Safe Speed Forums

Why can't you build your way out of congestion? If Lyndhurst had a bypass, there would be no congestion on the A35 through the town.

If the A31 from Southampton to Bournemouth was a motorway instead of a rather inadequate dual carriageway, a lot of the through traffic wouldn't be there in the first place.

I appreciate that with the best will in the world dense urban areas may be very hard to de-congest, but saying that "you can't build your way out of congestion" simply doesn't apply across the board in the way that a lot of people would like one to believe.

It's simply a generalisation used to justify lack of investment in transport infrastructure.


EDIT: wrt graball's last post, I must be getting very cynical: every time I see a local council sign promising imminent "road improvements" I shudder, as it almost invariably is an "improvement" that makes my journey more difficult henceforth (more traffic lights! chicanes! Oh good!).

Yes, in general, you can build your way out of congestion on interurban links. There are also plenty of New Towns - Milton Keynes in particular - that don't experience significant congestion even in rush hour.

Of course you can't do so in large cities like London or Birmingham, and that is where public transport does show an advantage. But that doesn't mean it's a panacea everywhere. And even in large cities you shouldn't be trying to restrict motorists wherever possible.

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"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

Of course it does. Why do you think that peak time fares are so high if not to discourage use?

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I live near Telford , which, I believe, was built around the time of Milton Keynes and up until about 5 years ago used to boast about it's free flowing traffic and lack of congestion.....BUT, in the last five years virtually EVERY road "improvement" has meant long queues which never used to exist before the "improvements. Many of the extra wide pavements that I talk about aren't in the dense urban areas but in the semi rural areas between towns and villages where the nearest shop or school may be about a mile away, so it's nothing to do with "improvements" for pedestrians.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Is it? Take away the need to check a route is safe to use often enough and it becomes an ingrained habit not to check. This leads to the situation I saw today.


Why not? We need all people, whatever their mode of travel, to be aware of the risks involved. Particularly where different modes come into close proximity. To pile the responsibility for the safety of all onto one group is counter productive. Today's peds are, in all probability, tomorrows vehicle drivers. If they take the ingrained habit of "somebody else is watching out for my safety" into a vehicle we are heading for a disaster. That IMO is what is happening now.




In other words you are stuck "between a rock and a hard place" so want to pass the responsibility for an answer to somebody else.

But to apportion that responsibility according to the danger they pose, to the potential damage they can cause, and ton the amount of training required of them is entirely reasonable. And under those criteria the responsibility must fall almost entirely upon the driver.



If they take the habit of assuming that car drivers must always show extreme care and consideration towards vulnerable pedestrians into their future driving, then we will have the antithesis of a disaster

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

This is not "reasonable". All road users have a responsibility to act in a safe manner. An "untrained" pedestrian may cause a driver to swerve into another car by walking out without looking. The potential damage that can be caused is immense. Your criterea are wrong.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

All adults have a responsibility to look after themselves and others, the "i'm all right Jack" attitude is what causes dangerous situations.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

islands dont seem to stop people overtaking me on the wrong side of them when i'm cycling !

(specifically this section of road link which for some reason has them every hundred yards or so! more often than not i have to ease off to aid an overtake rather than risk someone forcing their way through at a pinch point)

Andover's another good example. Breeze to drive in to; I can commute to the centre for 0900 in an hour from Sherborne if I wish.

Building your way out of congestion _can_ be done.

I agree with you here. Yes you know it's coming. However, in the real world it is rare that good habits are learned by poor training. Teach all people to take responsibility for their actions and we may be able to move in the right direction, as far as road safety is concerned.

Nearly all vehicle drivers are peds to a greater or lesser degree. Many drivers ride bicycles. They majority are aware of many of the risks experienced by peds/cyclists. Not all peds/cyclist are drivers. They may or may not understand they risks posed by vehicles or the problems they give to drivers by erratic behaviour. Better training to all groups and we may be able to get back to the safest roads in the world.

I think it's probably more complex than that involving stuff like 'desire lines'. Either way I still don't think it's just to spite motorists!



I think the key bit here is "IMO". IMO this isn't what is happening at all, I see it as redressing an imbalance between modes of transport.



Well, yes this is true! But it's also true that the Highway Authority will be able to answer your question far more thoroughly than me!

RE:"Building your way out of congestion" - It doesn't work, people simply travel further and clog up the roads again!

All the New Towns suggested have been designed with the private vehicle in mind (Milton Keyes etc.) and will eventually end up with congestion as further development occurs (assuming uninterupted car use growth). It's a case of the network getting overloaded again, but in the case of New Towns the network has been designed with a larger capacity from the outset.

With regards to bypasses, it's just transfering congestion from one place to another. Sure local congestion is reduced, but another bottleneck further down the line ends up with the traffic jams. The only solution is bypasses everywhere, or for people to start thinking about other ways they can make their journeys. It's not rocket science!

