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National Highways boss implies that major road building maybe ending

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MotCO

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The risk is that by bypassing, it creates more demand as car journeys become quicker and more convenient. It also makes the car more competitive against public transport. Resulting in more pollution in the long run. I'm not denying the immediate effect a bypass can have on a village, but I think the focus should be on reducing all car journeys instead.
But this assumes all journeys can be made by bike, bus or train. They can't. Holidays in towns or villages with no public transport are impossible except by car. Much food is transported by road on the A303 which presumably is cheaper than, or impossible by, rail. Local tradesman need vans to carry their equipment - you can't expect a builder to travel by bike. And so on.

Also, if traffic is so bad, why is the Government supporting, nay forcing, people to buy electric cars at all - why is it not banning all new vehicles? Because there is a realisation that traffic is inevitable and unavoidable, and with a growing population, traffic can only increase. Therefore you do need a road building / improvement programme.

There is also an economic argument - investing in a road building programme pumps money into the local economy, which is good for jobs etc.
 
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lachlan

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Because there is a realisation that traffic is inevitable and unavoidable, and with a growing population, traffic can only increase. Therefore you do need a road building / improvement programme.
Many towns and villages only have no public transport because we don't invest properly in buses and have cut back the railway network. Making it easier to drive will lead to more cutbacks.

Some journeys are unavoidable, but many could be switched to public transport or walking/cycling, and more freight could be switched to rail if we invested in the rail network. Electric cars are much better than ICE cars but they're still inaccessible to non-drivers, cause accidents, cause congestion, create tire particulates, etc.

Take a look at "pedal me", I followed them on Twitter for a while before I stopped using that website, they were always transporting things you wouldn't have thought would be possible without a car or van.
 

The exile

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But I know the road so accelerate round the corner before a straight so can be in a position and in the right gear to overtake (or not!) before they realise there is a straight bit.
There’s at least part of your answer… You don’t need to have been caught out that often by seemingly innocuous bends that get tighter as they go on to start treating what you don’t know with respect.
 

wilbers

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There’s at least part of your answer… You don’t need to have been caught out that often by seemingly innocuous bends that get tighter as they go on to start treating what you don’t know with respect.
though one option nowadays is to have a glance at the sat-nav when on an unfamiliar road to see what the corners ahead look like.


Satnav also helpful for pointing out where the speed cameras are in advance - saw a new (to me) one a couple of weeks ago, positioned just into a 30 speed limit, going downhill round a blind bend though it was well signposted as well.
 

The Ham

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But this assumes all journeys can be made by bike, bus or train. They can't. Holidays in towns or villages with no public transport are impossible except by car. Much food is transported by road on the A303 which presumably is cheaper than, or impossible by, rail. Local tradesman need vans to carry their equipment - you can't expect a builder to travel by bike. And so on.

Also, if traffic is so bad, why is the Government supporting, nay forcing, people to buy electric cars at all - why is it not banning all new vehicles? Because there is a realisation that traffic is inevitable and unavoidable, and with a growing population, traffic can only increase. Therefore you do need a road building / improvement programme.

There is also an economic argument - investing in a road building programme pumps money into the local economy, which is good for jobs etc.

Whilst not all trips are suitable to be done by modes other than motor vehicles, a little over 50% of all trips are under 5 miles, which for many should be able to cycle if the routes were suitable (I suspect that there'll be lots of replies either covering old, disabled, rural, crossing motorways junctions, etc. it's possible to do road crossing motorway junctions [unlit] by bike, I know I did so for many years).

The issue is that day too often the car is the first choice of mode of travel, when it should be the last.

As the choice should be:
- Walk
- cycle
- public transport
- taxi
- car

To get to 40% of the miles per person traveled by bike in the 1950's we'd need cycling usage to double (yes I know that it's not the 1950's but then I'm not even suggesting that we should be anywhere close to the miles by bike done then either).

A few years ago EV's only saved you about 1/3 of the carbon emissions of that of an ICE, conversely all rail use (so including DMU's and diesel locos) had a per passenger km emission rate comparable to EV's. However currently plug in cars (including plug in hybrids) total 2% of cars, so the average car emissions are a VERY long way off being even close to the average of trains.

The issue with EV's is that because the fuel costs are lower then the impact of driving that 500m trip is less than it was worth an EV, meaning that it's possible that EV ownership could actually see usage rates increase.

