Transport

Q. There is No Overall Long-Term Road Transport Policy! Tell us your thoughts.

The Ministry of Transport is hamstrung by ridiculous rules and regulations. It would appear that at the moment, each different police authority decides how they will interpret the laws. No more the NDP, will, when we enter power, decide on how the laws will be enforced; any interpretation will be left with the courts.

Let’s look at speeding; most motorists look upon speed cameras has cash cows supplying easy money for local authorities and their respective police forces. Motorists who think speed cameras work and are necessary are probably motorists or non-motorists who have been directly affected by someone speeding. Excessive speeds do kill and maim and controls have to be maintained.

The whole emphasis needs to be changed. The NDP believes that the emphasis should be on safety. Let’s start by renaming the cameras, if they are to be kept, in future they will be called safety cameras. If cameras are to be kept, then why are they all painted yellow? Many motorists treat the current cameras with complete disregard. They speed up to where they know the cameras are situated and then drop their speed until they are past the cameras range and then speed up again.

There might be another way to slow traffic to safe speeds. In Portugal and other countries they use traffic lights as way of slowing traffic down, particularly in busy and built up areas. It works very simply, as you approach a built-up area you are warned that there are speed activated traffic lights, if you or anyone else for that matter exceed the limit then the red lights come on and all traffic is stopped. After a few seconds, everything gets moving again. Not surprisingly, exceeding the speed limit in these areas now happens very rarely. It works, speed is reduced to safe speeds and nobody is fined, unless they break the red light of course.

We should look at our traffic light sequences: Why do we go from red to amber to green, it surely is much safer to go directly from red to green?

Let’s look at speed limits, on motorways maybe it’s time for the upper limit for cars to be increased to 75 or 80 miles an hour. It seems that the majority of cars on our motorways are travelling at that sort of speed already with tacit approval from the police. So let’s consider making those changes to the upper limit, however if we go that route then that limit will need to be enforced dramatically with draconian penalties for anyone who exceeds these new limits. By leaving Lorries and coaches at 70 or possibly reducing the speeds of those vehicles to 60 it would increase dramatically the distance between cars and these vehicles. This might stop some of the tail-gating.

Another thing to consider; what does the black diagonal stripe on a white background mean? It can mean 60 or 70 at the moment. It’s time to make speed signs say what they mean, if it’s 70 limit then the signs should show 70 and so on. It might also be sensible, on roads leaving ferry ports from the continent the equivalent speed limit in kilometres is shown for maybe the first 20 miles; after all we don’t want to be too helpful.

We need to find a way of ensuring that the cars on our road are both road-worthy and have paid both insurance, tax and have a proper MOT. There must be somebody out there who can come up with a scheme, which enables these issues to be monitored. Two million cars on our roads are either not taxed, not insured or both. The other 20 million motorists are paying for this lot; we need to stop it happening.

We keep being told that the most dangerous drivers are male 18 to 25 year olds. If that is the case then maybe all drivers who pass their test should have to drive with a visible plate on their cars, which both signifies that they have just past their test and that they are limited in the top speed they can drive.

Our road policy is in a complete mess. In most suburban areas new roads only occur when new buildings are being put up. Part of getting planning permission is providing the community with new road facilities, which in the past would have been built by a government department.

Repairs to our roads are carried out in a very haphazard way. Many will have noticed that there always appears to be a flurry of road repairs carried out in February and March. This is because an allocated budget for repairs hasn’t been used and if it isn’t used by the end of the financial year (5th April) then the budgeted allocation returns to central government.

The NDP has noticed that new motorways and trunk roads are normally only now normally only built in Labour constituencies. The south of England, the area with the greatest need has been consistently starved of funds for desperately needed major roads.

The NDP will also controversially ban all commercial vehicles over 3 tons from using the roads at weekends. The ban will start at 8.00am on Saturday and run until 8.00pm on Sunday.

Incidentally have you all noticed how frequently major motorways are now closed after an accident. Apparently the Association of Chief Police Officers has decided that as these accidents are now a crime scene the whole road should be treated as if there had been a blatant murder. Who gave them the power to take this decision, which now causes chaos whenever if happens.

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