Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 198 total)
  • Cars are killing us. Within 10 years, we must phase them out
  • Drac
    Full Member

    Oh don’t be such a hypocrite Drac. I bet none of you ambulances are electric.

    Of course not but my car is a hybrid.

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    Is this not Monbiot’s point? We need to make this infrastructure and legislation exist.

    Whoops, yes it is. Nothing in that article to disagree with tbh, numbers may be debated but at the end of the day you are talking semantics.

    My point was that pulling out the stick before you even have a carrot to dangle is just counter productive and sets people against the idea.

    Kerley – I’d love it if it was just rural that was the issue but we’re hardly remote in North Ayrshire, we just have a crap service. And no, I don’t think your idea would work but not for the reasons you imagine. The existing infrastructure is either oversubscribed, unreliable, inconvenient, infrequent or a combination of all of the above so until that’s sorted you would be winning nobody over.

    bails
    Full Member

    Squirrelking: you’re right when you talk about legislation. The only place where buses are controlled by local government is London, they were deregulated everywhere else in the name of competition and efficiency. And what’s happened?

    But everywhere outside London is banned from doing the same thing that London does, even when it’s pretty obvious it works.

    Tom Forth writes some interesting stuff on this topic, e.g https://www.tomforth.co.uk/learningfromlondon/
    It’s really interesting when it starts to tie back to productivity*. The reliance on inefficient private motor transport is part of the reason for the productivity gap that leaves most UK cities behind London and their European counterparts. If we fix that we can make ourselves healthier, happier and richer, but most people (not on here necessity, but the general public) don’t want that.

    *And how much did the feeling that London was getting loads of benefits while the rest of the country got left behind feed intob the B****t vote?

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    rsl1
    Free Member

    Interesting seeing this article played out in real life (or at least an internet forum)

    https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-31/september-2018/yawning-apocalypse

    “A pig ate his fill of acorns under an oak tree and then started to root around the tree. A crow remarked, ‘You should not do this. If you lay bare the roots, the tree will wither and die.’ ‘Let it die,’ said the pig. ‘Who cares so long as there are acorns?”

    mogrim
    Full Member

    “A pig ate his fill of acorns under an oak tree and then started to root around the tree. A crow remarked, ‘You should not do this. If you lay bare the roots, the tree will wither and die.’ ‘Let it die,’ said the pig. ‘Who cares so long as there are acorns?”

    That was clearly written by someone who’s never been outside a city.

    kerley
    Free Member

    The existing infrastructure is either oversubscribed, unreliable, inconvenient, infrequent or a combination of all of the above so until that’s sorted you would be winning nobody over.

    Not in the towns close to where I live (Christchuch, Bournemouth, Poole). A lot of reliable buses (never oversubscribed), train links and so on yet the areas have some of the worst traffic in the UK.

    I still don’t think car users would use it even if it was free though as it still doesn’t pick them up from their door and drop them to exactly where they are going. Even with reliable buses there is still a big element of walking (in rain and cold) and the journey taking longer because of all the stops and indirect route to where you are going.
    One way of stopping car use would be to not allow it.

    locum76
    Free Member

    I agree with the op but a society change is required and that will take a generation or two. I used to live in a cottage near the m8 where I was fortunate enough to be able to walk to work. On the walk home I used to laugh at the madness of all the single occupied cars stuck in a jam heading west in one carriageway and east in the other. Thousands of people heading from Glasgow to Edinburgh for admin sector jobs and thousands of people heading from Edinburgh to Glasgow for admin sector jobs. The mind boggles. Each driver determined to forge out a unique existence.

    I now have a job in the city as social enterprise manager. I drive to work. Alone. i am Borg.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I think the only way to do this is legislation and investment. Both things that modern neoliberal governments hate.

    scotroutes
    Full Member

     I would like to experiment with free public transport for 6 months to see if even making it completely free drives up use

    It was said during the Edinburgh Trams fiasco that it would have been cheaper to simply give everyone in Edinburgh a free bus pass – for life. Thing is, even with significant restrictions on car use in parts of Edinburgh, the existing buses were already causing traffic jams of their own. Many Town centres still suffer from roads that weren’t designed to handle the number of people moving through them. It will take draconian private car restrictions and a more widespread move to remote working as well.

    thegeneralist
    Free Member

    have to drop and pick up my young daughter from the nearest school

    Crumbs. Words fail me.

