Can you not time your journeys to avoid those same busy times of day ?

After all, what's good for the goose ...

There's several problems here.

Those side streets will be rammed with cars outside working hours, the bin lorry may well not be able to fit down the road with cars parked both sides, the road sweeper will only be sweeping the clean centre of the road.

Small store deliveries, they often haven't got the room for a dedicated loading bank, they often use short double decker trailers, so maneuverable but still carry enough for probably 3 or 4 stores, the RDC might be 100+ miles away, they have to deliver when they can.

I suppose the simple answer is to shut the store and force people to drive to hge purpose built supermarkets, but then that deprives local folk, who may not have transport or may well be getting a bit doddery on their pins, from having a small supermarket close enough for them.

The congestion we all now suffer we voted for, our country is probably 20% overpopulated now and increasing by the day, so this is only going to get worse.

How else are the shops to be serviced, the roads to be swept and the bons to be collected, they can't do all these things between midnight and 6am because enviromental healt often impose restrictions on times of deliveries.

An anecdote for you, one of my colleagues was delivering first thing to a small supermarket at Thamesmead, the locals didn't like the lorries turning up anyway so we used to stop about a mile from the shop and trun the lorry fridge off so we could approach as stealthy as poss, it was an awkward reverse round to the back door anyway right beside a block of flats.

My mate forget to turn the fridge off, and as he's backing round with his head out the window, appropriately enough a domestic fridge falls from the top of the flats and smashes to pieces right beside him, couple of feet closer it would have took his head off.

I got use to being public enema number one when i drove car transporters, you couldn't please anyone delivering to dealerships either.

Edited by gordonbennet on 14/02/2017 at 16:10

Besides the school run I seem to be increasingly held up by what appears to be lack of fore thought by providers of services or deliveries.Surely the council contractors of refuse collection and street cleaning could avoid the the rush hour on the busiest main throughfares - after all there are plenty of minor roads and side streets. The same goes for convenience stores such as Tesco Metro/Sainsbury Local/etc. Blocking up half the road whilst unloading shows a total lack of consideration for many of your customers an others!

If you want councils/businesses to only operate from 10-4, you'll pay a higher rates/price as they'll need more staff and more vehicles to do the same amount of work in a shorter time period.

Or you could move your hours away away from the old 9-5 norm - businesses and leisure outlets are expected to be open 24/7 or a large % - it's about time everyone worked the three-shift system!

The same goes for convenience stores such as Tesco Metro/Sainsbury Local/etc. Blocking up half the road whilst unloading shows a total lack of consideration for many of your customers an others!

The thing people seem to be unaware of is these shops take several deliveries per day. If all the lorries turned up at the same time it would be alot worse.

Most companies have deliveries on time windows so there should in theory only be 1 truck there at a time but, traffic, loading delays, unloading delays can all mean that goes a bit pear shaped at times.