Safe Speed Forums

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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

And that obviuosly doesn't take into account the massive rise in HGV traffic, over those years.

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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.

Of course one could turn the argument around and say how silly we have been in increasing our dependence on road transport to an extent that could never realistically have been matched by new road building :

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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

What would your alternative have been?

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Encouraging a more 'compact' society where people don't have the same imperative to travel - by measures such as not permitting large out of town shopping centres. Expanding the railway system and making it financially attractive to move many goods by rail rather than by road. Subsidising public transport of people. Providing good cycle facilities.

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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

Can I do my rant about population again please?

There are too many people. We’re trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot and the cracks are showing…

It’s different if you have an efficient transport system like Japan but the day that happens over here I’ll sleep with a gorilla…

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

It already is financially attractive to move goods by rail, it just isn't logistically attractive.
Large in-town shopping centres are good for those who live in town, not so good for those who do not. Lots do not.
Doing the family shopping and then trying to get on a bus is another thing that sucks.
"let the train take the strain"
I let myself be talked into going to Brighton by train. Cheaper.
Right. 14 quid return. Plus taxi fares, my share 12 quid.
Oh yeah, and the through-train stopped at 2030z....so it was a train to London Bridge, then the northern line to St Pancrap International and then home. Three hours.
Never again; Not in my [remaining] lifetime.

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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

I never quite got my head round the situation at the railway line plant in Workington. The steel mill was right next to the railway line and actually had a travelling crane that straddled a set of sidings. Despite that, I'd regularly get stuck behind processions of slow-moving extended flat-bad artics moving pitifully small bundles of railway line by road! I mean, if you can't move raliway line by rail economically, what hope is there for any other goods?!!!

(Anyway, the problem resolved itself when the mill closed. I'm told it could only produce 60' lengths and it wasn't worth upgrading it because they couldn't move the longer lengths by road... ! Hopefully that's not true)!

I am not arguing that you should use the train. I am just pointing out that, forty or so years ago, a collective "decision" was made to allow Society to develop in such away that the number of cars in use would have to increase at a rate greater than it would be practical to provide a good infra-structure for them. And that we are now seeing the consequences and must be prepared to live with them.

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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

Well, we could always have rationed car ownership like in, say, East Germany

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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

Mole. They even move railway engines by road because it is cheaper than moving them by rail. That is because they have to pay a realistic commercial rate for use of the the railway lines; whereas use of the road by HGVs is effectively subsidised by other road users and from general taxaion

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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

It isn't subsidised from general taxation as the receipts from fuel duty pay for all of the costs of the roads (and all other government transport spending) several times over.

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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

My friend in Athens told me they did that in his home town. Your entitlement was based on your regisration plate and you could only use it on alternate days.

So people bought a second car..

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Where and when this has been tried, the result has normally been high-rise inner-city ghettos, with no hope of employment within a reasonable commuting distance for more than a small fraction of its inhabitants.



..which then encourages even more traffic around in-town shopping centres.



Because of the required infrastructure and maintenance thereof, rail transport is massively more expensive for the same capacity than road transport. And the capacity is hugely lower as well - it would even be lower if you replaced every lane of every motorway, 'A' and 'B' road with railway track.



Public transport is already hugely subsidised, as well as its capacity being a small fraction of that of private transport.



All well and good for those who can and will cycle - that won't be the case for the majority.

The country simply cannot afford what amounts to expensive luxuries.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I'm intrigued by some of these arguments. I don't have any facts at my fingertips, so I've no idea what's what, but it does seem barmy that it's cheaper to move railway lines (and trains!) by road from somewhere that has a railway running through it to somewhere that's going to use, well, er, railway track!

I'm fond of both cars and trains, but I live in a part of the world that was, 100 years ago, served by almost more miles of railway line than tarmac roads! Almost everywhere I look, I can see disused track beds. Hell, 100 years ago, I could have walked less than half a mile down the lane and caught a direct train to London! I have to drive 40 miles to Penrith or Carlisle to do that now!

So why is it that trains are so expensive? Presumably the running costs per passenger-mile (or per ton of goods-mile) are pretty reasonable? I guess it's the infrastructure that costs? Right now we've seen (over the last 10 years) about 50 years' worth of neglected investment ploughed into the rail network. I guess with road transport, a lot of that investment is made by the drivers themselves when they replace or maintain their cars. Presumably rail investment will level-off now that we're getting back where we would have been had we invested smaller sums more regularly? If that happens, would it still be true to say that rail is more expensive than road?

Unfortunately, yes. The cost of the rail infrastructure is inherently far more than roads. Although, if you include the cost of cars and lorries the gap narrows quite a bit. But if you, like most people nowadays, already have a car, then you don't save anything by leaving it parked in the drive.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

That is the point of my argument. Not the straw man - that we should all abandon our cars for trains - that so many are attacking. If, in the post war years when we were planning and developing the Motorway network, we had had an equal commitment to improving the rail network, rather than dismantling it, we would have a much better transport system in this century.


The infrastructure is expensive, largely because of an old-fashioned labour intensive signalling system. That system is very safe and easy to justify on high-speed main lines. But when Beeching came to examine the economics of small branch lines he was understandably appalled to find that a typical short branch might have five signal boxes in twenty miles, each needing two or three signal-men; this to run a day-time hourly service.
His solution, closing the lines, was economically justifiably but was short term thinking and was wrong. But he was right that running large steam trains for a few passengers was not viable. In retrospect, it would have made good sense to convert these branch lines to light railways with their much less onerous signalling requirements. In effect convert the trains to trams. That that is viable is illustrated by the Manchester Metro where, out of the city zone, the trams run on old railway lines.

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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

The small branch lines were built at a time when there was no motorised road transport, and in many cases had stations well away from the small towns and villages they served. For the traffic on offer, once motor buses and motor lorries running on existing roads were available, having a separate branch line became hopelessly uneconomic (if it ever really was economic in the first place). It was lorries and buses that killed off the rural branch line, not the car.

The railways today have more passenger traffic than at any time since the Second World War, even though the track mileage is not much more than half as much. They are doing what they are good at – mass commuting into city centres, and fast inter-city travel. But it is pie in the sky to think that the small rural branch line can or should be revived.

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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

That straw-man again I am talking of how the transport infrastructure might of developed differently with different imperatives. How it should be changed from its present form is a different argument.

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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

Perhaps because we spend too much money on them!

I remember some years ago reading an article about Charles Babbage. His difference engine project cost around £45,000 (money of the day,) equivalent to a couple of million in modern money.

For the same money he could have bought around 50 of his contemporary railway locomotives!

And How much does a modern railway Locomotive cost???

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"