Tho it is quite heavy on the courgette side of things
It's eat them or compost them, or they'll turn to marrow tomorrow.
What is in the jar? It seems to say “Irish marrow chutney” but then that means you voluntarily added some courgettey style condiment to your already ultra-courgettey meal. Perhaps as a joke?
Well spotted and not an intentional joke, just a coincidence. It's homemade Irish marrow chutney (sometimes we do let the courgettes turn into marrows). Mrs P. makes it.
The 'Irish' comes from the added Irish whiskey but it's a common enough recipe e.g.
Replace "1.5kg Marrow 1.5kg Apples" with "3kg Apples" and that sounds quite an appealing recipe.
I like stuffed slices of marrow cooked in the oven.
Cut into 4-5cm lengths. Clean out seeds. Stuff with stuff of your choice; I like savoury mince based filling. Cook on a baking tray until the tops are crisp.
Can be served with a liquid sauce or with other trimmings.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Well I used to think like that. And then in 2020 the state essentially criminaliaed meeting other people. So I'm now much more cautious about anything which could allow me to be tracked. The state is not some benign organisation. The British state may be less sinister than the Chinese state but it is only a matter of degree.
I fundamentally disagree. I think the British state is a benign organisation. Inept at times, not always fair, not very efficient, but basically benign.
This depends. Perhaps how to judge a state is by how it deals with the most marginalised and unwanted. Boat people. Children no-one wants. Children in larger families on benefits. Roma. The homeless.
The state does this, and it is not ineptitude, it is malignant cruelty to a pregnant troubled criminal and to a baby being born. These are people who have by our natural instincts an absolute first priority claim on the state's kindness and care:
I genuinely thought tennis balls varied in colour, with different ones used for different surfaces and conditions, like golf and football. Thinking about it they don’t play tennis in rain or snow so not sure where that idea came from.
Ones bought for home use may be more varied, and certainly used to have coloured parts on them. A quick glance suggests that is now about as hard as finding a non-orange carrot for sale at the shops.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
I'm surprised anyone would think tennis balls are green. What's the reason for this generational switch?
No one under 60 watches tennis.
FAKE NEWS! I'm 47.
In years maybe but you're 60-something in spirit. I can prove that too: you watch tennis right?
Nope, you're 60-something in spirit cos you love Cricket!
Tennis may be an old person (or old at heart) sport, but Cricket is not.
Cricket is more of an upbringing thing. There are communities/classes very interested in Cricket and others that are not, regardless of age.
Cricket is shown on the sport channels and much more than tennis. There's a dedicated Cricket sports channel, no dedicated tennis one AFAIK.
Tennis is shown on the old farts channel instead of the sport channels.
We lived in Berkshire until I was 10. Very little interest in cricket at my primary school or locally IIRC. We then moved to Canterbury, my grammar school is almost next to the St Lawrence Ground, and it was huge. Never really learned to play by that point though, something I’ve always regretted.
“A coming influx of Chinese electric cars represents a security risk as they could be remotely controlled to “paralyse” Britain, according to the head of the industry’s professional body.
“Britons face “major security issues” from Chinese cars, warned Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“In a report due to be shared with car makers and regulators, Prof Saker said there was “no way” of stopping Chinese cars coming under remote control.
“He said: “The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country.”
“While regulators can test samples of cars for spyware or other security vulnerabilities, testing thousands of vehicles is not feasible, he said.
“A similar frailty of testing samples allowed Volkswagen to cheat emissions tests ahead of the Dieselgate scandal.
This is all like Battlestar Galactica when the Cylons wrote a line of code into the Colonial defence software allowing them to shut it down and destroy humanity. But there was Tricia Helfer which made it a bit better.
Lucy Lawless.
They were both Cylons, but Tricia Helfer was the first seen.
And the most seen, save maybe for Grace Park.
In terms of nekkid, yes. Although there was a shot where Boomer/Athena (I forget which) sees multiple versions of herself
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
I believe the Jehovah's Witnesses were rather critical of the German concentration camps too.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest their objection was not, primarily, that if they chose to arrive at the camps by car they had to go the long way round to the main entrance.