Someone using a train is much more likely to walk or cycle their shorter trips, and so their total average per person per km carbon emissions are likely to be lower than those who use cars.

Some have done that owning a scooter means that their journey time is not that different to a car (especially given you've got to park the car or you can take a shortcut) and can save them a lot of money compared to car ownership or using buses. They also can be carried on a train or tucked under a desk so you are less likely to need to lock them up compared to cycles.
 

Bald Rick

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And then, thinking about a bit further north up the A3, would this assumption of no new roads mean that Guildford wouldn't get the A3 bypass it's been needing for years?

to be fair, the A3 at Guildford has already had two bypasses.
 

HSTEd

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Whilst not all trips are suitable to be done by modes other than motor vehicles, a little over 50% of all trips are under 5 miles, which for many should be able to cycle if the routes were suitable (I suspect that there'll be lots of replies either covering old, disabled, rural, crossing motorways junctions, etc. it's possible to do road crossing motorway junctions [unlit] by bike, I know I did so for many years).
Whilst it might be possible to do a 5 mile each way journey by bike easily enough, given unlimited time, most people really don't have unlimited time.

A five minute journey in a car becomes 20+ minutes on a bike, 30 (plus waiting contigency) bus and well over an hour on foot.

Try doing your shopping on foot from a shop several miles away.
Youj will either go from spending ten or fifteen minutes in transit to literal hours in transit, and its likely you will have to do the journey more often because of limited carriage capacity.
You could easily be talking multiple hours lost a week.

[And before anyone says "shop closer to home" - that just translates as "get ripped off by small shop owner who will take advantage of the lack of usable competition" - there is a real reason Supermarkets became dominant in the first place]

Commutes that take minutes will take hours, this will substantially degrade the available leisure free time of a large part of society and dramatically reduce their standard of living.

Unfortunately a society as well off as our own requires massive use of motorised transport in order to exist - to do otherwise leads inevitably to a huge reduction in the standard of living of the population. And is often couched by campaigners as implictly something that will be imposed on the lower orders rather than themselves. Either you accept massive car use or devote a significant fraction of industrial output to the construction and maintenance of a saturation public transport system.
A few years ago EV's only saved you about 1/3 of the carbon emissions of that of an ICE, conversely all rail use (so including DMU's and diesel locos) had a per passenger km emission rate comparable to EV's. However currently plug in cars (including plug in hybrids) total 2% of cars, so the average car emissions are a VERY long way off being even close to the average of trains.
We are now at the point that resistive electric heating is lower emissions than natural gas heating. So the emissions from the electricity supply have absolutely cratered.

If you wanted to speed EV rollout (and it is probably the best place to deploy zero carbon electricity in the short term), you would just ban the sale of all new cars that were not electric or the equivalent of a Dacia Sandero or Volkswagen Up!

You would also dramatically subsidise home delivery of goods.
 
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The Ham

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Whilst it might be possible to do a 5 mile each way journey by bike easily enough, given unlimited time, most people really don't have unlimited time.

A five minute journey in a car becomes 20+ minutes on a bike, 30 (plus waiting contigency) bus and well over an hour on foot.

Try doing your shopping on foot from a shop several miles away.
Youj will either go from spending ten or fifteen minutes in transit to literal hours in transit, and its likely you will have to do the journey more often because of limited carriage capacity.
You could easily be talking multiple hours lost a week.

[And before anyone says "shop closer to home" - that just translates as "get ripped off by small shop owner who will take advantage of the lack of usable competition" - there is a real reason Supermarkets became dominant in the first place]

Commutes that take minutes will take hours, this will substantially degrade the available leisure free time of a large part of society and dramatically reduce their standard of living.

Unfortunately a society as well off as our own requires massive use of motorised transport in order to exist - to do otherwise leads inevitably to a huge reduction in the standard of living of the population. And is often couched by campaigners as implictly something that will be imposed on the lower orders rather than themselves. Either you accept massive car use or devote a significant fraction of industrial output to the construction and maintenance of a saturation public transport system.

We are now at the point that resistive electric heating is lower emissions than natural gas heating. So the emissions from the electricity supply have absolutely cratered.

If you wanted to speed EV rollout (and it is probably the best place to deploy zero carbon electricity in the short term), you would just ban the sale of all new cars that were not electric or the equivalent of a Dacia Sandero or Volkswagen Up!

You would also dramatically subsidise home delivery of goods.

