Safe Speed Forums

But I've already pointed out what they are supposed to be.

Are you saying that you expect there to be an official pro-public transport/ anti-car government presence on the web, lots of pro-pro-public transport/ pro-anti-car government websites; additional websites to be neutral, and no "Third Way" pointing out that:



Why not? In fact, why not several times existing levels?

Take the main radial routes into town near me:

Effectively four lane routes with pinch points.

They could have, very easily, removed the pinch points.

Instead they:

Introduced bus lanes.

Ran the bus lanes right up to junctions necessitiating a handbrake turn, or a turn using forward and reverse gears, to negitiate the junctions legally.

Built central islands.

Filled in bus lay-by's.


By removing the pinch points they could have increased the previous flows considerably.


By halving the road width, and constricting the junctions, and removing any possibility of "overtaking" vehicles casing a bottleneck they have effectively strangled these arteries.


By how many times could they have increased flow by making them full, continuous four lane roads?

By how many times have they reduced flow with their improvements?


If they were to reverse the improvements, and carry out some real ones:

By how many times could they increase flow?



Have you read the guy's CV:

He's spent a lifetime in Transport planning (before it became PC).

He claims that the large and expensive team BR built to put it's case had no answer to his points.

Are you challenging him?



That's a soundbite?!


It's quite simple, but so hard to believe your mind refuses to accept it.

Bit like the South Sea Islanders who thought that European explorers' long boats dropped out of the sky because their galleons were so incomprehensible to them that they literally couldn't see them!

It means that just one lane of motorway could handle all the traffic.

PS He gives examples somewhere of it actually happening in the "real" world, doesn't he?

Which answers your following point.

(Or am I thinking of another website?)

I'll be back!

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

Sorry, but is that supposed to be a response to my Fri Dec 31, 2004 12:41am post?

Unfortunately I'm unable to see your point.

Perhaps I need a pair of these: : ::::...0^0¬

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

"Transport alone causes 25% of the CO2 emissions at global level"

Would that be man-made?

"And air and road account for almost 90%"

Because they account for what percent of transport?

And how many times more inefficient (and so more polluting) did the Transwatch site say rail was?

This isn't another of those sites that think that energy for trains comes from (organically grown) solar panels on the carriage roofs?


And didn't I read somewhere that current CO2 levels already absorb all the available CO2 absorbable heat there is to absorb?

And that heating causes increases in CO2 levels, not the other way round?

And that cars produce an immeasurably small percentage of the total CO2, never mind of greenhouse gases?

And that the greenhouse gases have a negligible greenhouse effect in comparison to water vapour?

And that it's been far hotter with less CO2 and far cooler with far more CO2?

And it's the Sun wot warms the World?

And........


And what if CO2 does, despite all the real evidence, cause global warming, and we're heading for an ice age, and we need global warming, but we've reduce CO2 emissions "just in case" the opposite........?!



Dead Link!



Not had a chance to read, but saved for future perusal.

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

I was under the impression that you'd supplied this map to demonstrate "congested" areas with extensive rail networks, which obviously, as a map relating to conditions more than 40 years ago, it fails to do.

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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

Nope.

Neither have you provided an example of a "rural" railway that could usefully be converted to road.


Another marvellous example of going off on a tangent.

Perhaps if you were capable of greater concision in your posts you might get answers to more of your points. Unfortunately life's too short...

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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

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4135889.stm

UK makes more than 1bn rail trips

The train is fast becoming one of our favourite ways of travelling.

Commuters may rant about poor service, but Britons made more rail journeys in 2004 than for 45 years.

A total of 1.05 billion journeys were made by train this year, says the Association of Train Operating Companies.

The increase means that the public are making one million extra journeys a week.

Atoc director general George Muir said: "More people than ever are voting with their feet and travelling by train, which is good news for the environment.

"With nearly 1,400 new trains introduced this year alone and 320 new timetabled services running, we are attracting more passengers than in the late 1950s.

"It also means we have the fastest growing railway in Europe."

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling said: "The railways are now carrying more people than at any time since 1959."

Atoc said there had been increases in the number of journeys in all three categories of rail travel.

He said regional was up by 7.8%, long distance up 4.1 and London and southeast up by 2.6%.

Bob Crow, general secretary of Britain's biggest rail union, the Rail Maritime and Transport Union, said: " This is excellent news for Britain's railways and good for the environment."

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Hmm, doesn't sound much like an obsolete and outmoded form of transport, does it?

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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

Where, apart from in your fevered imagination, did anyone propose destroying any part of the current road network?

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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

Peter, it sounds like a load of old spin.

The road network is (effectively) subsidising the rail network to the tune of billions per annum, and the rail network still only manages to carry 10% or so of the traffic. Does that really seem like good sense to you?

Surely if the rail network is so loved and so needed it should pass the test of profitability. Shouldn't it? If not, then why not?

(I'm really hoping there's a good answer to this one!)

