New AHS roundabout

[HeeBeeCheeBee]

Are the three who voted yes willing to reveal themselves? lol.

[Capeesh]

Panama Canal

Great pyramid of Giza

Great wall of China

Hoover Dam

Golden Gate Bridge

English Channel Tunnel

Aqueduct of Segovia

Brooklyn Bridge

All great civil engineering projects and now we have a new addition...

The Great Circle of North Lochside.

[HeeBeeCheeBee]

Does anybody know what happening with that big swale with water in it on the North side of the road up the hill. The road that's closed off. Are they going to make something like that bonny park at the Sound roundabout?

[Twerto]

Amenity trust are going to be working with planting in that area come spring.

[George.]

Amenity trust are going to be working with planting in that area come spring.

 

But what will they plant? Bushes and plants that may well flower nicely in the summer, or will they just plant their heads in the ground - again???

[HeeBeeCheeBee]

Thank you Twerto, if its half as good as the Sound park it'll be lovely. Certainly a huge improvement on the rough boggy area there before these improvements.

[Davie P]

 

Amenity trust are going to be working with planting in that area come spring.

 

But what will they plant? Bushes and plants that may well flower nicely in the summer, or will they just plant their heads in the ground - again???

 

 

What's that meant to mean? Is it just a generalised pleepse about 'they'?

Edited November 12, 2015 by Davie P

[Ghostrider]

@GR - traffic lights cost a fortune to install and maintain so I wouldn't bank on them being a cheaper option. Even if the council had opted for an 'ordinary' junction, there would inevitably have been costs involved in regrading, diverting services, drainage, kerbs etc.

 

As for putting a road around the rest of the loch - how much would that have cost? Not only that but it would be safe to assume that a lot of the outbound traffic using it would be wanting to turn right/head south at the Westerloch/South Road junction. Good luck to anybody - and bus drivers in particular - trying to do that at a busy time of the day without the help of a roundabout or lights. And cue once again the pleepsin' about costs/disruption/the wrong design if it had to be altered or it being 'an accident waiting to happen' if it wasn't.

 

On the whole, there was a general consensus that the council made the right decision to opt for Clickimin over the Knab for the new school. It seems that all we've heard fae sine has been that everything is wrong with it - the loss of the campsite, the helicopter pad, the impact on centre users, the design of the building and now the roundabout.

 

Reading Ian Halcrows comments on the ST news article should really put this whole issue to bed. But then what would he know?

 

I don't doubt traffic lights could well have cost as much as a roundbout, this was a SIC job after all. I'm blowed if I can see how and why they need to cost as much though. A few poles with six low power lamps at the top aren't needing to cost anymore apiece than a streetlight, surely. Cabling to link them all together, and some very basic software, surely needn't cost much either, and what else do you need?

 

That said, given that the traffic light market is a very limited one, and that virtually all customers are public bodies, the creation of a monopoly/cartel/price fixed extortionate cost supply would be simple exercise, you just need to look at the NHS drug supply for proof of that.

 

The roundabout is on the junction of a new road, kerbing, pavements, grading etc were all going to have to happen, and cost, regardless of what sort of junction was being installed.

 

Yes, going through Westerloch would have cost, and would no doubt have raised all sorts of complaints from Westerloch area residents, like I said, political reasons. They could have put traffic lights on the Westerloch junction, or, perhaps more sensibly, re-routed the Westerloch road to join the existing Sound roundabout. Yes, there would have been hell to pay from Murrayston with folk's houses being demolished and the place being split in two by the road, but that kind of thing didn't bother them when they needed a road in to their "Cultural Quarter", so why should it bother them when they need one to their "Educational & Recreational Quarter".

 

I agree the Knab was a bad site, but IMHO the old dump is equally bad as a site. It should have gone out of town where there was plenty of room to build something that was the best design for the job and climate, with good access in every direction, not another "building to fit the chosen site", with the "tries to be everything to everyone, but ends up not be much of anything to anyone" result you inevitably end up with.

