Warnings prevent Friday's lam
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• The predicted traffic jam nightmare of last Friday did not happen, admits TrafficMaster, the company responsible for last week's press warnings. Extra congestion, however, was reported on Thursday and early Friday morning, and the traffic peaked earlier than expected on Friday evening. This suggests that drivers might have changed their plans as a result of the national media coverage.
A spokeswoman for TrafficMaster says it wasn't as bad as the company predicted, but that there was a lot of unusual congestion around the predicted blackspot "Because we did a study for the Sunday Times we got a lot of national publicity. So many people got the message that had it not had an effect I would have been astounded. Also, the flooding may have encouraged people to stay at home," says the spokeswoman.
TrafficMaster, which has a network of sensors to detect congestion, picked up a 200% increase in calls back from the sensors on Thursday and early Friday morning. A Friday traffic peak at 5pm as opposed to the expected 7.30pm was also reported.