    Have you ever heard of a thing called a school bus?

    bails
    Full Member

    Many Town centres still suffer from roads that weren’t designed to handle the number of people moving through them

    If those people were mostly on bikes, trams and buses then there wouldn’t be as much of a problem. The issue is they can’t cope with the number of cars moving through them. The solution is either to get some people out of cars for some journeys and turn our city centres into this:

    or to accommodate the cars and turn our city centres into this:

    Malvern Rider
    Free Member

    The fable of the yawning pig is very fitting. It was an adaptation, here is a translation:

    A Poem: The Sow Under The Oak Tree

    A poem by Ivan Andreyevich Krylov, translated by Yana Kane

    Beneath an oak a sow pigged out on acorns,
    Then napped under the shady canopy,
    At last, refreshed, she set her snout to digging,
     Baring the roots that fed the ancient tree.

    “Stop! Stop!” called out a raven from the branches.
     “The oak tree’s roots are damaged when you dig.”
    “What do I care if this useless stump does wither?
    Acorns are all I’m after,” said the pig.

    The oak tree’s voice then joined the conversation.
    “Ingrate!” said to the swine the mighty tree,
    “If you could lift your snout up from your grubbing,
    You’d see that all the acorns come from me.”

     ——-

    An ignoramus mocking education,
    Scoffing at science, is blind just like that sow,
    Failing to see that on the tree of knowledge
    Ripened the comforts he’s enjoying now.

    This far down the line the argument is pretty much academic. The pig gave up yawning a while back when he mistook a talking raven for ‘Chicken Licken’. A fierce lazy online comment-war ensued and raged for decades.

    Online pig-wrestling is now the most popular global sport, even though it remains unrecognised. Time was when the pig would just keep on yawning and sleep on straw. Now he takes the straw and constructs facile arguments with it. Then shits on it, claiming victory over the raven whom he now refers to generically as Chicken Licken My analogy is stretched, and my day is already ruined.

    bigjim
    Full Member

    From my high horse here in Copenhagen it’s threads like this that make me think the UK is totally doomed.

    jam-bo
    Full Member

    From my high horse here in Copenhagen it’s threads like this that make me think the UK is totally doomed.

    it’d better be a high horse. you’ll get wet feet before we do… 😉

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Crumbs. Words fail me.

    Have you ever heard of a thing called a school bus?

    You’re assuming there is one.

    We used to put our daughter on the bus when she was 5/6. It took nearly an hour each way, which is a bloody long time for a little kid. Then they cancelled it due to lack of funding.

    gobuchul
    Free Member

    Has anyone spent anytime in the Netherlands?

    Great, probably the best, cycling infrastructure, good rail network, lots of goods carried by the canal network. Sounds perfect.

    Their motorways are still completely overloaded, just try and drive past Rotterdam at rush hour.

    There is more to the solution then just telling people to ride bikes.

    jam-bo
    Full Member

    You’re assuming there is one.

    We used to put our daughter on the bus when she was 5/6. It took nearly an hour each way, which is a bloody long time for a little kid. Then they cancelled it due to lack of funding.

    closer school?

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    You’re assuming there is one.

    Or as this was started as a 10 year plan thread maybe we could get them back, hour each way seems tough but it’s quite normal for a lot of rural kids who’s parents can’t take them to school. Certainly is used to be a dedicated bus so it was safe for the kids but the downside was it took longer as it was picking up people from all over.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    There is more to the solution then just telling people to ride bikes.

    I outlined a load in my post above. Lots of things can be done right now by just making it hard to drive into cities and easy to use public transport and investing in it. Every bus route should have bus priority, no bus should be stuck in traffic.

    Drac
    Full Member

    closer school?

    You’re assuming there is one.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    closer school?

    You’re assuming there is one and you can get into it. And haven’t moved house in the meantime and don’t want to take a fragile kid out of a positive environment, etc etc. There are lots of exceptions.

    NB I’m not justifying the status quo. If I were in charge there’d be free school busses everywhere based on need not profitability.

    ransos
    Free Member

    You’re assuming there is one.

    It was a question.

    samunkim
    Free Member

    Get rid of bloody Moto-X bikes first

    Drac
    Full Member

    It was a question.

    You’re assuming I didn’t know that.

    DrJ
    Full Member

    I’ve lived in places with great public transport systems (relatively speaking), but they were rubbish in reality – expensive, overcrowded, and rarely went exactly where you wanted them to. That’s not to say they don’t have their place, but to suggest that you could replace 90% of car journeys with public transport is ill conceived and unrealistic, even with a limitless budget.

    Really? I live in London and before that in Copenhagen and haven’t owned a car in years.

    cromolyolly
    Free Member

    It’s interesting – recently some cities challenged their elected representative to use nothing but transit for a week – most failed miserably. Many said that was because they would have been late for an event/appointment. Or they needed to go to a shop the other side of the city and it would have taken hours. Or they couldn’t leave work and get to their organic hot tantric yoga class on time. They completely missed the point – to experience what they can and can’t do on public transit. You have to change your lifestyle. That’s the larger problem. You simply cannot build enough transit to live like you do with a car. The lifestyle changes have to come firat otherwise it will fail.

