Holland breaks traffic jam record

[Doggy Styles]

1. Just like South East England

Not this time. Yesterday we awoke to 3cm of snow round my way but no delays or traffic jams. They gritted in advance for a change.

In the past that would have meant gridlock.

[darmstadt]

Germany wasn't much better yesterday. It started snowing just north of Frankfurt and took me 6 hours to drive 300km to work as some ****wit of a lorry driver (probably East European with bald tyres) decided to take out a bridge. There wasn't much snow and what there was, was quite heavy but localised so that you had 10 cm around Duisburg but 20km away there was bugger all. In NRW there were quite a few 20-30km traffic jams and the radio reported over 400km of traffic jams just for that area in the morning. Today its snowing like buggery here and no problems.

[Mich the Tester]

Germany wasn't much better yesterday. It started snowing just north of Frankfurt and took me 6 hours to drive 300km to work as some ****wit of a lorry driver (probably East European with bald tyres) decided to take out a bridge. There wasn't much snow and what there was, was quite heavy but localised so that you had 10 cm around Duisburg but 20km away there was bugger all. In NRW there were quite a few 20-30km traffic jams and the radio reported over 400km of traffic jams just for that area in the morning. Today its snowing like buggery here and no problems.

That would cause chaos whether there's snow or not.

[d000hg]

Meanwhile we're booking a holiday in Finland including a night train from Helsinki to the Arctic Circle where it is -15, which is unlikely to be delayed.

[Old Hack]

I flew to Finland a couple of years ago, just south of the Artic circle, -32, snow everywhere and was heavily snowing. Flight back to East Midland was delayed, as they had a few inches of snow in the Midlands.

Gives you a kind of perspective.

[Spacecadet]

This morning, longest total traffic jams in the Netherlands in history as the whole country was coated in a few cms of snow; 1400km total, that's 400km more than the previous record from 1999, a day which I remember well, having travelled from Zwolle to Den Haag, a distance of about 130km in 6.5 hours. This morning I managed the 94kms to permieHQ in 2.5 hours, so I was lucky. But this time, half the trains were cancelled (the new super duper winter rail policy is to deliberately cancel half the trains when it snows) and nobody from the Ministry of Transport on the news seems to connect the facts 'trains cancelled' and 'record traffic jams'; maybe it's because the broadcasters are mostly public employees who wouldn't want to lay the blame on other public employees. Maybe it's 'coz they is thick.

Now I know there are going to be delays with snow; it's not Switzerland or Norway or some other highly efficient, well run, hard working little country, but come on; cancel half the trains, watch the traffic jams grow and then advise people not to go on the road 'because it's very busy'. I noticed as I arrived that the only other people in PermieHQ are one of the fit secretaries who lives around the corner, yours truly (formerly self employed and currently setting up a new BU in which I will have a share), the boss (who owns the company) and two BU directors who have shares. Is it some coincidence that the only people to turn up are those who either live nextdoor or have some direct stake in the firm's success, i.e. feel the pain in their pocket if they don't bother to turn up?

Is it a coincidence that the people who decide to cancel half the trains don't actually need to run any trains to receive their salary and gold plated public sector pension?

Rant over.

Surprises me, I'm constantly being told that the rest of Europe copes fine with snow

[d000hg]

Surprises me, I'm constantly being told that the rest of Europe copes fine with snow

The parts that get it regularly, presumably Holland doesn't.

[Mich the Tester]

The parts that get it regularly, presumably Holland doesn't.

No, not regularly, just a couple of weeks every winter. According to our transport minister a few lost working days each year in a country with a GDP of about 5 or 6 hundred billion doesn't justify spending a few million more on preparing the railways for snow.