I’ve spent today on the site of a shortly to be built 700 pupil primary school and 200 child nursery.
Surrounded by hundreds of new homes, first 1/3 already built. 2- 3 miles flat along a river to city centre. The furthest a child will travel to the school is 1.5km.
There’s no sustainable travel plan (yet).
There’s no safe routes to school planning.
There’s no cycle lanes at all yet, or currently planned.
There’s no park and stride planned.
There wasn’t a plan to access the school other than by main entrance, with a car park and drop off area (naturally).
The focus of the design was a grand front entrance with disabled and visitor parking front and centre.
You can’t get to the new supermarket via a traffic free route, and you have to cross a busy roundabout to get to the supermarket – or walk an extra few hundred metres up the road to old underpass and few hundred metres back down. There’s no local shop/corner shop planned
The housing developer had objected to the bus going through the estate roads, as new owners don’t like the noise. Current round 2,3 and 4 of housing has no way of a bus going through estate and turning round – so unlikely to ever get a bus service on the estate.
At present the plan is to bulldoze all the trees on site, including ancient oak and Scots pine, so that the building can ‘sit in the landscape’.
All houses have garage and double drive (apart from the token few social houses)

It’s the perfect pro-car plan.

Is it me, or do we as a nation just not have the appetite for change…?

Less cars?

Less cars?

Yes. I’d like that.
😜

Cars are cheap and convenient, therefore people use them.
Houses with no garage or parking facility are worth less.
This won’t change while oil is cheap enough.
I wish it would change, but i doubt it will.

if car drivers had to pay ther full cost of their driving it would soon change – and with decent town planning the worst effects can be reduced. this sounds like awful planning to enforce car dependency.

Yes it’s dismal stuff, no steer from central govt. who are happy to bleat on about “war on the the motorist” rather than take the opportunity to legislate to engineer sustainable travel into new developments.

You cant hear the Electric buses coming past my house so that argument from the site owners is a poor excuse.

 no steer from central govt.

While this is true, planning decisions are down to local authorities. Many put in additional obligations on the developers to include sustainable transport links etc.

LPA’s are poorly resourced and big developers have deeper pockets and can always appeal to the planning inspectorate, in reality the priority is a numbers game with little thought of quality.

Sounds like where we live. It’s **** desperate 🙁

US model. Single occupant cars for all. No walk/no cycle. Cookie-cutter developments. Identical retail parks growing like mushrooms. As are ‘megafarms’ (consolidated agriculture, US-style intensive animal farms/factories)

Almost as if Henry Ford, Big Oil, Big Macfastards and Monsanto all hatched a plan to keep us fed and hyper-mobile so we could we could travel regularly to the retail parks to eat shit and buy cheap imported goods that last mere months before buying again/upgrading. Healthcare is looking like a juicy low-hanging fruit, especially the diabetes market…

We’ve been playing a barely verbalised yet cute game of ‘keep up with Uncle Sam’ since post-WW2. Once free of the EU it can and will happen much faster for investors and developers.

This won’t change while oil is cheap enough.

And it won’t even change then, because buying new electric cars will be the norm within 10 years. Has to come from Gov. who still seem unwilling to force real changes.

Don’t have the imagination, agency, legislators with the will to make it too expensive to do the wrong thing.

Individuals can’t arrange their lives to live a different way until employers, governments, developers etc start making a world where it is possible.

Why are we still planning around buses? We need a but more innovation than that.

Hear hear. The future banning of domestic gas heating is a joke in tho light!

No, we don’t have the appetite for change on any significant scale.
In Groningen, 61% of trips are made by bicycle. I find that incredible, and it is amazing that the Dutch chose to work towards that 40 years ago, and have been building since then. As a society, their heads are in a completely different space on urban planning.
Going back to the OP’s original example, it’s disgraceful that we’re not putting in cycle routes for new housing that is less than 1.5km from a school, in the 21st Century. I’m still pinning my hopes on driverless cars for the safe cycling revolution, because we’re never going to get universal cycling infrastructure.

That’s only in the city centre though. Drops outside there. Cycle infrastructure isn’t the answer either. There just aren’t enough of them and the way the housing is laid out precludes it for many.
Self driving cars are a terrible idea. Why spend all that innovation on making one of the problems even more convenient?.

The requirements for new housing developments/estates are woefully lacking in not only sustainable transport links but also energy requirements. Why are developers still not required to utilise rainwater harvesting systems, solar and wind energy generation, recyclable/recycled building materials? The list I’m sure could go on.

Additionally, there is no requirement in place for the lifespan of a new build. Your 10 year NHBA (or whatever toothless and unaccountable organisation is actually called) warranty is all the purchaser gets. I do wonder if, in 30 or so years time, insurers will ask for the date of build and adjust their premiums upwards accordingly for those built around the turn of this century.

As an aside, near to us, a new and very large housing development is to get its own new high school! Unfortunately, the school is not going to be situated conveniently within the curtlidge of the new development, it’s to be built a mile or two outside, on the site of the current park and ride car park. Yep, go figure…

It felt yesterday like the decisions made by planning perhaps 5 years ago are the issue.
The perfect alignment of pro-car planning.
At least I can fight my bit – but that bit has been made much harder by the unchallenged assumptions and lack of adherence to planning good practice.