    Car ownership reductions disproportionately affect the poor and differently abled. Cheaper household supplies are often available in places further away for instance.

    Plus if you think hybrids and electrics are less polluting, think again. They are worse to make, need batteries we don’t know how to reuse or recycle and even if your electricity isn’t fossil fueled it might be nuclear and burying that isn’t sustainable in the long run

    Edukator
    Free Member

    need batteries we don’t know how to reuse or recycle and even

    Incorrect, there are plants operating for recycling lithium ion batteries. The one in France was on the news recently. The get 70-80% of the lithium back and the residue is incorporated into building blocks.

    Renault have a power storage unit using old car batteries.

    There is higher embedded energy in EV production but an ICE car always overtakes it in emissions over lifetime according to the Fraunhofer institute even with the brown-coal heavy German electrity production. UK electricity is 32% renewable and less than 50% carbon producing.

    An small ICE car burns about 8 tonnes of fuel in it’s life in addition to the energy used to make and recycle it. And in cities people breathe a significant amount of the resulting exhaust gas. None of those 8 tonnes of hydrocarbons are recycled.

    Could STW start a reporting system for people who consistently post “fake news” and have a three counts and you’re out system, please.

    Edit to add a link so I don’t get accused of fake news – first Google result for recycling lithium bateries:

    Un nouveau processus pour recycler proprement les batteries au Lithium

    tuboflard
    Full Member

    But everywhere outside London is banned from doing the same thing that London does, even when it’s pretty obvious it works.

    Not entirely true. Areas which have combined authority Mayors (Manchester for example) have the powers to introduce bus franchising if they choose. The challenge is that it’s not necessarily the golden bullet people think it might be, as it still requires significant public investment to run services to the places and at the frequency that you’d like. But, if you’re prepared to pay for it then there are definite advantages.

    scotroutes
    Full Member

    And nowhere outside of London gets the same amount of central government funding for its transport infrastructure.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    It’s interesting – recently some cities challenged their elected representative to use nothing but transit for a week – most failed miserably. Many said that was because they would have been late for an event/appointment. Or they needed to go to a shop the other side of the city and it would have taken hours.

    See here is the shocking point, it’s rather obvious….
    Private cheap car ownership has left us lazy and wasteful.

    Public transport will not replace a car but keeping this one bonded in a city context will do a lot more, a lot more efficiently.

    You want to travel to the bargain shop? I can get it delivered from Amazon at a good price.

    Long term views here – ie stuff we can implement
    Shared car schemes – ie a number of easy to rent cars that are parked in communal areas, sensible limits on individual renters (ie can’t just block book it) that allow you to do the infrequent need a car jobs (I have access to 3 schemes now and have registered with one)

    Again public transport priority over private cars in all situations, watching a bus try and deliver 40-60 people somewhere while crawling behind hundreds of single occupancy cars is depressing.

    Subsidised public transport for low income families, make it free for kids, make it free for job seekers.

    Ban single occupancy cars from within cities during peak times while increasing park and ride near outer stations and tram terminals – and yes you choose to live in the country you can handle the car parking out there.

    Sort out school catchments – you go to the one where you live and transport is provided – make the incentive to improve schools for all not just move kids to the nice one.

    We tackle the cities, then the town and protect people in rural areas the best we can, or more realistically we protect rural workers who are low paid and need to live locally, we don’t assist those who choose to live miles from where they work despite it having no transport option but a car – that is your choice.

    A final point and one that starts to ring true as I’ve been interviewing recently, there does appear to be some correlation between home ownership and car ownership

    Of course it would be overly simplistic to call that cause and effect there are many factors but a system where home ownership is the aim leads to a less flexible workforce, it means you need to make big decisions when changing jobs – simply read the threads on here about new job/rubbish commute dilemma. The cost or moving is huge, it stops people being able to live in the best place for the job they are doing, a massive increase in remote working will help this but fundamentally are we going in the right direction?

    molgrips
    Free Member

    There are other reasons for not wanting to move house besides having to sell it. Most of the renters I know want stability and permanence. Home ownership isn’t just about avarice as many on here seem to suggest.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    There are other reasons for not wanting to move house besides having to sell it. Most of the renters I know want stability and permanence.

    Which is achievable, most renters I know what housing at an affordable price 😉 That ship sailed though.

    and ooo new word leaned today “avarice” did I ever suggest is was?

    For me certainly if I’d owned houses along my moves through life the only person who would be getting rich are estate agents.

    The opening of this thread was about getting somewhere better in 10 years – do you think things will be better if we keep going the way we are?

