Safe Speed Forums

Similary you must consider the effects banning public transport and making everybody take motorised personal transport.

Massive rise in cancers and respiratory illnes (motorists are exposed to far far higher levels of pollution than cyclists or pedestrians, when we are in our cars we are soaked in pollutants).

Massive rise in unheathly lifestyle (even using public transport often involves a fair bit of walking, and stairs).

Massive rise in stress related diseases; can you imagine if every journey made that involved a bus or a train was performed from start to finish in a car, at rates of eight out of 10 cars being single occupany, utter gridlock.

Those who use public transport at the moment would not use private transport anyway. Too much hassle parking, not to mention the approaching parking-space tax[es] (my local tesco will be paying something like £540,000.00 annually).
In any case, I was pointing out that everything you do will have an adverse effect on somebody/thing.
I am quite looking forward to my free bus pass....others have already researched the route to various places by local bus....for free. Oooppps...damn: The conservatives will stop them. Sh*t. And I'll have to wear a mask...don't want to breath too many bugs !
I don't know what you drive, but most cars have filters fitted onto the cabin air supply now...my van has. It does a good job of filtering anything larger than 5 microns out of the air.
I quite like the idea of towns being no-car/van/truck/bus.......loads more room for knife-murderers to wander about in...and muggers...and more room to just look in the [empty, shuttered and derelict] shops.
Things are not as bad in towns as people like to make-out. Look at the thousands that die every year from a variety of diseases caused [or made worse] by working conditions....yet the councils are constantly harping on about air pollution causing a world-war-one death toll. Not too much about the industrial death toll (what industry we have remaining)
Swings and roundabouts old chap.
At the end of the day, we all die.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Maybe, maybe not.

1. Wasn't there a survey recently that declared that even taking socioeconomic effects in to account, people with access to cars were happier?

2. I'm told by ex-co-workers that in pre-TFL days the bus lanes were turned back into free-for-all lanes when there was a tube strike, and therefore London was a lot nicer place for the private motorist, despite all the tube regulars driving. This ties in nicely with the data a few years back that showed congestion in central London had gone up, while traffic levels had actually declined; this anomaly being due to road space being removed/jlights being retimed.

Weepy in the days of the internet .. I wonder why we all insist on office hour :scratchchinL Yes some jobs require presence in situ., buit umpteen others don't .. and I think we should really look into this properly and maybe go "flexi" more to tie in with family lives as well.

NOTE.. I am not disagreeing but offering a different point of view,. Disagreeing with someone is not disrepsect but a right. The insult lies in how they "post it". I do not think I have insulted anyone.. I have teased but I think all realised this was just "light fun" and took in the way intended ., as meant nicely only. I do not think I myself nor either of the Mad Cats have posted "intended malice". I think all know trolls and pretences have tried to assiassinate our characters because they have no counter to offer against the Higheay Code.. Road Craft and Stature Law/court cases I will say some posts have disturbed the gentle Mad Cats in particular as "optimists who believe in the good of mankind." I'm different . I;ve seen the good . the bad . the ugly and palin evil over the years Greenshed has not seen this. Nor his army of sock puppets

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Listening to the grumpy old men on these forums, you wouldn't think so.

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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'd love to read this survey, if you've got access to it I'd find it really useful.

Thinking about it, I suppose it does make sense. After all our society revolves around private motor transport so the majority of services are going to cater for this medium more than any other, ergo it's easier (and probably therefore likely to make people happier) to live your life with a car than without.

I've heard rumours that many London Boroughs are starting to treat pedestrian traffic in the same way as road traffic. That is, measuring the numbers of pedestrians and waiting times at crossings I seem to remember being at a meeting where they even demonstrated the modelling software used to do this. I suspect this will mean many more sets of traffic lights will be retimed to cater more for the pedestrian element rather than road traffic. If this is true I doubt things will be getting much better (for road transport anyway!) in London for a long time yet.

Johnny, you seem to know people in the "Transport-set" in London, do you know if there is any truth in these rumours?

Shank's pony is by far the most popular method of transport in London, so why shouldn't pedestrians be a stakeholder group when discussing the way the roads are set up?

At some junctions I can see tens of pedestrians waiting to cross the road whilst about 15 people in, say 13 cars swan by.

Unless you all think we should step out of out front door into a car and then drive up to the office door and get out.

I was under the impression my views on the relative inequalties of transport in this country were well known on here!

For what it's worth, I agree entirely with you Weepj, unfortunately many people seem to think the changes to the lighting sequences in London were done solely to create road traffic congestion. I believe they were done to reduce pedestrian congestion. Much like the re-engineering of many junctions to make life easier for peds has had a slowing effect on road traffic (inc. cyclists!).

I would personally encourage any efforts that sought to reduce the gulf between provision for motor vehicles and other forms of transport.

Sorry Peyote, I totally misread your post and mistook you for a "roads are for cars only" nut (I think I've done this before!).

At the moment on my one hour journey across London on a pushbike I spend about 10 minutes stationary at junctions and lights.

Boris said he will be rephasing lights to "increase traffic flow", which presumably he wants to see less time devoted to allowing peds to cross the road; will be interesting to see how my stopped time changes as he does this.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard- ... article.do

(note the Standard reporting is immediately biased, asserting that Boris CAN cut jams by rephasing lights)

Surely not to aid justification of the congestion charge...

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

The congestion charge was coming anyway, all the people that make assertions that Livingstone changed the phasing after he won the election to justify it seem to forget this.

London was already gridlocked on a daily basis.

Yes, no doubt, but did the phasing make it even more gridlocked than before?

<why must these most obvious points be stated>

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

You're trying to assert the lights were rephased by Livingstone to cause congestion to justify the congestion charge? But it was going to happen already, the mayor's role was given the power to introduce road charging by the instrument that created it before Livingstone was elected.

When are you saying the lights rephased to create congestion?

No worries, I've had worse!



I don't think that's true, I'd like to think it was purely for the benefit of peds. Call me naive if you like!

To help justify, not simply to justify (can you not see this simple difference?)

I don't dispute that, but it doesn't exclude the real possibility of there being a helping hand to gain support during the run up of the roll-out.


Well before the CC took effect, obviously (undo within the CC zone when it takes effect).

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

I don't think that's true, I think it was purely for the benefit of the politicians. Call me cynical if you like!

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Don't put yourself down, dc, I find you quite chirpy!

I'm sorry P, I honestly wouldn't know where to start looking. Only that it was ~2 years ago, done by a university, and the research was intended to show the opposite, lol. I didn't read it on the web, I think it may have been on R4 (?). This so sounds like I'm making it up.... I will try and chase this up.



Hell no. This was anecdotal evidence from co-workers when I worked for a company with a few dozen vans working in central London. I was quite new and was dreading the traffic to be caused by an impending tube strike. This sparked a discussion among old hands about how much better driving was when the bus lanes were suspended in prior tube strikes.

Found an article about that research.

Health: Official: driving makes you happy