Unfortunately, the school is not going to be situated conveniently within the curtlidge of the new development, it’s to be built a mile or two outside, on the site of the current park and ride

West Dunbartonshire?

People are lazy and self entitled. Walking takes longer than driving and my time is more precious than anyone else’s. That seems to be the prevailing attitude. It also doesn’t help that your average joe sees cycling as a sport and/or public menace. Sad state of affairs isn’t it.

Maybe it’s a good thing we seem to be discussing this every other week now, though the reactions in the last thread tell me along with the OP just how far we have to go.

That’s only in the city centre though.

It’s still an incredible level of bicycle use compared to the UK, and you have a city centre that is much nicer to travel around than most UK cities.

Self driving cars are a terrible idea. Why spend all that innovation on making one of the problems even more convenient?.

One of the biggest deterrents to cycling is perceived danger. Take out the human drivers and your existing road network becomes cycle friendly. Self drive also opens up new opportunities to sell cars as an on demand service, instead of owning your own car, combining journeys, etc, so you can reduce the total number of cars in use.

Planning is a farce. A new school is to be built here, withing 5 years. No one knows where but the three sites proposed will all increase car use.

My wife works at Ayr hospital, it’s half a mile from the edge of town, there’s a pavement all the way there, but…

To get there, you have to cross the A77, one of the busiest trunk roads in the country, at a roundabout, with no crossing, underpass, **** all. I meet her at work on a tuesday to go for a run with her when her shift ends, getting over that road is a bloody nightmare.

We just don’t have the appetite to change, too **** lazy.

It is disappointing that there is not more being spent on cycling infrastructure…there have been some new roads built near us and their idea of cycling infrastructure are wider pavements that just spits cyclists out back onto the roads at junctions and roundabouts…the very places where cyclists are mostly involved in accidents.

But there is no need to reduce cars on the road. Public transport really is not a viable option for people who don’t live and work in and in the near vicinity of cities or where they work. People should have options and alternatives, but no ‘policy’ to recude car ownership is needed. We should be getting people out of fossil fuel burners and into EV’s or at least hybirds…whcih is happening, but these things don’t happen overnight. People made the switch to diesel cars from petrol cars quickly enough, over the course of ten years, so not overnight but relatively quickly, so the transition to EV’s should be just as quick. But people need to get real about their car usage. The overwhelming majority of car users use their cars for small journeys…so excuses like “there are not enough charging points around” is just nonsense…most people’s daily car usage is well within most EV’s range capabilities, so there are no excuses for most of us to not swap over to EV’s when we next change cars…but attitudes still havn’t changed. I’m currently having this argument with my wife who is about to change her car, but for some reason just wont consider an EV. Its a battle i’m not giving up on, but so far she’s just not considering it. I just don’t understand the mentality.

On my commute to work (hmmm, I drive) there are several new housing estates going up. Not one of them as far as I can see have any kind of cycling infrastructure planned for. They are situated within easily cycling distance of the nearest large towns, but yet the main entrance in/out is onto a large fast A-road so the chances of anyone favouring jumping on a bike is minimal.

Meanwhile, there is one of the largest road development projects currently being undertaken in Europe taking place on the A14 & again I have seen no real placement of cycling infrastructure alongside this road or on the surrounding roads that are all being heavily modified.

The whole thing is a bit of a joke.

All the time, I see people on local facebook groups bemoaning the one cyclist who held them up for 5 seconds on their commute into work, while making no mention of the thousands of cars clogging up the road or the fact that they could probably have cycled their short commute themselves & taken a car off the road.

And they could add decent sustainable provision for pretty much free at this point.

Yup, the UK is broken.
I’m always reminded how bad it is when I travel around Europe.
Effective and reasonably priced train travel/public transport. Copious cycle lanes. Pedestrians and cyclist are the priority. Strict speeding enforcement.
The UK feels about 20 years behind and it won’t change.

But there is no need to reduce cars on the road. Public transport really is not a viable option for people who don’t live and work in and in the near vicinity of cities or where they work.

Car usage peaked in the 1980’s, and has stayed roughly the same since at about 85% of all journeys made. The growing wealth, cheaper cars, cheap fuel, and large road building schemes all encouraged people to live further away from their jobs. What also helped was the total lack of investment in public transport/privatisation.

This used to be a choice, but now its become in a lot of cases a necessity, due to the cost of housing, people are now forced to live further away from where the work is.

but no ‘policy’ to recude car ownership is needed. We should be getting people out of fossil fuel burners and into EV’s or at least hybirds…whcih is happening

That may help the environment we exist in, but it won’t solve the very large issue of numbers. EV’s still take up pretty much the same amount of space as a diesel or petrol vehicles on the road.