    Edukator
    Free Member

    We paid a more for a small house within an easy walk of the station, bus hub and Madame’s place of work than we would have for a flash place with a swimming pool and half-hour commmute. It wasn’t just an eco-choice though. We also considered schools, access to trails, distance from a public swimming pool (we can hear the tanoy), access to services… . And we had enough in the bank to pay more, some don’t.

    Very few pepole choose their home just on the bassis of transport and short of state attribution of property it’s not going to happen.

    kcr
    Free Member

    Their motorways are still completely overloaded, just try and drive past Rotterdam at rush hour.

    And how much worse would things also be in urban areas if the Dutch didn’t have their cycling infrastucture?

    I’ve spent a bit of time cycling around The Netherlands, and it was a pleasure. I wish we had the consensus and the leadership to do what they have done.

    cromolyolly
    Free Member

    You want to travel to the bargain shop? I can get it delivered from Amazon at a good price.

    You can but it isn’t any more environmentally friendly than going in your car.

    cromolyolly
    Free Member

    Incorrect, there are plants operating for recycling lithium ion batteries. The one in France was on the news recently. The get 70-80% of the lithium back and the residue is incorporated into building blocks.

    Forgive me I omitted the ” in an environmentally sound way” I assumed from context that would have been obvious. Shipping it to China on ships, storing nasty chemicals in building blocks which will eventually be released back into the environment, and the inevitable fact that some unscrupulous persons/companies will try to save money by disposing illegally mean that we haven’t found the answer.

    Honda has had cars on the road which are ICE which leave the air cleaner in their wake than it was before and have done for over 10 years.

    Energy produced from fossil fuels produces carbon even cleaner burning natural gas. EV cars get these than a third of the quoted mileage in cold climates thus need recharging more often using more power etc. Etc. I would have thought you would realise one source is insufficient.

    Could STW start a reporting system for people who consistently post “fake news” and have a three counts and you’re out system, please.

    If that is addressed to me you can stick your slander (or libel, doubtless you’ll do some sole source research and tell me which) and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, sunshine. I’m surprised with all the absolute bollocks you spout regularly and on the other car thread in particular that you’ve got the nerve to acuse anyone else of fake news. I hope to Christ you aren’t teaching anymore and that the pupils you did have have been deprogrammed.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Even with reliable buses there is still a big element of walking (in rain and cold) and the journey taking longer because of all the stops and indirect route to where you are going.
    One way of stopping car use would be to not allow it.

    So you’d force people out of work to satisfy your dictatorial attitude to private car use? I’m lucky to have the job I’m doing, there is very low unemployment around here, so you’d prefer I had a journey to work lasting over two hours, probably closer to three on the bus, if there was even a bus in the early hours of the morning, rather than the twenty-twenty five minutes in my car, at far greater cost?

    We tackle the cities, then the town and protect people in rural areas the best we can, or more realistically we protect rural workers who are low paid and need to live locally, we don’t assist those who choose to live miles from where they work despite it having no transport option but a car – that is your choice.

    Christ on a pogo stick, the arrogance of the man! Stalin would be proud of you. I DO NOT CHOOSE to live miles from where I work, it was the only job I could find after the last one ended, leaving me with barely any savings and a mortgage and other bills to pay, and I’m bloody luck to haveone that’s fifteen miles away and relatively easy to drive to.
    Your obsession leaves you blind to the realities of life outside of cities in the UK.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    Your obsession leaves you blind to the realities of life outside of cities in the UK.

    Which is why I said we start in the cities, make heaps of improvements, increase levels of service first. This is about a vision for the future where we can make improvements to the way the world works. I completely understand that it’s important to make improvements before coming in with the stick.
    It’s also why my post made a really clear distinction between what we can do in cities right now and what we can try and do further out over time. But don’t let that cloud your anger, this entire idea is to make your life harder and to target you individually.

    Your obsession leaves you blind to the realities of life outside of cities in the UK.

    Try reading more carefully there, I’m currently sat in a very rural spot 7 miles from the nearest town, 35 from a city, public transport is shocking out here, it’s worse than when I grew up here, it needs some significant improvements – it’s the area I mentioned above with a rail line that could make a huge difference to people moving around here and stop heaps driving into Newcastle to queue and park every day.

    To make any of this happen needs significant investment over 10-20 years but it needs to be started and changed need to be made from now going forward.

    How would you change things?

    Edukator
    Free Member

    Honda has had cars on the road which are ICE which leave the air cleaner in their wake than it was before and have done for over 10 years.

    Laughable. Peugeot claimed the same so some journalists turned up at the tech centre well prepared. The people in the tech centre refused point blank to breathe the exhaust gas from the car they claimed cleaned the air.

    jam-bo
    Full Member

    How would you change things?

    Hover boards

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