An ordained plan or random chance?

Yes indeed, a question which has occupied theologians and philosophers for centuries in the context of the origin of the species. Now would they like to turn their attention to Britain's transport network? Here, in my own city of Birmingham, we have just enjoyed a Bank Holiday weekend when all the happy souls free from the rigours of work want to get out and about for the weekend.

So what happens, two of our most popular railway local railway services are halted because it has been decided that this is the ideal weekend to do work on the tracks. OK fine, so if we want to go shopping in the city we take the bus or the car? Well there are much reduced bus services because the staff all want a holiday too, so its the car..which our political masters do not want us to use because of pollution and climate change etc etc.

Well thats OK though because all roads into the city centre are closed to traffic because of a fallen bridge ...oh and more importantly... a climate change demonstration! Oh well so the city shops, which gain a lot of income on Bank Holiday Monday might as well close then!

So, trainless and busless, we take our cars, clogging up the atmosphere as they do, with our families and kids to some area outside the city for a day out.

Ah, but of course Bank Holidays are an ideal time to repair lanes on all the motorways, so the hundreds of cars are routed down one or two lanes with vehicles heating up, dad getting irritated, mom getting fraught and the kids screaming in the back. Eventually thanks to the careful coordinated planning which has tried to make our Bank Holiday such a pleasure, you reach your destination an hour later and it should have taken and having used twice as much fuel, pumping all those nasty carbon deposits into the atmosphere.

If there is any regional planning at all it seems to be designed to benefit the local authority and the Network Midlands traffic management rather any any coordinated attempt to minimise Bank Holiday disruption for the rest of us. Surely its clear that people are going to want the trains, the buses, the motorways to get out when they are on holiday, yet there seems to be no cognisance of the fact. Why can't roads be repaired at night - as they are in America, for example - when there is little traffic on the road? Because we're British and no one complains.

Lesson to be learned? If you live in Birmingham, forget about going out on Bank Holiday Monday..just curl up with a good video and let the world pass you by. I did!