Safe Speed Forums

Oh dear ... I need a reality check because I actually agree with some of what Basingwerk wrote.

No matter where you'd like to set the boundaries of this discussion, Malthus will eventually apply because the World has only so many resources and they have to go around for everyone in four dimensions. The biggest problem the world faces today is human overpopulation. However, that's another discussion even though the increasing population is one reason for the increased demands on road-space, and so a contributory factor to the cost of motoring.

WRT the environmental impact of road transport, consider this. The main greenhouse gas emitted by road vehicles is carbon dioxide (CO2). Less than 6% of world-wide CO2 emmissions come from transport sources (which includes land, sea, and air transport). The UK produces less than 2% of global pollution, so UK road transport produces no more than one thousandth of one percent of global CO2. (Source, Stuart Beatty's analysis of the UN figures). To think that even something as drastic as closing the UK road network would have any significant effect on global warming is IMO somewhat foolish and arrogant. Given that taxing everyone off the roads would have no discernible effect worldwide, fuel tax must be all about feeding the coffers of the exchequer and the environmental argument is pretty much spin.

Having got that off my chest, I see the real issue as congestion. Our road network is inadequate after decades of neglect and something must be done or the country will rapidly grind to a halt. AFAICT, there are three ways to reduce congestion:

• Increase road capacity
• Reduce the number of vehicles
• Improve road-use balance (i.e. move journeys from the congested commuter routes to less-well-used roads)

I suspect that any solution must use a combination of these.

Increase road capacity
Build more roads. Include in that a supplementary toll system (like France) with a near-guaranteed level of service.

Reduce the safe inter-vehicle distance from the currently recommended two seconds in good conditions. Unfortunately, unless you improve response times, doing that leaves the system open to catastrophic reaction to minor changes. FWIW, inter-vehicle separation is already reduced below safety on congested roads and attempts to smooth flow (e.g. variable speed limits) only put off the onset of disruption and increase the likelihood of eventual reaction being catastrophic (long tail-backs or even multi-vehicle pile-ups). I suspect that to reduce inter-vehicle distances safely will require us to give up control of our vehicles because computers can communicate and react a lot faster than us.

Reduce the number of vehicles
Unfortunately, our masters seem intent on using only sticks and no carrots here. They seek to dissuade us from using our vehicles by obscene taxation. However, that policy is blatantly unfair because of the disproportionate affect it has on those who can least afford the tax but who most need their cars (e.g. agricultural workers who are the among the lowest paid and live where there is no viable public transport and often must drive many miles for food, medical care, schools etc.)

What is needed is safe, clean, and reliable alternatives to coax people out of their cars. FWIW, I've travelled both by bus and by train in the last month and I don't want to repeat the experience in a hurry. Both modes were smelly, overcrowded, and late. So, it's hardly surprising that I got back to using my car ASAP.

Also, consider that many journeys should be unnecessary. We have the technology to let most clerical and call-centre work be done from home. After all, most of big business can now farm this work out to India and save money, so "teleworking" should be financially sound. Instead of trying to tax people out of their cars, what if the Government gave additional tax benefits for teleworking? Take most office commuters off the road and provide decent school transport and you'll have cured most of this country's congestion at a stroke.

There are, of course, other ways of making some journeys unnecessary, e.g. providing incentives for on-line shopping and home deliveries.

Improve road-use balance
Give business financial incentives to decentralise. Yes, I know that London thinks it's the centre of the known universe, but it doesn't need to be so. Again, we have technology that should mean it's no longer necessary for everyone to be right next door to everyone else to be viable. Once decentralisation has taken hold, I suspect that the process will continue with little financial incentive from Government, but they have to offer a carrot to business to get the ball rolling.

Provide school bus pick-up points, particularly for rural dwellers. Instead of all those cars converging on one point (the school) they would converge on many points (the pick-up "stations") with much fewer vehicles then converging on the school. Persuade people they should use such a system by, if necessary, surrounding the schools with no-parking or resident-only permit zones.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings.

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Will

Will,

I've moved your fascinating post to another thread because it was way off the topic I was trying to define.

I think road building and self regulation are the absolute key to congestion. Gridlock is hypothesized, and occasionally takes place after power failures or the like, but there is no city in the world that is economically crippled by gridlock. Lots of folk complain about traffic, but clearly that isn't the same thing.

Self regulation is based on the time taken to travel. If it takes too long then the least necessary journeys are simply not made. We all do it as a daily activity (I'm not going to xyz, it takes too long).

Gridlock? I don't buy 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

Hmmm ... for once, you're not telling the whole truth. If some journeys are unnecessary, and thus not undertaken, congestion must reduce. However, social and economic factors present significant resistance, which will require some intervention to overcome.

