Motorway closures
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-41371699

This comes after a huge similar problem on the M1 a few days ago caused by what looks like a 5l container of hydrochloric acid which had reacted with something and been dumped.

Obviously the authorities need to exercise caution but if we're going to close motorways every time something odd is discovered the whole country could virtually be brought to a halt without much effort. There doesn't seem to be any real plan for mitigating the effects of these incidents, getting stranded motorists off the affected roads or preventing them joining them for a good period after the problem is discovered. I suspect a large part of the problem is treating these incidents as terrorist related (which of course they could be) and then having to wait for suitably trained personnel to turn up and do what they need to do. The problem is that any budding terrorists out there could well see this chaos and conclude that an easy way to create mayhem, will be to dump containers of stuff on our motorway network. What it is doesn't really matter because the police will treat them all as potentially hazardous and close the roads until it can be proved otherwise.

If that were to happen surely someone somewhere would need to make the decision to either allow parts of our motorway network to be paralysed on a regular basis or adopt a rather different strategy of dealing with them to minimise the risk to Joe Public and/or provide an efficient means by which to divert them away. Regularly forcing large numbers of people to spend countless hours stuck on the motorway isn't really tenable is it?

Re: Motorway closures
 

For the M3, if it was reported at 4am and closures put in place then, the diversionary routes should have been in place before there was enough traffic to cause a big build up, and for people to re-plan their journey to take a different route. By the looks of it though, that wasn't properly communicated so people continued to the closure and got stuck.

The M1 closure was at 07:30 on weekday, so there was probably enough traffic already on the Motorway to cause an immediate problem.

When the M6 closed the other week after the tanker crash, I believe that big parts of Cheshire pretty much ground to halt too due to the volume of traffic looking for alternative routes.

Re: Motorway closures
 

Why wasn't a gap made in the central reservation, to allow cars to turn round??

Re: Motorway closures
 

@ Ben - Yes, that's what I mean about getting the communication right. God only knows how bad it could be at peak times and I think the authorities need to get their act together in this regard.

@ Hom3r - I heard that they were talking about cutting a gap in the central reservation but only after many hours and don't know if they actually did in the end. IIRC the other side of the motorway was also closed and if so there'd be no reason not to allow vehicles to do a U turn and head back the other way would there? :shrug:

It's really not difficult to imagine the sort of chaos which could very easily be created by anyone with a desire to do so. A few dodgy packages dumped strategically on the hard shoulder of a some busy motorways and there's going to be protracted gridlock affecting thousands of motorists and vehicles/ambulances carrying potentially important or even vital goods, equipment, people etc.

The official response to these events may be being done by the book but IMHO the book needs a serious review to take account of the reality that it's all much too slow and cumbersome for the world we live in. I'd love to hear from anyone with any inside knowledge of how these incidents are handled and whether or not anything is under review.

Re: Motorway closures
 

You can read the post incident bulletin here for the M3 incident.

If people listen to local radio and also check travel before travelling on the motorway network some of these queues can be reduce by checking before you travel.

Re: Motorway closures
 

But back in the real world how many people actually do that?

Re: Motorway closures
 

Not many that is for sure.

Re: Motorway closures
 

Such is the volume of traffic that whatever alternative routes you might be able to take very soon become clogged up so yes you can check whatever you like before setting off but once youre stuck you're stuck whether it's on the closed motorway or the surrounding A and B routes.

Yes of course people could plan better but we have no idea how many people cancelled their travel plans having found out about these incidents. If this continues to happen more people will be inclined to avoid motorways wherever they can and use the alternative routes our motorways were designed to take the pressure off.

The authorities need to up their game in terms of dealing with such incidents more promptly to avoid gridlock. If we're going to tell the terrorists that we're not going to let them affect our way of life we can't be closing down all sorts of things for long periods of time every time somebody reports something on the hard shoulder. Terrorists aren't going to kill large numbers of people in this manner, there are far easier ways to do that.

Re: Motorway closures
 

Looking at the Highways report it does look like the closures were there for a while, so I still don't understand why people became trapped if there the diversions in place - unless that traffic was before the diversion?

I know that some built in sat navs will use the TMC to identify issues and reroute, so you'd think that anyone using those would have managed to avoid the area

Ideally services like Google Maps and Apple Maps should connect to the Highways agency data, rather than relying on user reported data.

Re: Motorway closures