The M1

This is how it used to look….

Having had the poor fortune once again to sit on the M1 in a queue of traffic I had time to ponder just why our governments over the years have managed to achieve so little. Although there has been a small amount of road widening in the last few years, generally the amount of vehicles using these roads has increased thousands of times in comparison to the money spent on them.

Yes, I know, every time someone suggests increasing the amount of tarmac available for us tax paying motorists the green brigade will jump up and down chirping away about the poor polar bears and Mediterranean temperatures we’re going to have to endure – but let’s look at the real facts;

People like to buy cars and drive them – I’m one of them – I like to drive where I want and have the freedom to go when I want without having to sit on a train next to some brain washed extremist wearing a rucksack stuffed full of fertiliser.

The public transport situation in the UK is a joke –  Yes we were the envy of the world when the railways were built in the late 19th century – it wouldn’t have taken Einstein to realise that we may need to keep them up to date with a bit of government funding .

Anyway, back to the motor car – eventually some clever scientist will shout “Eureka!” and declare that he / she has invented a vehicle that is pollution free and runs on water – the only trouble is we’ll suddenly realise that, like the railways, the roads are also not fit for purpose.

Each successive government bows down to the green lobby and decides the only way forward is to tax the motorists onto public transport – surely even the dimmest politicians must realise this ain’t going to work.
We want cars and more and, just as the population keeps growing – so will the number of road users.
The powers that be clearly think that we can all just sit on grid locked streets and we’ll eventually go away.

No how do we improve the M1 – we have a couple of choices –

We could build a second motorway next to the first – the trouble with this is that it would require too much land acquisition. No good.

The best solution would clearly be to finance a new upper deck. Surely a group of good engineers could find a way to support a new road deck on legs that stand either side and on the central reservation.

If they were really clever they could work their way along and lower the new pre-fabricated sections into position whilst the road carried on in use below.

This would allow commercial vehicles and lorries to use one level and everyone else to use the other. In bad weather or snow everyone could squeeze onto the lower level which would be nice and dry.
This would hopefully keep us mobile for a few more years.

Until teleportation gets invented we’re going to want to get around without having to jump on the National Express or the remnants of Stephenson’s Rocket.

David Black