Whilst 5 miles is a significant distance, the point being is that actually there'll be a LOT of travel which is shorter than this and so would be viable by other modes. There isn't the data easily available for (say) journeys less than 2 miles, but it's likely that it's over 10%, it's probably that over 20% are less than 3 miles (although I wouldn't be surprised if those percentages were much lower than the actual figure).

Yes there's going to be significant miles traveled by car (I've never said that there wouldn't be), however there's a lot more miles than are currently done by car which would be suited to other modes with limited delay.

Sometimes journeys are almost as fast walking as going by car, yet people still drive them (I've seen people do it and it only save them a minute or two over their day).

As for shopping, it depends on what you are buying, if it's just a single item sometimes it's better to be ripped off by paying more than at the supermarket as the cost of fuel more than covers it. Otherwise is you're needing to go over 4 miles to a shop your probably better off paying the delivery charges, especially if your time is of value to you (8*15p would be £1.20, and Sainsbury's have deliver charges from £1 for evening slots).
 

stuu

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Whilst it might be possible to do a 5 mile each way journey by bike easily enough, given unlimited time, most people really don't have unlimited time.

A five minute journey in a car becomes 20+ minutes on a bike, 30 (plus waiting contigency) bus and well over an hour on foot.
The enormous majority of those journeys under 5 miles are going to be within urban areas, so they won't be taking 5 minutes at any time, at least 12 if speed limits are adhered to. And worse in peak times. With even limited cycling infrastructure its very easy for cycling to be time-competitive with cars. 5 miles in 20 minutes is no issue for someone of reasonable fitness on decent cycling infrastructure
 

matacaster

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Whilst it might be possible to do a 5 mile each way journey by bike easily enough, given unlimited time, most people really don't have unlimited time.

A five minute journey in a car becomes 20+ minutes on a bike, 30 (plus waiting contigency) bus and well over an hour on foot.

Try doing your shopping on foot from a shop several miles away.
Youj will either go from spending ten or fifteen minutes in transit to literal hours in transit, and its likely you will have to do the journey more often because of limited carriage capacity.
You could easily be talking multiple hours lost a week.

[And before anyone says "shop closer to home" - that just translates as "get ripped off by small shop owner who will take advantage of the lack of usable competition" - there is a real reason Supermarkets became dominant in the first place]

Commutes that take minutes will take hours, this will substantially degrade the available leisure free time of a large part of society and dramatically reduce their standard of living.

Unfortunately a society as well off as our own requires massive use of motorised transport in order to exist - to do otherwise leads inevitably to a huge reduction in the standard of living of the population. And is often couched by campaigners as implictly something that will be imposed on the lower orders rather than themselves. Either you accept massive car use or devote a significant fraction of industrial output to the construction and maintenance of a saturation public transport system.

We are now at the point that resistive electric heating is lower emissions than natural gas heating. So the emissions from the electricity supply have absolutely cratered.

If you wanted to speed EV rollout (and it is probably the best place to deploy zero carbon electricity in the short term), you would just ban the sale of all new cars that were not electric or the equivalent of a Dacia Sandero or Volkswagen Up!

You would also dramatically subsidise home delivery of goods.
A pushbike is fine if you live in flat areas like East anglia. Cycle lanes in Huddersfield are virtually the sole preserve of enthusiasts. Only Leeds Road is pretty flat. All cycle lanes have done is reduce the road space here. It also rains a lot here.
 

MotCO

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Shall I get my 93 year old mother-in-law, or my niece with two young children, a bike?
 

Ken H

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A pushbike is fine if you live in flat areas like East anglia. Cycle lanes in Huddersfield are virtually the sole preserve of enthusiasts. Only Leeds Road is pretty flat. All cycle lanes have done is reduce the road space here. It also rains a lot here.
quite. I live about a mile and a half from any shops. But the town where the shops/quacks/train station etc are is 120ft lower than my house. You have to be quite fit to walk that, never mind cycle it. 3 buses a day, last one back just before 14:30
OK I do walk it sometimes if I have time. But I usually drive. walking back with 2 big bottles of milk isnt funny.
 

lachlan

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Shall I get my 93 year old mother-in-law, or my niece with two young children, a bike?
Public transport and adapted bicycles (with trailers, suitable for children) exist. Though that's beside the point. Most people aren't 93 years old and/or carrying two young kids around them at all times. How come most cars only have one person in them?
A pushbike is fine if you live in flat areas like East anglia. Cycle lanes in Huddersfield are virtually the sole preserve of enthusiasts. Only Leeds Road is pretty flat. All cycle lanes have done is reduce the road space here. It also rains a lot here.
Ebikes exist, as does public transport. Glad to here they've installed bike lanes where you are, that is the first step towards getting more people cycling
 

Ediswan

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Shall I get my 93 year old mother-in-law, or my niece with two young children, a bike?
Cargo bikes which can carry two young chldren are available, including e-bike versions. Not suitable for all circumstances, but definitely available.
 

