The place that is: Shotton Solutions

Hello dear reader, and how are you?

This post concerns the town of Shotton, which is nearby to me and which I drive through regularly for work, church and to visit friends. Unfortunately driving through Shotton can be a hard event to go through because of the horrendous traffic there which will frequently jam up even during the middle of the day when no one should be driving really! This is partly due to a network of side streets which wind around and take time off your journey, and since evryone knows them it doesn't often speed things up to take them.

Aerial photograph of Shotton

This, unfortunately, drives almost all traffic onto the main street. In terms of covering distance it is the most efficient way to get round the town. Unfortunately it is a very efficient way to get to lots of other places too as it leads to and from several other towns in more or less a straight line. This means that half the people in Shotton are actually trying to get out of it, often with little success. The non local traffic don't know the side routes and the locals can't be bothered taking them so it can make for a very frustrating journey indeed.

Photo of mai

n street - ironically taken on a quiet day

Various solutions to this have been proposed, including stopping buses from stopping in the main street, but this merely drove more people onto the roads and those who chose to walk home just caused road rage because they were actually travelling faster than the cars. I would like to propose an alternative solution to the problem and that is to create a large overpass which would literally let cars skip over Shotton and carry on to other destinations and at the same time letting local traffic continue as normal, albeit with a few buildings missing and not being able to see the sun as much.

Artist's Impression

Such an overpass would in my opinion facilitate a much better way of life for people driving through Shotton, those outbound could pass over the town at a comfortable 70mph which lical traffic could carry on beneath with little or no interruption to their journey. I do feel that something like this will be necessary since Shotton is developed and spread out so there's nowhere to put a diversion road without going miles out of the way which is why people still go through Shotton even though they expect heavy traffic, something needs to be done - who will step up?

Disclaimer: Of course most of the facts in this post are made up and for the purposes of a joke, if you don't get that you're a bit thick really and you probably won't even read this but I'm putting it here anyway. This post is purely about the traffic situation in Shotton and means no slight to the town or the townspeople, well only a slight slight at least, the very slightest of slights I should say. All in all this has been an interesting experiment and when it comes down to it I think we will all agree fundamentally that the average price of a can of Coca-Cola should be no more than 50p.

However, when experiencing the actual reality of Shotton traffic myself and one or two other have often mentioned an alternative solution...