“A coming influx of Chinese electric cars represents a security risk as they could be remotely controlled to “paralyse” Britain, according to the head of the industry’s professional body.
“Britons face “major security issues” from Chinese cars, warned Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“In a report due to be shared with car makers and regulators, Prof Saker said there was “no way” of stopping Chinese cars coming under remote control.
“He said: “The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country.”
“While regulators can test samples of cars for spyware or other security vulnerabilities, testing thousands of vehicles is not feasible, he said.
“A similar frailty of testing samples allowed Volkswagen to cheat emissions tests ahead of the Dieselgate scandal.
This is all like Battlestar Galactica when the Cylons wrote a line of code into the Colonial defence software allowing them to shut it down and destroy humanity. But there was Tricia Helfer which made it a bit better.
Lucy Lawless.
They were both Cylons, but Tricia Helfer was the first seen.
And the most seen, save maybe for Grace Park.
In terms of nekkid, yes. Although there was a shot where Boomer/Athena (I forget which) sees multiple versions of herself
That was when Boomer was sent to deliver the nuke onto the basestar above Kobol, right before she came back and shot Adama.
"Grant Shapps says he and family were de-banked because of political role Energy secretary says ‘anyone who decides to devote their life to public service is essentially at risk of being penalised by banks’"
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
Local Government will go
a) Who will pay for any of this? b) Argh, people are opposing it, let's just drop it.
Though I do laugh at one area I know where people successfully fought tooth and nail to prevent a bypass decades ago, and now many locals and representatives (some still from that period) spend a lot of time complaining about the lack of a bypass causing traffic and air quality problems.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
I genuinely thought tennis balls varied in colour, with different ones used for different surfaces and conditions, like golf and football. Thinking about it they don’t play tennis in rain or snow so not sure where that idea came from.
Ones bought for home use may be more varied, and certainly used to have coloured parts on them. A quick glance suggests that is now about as hard as finding a non-orange carrot for sale at the shops.
“A coming influx of Chinese electric cars represents a security risk as they could be remotely controlled to “paralyse” Britain, according to the head of the industry’s professional body.
“Britons face “major security issues” from Chinese cars, warned Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“In a report due to be shared with car makers and regulators, Prof Saker said there was “no way” of stopping Chinese cars coming under remote control.
“He said: “The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country.”
“While regulators can test samples of cars for spyware or other security vulnerabilities, testing thousands of vehicles is not feasible, he said.
“A similar frailty of testing samples allowed Volkswagen to cheat emissions tests ahead of the Dieselgate scandal.
This is all like Battlestar Galactica when the Cylons wrote a line of code into the Colonial defence software allowing them to shut it down and destroy humanity. But there was Tricia Helfer which made it a bit better.
Lucy Lawless.
They were both Cylons, but Tricia Helfer was the first seen.
And the most seen, save maybe for Grace Park.
In terms of nekkid, yes. Although there was a shot where Boomer/Athena (I forget which) sees multiple versions of herself
That was when Boomer was sent to deliver the nuke onto the basestar above Kobal, right before she came back and shot Adama.
Indeed. I went for years without watching it (no dish) then when it went on iPlayer I binged all of the episodes. The plot makes absolutely no sense and they were obviously making shit up as they went along. But I still rate it very highly.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
Of course, but almost all towns are surrounded by green space so have plenty of green land able to build by-passes/roads on if people are just willing to build on land.
Remove the traffic going through town to get to a different town or city, and you free up traffic for the traffic that needs to be in that town or city.
This applies to cities, not just towns too. Almost all motorways in the North West converge upon Manchester and link to each other in Manchester. As a result roads meant for Manchester (including the M60 ring road) are loaded up with traffic that has no reason to be in Manchester at all.
Build extra motorways and roads and you could eliminate from Manchester (and other towns and cities) traffic that has no reason to be in that town and city at all.
“A coming influx of Chinese electric cars represents a security risk as they could be remotely controlled to “paralyse” Britain, according to the head of the industry’s professional body.
“Britons face “major security issues” from Chinese cars, warned Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“In a report due to be shared with car makers and regulators, Prof Saker said there was “no way” of stopping Chinese cars coming under remote control.