JohnMcL7

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Also not every single trip needs to be done by bike as I still have a car myself which I use for carrying the dog or people but there's still plenty of trips can be done by bike which has significantly reduced my car usage over the years. If there was a more usable train service I'd be able to use the car a lot less but unfortunately getting a bike booked on Scotrail is next to impossible and for all the talk of dualling the A9 after many years of upgrades and improvements there's not a word on the Highland Mainline which remains a slow single line railway much of the way.
 

The Ham

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Shall I get my 93 year old mother-in-law, or my niece with two young children, a bike?

Until we changed childminders my (then) 2 year old would be carried on my bike whilst my 4 year old scooted.

My now 9 year old now loves cycling and we often cycle to get about when traveling locally.

As for 90+ year old, there's about 600,000 of them, and I suspect that few are still driving themselves, so are likely to be of almost no material impact on the number of miles traveled by car.
 

MotCO

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As for 90+ year old, there's about 600,000 of them, and I suspect that few are still driving themselves, so are likely to be of almost no material impact on the number of miles traveled by car.

So you expect anyone over 90 to catch a bus (if there is one), or be imprisoned in their house?
 

The Ham

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So you expect anyone over 90 to catch a bus (if there is one), or be imprisoned in their house?

No, that's not at all what I was saying.

I was saying that:
- there's not many (if they all own one car they'd make up just 2% of cars owned)
- very few own a car anyway
- given both of the above the overall impact of them not at all driving or all driving just as they are would be very small in the greater scheme of things
 

stuu

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So you expect anyone over 90 to catch a bus (if there is one), or be imprisoned in their house?
People who need to drive a car should continue to do so. There are many, many journeys made by car by people who are physically capable of walking or cycling a couple of miles but choose to drive instead. If some of those can be persuaded out of their cars the roads are clearer for people who have no choice but to use a car.

Or you could make up another ludicrous edge case just to disrupt any debate
 

Ediswan

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Or you could make up another ludicrous edge case just to disrupt any debate
I know there are sometimes edge case examples presented, but the two @MotCO presented were 'being 93' and 'having two young children'. Both are common.
 

py_megapixel

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I know there are sometimes edge case examples presented, but the two @MotCO presented were 'being 93' and 'having two young children'. Both are common.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 0.9% of the population is over ninety, and I'd be extremely surprised if anywhere near a majority of those people were driving at that age. There is nothing about having two young children that necessarily precludes the use of modes of transport other than driving.

So you expect anyone over 90 to catch a bus (if there is one), or be imprisoned in their house?
If catching the bus is a suitable option for their journey, yes, but I find it disingenuous to phrase it like that.

Your post is reflective of a prevailing mindset in this country - "public transport restricts my life; a motor vehicle frees me from that." This need not be the case, and the fact that it is in many places is symptomatic of transport planning, like so many things in this country, being done at the lowest possible cost and with utter contempt for the poor and the vulnerable, and no consideration for whose quality of life is being inadvertently dragged down.
 
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MotCO

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Your post is reflective of a prevailing mindset in this country - "public transport restricts my life; a motor vehicle frees me from that." This need not be the case, and the fact that it is in many places is symptomatic of transport planning, like so many things in this country, being done at the lowest possible cost and with utter contempt for the poor and the vulnerable, and no consideration for whose quality of life is being inadvertently dragged down.

Therre is a reaon for that - in this day and age, people do not have so much free time as in previous generations, and cannot afford the time to wait and catch buses, usually more than one to go to where where thay want to go. I used to work in London, and commuted by train - driving was a non-starter. However, when I changed jobs, I had to drive since it was so much quicker than having to go into London and back out by train. Buses or trains do not, nay cannot, replicate all the journeys by individuals because people have different destinations. People's lifestyles, and their life choices, such as where to live, where to work, where to send the kids to school are all based on available transport links, including car journeys. To deprive them of one option is just not feasible.