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

No form of transport makes a profit in the UK. The roads are very heavily subsidised as are airports and to a lesser extent rail. If we were to go down the road of insisting on short-term profit from everything then schools, hospitals and overseas aid would have to be cancelled. We would soon degenerate into a very uncaring, selfish and ultimately non-sustainable society.

With a tax take alone on roads of 45 billion, and less than 6 billion spent annually on roads provision, how do you figure that one George? Seriously.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Good figures Peter and certainly reflect my recent experience. The trains are improving at a vast rate and can now get things right most of the time. I rarely finish a journey any more than 10 minutes behind predicted times and the service from Nottingham to London is superb - at #12 each return inc. free tea & coffee, exceptionally good value too. The best it's ever been.

Once the railways get rid of those who are determined to destroy it with ludicrously high maintenance charges and absurd safety regulations - which simply create more danger then we can look forward to higher passenger numbers, emptier roads so those who want to drive can do so and those of us who choose to spend our time more productively (I view travel time as work time with my laptop and mobile phone) can also continue to do so.

Simply - I'll dig out the figures later but road provision is not the entire social cost of roads. One tiny example - parking provision. A house with a drive costs at least 10K more than one without. On-street parking spaces work out at about that figure as do workplace parking places. Another speed control and policing - why should residents pay for speed bumps etc when it's to control speeding motorists? Then there's the cost to the health service of all the pollution caused very local to where people breath and 3 times as much globally as diesel trains or light rail. I could go on, but that's the gist of my argument. I don't expect you to agree but I'm provoking thoughts.

The passenger numbers certainly aren't spin, and haven't been achieved through using subsidy to provide particularly low fares - indeed, people are often heard complaining about the high level of many rail fares.

I see no reason in principle why the state shouldn't fund the provision of transport infrastructure - by the same line of argument, all pavements and footpaths are subsidised. Also many road improvements in more remote areas (such as, say, all the improvements on the A9 north of Inverness) cannot be regarded as "profitable" in a strict sense.

The current level of subsidy (which I agree is much too high) largely stems from

(a) the complex and fragmented way in which the railways were privatised, which removes much incentive to operate more profitably, and
(b) the misguided public view that any price is worth paying for rail safety, which leads to much unnecessary gold-plating

In the later years of British Rail, when they had the commercially-focused Sector organisation, the overall level of public subsidy was less than a third of what it is now.

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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

I don't think you have come anywhere close to answering my question.

I don't object to public investment in transport infrastructure, but I can't think of a single reason why a transport system that's desired and well used shouldn't become a profit centre. I appreciate that there would be a need for unprofitable routes, but why shouldn't the profitable routes provide enough profit to cover the unprofitable routes?

The bottom line is that I tend to believe that the market makes good choices. If the market doesn't want rail at its true cost then we'd need some amazingly compelling reasons to waste cash providing it.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

And I tend to believe that the market makes choices that are convenient and attractive for itself. These choices are not necessarily in the interest of the overall good; many currently are, and will in future, wind up costing us dear. 'Cost' in this sense is not solely financial, there are others although I realise that money is our No1 attention getter these days.
But, sadly, our 'live for today' society doesn't care about such things.

I'm with Rigpig on this one - the *overall* cost is so rarely seen by the market spinners - and so the market (for want of a better phrase) makes misinformed choices.

Rigpig and Roger,

[this is about 40% devil's advocate by the way - I suspect there might be a case for letting the market decide to pave over the railways.]

OK. I agree. The market might sometimes make a short term choice that's against the long term interest. But in this case how does the long term interest differ from the short term interest?

It's not like strip mining or nuclear power. It's about evolving transport choices. Market driven evolution seems pretty good to me. Can anyone tell me why it wouldn't be good in this case?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

"Can anyone tell me why it wouldn't be good in this case?"

Yes - if for instance the oil dries up we have no alternative. Or the true cost of the war in Iraq is borne by the beneficiries - the motorist. Pollution levels in the inner cities would rise as cleaning up is unprofitable - why fit cats when they reduce milage and so increase costs? Where's the profit in driving safely - "the cost to society doesn't justify the few lives saved many of them are old people anyhow who are a drain on society"

If we allow profit to drive society forward we go backwards.

Huh.....We have several alternatives to Oil.....Hydrogen for example.
Brazil also uses Alcohol as an alternative...both are limitless in availability.

All the major motor manufacturers and some governments are investing in Hydrogen technology and infrastructure.

Within the next 10-15 years motoring will not depend on oil.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Actually I think the market will sort that out as well. Sure hydrogen and bio diesel fuels are expensive now, but if the oil was running out and the price went up then all of a sudden there would be enough money to develop bio diesel and hydrogen fuels - and probably money left over to come up with further alternatives.



I'm absolutely disgusted and ashamed to be British about the war in Iraq. It certainly wasn't fought with my blessing. I don't want any "benefit" at any price.



Pollution controls are a good thing to legislate (at least they are when the science is good).

Crashing is expensive and painful so there's excellent pressure on folk not to crash.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety