Safe Speed Forums

It's not about road safety as such, but this article in today's "Times" from Mick Hume (a non-driver) is so good that I thought I should share it with you:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 87,00.html

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The car represents freedom and progress, so let's build more roads
Mick Hume

I NEVER learnt to drive a car. Long before anybody had heard of road rage, a wise friend advised that I was not psychologically suited to negotiating London traffic. But I must warn you that I may get behind the wheel, as a protest against the neopuritan crusade to drive motorists off the roads.

Every Bank Holiday is now preceded by warnings of "travel chaos" and
"motorway misery". From Whitehall down, today's consensus is that too many of us want to travel too far, too often. But what on earth is wrong with that?

If you want to know why you have spent the weekend stuck on a motorway, you could have spent that time reading the Government's latest report, The Future of Transport. In his foreword, Tony Blair acknowledges that there is "huge room for improvement". "But we also recognise," he declares, "that we cannot simply build our way out of the problems we face." In the preface, Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, warns us: "We cannot build our way out of the problems we face." Then the report itself tells us that - wait for it - "We cannot build our way out of the problems we face on our road networks."

Message received. But why exactly can't we build our way out of transport
problems? That, after all, is what we have always managed to do,
transporting ourselves out of the caves, along the Roman roads, on to the
Victorian railways and our modern motorways. On Friday night, my wife drove us non-stop to Manchester, by using the new M6 toll road to bypass Spaghetti Junction - proof that it remains entirely possible to build our way out of a problem by making Birmingham disappear.

Cost cannot be the barrier. The Government takes more than £40 billion in
motoring taxes, and spends about a tenth of that on the roads. As for claims that building better roads would amount to "concreting over the countryside" , research for the RAC Foundation suggests that roads take up 1.4 per cent of our green and pleasant land, and that building enough new capacity to contain congestion over the next 30 years would require another 0.05 per cent.

What is lacking is the political drive to try to build our way out of
transport problems. There is a widespread sense that the solution must be
for people to travel less, especially by car. Thus the Government suggests
that, after ten more years of congestion, it could introduce a punitive
pricing system - charging motorists up to £1.30 a mile to discourage them
from driving at the times when they most want to. And there is no sign of
bold investments in public transport to compensate.

The Future of Transport declares that the Government's underlying objective is "balancing the need to travel with the need to improve quality of life". But since when was there a contradiction between the two? Increasing our ability to travel has been the road to progress and freedom. In recent years, our quality of life has been improved beyond measure by everything from motorway-transported supermarket produce to cheap flights to the sun - both of which are now under threat from those who want to tax us to a standstill. It is a wonder the Government has not banned Bank Holidays altogether to curtail travel and thus "improve our quality of life".

The discussion of transport and roads sums up the small-mindedness of our times, when parochial Nimbyism is triumphing over ideas of universal
provision, when giving people too much freedom is seen as a problem and the advice is to stay safe at home.

To see how low expectations have sunk, look at the "debate" about how to
improve traffic flow. Labour has the lunatic idea of painting in
preferential lanes for people sharing cars. The Tories top it by proposing
that car-sharers be allowed to use bus lanes instead. While they compete to come up with the most bonkers scheme, all agree that building bigger roads would be "madness".

Ken Livingstone epitomises the mean spirit of the age. "I hate cars," he
once whined, "I'd ban the lot." As Mayor he has set about driving motorists
off London's streets with congestion charges, bus lanes, and a list of
"traffic calming" measures as long as the M1. Like me, the Mayor of London reached middle age without learning to drive, but that is all we have in common. The political Left that I drive on is about raising aspirations and increasing freedom. Mr Livingstone belongs to that miserabilist British Left for whom socialism means "sharing out the misery", now redefined as making everybody crawl along in the same malodorous, overcrowded bus.

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Well said that man!

Also don't forget that, if properly designed, new roads are much safer than the ones they replace.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Newbury Bypass and Twyford down were in the early nineties. road building has become politically incorrect, especially if said new road has blue signs, becuase of them.

any connection to the fatality gap perhaps?

new roads these days, including motorways, have tight junctions and short slips to minimise land take, and that means slowing down on the mainlines without a real decelleration lane. the M6Toll has pitifully tight junctions, with narrow and short slips.

what's the fatality rate on the A14 between the M1 and A1? no doubt it is higher than most (if not all) rural motorways. reason-it's a motorway (pretty much) with crap junctions, no hard shoulder, just two lanes and too many junctions, with piddly roads meeting it with central reservation gaps and stuff. Improvements were proposed (most of this route was built in the 90s) but shelved. Do the government not see the benifits of making junctions safer?

We also are having more roundabouts with a spur up to a minor road (that doesn't meet the main road at level) in the middle of new dual carraigeways. seems a waste to have the roads grade seperated, and then dump a roundabout instead of proper slip roads. some pillock will be going along the road, and not see the roundabout-smash.

The lack of new bypasses (hey-just put some pelican crossings with minute long pedestrian phase every couple of hundred yards, and some gatsos-no one will use the road anymore) is also worring. large volumes of long distance traffic in urban areas, on roads with stuff to frustrate traffic is not a good road safety idea. it also pisses off the villages more (seeing as villages campaign for bypasses for years).

Simon