“He said: “The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country.”
“While regulators can test samples of cars for spyware or other security vulnerabilities, testing thousands of vehicles is not feasible, he said.
“A similar frailty of testing samples allowed Volkswagen to cheat emissions tests ahead of the Dieselgate scandal.
This is all like Battlestar Galactica when the Cylons wrote a line of code into the Colonial defence software allowing them to shut it down and destroy humanity. But there was Tricia Helfer which made it a bit better.
Lucy Lawless.
They were both Cylons, but Tricia Helfer was the first seen.
And the most seen, save maybe for Grace Park.
In terms of nekkid, yes. Although there was a shot where Boomer/Athena (I forget which) sees multiple versions of herself
That was when Boomer was sent to deliver the nuke onto the basestar above Kobal, right before she came back and shot Adama.
Indeed. I went for years without watching it (no dish) then when it went on iPlayer I binged all of the episodes. The plot makes absolutely no sense and they were obviously making shit up as they went along. But I still rate it very highly.
The ending is terrible - although compared to GoT it’s almost Shakespearean.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
“A coming influx of Chinese electric cars represents a security risk as they could be remotely controlled to “paralyse” Britain, according to the head of the industry’s professional body.
“Britons face “major security issues” from Chinese cars, warned Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“In a report due to be shared with car makers and regulators, Prof Saker said there was “no way” of stopping Chinese cars coming under remote control.
“He said: “The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country.”
“While regulators can test samples of cars for spyware or other security vulnerabilities, testing thousands of vehicles is not feasible, he said.
“A similar frailty of testing samples allowed Volkswagen to cheat emissions tests ahead of the Dieselgate scandal.
This is all like Battlestar Galactica when the Cylons wrote a line of code into the Colonial defence software allowing them to shut it down and destroy humanity. But there was Tricia Helfer which made it a bit better.
Lucy Lawless.
They were both Cylons, but Tricia Helfer was the first seen.
And the most seen, save maybe for Grace Park.
In terms of nekkid, yes. Although there was a shot where Boomer/Athena (I forget which) sees multiple versions of herself
That was when Boomer was sent to deliver the nuke onto the basestar above Kobal, right before she came back and shot Adama.
Indeed. I went for years without watching it (no dish) then when it went on iPlayer I binged all of the episodes. The plot makes absolutely no sense and they were obviously making shit up as they went along. But I still rate it very highly.
The ending is terrible - although compared to GoT it’s almost Shakespearean.
I'm quite fond of the ending tbh. Although - famously - it does require Starbuck to be an actual angel.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
“A coming influx of Chinese electric cars represents a security risk as they could be remotely controlled to “paralyse” Britain, according to the head of the industry’s professional body.
“Britons face “major security issues” from Chinese cars, warned Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“In a report due to be shared with car makers and regulators, Prof Saker said there was “no way” of stopping Chinese cars coming under remote control.
“He said: “The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country.”
“While regulators can test samples of cars for spyware or other security vulnerabilities, testing thousands of vehicles is not feasible, he said.
“A similar frailty of testing samples allowed Volkswagen to cheat emissions tests ahead of the Dieselgate scandal.
This is all like Battlestar Galactica when the Cylons wrote a line of code into the Colonial defence software allowing them to shut it down and destroy humanity. But there was Tricia Helfer which made it a bit better.
Lucy Lawless.
They were both Cylons, but Tricia Helfer was the first seen.
And the most seen, save maybe for Grace Park.
In terms of nekkid, yes. Although there was a shot where Boomer/Athena (I forget which) sees multiple versions of herself
That was when Boomer was sent to deliver the nuke onto the basestar above Kobal, right before she came back and shot Adama.
Indeed. I went for years without watching it (no dish) then when it went on iPlayer I binged all of the episodes. The plot makes absolutely no sense and they were obviously making shit up as they went along. But I still rate it very highly.
The ending is terrible - although compared to GoT it’s almost Shakespearean.
I'm quite fond of the ending tbh. Although - famously - it does require Starbuck to be an actual angel.