 

I don't think Ian Halcrow mentioned that the general concensus of opinion is that roundabouts function best where you have a relatively equal and steady flow through all connected junctions continously, but traffic lights tend to be a better solution in situations where traffic flow is more in peaks and troughs, as it evens out the flow, and gives everyone a more equal chance to travel in whatever direction they need to.

 

If this roundbout isn't the classic example of peak and trough traffic, I don't know what is. The heaviest traffic through it will be in the half hour prior to the school going in, which just happens to coincide with a number of folk also going to their work. The likely result of that is that while traffic coming in from the north will flow easily, regardless of their destination, traffic coming from the south is going to be bottle-necked at the roundabout, which in time will see folk taking other routes through the town to by-pass it, increasing pressure elsewhere.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Ghostrider

[Ghostrider]

@ GR, Feel free to take up your concerns over what i said regarding the old dump with SEPA.

 

I'm not doubting SEPA's anally OTT solution to anything "environmental", as they always are. I'm just surprised that there's anything that far north that can be identified as once having been "dump" material.

 

Bottom line is we need rid of the EU, and Scotland if it will insist on imposing such ridiculously un-necessary regulations as the likes of SEPA does, and apply a bit of basic common sense.

 

If there's identifiable dump material, scoop it up and truck it to the existing dump, what else is needed, and how much need that cost? Not a lot. Job done. Anything more, is just making work for its own sake.

 

It defies all logic and reason that you can let it lie there doing whatever it does, and that's fine. But dare disturb it and it has to be handled like it was radio active. If its that vile when disturbed then the ground water that its sitting soaking in and which eventually seeps in to the Clickimin Loch is equally vile, yet their are no restrictions on folk paddling around in the loch water as they see fit, or livestock grazing to the water's edge of drinking from it. Either the "harmfulness" of the dump remnant material is being grossly over-exaggerated, or the "harmfulness" of the loch water is being hushed up, there's no other conclusion to reach.

[Ghostrider]

One more thing. The northernmost extremity of the dump 50+ years ago was equal to the line of Anderson Road, it certainly grew somewhat before it closed as is swallowed 15 or so years toon bruck in that time, but only, if my recall is correct, east/west and southward.

 

Its size, again if my recall is in any way accurate, was such that it wouldn't surprise me, in fact I'd expect, that the current excavations for the school site along the west end of the running track and pitches would be bringing up dump material.

 

Is or isn't this the case, can anyone confirm? And if it is the case, isn't it costing as much of a fortune to re-dipose of that kilo for kilo, as it would any little remnants that might have come up on a plot the size of a roundabout? Which poses the question, did the school, seeing as its backed and run by some funky Scottie Govt, Agency get a budget that could easily cover such disposal costs as it was the Agency's first venture in to Shetland at a "delicate" time and was as much of a PR exercise as aything else, whereas the roundabout, being funded from an already pared down Highways budget simply had to go with minimum cost, regardless whether the site/design could have been far more user friendly if jiggled a few feet this way or that, if doing that risked pulling up a handful of ess or the brucks of a syrup can?

[Frankie]

It wouldn't have mattered where it was located or if it was a simple t-junction, traffic lights or a roundabout, someone on this forum would have been up in the middle of the night plinking on their keyboard pleepsing about it.

[Suffererof1crankymofo]

http://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/facilitating-change/2012/02/facilitating-change-four-lessons-from-the-devolution-of-the-british-roundabout/

 

3rd one down gotta be cheaper than what we got.

[HeeBeeCheeBee]

No doubt some would try to drive over the grassy bit here. lol.

[klanky]

And every where else in the UK:

 

 

A new roundabout is installed.

 

Everyone deals with it without any need for long-winded online analysis or tears.

 

 

The End.

[Urabug]

Frankie I assume that you never complain and let everyone and anyone do exactly as they want no matter how it affects you or anyone arround you.

 

Unfortunately we all have to "pleepse" from time to time,cannot let folk thing they have got it all there own way.