Police warn motorists to stay safe as rain batters South Essex (From Basildon Recorder)

Every time we have so called 'heavy rain' the roundabout at the A127/A130 floods! It brings Rayleigh to a standstill, bad design to start with and lack of maintenance of the drainage.

Never seen traffic so bad in Westcliff/Southend. So many people turning round and looking for alternative routes out of it that even the minor roads were jammed. People late for hospital appointments which will throw their system out for the day too. What annoys me is that when the traffic is bad drivers get selfish not letting others out and it just gets worse. If everyone had let just one car out in the small roads around Kent Elms this morning then the gridlock would have loosened far quicker. How can so man cars pass such long queues of elderly people standing at bus stops without offering lifts? Whatever happened to our sense of community?

can I have my rain battered Essex deepfried?

took 2 and a half hours to get to the bottom of hambro hill, turned off at kent elms at 7.20 this morning cause of traffic. all I wanted to do is go to Uni in chelmsford, no chance though everywhere was at a standstill, gave up at 9.45 and turned round to come back home. Ill spend the day at home writing an essay

I bet they still took Sadlers Farm roundabout down to one lane at 9:30am during the chaos!

Just to add to the story, I travelled from Benfleet A13 to Leigh on sea and then to Southend airport area starting at 9.00am this morning, then noticing a matrix sign around Eastwood with A127 West closed, I used back lanes to get to Makro in Raweth Lane. I left and travelled north on the A1245 and then South on the A130 to get back onto the A13 and back home, passing a second sign with the same legend as the first . The journey took 3 1/2 hours, with 2 hours spent driving. I contacted both the Poilce who did not have responsibility for the signs and Essex County Council to point out that the information on the matrix signs was less than helpfull, finally telling me that the phone could only be used to report damaged signs. My point was that the first line of the sign referred to a roundabout by name, not referring to the A127 / A130 intersection at all. Now I know that I come from the land of dinasaurs, having driven around and lived in South Essex for all but 5 of my 70 years, but if I dont know about the roundabout name who does. I was informed by the young man at Essex County Council that Sat Nav receivers do, but if the planners are assuming that everyone has one of those, which incidentally I do but funnily enough I dont need one to find my way around South Essex, how is it that they cannot accept comments about their systems on this new piece of modern technology called a phone? Their logic is non-sensical, and I suggest that they really dont care, despite spending millions of pounds on a network of displays. On a slightly different tack, I have recently driven through the Tarpots area of Benfleet on the A13, same journey. and cannot for the life of me understand the re-marking of the junction at Rushbottom Lane, it is now downright dangerous, and causing a backup on the inside lane and up the A130.whilst the outside lane was clear. And then there is the Sadlers Farm fiasco, who ever thought anyone was going to understad a road sign with a knot in it? And then there are the A13 bus lanes, which are timed to coincide with "rush hours" I assume. I have used the bus lanes when appropriate out of peak times and not even the busses use them, I have been overtaken by busses on several occasions, so who is supposed to use them and when. We seem to have a bunch of theorists in charge of Benfleet Traffic Management who dont seem to have ever stepped outside their offices.
Roger Mullender