What is your longest short journey?

[Time Waster]

What I mean is what is the biggest differential between what a journey should have taken and what it actually took?

I have just taken 3 hours to travel on a 40 minute journey. Several stretches of the M6 were closed and the resulting traffic jam on the alternative routes took 3 hours. Coming home the M6 was open so it took 40 minutes door to door!! So this works out at the journey took x4.5 what it should have done.

Anyone beat that? I was in a van so I am talking about car or van journeys.

 

[wiggydiggy]

Do busses count? My house to work is approx 13 miles. It once took nearly 3 hours by bus thanks to a combination of poor bus routing and too much traffic. On another occasion I got off the bus about 3 miles from my house and walked back faster. Normal serice door to door is approx 2 hours.

 

[Time Waster]

Thats x1.5 the normal journey. Not fun but I think that is a common thing with public transport these days. It certainly is when a 25 minute journey takes nearly 3 hours because two once an hour trains were cancelled leaving you stuck at a station until the first train makes it there.

Then there are train replacement buses!! Oh boy they are fun. My train commute to work takes 40 minutes. When the line was broken for a few months the replacement bus took maybe 2 hours!! My first replacement bus based trip home took 2.5 hours. They later changed them into two or three routes with different stations skipped by the buses I think. I was already switched to our van by then anyway.

 

[Alex321]

Well it wasn't exactly a short journey, but my worst such experience was when I was working as a freelancer, and had a contract near Hitchin, travelled there on a Monday morning, home on a Friday.

Just after 8AM, on the M4 between junctions 13 and 14, and accident ahead had blocked the road. Halted in the queue of traffic at about 8:05. Didn't turn a wheel until about 12:15 at which point they were taking those of us in the trapped section down to just short of the accident, where they had removed the bollards from a gap in the central barrier, and made us do a U turn and go back to the previous junction (both carriageways were closed at this point). It was after 1PM before I reached that previous junction, and then drove cross country, passing the place I was working about 10 minutes after I would normally have left for the day.

I normally reached that office between 10 and 10:30 depending on traffic, and left about 5:30pm, so that was about a 7 hour delay on what was normally about a 3.5 hour drive.

I heard later that one of the vehicles in the accident was a tanker full of rubber liquid which had caught fire. The road surface had to be repaired, and it was 8pm before the Eastbound carriageway was re-opened. They didn't even open the other carriageway until 4pm.

 

[presta]

I have just taken 3 hours to travel on a 40 minute journey.

I can't recall all the times I've been held up, but those times are exactly the same as one I do remember. There were deep snowdrifts blocking the road in January 1979, and there was a long queue to get through a narrow channel cut by the snow plough. The snow was only about 4" deep out on the open fields, but the road was in the lee of a hedge and the drifts were deep enough to bury abandoned cars. I got to work about 10:30, and by 15:00 the police called to say that anyone living out of town should go home because the roads were rapidly becoming blocked again.

I would probably have been similarly delayed on 9.11.85, having taken a detour to A&E by ambulance.

Every morning's commute took about twice as long as the same journey in the middle of the night when there's no traffic.

 

[TheDoctor]

Our local Wednesday Night Ride to the Pub routinely does a 15 mile ride to a pub that's three miles away.

 

[wiggydiggy]

Thats x1.5 the normal journey. Not fun but I think that is a common thing with public transport these days. It certainly is when a 25 minute journey takes nearly 3 hours because two once an hour trains were cancelled leaving you stuck at a station until the first train makes it there.

Then there are train replacement buses!! Oh boy they are fun. My train commute to work takes 40 minutes. When the line was broken for a few months the replacement bus took maybe 2 hours!! My first replacement bus based trip home took 2.5 hours. They later changed them into two or three routes with different stations skipped by the buses I think. I was already switched to our van by then anyway.

Yeah the first time I used it I was a bit gobsmacked at how slow it was, I wasn't expecting lightspeed but I had to give it up as losing upto 4 hours (if it is on time) there and back a day just wasn't practical anymore. The only positive is that is relatively cheap - £85 approx (with staff discount) for a monthly Bus Pass.

Rail Replacement I think would have been the death of me by now if I wasn't work from home, the Transpennine Upgrade has decimated the Leeds/Manchester line to the point there are no services weekdays at the moment.

 

[CXRAndy]

A 16 mile journey taking 45 mins normally took more than 7 hours due to a sudden and prolonged snow storm. Resulting in me struggling to find a route navigable which didn't include any downhill road sections. I think in the end having gone back and forth over several times trying to bypass stranded traffic I ended with 40-50 mile trip. This was back on the early 90s between Leeds/Bradford and Keighley where I lived at the time

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Mrs SD not me:

4.25 hour journey took 13.5 hours from Orpington to SE Lakes.

M25/M6 route during snow conditions some years ago.

Absolute nightmare for her.

 

[gbb]

Sset off one day to Hunstanton, 50 miles away. Half way there, static traffic, stuck for about an hour, no way of getting out of it. When we got to the next roundabout I figured we could avoid the jam that was Hunstanton bound and find another way. Took that alternative road off the roundabout, then half a mile or so ...got stuck in another jam for about an hour.
We gave up once it eventually cleared and went home.
1 hour journey, never got there, spent around 5 hours in the car.

There's been a couple times where we've been diverted off the A1 southbound near Grantham...to be taken all round Rutland on poor A roads...which has turned a one hour trip into a two and a half one.

Longest long journey delay was coming back from Cyprus when the Iceland volcano went up the day before I was due to leave for home. I spent about another 7 days in Cyprus, luckily I could carry on working so was being paid anyway.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

About 20 mins longer than typical, when I had a particularly snowy cycle commute. The commute at the time being 13 miles one way.

 

[TheDoctor]

Well, if we're talking flights...
Went to NZ for three weeks.
They closed the border as we landed
We flew home 5 months later.
2020 was a strange year.