to high winds.
It has been mentioned on here before how Exeter are miles ahead of Torbay when it comes to creating new jobs, this new site if it happens is right beside the motorway and will have such easy access to it.
But do just building industrial units really create new jobs? There are a number of empty units on the Sowton Estate that have been that way for a while. I have yet to go on any industrial estate where every single building was in use. Further up the M5 on land right next to the wicker lady beside the M5 at Bridgewater, the steel works have been going up for weeks for what is going to be a massive new industrial estate.
Just where are all these new companies going to come from to fill all these units that are being built, have we suddenly turned the corner and now growing in this country at a rate on knots?
Bring new companies to Torbay is always the cry going out, but is it no wonder that the land at White Rock on offer for new industrial units has not received any interest at all? When all down the M5 corridor new industrial estates are springing up. Why drive past all them to then get held up on the crawl from Penn Inn into the Bay?
Anyone who wrongly felt Devon was just full off nimbies would have been laughing their heads off hearing all those Exeter City people moaning about their new bridge to nowhere. Me I just cursed the bloody thing for the time it cost me this morning. Shame it only goes into a field or I might have been tempted to see if my van could fit on it and then use it to beat the jams it caused.
It was all up and in place when I came back down the M5 this afternoon.
Here is an artists impression of what it was expected to look like.
This one shows the hold ups due to high winds
I was ready to leave Toolfix at 5.45am this morning and Weymouth was my first destination. I told myself to cut down the chat today as I needed to get home as early as possible. I had a problem with the brakes on my car and had a mechanic coming to my home when I got home to fix it.
So off I set and as I went past Kenford I saw the signs saying to drive at 40mph. A little further on and a sign showing two lanes of the motorway were closed. Got just a little further and the sign said M5 closed from junction 30 to 28. I wanted junction 29 onto the A30 for Honiton.
Then a good mile or so from junction 30 (Exeter services) I came to a complete stop. Yes all three north bound lanes of the M5 were being taken off the motorway at that junction and then along the road at the bottom of Sowton industrial estate.
Complete utter chaos and that very short mile took well over one hour to complete and where were the diversion signs? At the end of the road it was even more chaos as most drivers thought they could nip up the slip road there and back onto the motorway. WRONG, it was closed off. No problems for me as I’m now on the A30 and most other drivers simply did not know it they should use the A30 or not.
But while I was stuck in the middle of that major jam, my radio set on radio two, went to radio Devon for a traffic report. Now I just assumed they were working on the road surface or something, but a new bridge was being put in place and the whole operation had badly over run its time allocation.
But then the man said that coming up in the news was the residents of Exeter’s angry reactions about the new bridge to nowhere. So I changed channels and started to listen to the story.
First up was some councillor, (don’t you just love them) he was saying “this is a wonderful day for the people of Devon, this new bridge (yes he said it was the bridge) would bring 3500 new jobs to Exeter and two million pounds of investment.
Sounds good even if the bridge at this time is only going into an empty field. But wait before you all get carried away I need to tell you this bridge is only a cycle and pedestrian bridge and has cost nearly five million pounds.
There are plans for the field to be turned into an indusial estate with housing, I do not know at what stage the planning is at, but it seems no one thinks the bridge is needed and most feel it’s a waste of money.
Exeter City Council has to make savings of 50 odd million and they go and spend 5 million on this bridge to nowhere. The reason for the holds up this morning was they had to delay putting it into place with a crane due to high winds.
It has been mentioned on here before how Exeter are miles ahead of Torbay when it comes to creating new jobs, this new site if it happens is right beside the motorway and will have such easy access to it.
But do just building industrial units really create new jobs? There are a number of empty units on the Sowton Estate that have been that way for a while. I have yet to go on any industrial estate where every single building was in use. Further up the M5 on land right next to the wicker lady beside the M5 at Bridgewater, the steel works have been going up for weeks for what is going to be a massive new industrial estate.
Just where are all these new companies going to come from to fill all these units that are being built, have we suddenly turned the corner and now growing in this country at a rate on knots?
Bring new companies to Torbay is always the cry going out, but is it no wonder that the land at White Rock on offer for new industrial units has not received any interest at all? When all down the M5 corridor new industrial estates are springing up. Why drive past all them to then get held up on the crawl from Penn Inn into the Bay?
Anyone who wrongly felt Devon was just full off nimbies would have been laughing their heads off hearing all those Exeter City people moaning about their new bridge to nowhere. Me I just cursed the bloody thing for the time it cost me this morning. Shame it only goes into a field or I might have been tempted to see if my van could fit on it and then use it to beat the jams it caused.
It was all up and in place when I came back down the M5 this afternoon.
Here is an artists impression of what it was expected to look like.
This one shows the hold ups due to high winds