The overwhelming majority of car users use their cars for small journeys…so excuses like “there are not enough charging points around” is just nonsense…most people’s daily car usage is well within most EV’s range capabilities, so there are no excuses for most of us to not swap over to EV’s when we next change cars

Can’t disagree with that, but it still doesn’t solve the numbers game.

There has been a lack of transport policy by Government for a long time now, and recently a willful lack of one by failing grayling, leaving it “to the market” to decide, which has inevitably led transport in this country to where it is today. Jammed.

I’ve spent today on the site of a shortly to be built 700 pupil primary school and 200 child nursery.

Did you drive there ?

Askin fo’ a freeend..

In Milton Keynes new developments have Redway cycle and walking routes incorporated into the development. I think it is on all developments but do not live in Milton Keynes so others may know more. They are already miles of redroutes that get used alot.

Sounds like where we live. It’s **** desperate

Same here. Durham County Council declared a ‘climate emergency’ a few weeks ago yet are still ploughing ahead with a retail park (including a drive through KFC ffs) and have cut a load of trees down to enable the site traffic to access it across the shared use cycle path. They’ll also be out a dozen times this year to scalp the grass on petrol mowers. The place is a **** shithole and nobody seems to care.

The problem is capitalism-

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/ending-climate-change-end-capitalism

A timely release by the Department for Transport today, in light of this thread:

Future-of-urban-mobility-strategy

A pretty comprehensive report (which i consulted on for the “EV bits”) and setting out a path to a more sustainable future for transport. yes, it’s a government report, yes they are mostly useless, but it’s a step in the right direction, and shows there IS a desire to change the way we move ourselves around and break the dependency on the private car. (No, it won’t happen overnight, and probably not in my life time (/oldgit] but it’s a start, and we have to start somewhere)

The high cycle use in NL isn’t just in the city centres – I’ve worked in Eindhoven, staying in the centre but travelling to a work site in the surrounding countryside. Cycle lanes were in heavy use everywhere, and you’d come across village bus stops with multi-layer bike racks that were full (people doing bike and bus park and ride). In Denmark they just wheel straight on the trains and all taxis had bike racks.

We have one new build estate with proper bike (and bus / rail) infrastructure, but that was a massive redevelopment of a major industrial site so they probably had to jump more hoops to get permission in the first place. Everything else (built piecemeal) is woeful.

The local council is currently running a “Green Links” consultation. The spiel is “green links underpinning all development, connecting people to parks and green spaces, active ,health, leisure, home , work” blah blah blah. The reality was the questionnaire didn’t even ask about healthy transport, or biking / walking for anything other than leisure. All they want to do is justify easy hits by spending money on parks and a new leisure centre. In comments I did manage to point out the miles of proposed traffic free green links that have been dotted lines on the council cycle map for the last TWENTY years which have now been totally removed from the latest print run 🙁
The only bit that exists is a comical 50 metres of tarmac to nowhere:-

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.7125121,-2.7016723,127a,35y,281.04h,45t/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

The high cycle use in NL isn’t just in the city centres

Yes, I’ve spent a couple of holidays cycling around The Netherlands (one with young kids) and the most striking thing about the cycling infrastructure is that it is ubiquitous. Everywhere you go, there’s a route (even in the country, I saw minor roads with on-road cycle lanes that were bigger than the car lane) and it all joins up, so it’s dead easy to get to wherever you want to go. Loads of people cycling simply because it’s convenient.

Need to copy threads like this to the planners and councillors but the odd planner (and odd counciler) I have met would be keen to implement some of these ideas but is up against the system, business models and the ‘men’ (a plural of ‘the man’)

Did you drive there ?

Askin fo’ a freeend..

Rumbled.

Mebbes.

(TBF, there were three in the car and we visited two other schools in the same city. And, for some reason, there is no public transport or cycle infrastructure…)

The high cycle use in NL isn’t just in the city centres

No but the specific example quoted was – but it not clear from the way it was phrased.

It’s still an incredible level of bicycle use compared to the UK, and you have a city centre that is much nicer to travel around than most UK cities.

It is and you do unless you have mobility issues, then you are on the outside looking in, literally.

It doesn’t translate well to the broader issue because their particular geography lends itself well.

Self driving cars are so far really bad at pedestrian detection. Start by addressing whether the perception is real, then figure out a way to do away with cars period. Mini-trams?

eh. For everyone saying it’s the public’s fault, it’s really not. Much greater use of public transport and bikes in continental Europe is down to governments making it easy to switch. Give people an affordable, safe, convenient replacement to driving everywhere, and make it difficult for them to park, and they’ll use public transport. But it requires huge investment from layers of government that are equipped with neither.
So we’re at the “complain about use of vehicles while not giving them any alternative” stage – and I’m not accusing anyone on this thread of doing so, I mean more in the generalised pro-green lobbies.
So it’s totally unsurprising that people continue to use cars.

Government gets sheds loads of tax from folk driving. As they do people smoking ciggies, which kills them. Putting costs up isnt a deterrent, theres no alternative for most people as most people dont want the hassle of anything other than driving to the shops / school etc. I’ve recently worked with 3 different people who live about half a mile from work and they all drive and moan about the traffic / potholes.