I suspect that the school run occurs in part because of alarmist reaction to media hype that exagerates the dangers to our children. Mums now want to ensure that their children are safe and probably consider the resulting congestion and local pollution a small price to pay. You'll only change that by persuading Mums that it's safe for their children to walk, and/or by providing safe, convenient and efficient school busses.

Employers perceive that they can only control their workforce if they're in the same building. This is possibly the greatest factor preventing widespread telecommuting. So, for teleworking to succeed, there needs to be something in it for businesses to overcome the initial resistance. This won't come from self-regulation, but it may be possible if the government offers tax incentives.

FWIW, I know of two companies that no longer exist because of congestion. In both cases, congestion increased delivery time (and thus decreased the radius one driver could cover in the allowed driving day), which drastically cut the potential customer base. Add to that delays in commuting to work, which effectively cut the radius workers were prepared to travel and caused key workers to resign. The resulting staff shortages, increase payroll cost, and reduced customer base sounded the death-knell for both companies.

While true gridlock is very rare (although I've seen it once -- and it required several police officers to sort out), heavy congestion has significant social and economic cost. Contrary to your assertion, I suspect that heavy congestion is partly the cause of the decline of town-centres to the favour of out-of-town malls and supermarkets. I know that twenty years ago, I'd happily drive into town, pay my fifty pence for parking, do my shopping, and drive home. Now, I won't go near the town unless I absolutely have to because I know that I'll be driving around in near gridlock conditions looking for an extortionately-priced parking place for longer than I'll spend shopping. While congestion isn't economically crippling cities, I suspect that it's only a matter of time before it does because it's already crippling most towns in this country.

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Will

I didn't intend to rule out "interventions" - instead I was trying to lay some foundations. Far too often the self regulation effects - which are both strong and obvious - are completely neglected. The projections that imply some future gridlock all ignore this most important mechanism (AFAIK).

Not telling the whole truth in a 7 sentence forum post? On a huge socio-economic question? Give me a break!

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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 man ...



... but your arithmetric is off by a hundred. 6 percent as a factor is 0.06, and 2 percent as a factor is 0.02. 0.06 times 0.02 equals 0.0012, which, times 100 to make a percent again, is 0.12%, so UK road transport produces more than one TENTH of one percent of global CO2, not one thousandth of one percent of global CO2. That is 100 time more than you supposed, so would that make it 100 times less foolish and arrogant to try to reduce it? If, via geo-thermal energy production and hydrogen cars, we halved it, and other countries did likewise, that could make several percentage points differance. If we achieved similar improvements in other domains, it might still not be too late to stave off the worst effects. But I am not taking any chances - I have made long-term provisions for living in north America is it gets bad here.

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I stole this .sig

Not quite. My apologies for the maths, but I made another error which cancelled the first. My left-shift of the decimal point was countered by me omitting a significant factor. The actual figure is significantly less than one thousandth of one percent:

• Less than 6% of CO2 comes from human sources
• Of which approximately one percent is due to transport sources (the lion's share comes from power-generation and industrial processes)
• with the UK producing about 2% of global pollution

The amount due to UK road transport must be significantly less than one thousandth of one percent because the transport-related CO2 accounts for aviation and railways etc. as well as roads.

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Will

With due respect, where did that number come from?

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I stole this .sig

While my post implicitly accommodated "self regulation" (which IMO comes under "reducing the number of vehicles") your response completely ignored the major factors I introduced and I cannot accept that your post comes close to the real picture. That said, I certainly didn't (and still don't) mean to cause offence.

While self-regulation comes into it, we need to survive. To do that, we need to work, shop, access healthcare and, for the benefit of the next generation, get our children to school. Human nature is to do whatever it takes to survive and people have been known to go to extraordinary lengths when necessary. As the situation becomes worse, I suspect that people will accept increased hardship. They will moan, but wait in longer and longer queues. At some stage, those who can walk will because it will be quicker than driving. However, most humans can only cope with twenty miles or so per day and would require nearly ten hours if they had to put in a full days work as well. This would reduce the walking radius to about ten miles. So, get on your bike and increase that radius a little. However, that won't be much good because you and several thousand others will be too busy weaving around the stationary traffic to make much progress.

So, without motorised transport, commuting and other travel is effectively restricted to about a fifteen mile radius. Without decentralisation, the actual commuting radius will increase. Eventually, enough traffic will funnel into central areas to cause gridlock. Unless society changes drastically, gridlock is inevitable. Of course, self-regulation prinicples could mean that some businesses will "crack" and decentralise of their own accord. However, without intervention, I suspect that won't happen until there have been a few true gridlock incidents.

There you have it -- a (admittedly non-scientific but nonetheless logical) analysis based entirely on self-regulation in which true gridlock is highly probable.

