Morning Journey to work

I’ve been doing the same journey to work for the last 23 years! I don’t need to go through any towns or cities it’s mainly “B” roads. It’s approximately 4 miles in total but in that time there has been SO many changes to the roads I use. When I first started work here I could do the journey in about 15 minutes – the record is 12. Now, especially when children are at school it’s double that! For a start they have put in at least six new sets of traffic lights/pelican/toucan crossings. For those that don’t know what toucan crossing are they are where “two can” cross for example pedestrians and cycles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toucan_crossing. Then there are the numerous Lollipop Persons. Now when I went to school the Lollipop Person would keep the traffic flowing and wait until there were a few children before they stopped the traffic. That doesn’t seem to be the case at one of the schools on my journey. If just one child appears she is out with her stick and then she waits while kids saunter up the road to cross! It causes chaos in the mornings to the traffic. Why not wait until there are three or four children and then stop the traffic!

Since the start of January they have put FOUR way traffic lights in at a junction where they are “carrying out road improvements”. The first morning the lights caused havoc. It took me 40 minutes to get to work (I could nearly walk it in that!). Since then they have had someone “manning” the controls at peak times in order to try and keep the traffic flowing. It still takes at least 10 minutes to get through the junction. That’s 10 minutes I could have had in bed!

There are virtual no alternatives to my journey. One alternative would be to go into Town and out again but that means using the main dual carriageway and at peak times it can take just as long.

So I have to grin and bear my 30 minute journey each morning knowing that if it takes just a couple of minutes longer I’ll not find anywhere to park at work … but that’s another story for another day.

However this morning I left five minutes earlier and the journey took me just 20 minutes. That meant I was in work 15 minutes early. Is that a good thing because if I did that every day my employer would gain 1 hour 15 minutes out of me each week and over a year that’s a lot of “free” work they have gained. Oh to have a flexi-time system!