Highway Agency Færies Indulge in Futile Night-time Frolic

 One of the things that we, STAG,  noticed, time and time again during the SH2 demonstrations to press for the urgent dualling of the A303 past Stonehenge and Winterbourne Stoke and an end to rat-running brought about by the premature closure of the A344, was just how dangerous negotiating the Longbarrow roundabout was.  Time and time again, eastbound and westbound vehicles on the A303 failed to stop, or even slow significantly, for the roundabout.  When they did stop, they were often several feet into the left hand lane - accidents in the making.

There were several near misses that we witnessed on Tuesday 17th December and it was only by dint of great good luck that none of these resulted in an accident.  This was largely due to the good nature and common sense of the STAG drivers, who frequently gave way to ill-mannered traffic from the left in situations when they were well within their rights to press ahead.

Then overnight on 17th/18th December, the Highways Agency Færies struck. As if by magic, new road markings had appeared.  "Aha", we thought,. "They must have been sprinkling magic dust to to improve safety on the roundabout, to improve traffic flow, to make everyone's life so much easier."

Clearly, after hours going round and round the Longbarrow and Airman's Cross roundabouts, then spent a night having nightmares about it, we were all somewhat delusional.  Far from improving things, the Highways Agency Færies had succeeded in making things worse.  Much, much worse.  It seems they intend to up the accident rate for the winter solstice and the Christmas rush to the West.  Merry Christmas one and All.

We thought we should illustrate the before and after state of the roundabout.  So here we go, travelling south from the Stonehenge Visitors Centre on the A360. On the 17th it looked like this:

 and on the 18th, like this:

Not too much difference here.  But let's go round the roundabout a bit.  Here is another shot from the 17th:

 and on the 18th:

 Oh look, the lanes leading past the westbound entrance of the A303 have changed and we have a new right-turn lane that suddenly starts of the right.  Look also at the two cars ahead of me.  They are, in both cases, following the natural line round the roundabout - which isn't defined by any of the white lines.

Going a bit further round the roundabout past the southern exit for the A360, we see this on the 17th:

 and on the 18th, we see this:

 We now have the appearance of a dotted line that cuts across the 3 lanes of moving traffic at 45 degrees - a recipe for disaster.  It seems to be there to encourage westbound traffic to plough into southbound or westbound traffic from the A360 - or to sit in lanes across the roundabout.   Note that there appear to be no "Keep Clear" signs any more.  These silly lines lead across to the westbound A303 exit from the roundabout.

And here we have the exit back north along the A360 on the 17th December.   Note how the natural route off the roundabout takes you into the left hand lane of the A360.  The right-hand lane is in the wrong place entirely - as it is on each of the other three exit lanes.  Obviously designed by folks who had never used a roundabout in their lives!

On the 18th, we get:

More dotted lines guiding the eastbound A303 traffic - which the northbound traffic has to cross at 45 degrees to leave the roundabout.  Again, the second vehicle follows the natural line off the roundabout and keeps in the left-hand lane.

I predict that from this weekend, we are going to see an increase in accidents where northbound and southbound traffic on the A360 is "T-boned" on the passenger's side by eastbound and westbound traffic on the A303.

Given that the roundabout planners employed by the Highways Agency don't appear to have much of a clue about road design and the Highways Agency themselves even less of one, judging by the way their randomly shoving down road markings seems only to have made matters worse, why don't they try the blindingly obvious for a week or two.  Stick a 360 degree video camera at high level in the middle of the roundabout and determine the consensus routes worked out by the road users themselves.  When you've got that information, mark the road accordingly!