No. You are right, it's simpler than that. There are a finite number of drivers in the UK. If they all drive 16 hours per day this dictates a maximum road space requirement to accommodate them. This is a finite quantity of roads. All you have to do is build them. This is what I mean about "not being able to build yourself out of congestion" being logically wrong.

You can advance other arguments againsy road building (such as social engineering or control of where people travel) but the congestion argument is just plain wrong.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Okay, you got me there! it's not very pratical though is it? Maybe I should've said "You can build yourself out of congestion, but it's not very easy, cheap or practical, and just creates a myriad of other problems in the process".



Thanks!

The other message that comes out of "people simply travel further and clog up the roads again!" is that somehow allowing people to do what they wish is a Bad Thing.

Cars have given people huge levels of personal freedom, compared to what they had before. When I was a child, I met old people in my village who had rarely been more than fifteen miles, and as a result had led very limited lives. You would struggle to meet people like that now. This is undeniably a positive thing.

The same could be said about each improvement in transport technology since the turnpike. If we'd used the arguments we hear now to prevent infrastructure improvement, we'd still be living in a pre-industrial society.

I have to say I think the Swiss general should register now and reply as I think they are all better qualified than me to do so.


Switzerland is a very small country .. but seems to have pitched its balance for all road users about right. OK .. so they may topple from the 2007 top motorway slot as regards safety after 2008 disasters .. due to deep freezes in the latter quarter and off to a seriously bad start in 2009.. My wife should post.. she has the links and the lingo to explain /.

(She types as she talks.. just think sexy Dietrich type voice. .. lace stockings.. and a dress sense which lets imagination ripple.. and you have Wildy in your mind. But hands orf.. I claimed her as mine the second I saw her I am a "jealous guy" and a proud possessive one when I see others admire her sheer feminity )
#

But Peyote . you post to the cycling fora. The likes of spinny .. Howard and other ill informed claim places like Switzerland.. Holland (land strapped) as "cyclotopia")

They are not actually and if you bothered to look at the stats.. they are not quite as safe as an occasional holday maker may think

But despite my reservations as to actual and overall safety based on what I can read and understand as published by them foreigners and which my wife explains when I do get "lost in translation" - I still wonder how come UK cannot engineer decent road user situations in urban centres as the Swiss in particular do manage. (Biel/Basel/Berne record the highest KSi from trams by the way and claim this is because those on foot or on bicycle who get hit by ther trams fail to look.

I can post links. They are in foreign language though. I do understand French from school/umpteen holidays in France ..

and German? .. I learned at the Goethe Institut as I needed to know what my wife was on about most of the time

By the way I enjoy reading your comments on here and if you plan to visit the Lakes.. let us know. We would love to have a or tea with you.

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The network only gets clogged up if there is additional development above the original design without increasing the road capacity. And the New Towns do show that it is possible to design congestion-free and workable urban environments.


But, because of road improvements, you can nowadays make most long-distance journeys by car nowadays and experience less congestion and delay than you would have done in 1959, despite there being five times as many cars on the roads. In most cases roadbuilding does deliver benefits that are genuine and permanent. They may be somewhat eroded over time by increased vehicle usage, but they don't in general disappear entirely.

_________________
"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

My sister's husband works in central Manchester.


They live in Worsley. It took 15 mins to get to Worsley Brow/J13.

After some building on GREEN BELT land .. plus some other developments which the locals are still furious about .. it now takes 40 minutes.

But once on M60 and despite the crawl on the A57 - the Manchester bound in-laws say they spend just 20 mins in a slow moving crawl to Mancunian Way .. based on traffic light daftness.

Congestion? In the big towns? Hugely engineered .. and a bit of planning? Foresight? Common sense?

Reduces to zero.


The family based in Manchester were not taken in by a sudden "congestion" in the run up to the crucial vote. They noted the traffic lights changed back to normal after that vote.




Folk out there are not that daft ..

Anyway,.. in the cold weather .. I'd rather be in my nice warm car than freezing .. waiting for a bus/.train or getting wet and cold on my bicycle. I may enjoy a leisurely ride in the crisp frost or rain in the full knowledge I can thaw out in front of a log fire . with a bowl of home made soup or mug of mulled wine.. or curl up with my wife .. but that is a lot different than arriving at work.. wet throught to the skin.. chilled to the bone .. and thoroughly cold and fed up.

So . I guess I like my car.. the commuter crawl.. Sir Old Grumpo Toglet of an Irish Tel ..and its heaters

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Oh I don't know, I guess it depends on your initial veiwpoint. I'd view that to mean that "allowing people to do what they wish is a good thing, unless so many people end up trying to do it that it prevents most (all?) people from doing it".



I can't argue that cars have provided huge levels of personal freedom, but we're getting to the stage where that freedom is being restricted by the numbers of cars there are. That's also ignoring all the other problems they cause outside of congestion. It's time we appreciated cars for what they can give us, and treat them as the luxury they often are.