Variations on Road Rage

B

Brian Johns

Dedicated Member
NO, not from our show, just a basic rant about road works as I am feeling fed up with them at the moment.:frown:

There are major road works going on all around my area at the moment, including literally over my back fence! They have been going on for several months now and while most of the stuff directly behind me has almost finished we still have all the problems from works further away.

Vibrating rollers…. It is like living in a permanent Magnitude 3 earthquake. There is the continuous rumbling low frequency noise for hour after hour with doors, windows and anything not nailed down rattling away.:02::02:

BLEEPERS!!!...not Foggy’s, the reversing bleepers on every %^^&ing vehicle (and I sometimes think on every person…note I did not say “worker”) I know what they are for but do you have to hear them 3 suburbs away??!!

I reckon it must defeat the purpose having them all going all the time. (Query- do road construction vehicles EVER go forward????) I would think no bleepers but the occasional scream of an idiot going under the tracks of a clearly visible house sized bulldozer would act as a better deterrent.

There is much more but just writing it down is too annoying. Nothing I can do about it but I needed to rant, been going on too long and I am just FED UP!! :devilish:
 
Same here in Wymondham Norfolk. Mainly due to all the unwanted housing going on in our Town.:02: More than one going on at a time so difficult to avoid.
 
We used to live at a road junction in Gainsborough (Lincs) and swear the Council kept their petty cash in a box under the pavement outside. They seemed to be digging it up every couple of weeks. Now we live in Ipswich and there seem to be roadworks on every major route in the city. No sooner do we work out a route to miss the problem than they start on our new route as well! I reckon it's a big conspiracy to keep cars out of the centre.
 
I have been sat with windows wide open for weeks now (flat is so well insulated it keeps the heat in) My major grumble is that I am at a junction that includes a hill. Boy racers who knock the baffles? out of their cars and or m/cycles seem to be going by continually. When they change gear to tackle the hill it makes me glad that I am quite deaf. I have an attachment to the T V that makes it possible to listen to it without deafening the neighbours, if the microphone picks up the car noises it sounds if they're going through the flat!:13:
 
Brian

Welcome to the Victor Meldrew School of dealing with retirement , where basically everything is an issue and you have to vent your spleen by either telling someone or writing it down . I won't bore you with the detail but my latest contribution has been to write to my MP to complain about concessionary bus passes . I am now in possession of 4 Official House of Commons letters with explanations of the position from the local transport company . I have recently alluded in another post about my run in with the Met Office . Keeps the mind active and it does give some satisfaction. :)
 
I have a lot of roadworks to contend going to and from work at the moment have to leave home earlier. They say they should be finished by Christmas:frown:
 
The gas company has had patches of the street in front of my house torn up all summer in order to line the old pipes with new, safer material, and to move our meters from inside our cellars to outside. The noise, dust and disruptions to traffic patterns have been a constant nuisance, worse now that the school year has started because this is one of the primary school bus routes to a nearby elementary school.

On the other hand, there have been several disastrous gas line explosions in this region within the last decade, so I feel safer now that our very old pipes have leak-resistant linings. I'm also happy to not have to plan around being at home for several consecutive days every even-numbered month in order to leave the outside entrance to the cellar unlocked so the meter reader could read the meter. That was a continual nuisance, especially when I'd see the meter reader visiting other houses in the neighborhood, but when my bill came I'd find that my reading had been estimated. Apparently the reader had skipped my house.

With any luck, the street will be back to normal by the time I get home from my next trip on October 1st.
 
This is just SOME of the massive roadworks happening directly over my back fence. They are extending the major Freeway (motorway) here some 6 kms north from where it currently stops.
This means that all the support and surrounding roads need to be upgraded to cope with the expected massive increase in traffic. The below shots are from "Connolly Drive, Clarkson" for anyone who wants to look it up on Google Earth.
This is the road that runs behind my house and is being upgraded from a dual carriageway to a dual carriageway with 2 lanes each way. This is causing problems as there are a number of small roundabouts dotted along Connolly Drive.
The road workers have been alternating which side of the road they work on so the whole road is now a maze where you chop and change sides multiple times.

