Safe Speed Forums

Well on my calculations it would have only be £12 more expensive to take a Hummer to Edinburgh and back! Based on 10mpg(checked on web for that) and the fact PT to the station for 2 would roughly equate to parking charges. Thats if I had a Hummer... but you see my point don't you? We can both take selective figures that are perhaps untypical for most people. I've enquired about those £1 fares, and unless your prepared to travel at 2am or something daft, its difficult to get them. Trust me you'd be lucky to find any on Fridays and Sundays. MegaBus is good value, I grant you, but the nearest stop is 30 miles away from me adding yet more time and expense.

I don't wish to fall out with you, it not so much the planners that I was claimed to demonise the car, its some relatively mainstream environmental groups that I was thinking of.

If you live in, or near a city then you have got half a chance with PT, as city to city links are generally adequate - but that still doesn't negate the fact that the train in particular is damn expensive to use. While I do admit that on occasions National Express and MegaBus offer much better value, its often slow, especially if you live in a town and are only served by the occasional National Express stopping service. In a town of 80 000 we have only 3 NatEx services - 2 to London and and 1 to Birmingham. The London service takes 6 hours 30 mins compared to a about 3 hour 30mins in the car.

Sorry, didn't explain myself fully. By reducing the 'school run effect' I meant the phenomenon whereby driving in term time is so much more time consuming because of people on the 'school run'. I've noticed that on some routes out of Bristol, I can arrive 10mins earlier at my destination in half term! To reduce the huge impact that parents taking their kids to school has in urban areas, we need good walking environments, which unfortunately is not the case in many areas. I know of many parents who insist that they must drive their kids 0.5 - 0.75 miles to school. Surely we should aim to deal with shifting these journeys away from the car first and see what the impact is on urban congestion?



I'm a little doubtful about this. Whilst I agree that for many PT is not currently a viable option, I still think there are many people who would be able to travel by PT at no extra time or money cost to themselves, but who won't because of the 'stigma' attached. For most people, they'd consider themselves 'poor' because they travel by bus.

Example: A commute from Bradley Stoke, 7 miles north of Bristol. There are several express bus services between 7am and 9am, and back between 4pm and 6pm that use the motorway route in and take about 25mins to take you right into the city centre. By car it takes about 25mins, as in a few places the bus has priority. The roads are always solid with commuters travelling in the same direction at the same time, yet the bus is only 20-30% full.

In many cases it the 'status' of having a car that preoccupies travel decision-making rather than consideration of costs and time. Many, who do have viable PT alternatives, will still maintain that the bus or train is slower even if it isn't. Frankly they don't care - they just want to arrive at work by car (only the low paid staff travel by bus surely?). [Of course there are many who are totally correct; using PT would be time consuming and expensive]

Not so sure about that. some perhaps, but others choose the car over the bus for speed and cost because the car beats the bus on both. My mother in law tried bussing into work for a short while and put up with the 40 minute journey time. She soon gave up after I told her where to park cheaply and found that she saved a couple of quid a week, which isn't hugely significant but ten minutes each way is a hell of a lot better than forty. And she gets the bonus of being able to listen to country music without people like me taking the mickey .

Using public transport for a journey into central London I've found to be a total non-starter if I try to go the whole way. For one thing in my neck of the woods the bus service to the nearest mainline station is no good for getting the right train. No matter what it would cost if the service isn't up to it the car is the only option. Plus a full days parking plus the train fare is rather more than driving. I will credit the Tube with being a decent public transport option, and I've found the best way for me to get into the city is to drive as far as about Heathrow/Osterley area where there are about three Piccadilly Line stations with parking (cheaper than my local mainline station car park too) and get a Tube the rest of the way. I'm lucky to have a realistic integrated transport option when I've had to make that journey, although I don't know if it was actually planned that way. But that's the sort of thing integrated transport needs IMO. It isn't really integrated if it fails to include the car.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

A lot of the 'reduced traffic at half-term' effect is down to the fact that parents also tend to take time off work at these times. My daily commute is entirely outside of urban areas, mostly on the motorway, and the traffic is very noticeably lighter at half-term.
A lot of the 'school run' problem is also down to regulations. Consider the case of a working mum who hasn't the time to walk her children to school, as she's not allowed to drop them off before 08:50 but she has to be at work at 09:00.
And, if you have, say, 50 cars arriving at the school, finding parking, and their occupants being delivered to the school gates, over a period of half an hour or so, it isn't too much of a problem. But when that timescale is reduced to five to ten minutes, it becomes a massive problem.

Which brings us to a fundamental issue which most planners (I'm not necessarily referring to you) seem to miss.
Traffic levels are largely self-regulating and therefore largely independent on the number of vehicles on the road.
To illustrate, imagine that your daily drive to the office takes an hour. At some point, someone waves a magic wand and makes 50% of cars disappear from the road. Now the roads are suddenly clear and you find that it only takes a half an hour to get to work. So you start staying in bed for an extra half an hour, and you still get to work on time. Problem is, after a few weeks of driving bliss, everybody else cottons onto this and they also start hitting the road a half an hour later. So now your journey time starts creeping up again until, soon, you are back to square one.
The only real difference this has made is that the peak period now only lasts half as long - but that doesn't affect you, as you're already sitting in your office so who cares if the roads are now empty at 09:30?



I would say that for most people PT isn't a viable option - simply because PT doesn't have the capacity.
As an example, if you live along the A38 corridor, say in Thornbury, and you have to be in Bristol centre by 09:00, you have the choice of just five buses to catch. Now, if each bus holds 50 people, that's a grand total of 250 people living in the A38 corridor for whom the bus is a viable option. The rest of them have to drive - but, no matter, those 250 people would, if they drove along the M5, take up just eight minutes worth of roadspace of one lane of the M5. (capacity 1800 vehicles per lane per hour assuming a 2-second gap)

Cheers
Peter

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

What happens if someone has to stay in work beyond 6pm? Suddenly they're stranded and can't get home, or will have to take some unpleasant convoluted route to do so, exactly what you dont want after an unplanned extra 2 hours in the office.

Or you could take a taxi, thus losing all the overtime you've just earned.

Unplanned almost-but-not-quite compulsory overtime is a fact of life for many workers these days. Even more so in an environment where redundancies are on the cards.

Letter in the local Bolton paper spoke volumes this evening




Well.. think he's said it all....

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