Cotter duplication on track for February finish

bigred said :

They have certainly been making good progress on this project in recent weeks. Congratulations are due all round.
It has also been an interesting experiment in the effectiveness of road works zones. While the signposting very clearly wants motorists to slow to 60 hm/h from near North Weston bus stop to just past the Lady Denman Drive intersection, the reality is that very few vehicles actually do slow unless there is a suggestion of some enforcement/revenue raising going on. It seems to me that it is more likely that there will be more risk of a faster moving vehicle colliding with the rear of a vehicle that had slowed.

I’d suggest that’s in part for two reasons:

1- why should traffic be slowed from the North Weston bus stop when the roadworks aren’t actually being carried out at that location – the area of roadworks isn’t until after the last set of Parkway traffic lights? If roadworkers applied the reduced speed zones only to the areas where the work was actually occurring, roadusers might take them more seriously.
2- for the first few months of work, construction fences were installed at the outer edges of the sealed shoulders to the existing road. All construction work was occurring on the other side of these fences (ie. away from the traffic), so the area where the public drove was completely unaffected by the works. Most of us managed to drive at 80km/h without colliding with any of the trees that used to line the road for decades prior to the works, why could we suddenly not be trusted to drive at that same speed between the bright construction fences installed in the same position? Even after hours (when no workers were on site), the reduced speed limit was still applied.

I’ve got this little children’s book that might explain it (you might have even heard of it) – it’s called “The little boy who cried wolf!”
If you cry “Roadworks, 60km/h” often enough when there is no increased risk, people will eventually learn to ignore it. I expect many road users will only take roadworks signage (incl. speed limits) seriously when the roadworkers themselves take it seriously.

They have certainly been making good progress on this project in recent weeks. Congratulations are due all round.
It has also been an interesting experiment in the effectiveness of road works zones. While the signposting very clearly wants motorists to slow to 60 hm/h from near North Weston bus stop to just past the Lady Denman Drive intersection, the reality is that very few vehicles actually do slow unless there is a suggestion of some enforcement/revenue raising going on. It seems to me that it is more likely that there will be more risk of a faster moving vehicle colliding with the rear of a vehicle that had slowed.