When I moved in here some 20+ years ago we were at the end of civilization. everything you see in these photos was virgin bush in those days, in fact we used to have Kangaroos and Emus running around in the bush.

The whole area is now built up and stretches kilometres (OK..MILES) north of here now.





Note the "TINY" yellow machines which beep incessantly while rolling and grading the roadbase.

Marianna, we don't tend to have cellars here in Oz, most houses are what you call bungalows. Gas and electricity meters are usually mounted on the front outside wall of houses, water meters are usually on the ground in the front corner of the yard.
 
Brian,
I see what you mean and having been there when it was bush land I can see how you are so so angry . I don't know if you watch or have seen Red Dwarf but it's a definitive tomato ketchup moment .....
 
Captain, I am not so much angry as just fed up with them, they have been going on so long.
As for the small rouge one, I am a Smeghead too and it wasn't TOMATO ketchup, Lister is too sophisticated to put RED sauce on lobster, he wanted BROWN! :08:
 
Just a query to Marianna about her meter readings. Are there plans for you, or anyone else, to have 'smart' meters installed? I had them installed last week and shouldn't have to give another meter reading as they're linked directly to your energy supplier. They also supply you with a small screen that shows you just how much energy you're currently using. You can therefore have an accurate bill as opposed to estimates. It also makes you realise how much you are using per day, week etc. :01::17:
 
How would one know if one had a 'smart meter"? Here in Durham NC
in the states, we get a monthly electric bill from Duke Energy. But we
never see anyone walking around monthly reading meters. Guessing it's all
done automatically, but how would one know??
 
Marianna said:
The gas company has had patches of the street in front of my house torn up all summer in order to line the old pipes with new, safer material, and to move our meters from inside our cellars to outside. The noise, dust and disruptions to traffic patterns have been a constant nuisance, worse now that the school year has started because this is one of the primary school bus routes to a nearby elementary school.

On the other hand, there have been several disastrous gas line explosions in this region within the last decade, so I feel safer now that our very old pipes have leak-resistant linings. I'm also happy to not have to plan around being at home for several consecutive days every even-numbered month in order to leave the outside entrance to the cellar unlocked so the meter reader could read the meter. That was a continual nuisance, especially when I'd see the meter reader visiting other houses in the neighborhood, but when my bill came I'd find that my reading had been estimated. Apparently the reader had skipped my house.

With any luck, the street will be back to normal by the time I get home from my next trip on October 1st.
Click to expand...
Back in the '50's when I was knee high to a grasshopper, the meter reader would just open the front door, come in the house shouting "meter reader," head for the heater room (yes that's what we called it) in the kitchen, read the meter and leave.
 
OK, over here in the US, they have a giant orange sign on the back of some of those giant dump trucks that says, "Keep Back -- Do Not Follow." Now I puzzled over this sign. Why am being warned not to follow? Why would I want to follow anyway? Finally, I did get a clue. You are being warned not to follow the truck onto a construction site. If you are the type of ditzy driver that instead of driving by looking at the road, you drive by following the vehicle in front of you that sign would make sense. Perhaps if you are driving in the middle of a raging snowstorm and the only way you know where the road is, is to follow the vehicle ahead.
 
I had a friend follow another car in a fog ,till he realised that the car in front was doing over70 mph . This was on a foggy night and he thought he would be safe as long as he kept the other car's tail lights in view!!:39::rolleyes:
 
Over here we are being advised by our energy companies and adverts on TV that 'smart' meters are being installed. I had a letter from my energy supplier to say they wanted to install them. It does away with estimated bills which often happens if you're in work when they call to take a reading. However it's going to have an impact on jobs as meter readers eventually won't be required
I think you'd know if you had 'smart' meters as they provide you with a reader you plug in to an electrical socket and it shows you how much energy you're using! This can help you budget your usage as I was shocked to see how much electricity the tumble drier was using for example. I've got 'smart' meters for both gas and electricity.
 
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