The iPlayer edit took out the line in the final episode where Galen Tyrol says he's off to live on the northern part of an island in the Northern Hemisphere. Which implies he's an ancestor of Scotty. Crossover potential!
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Capacity is ultimately limited. Ultimately, logically, congestion does become the norm.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Get ready
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Sorry Barty, but this is nonsense and in your own words demonstrable nonsense. Our motorway network is absolutely heaving, having spent the last year driving around it in the West Midlands, Wales, the West Country, the North East and the South East I would go so far as to call it gridlocked.
And I've certainly been stuck in traffic in Milton Keynes whose roads might have been laid out by a drunk slug trying to follow a contour.
Congestion *is* very much the natural state of our roads. Although that does tend to support your earlier point that we don't have enough of them for the traffic we carry.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Get ready
I've already bought my horse.
Electric self driving trans-galactic heli-podules are the future. Any fule kno this
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
Of course, but almost all towns are surrounded by green space so have plenty of green land able to build by-passes/roads on if people are just willing to build on land.
Remove the traffic going through town to get to a different town or city, and you free up traffic for the traffic that needs to be in that town or city.
This applies to cities, not just towns too. Almost all motorways in the North West converge upon Manchester and link to each other in Manchester. As a result roads meant for Manchester (including the M60 ring road) are loaded up with traffic that has no reason to be in Manchester at all.
Build extra motorways and roads and you could eliminate from Manchester (and other towns and cities) traffic that has no reason to be in that town and city at all.
I'm interested in what specific routes would avoid Manchester that currently use it? Or is this more the M60 J22-18 parallel motorway with no junctions?
“A coming influx of Chinese electric cars represents a security risk as they could be remotely controlled to “paralyse” Britain, according to the head of the industry’s professional body.
“Britons face “major security issues” from Chinese cars, warned Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“In a report due to be shared with car makers and regulators, Prof Saker said there was “no way” of stopping Chinese cars coming under remote control.
“He said: “The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country.”
“While regulators can test samples of cars for spyware or other security vulnerabilities, testing thousands of vehicles is not feasible, he said.
“A similar frailty of testing samples allowed Volkswagen to cheat emissions tests ahead of the Dieselgate scandal.
This is all like Battlestar Galactica when the Cylons wrote a line of code into the Colonial defence software allowing them to shut it down and destroy humanity. But there was Tricia Helfer which made it a bit better.
Lucy Lawless.
They were both Cylons, but Tricia Helfer was the first seen.
And the most seen, save maybe for Grace Park.
In terms of nekkid, yes. Although there was a shot where Boomer/Athena (I forget which) sees multiple versions of herself
That was when Boomer was sent to deliver the nuke onto the basestar above Kobal, right before she came back and shot Adama.
Indeed. I went for years without watching it (no dish) then when it went on iPlayer I binged all of the episodes. The plot makes absolutely no sense and they were obviously making shit up as they went along. But I still rate it very highly.
The ending is terrible - although compared to GoT it’s almost Shakespearean.
Nah, it's worse than the GoT finale. I just avoid the last few minutes (where they basically throw out every lesson they learned over the course of the series in order to fit the final twist) and pretend it ended after the final jump, and I actually think it is then quite a good finale, with a cosmically influenced moment of potential resolution ballsed up by unpredictable human/cylon mistakes of a personal level.
I like to imagine the angelic/demonic intervenors being really annoyed, as it came so close to working.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Get ready
I've already bought my horse.
Electric self driving trans-galactic heli-podules are the future. Any fule kno this
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
Just to give my inner Yorkshireman a spin: anyone who buys Farrow and Ball paints because they think the colours look classy has got more money than sense.
All you need is a camera, a graphics program that allows you to fiddle about with RGB colours (which is practically any graphics program), and a knowledge of how to convert between RGB and the Swedish NCS colour system (which is easy enough), and then you can go to your local Brewers and get whatever Farrow and Ball colour you want (or even one you like a bit better) for a fraction of the price.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Yes no one now....again without trying to godwin I am sure jews would have felt the same in the 1920's...come 20 years later however. You have nothing to fear now....you dont know what you have to fear in 20 years time
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
The emptiness of roads most of the time is a trivially obvious result of the vast majority of journeys taking place within a small subset of the hours which exist in the day.