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Will

From the United Nations report of (I think) 2000 into global climate change. If you search the archives of the Road User's Forum at about the time of the 2000 fuel protests (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/ruf/ - you will need to join to access the archives) and look among Stuart Beatty's posts, which contain the actual links back to the UN documents.

Stuart put about the same amount of effort into unravelling the (obfuscated) figures as Paul has into automatic speed enforcement. Unfortunately, Stuart is no longer with us but the truths he uncovered live on.

HTH,

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Will

This "self regulation" I'm talking about is a classic supply and demand curve thing. Yes. There are essential journeys and people will go thruogh hardship to make them.

But for every journey that would remain if there was plenty of hardship there are ten that can be rescheduled, re-routed or simply not made.

This is why the out of town shopping centres are growing - they are benefiting from re-routed shopping trips. The market is recognising how people behave and BUILDING out of town shopping centres to accomodate their wishes.

It really is self regulating on a giant scale. And it ain't ever going to stop.

For every business that suffers from congestion, there's another waiting to pick up the fallout. Society and its transport need are evolving due to market forces and roads availability. It may not build a perfect society, and on occasion intervention may lead to better balances. But if the politicians and the councillors step back and let the market get on with it, we STILL won't get gridlock. Ever.

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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

Aren't you forgetting something bw?

What are you going to do about all that water vapour that accounts for more than 90% of the greenhouse effect?

Staving off the worst efftects??

The sheer arrogance of the belief that man can somehow control portions of the climate simply beggars belief.

But the more important question is this. Assuming we do as you suggest, how will we know if it is working or not? What markers will we be monitoring to conclude that all is well?

Given the entire universe in which to expand, you're probably correct. However, we have a finite system with only so much room in which to expand. People will tolerate evermore inconvenience until the system teeters on the verge of non-viability. It will be very near its "limit of elasticity" and be susceptible to catastrophic reaction to minor events. At that point, it will be possible for a simple breakdown or minor collision to gridlock an entire area.

Of course, organisations will react if possible to reduce the impact (e.g. move away), but I suspect the reaction of business etc. will be too slow to prevent damage and some businesses will close, some people will lose their jobs, etc. For example, consider how long it takes for a bypass to open after its need is recognised, or the time it takes for a business to identify a suitable new site, carry out cost/benefit analysis, etc. and finally relocate. The system will eventually recover, with a larger sphere of influence.

The cycle will repeat until the enlarged system reaches catastrophic reaction, when it will again enlarge. This process can continue until you run out of space or other resources. Of course, businesses, people, towns, and perhaps cities or even countries will lay waste in the aftermath. There may well be riots, anarchy etc. but, hey, that's natural selection and self-regulation for you.

If by gridlock, you mean "permanent gridlock", I agree that it won't happen. However, congestion (and the self-regulation reaction to that) may result in temporary gridlock incidents and will certainly be enough to cripple towns or even cities.

FWIW, it's happening right now (just as you wrote in an earlier post). You can see evidence in the derelict town centres, the regular ten or twenty mile tail-backs, the "no-go" areas, the small businesses failing, the export of jobs to India, etc.

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Will

Of course the system may be self balancing to a point, but the balance it would find might mean more congestion, danger, pollution and noise than necessary.

Malthus might have said that congestion, danger, pollution and noise are constraints on the road system which reduce the desirability of motoring as a transport solution. He might have also identified positive interventions (new roads, speed cameras, better trains, more coppers, taxation and tolls, humps etc) as a means of finding another balance. For example, by raising taxes and tolls, people might be 'encouraged' to use trains for long journeys or freight, so there would be a) more space of the roads for short journeys with less delay and b) money on hand to build more roads. A larger driver population could be supported. By using interventions (coppers and cameras etc.) to make the roads safer, the total cost of motoring might fall, and again, more drivers could be supported. Sure, free and easy market economics would find a balance, but it might not be the best balance.

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I stole this .sig

You may think this is a bit tongue in cheek, but I happen to agree with a lot of what this guy has to say, just try it, you might well agree as well..


http://angryharry.com/esFeminismCausesT ... estion.htm

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

What do you suggest?



What do you mean by that? Do you think we have or have not affected the climate?



We'll still be alive.

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I stole this .sig

basingwerk, mate, two things that are not in dispute:
1 - the existence of climate change. Been going on for the thick end of 4 billion years or so, and will carry on long after we're fossils ourselves. Climate stability is a fiction - it has never been stable.
2 - mankind is contributing to climate change.
What is in dispute is how much of the current climate change is natural, and the size and value of our contribution. Bearing in mind that we are still recovering from the Little Ice Age and that the world is still colder than it was only a thousandish years ago, it would be pretty odd if there wasn't some gentle warming going on. As for our contribution...

From http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html.
which comes to less than a third of one percent. Change of land use may be pushing that up, but then change of solar activity may be pushing it down again.

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