There are lots of people who need a car for work - community nurses and other health staff, salesmen/women, anyone who needs to carry a lot of equipment, eg plumbers and other tradesmen/women, taxi drivers and so on.

A further consideration is the impact on the economy if car use was severly curtailed. Anyone in the motor trade would see workloads drop (e.g. petrol station staff, mechanics, windscreen repairers, etc.). Also people would be less efficient if they could not easily travel to wherever they need to be.

does she still drive? If so, impressive…

My late mother drove until she was 88. Her twin brother, now aged 93, still does.
 

Bald Rick

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My late mother drove until she was 88. Her twin brother, now aged 93, still does.

I'm not doubting that. But i guess that the intersection on the Venn Diagram of “93 year olds” and “drivers“ is pretty small. At a complete guess, I’d say that fewer than 2% of 93 year olds still drive more than once a week.
 

stuu

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I know there are sometimes edge case examples presented, but the two @MotCO presented were 'being 93' and 'having two young children'. Both are common.
Sometimes? Almost always, this forum seems particularly bad for pedants insisting that every possible scenario is most important.

The point is that no-one has ever, ever suggested that 93 year olds should be out on their bikes. So why even mention it? There are millions of people who are physically fit and who could, with some gentle persuasion and some proper infrastructure, be able to make some journeys by means other than their cars. I have done that just as much as anyone else in the past
 

Sonik

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But this assumes all journeys can be made by bike, bus or train. They can't. Holidays in towns or villages with no public transport are impossible except by car. Much food is transported by road on the A303 which presumably is cheaper than, or impossible by, rail. Local tradesman need vans to carry their equipment - you can't expect a builder to travel by bike. And so on.
It works for the Dutch.

They do still have cars but because they have increasingly prioritized Public Transport, Pedestrians and Cyclists in urban areas since the 1970's their society and townscapes have naturally restructured around non-car transport. They have more small local shops for example instead of stupid great warehouses on the edge of town that can only be reached by car. Many Dutch people just grab a few bits for dinner each day on their way home from work, instead of doing a large weekly shop that takes two hours and needs a car to carry home.

Of course there will always be some people who need cars but the reason we in the UK are so dependent on them in our daily lives is because roads have been given priority in transport planning for decades, resulting in urban and retail development designed around car use.
 

matacaster

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It works for the Dutch.

They do still have cars but because they have increasingly prioritized Public Transport, Pedestrians and Cyclists in urban areas since the 1970's their society and townscapes have naturally restructured around non-car transport. They have more small local shops for example instead of stupid great warehouses on the edge of town that can only be reached by car. Many Dutch people just grab a few bits for dinner each day on their way home from work, instead of doing a large weekly shop that takes two hours and needs a car to carry home.

Of course there will always be some people who need cars but the reason we in the UK are so dependent on them in our daily lives is because roads have been given priority in transport planning for decades, resulting in urban and retail development designed around car use.
In fairness pretty much anyone could cycle in Holland and even I would. Try the pennines I could get maybe 1/4 mile freewheeling, but I suspect even an electric bike would bust a gut getting back.
 

Bald Rick

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It works for the Dutch.

They do still have cars but because they have increasingly prioritized Public Transport, Pedestrians and Cyclists in urban areas since the 1970's their society and townscapes have naturally restructured around non-car transport. They have more small local shops for example instead of stupid great warehouses on the edge of town that can only be reached by car. Many Dutch people just grab a few bits for dinner each day on their way home from work, instead of doing a large weekly shop that takes two hours and needs a car to carry home.

Of course there will always be some people who need cars but the reason we in the UK are so dependent on them in our daily lives is because roads have been given priority in transport planning for decades, resulting in urban and retail development designed around car use.

ah yes the Dutch. In 2019, 85% of land transport vehicular trips were by car.

source:


whereas in the U.K. in 2018, it was 83%

source:
 

AndrewE

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Shall I get my 93 year old mother-in-law, or my niece with two young children, a bike?

does she still drive? If so, impressive…
No, I would say it is worrying.
In the last month I have been told of 2 friends in their '80s who I thought were fully fit and compos mentis.
Both have given up driving after having accidents, one where a cyclist was nearly wiped out but luckily "only" left with life-changing fractures. We really need proper regular re-testing of older drivers, not just self-certification. I'm sure it woukd save money overall, but I'm also sure a populist government couldn't even consider it, let alone acknowledge the net savings which would follow.
(And all our insurance would cost less, for a start.)
 
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