Sponsored by
Tin-can prison called the M6
WHO sang This Is The Road To Hell?
I'm fairly sure it was Chris Rea and I'm almost certain he was talking about the M25.
But that was then and this is now – and I think it pretty much describes all Britain's motorways.
Yes, I have just had a particularly nasty journey. The traffic was nose to tail all the way to the south coast.
And, to make it even worse, I spent much of the time on the God-forsaken M6 – don't ask.
After several hours spent gazing at the back of a particularly mucky truck and resisting the urge to get out and wash it – I could have walked faster than we were moving – I started to wonder, is this the future?
Are we fated to spend an ever-increasing part of our lives stuck in traffic?
We all know it's taking longer to get to work. Every day it gets worse.
But what can we do? Public transport is, frankly, rubbish. So we sit in our little tin cans and get more and more frustrated.
After all the fuss about how successful congestion charging has been in London, they are planning to roll it out to other cities soon.
It's scheduled to arrive in Manchester in 2013 and Leeds can't be far behind. One problem though – it seems traffic has started flooding back into the capital. And people are now beginning to wonder if, like speed cameras, the whole thing is more about raising cash than keeping cars off the road.
Another solution is a little more successful. The M6 toll road. Yes, I know it's wrong in so many ways but, the thing is, it works. But it too has its surprises.
Picture it, a virtually empty motorway with its own very convenient services. There are plenty of spaces in the car park. Then you walk into the building to be confronted with a seething mass of humanity. Wall-to-wall bodies. I don't think I have ever seen that many people – many of them elderly and in obvious discomfort – in that small a space.
It looked like one of those visions of hell painted by that Hieronymus Bosch bloke. You know, the ones with all the twisted, tormented souls.
Some wag reckoned it was the latest holiday hot-spot. I was half-tempted to believe him
But it did feel like a descent into hell. Those queues. They were even slower than the traffic jams. And for what? Two bottles of water and a couple of tasteless lumps of stodge posing as sandwiches at rip-off prices. Tell me, in which universe can anyone justify charging nearly 15 quid for that?
Is it deliberate? Perhaps being ripped off by motorway services is our punishment for daring to venture on to the network.
But are we condemned to suffer forever? What's the alternative? Well until the Government gets its act together and provides cheap and efficient public transport, we're stuck with it.
Welcome to the road to hell.
jane.percival@halifaxcourier.co.uk
Email to a friend
Print this page- A58 crash UPDATE: road now re-open after man hit by car earlier this morning
- Crash on the A58 in Halifax this morning UPDATE: Man in hospital with several broken bones
- Taxi worker dies aged 35 after finishing his shift
- Man suffers serious injuries in accident on M62
- How the new Halifax Central Library will look
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Halifax
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -2 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North west