Unfortunately, this is also the time - tautologically - that most people want to travel. In the same way as the average population density of the UK suggests we should have an acre each, but the experience of the average person is very different.
Still, if you would like to fight the road wars on the referendum question "Would you like your town to be more like Milton Keynes?", I'm game.
Most congested places do not have space for significant new road-building; where they do have that space, it usually wouldn't help; where it would help, there are usually other things which would help more, for less money.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
How will people travel?
Who said there would still be people?
Funny. We've just been discussing a TV show where AI almost destroyed humanity, which was saved by a single vessel that refused to accept networked technology. Maybe Pagan2 has a point,
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Get ready
I've already bought my horse.
People should be rollerblading everywhere, so long as we maintain the roads and pavements.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Capacity is ultimately limited. Ultimately, logically, congestion does become the norm.
No, capacity is potentially effectively infinite, it's only limited by land which we have an abundance of.
Demand is absolutely limited. If everyone is in their car already and you build extra capacity then they aren't going to magically be in two places at once.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
How will people travel?
Tied to the land - pretty sure bringing back serfdom will be part of JRM's first manifesto as Tory leader.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
How will people travel?
It’s a cunning plan to force you to carry your smartphone with you
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Yes no one now....again without trying to godwin I am sure jews would have felt the same in the 1920's...come 20 years later however. You have nothing to fear now....you dont know what you have to fear in 20 years time
Xinjiang is a better reference nowadays.
Everybody should read at least a pamphlet or a book chapter about the oppression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang and then think for a while about the mentality that leads to tearing down a cartoon because it might make refugee children feel too much at home, or to a screw ignoring a call for medical help by a woman entering labour in a prison cell.
Even discourse about fear about what might happen is too soft. World society is definitely going in a certain direction.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Capacity is ultimately limited. Ultimately, logically, congestion does become the norm.
No, capacity is potentially effectively infinite, it's only limited by land which we have an abundance of.
Demand is absolutely limited. If everyone is in their car already and you build extra capacity then they aren't going to magically be in two places at once.
"No, capacity is potentially effectively infinite, it's only limited by land which we have an abundance of. " Where do I begin with that sentence...? I mean...seriously?
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Sorry Barty, but this is nonsense and in your own words demonstrable nonsense. Our motorway network is absolutely heaving, having spent the last year driving around it in the West Midlands, Wales, the West Country, the North East and the South East I would go so far as to call it gridlocked.
And I've certainly been stuck in traffic in Milton Keynes whose roads might have been laid out by a drunk slug trying to follow a contour.
Congestion *is* very much the natural state of our roads. Although that does tend to support your earlier point that we don't have enough of them for the traffic we carry.
It’s like the Laffer curve.
If you have lots of roads and only one car - zero congestion. Just extrapolate from there….
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Sorry Barty, but this is nonsense and in your own words demonstrable nonsense. Our motorway network is absolutely heaving, having spent the last year driving around it in the West Midlands, Wales, the West Country, the North East and the South East I would go so far as to call it gridlocked.
And I've certainly been stuck in traffic in Milton Keynes whose roads might have been laid out by a drunk slug trying to follow a contour.
Congestion *is* very much the natural state of our roads. Although that does tend to support your earlier point that we don't have enough of them for the traffic we carry.
Which, unfortunately, kinda makes sense.
Because the expensive bit of having a car is owning it in the first place, it's rational to use your car lots. So congestion is pretty much the only limiting factor on the amount of driving that happens.
So if you widen roads, you get temporary relief before the roads fill up again. See MK, which is about as driver-friendly layout as you could wish for.
And if you enact a road diet sort of policy, it doesn't tend to lead to worse congestion. People find other ways of achieving their life goals.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Well I used to think like that. And then in 2020 the state essentially criminaliaed meeting other people. So I'm now much more cautious about anything which could allow me to be tracked. The state is not some benign organisation. The British state may be less sinister than the Chinese state but it is only a matter of degree.
I fundamentally disagree. I think the British state is a benign organisation. Inept at times, not always fair, not very efficient, but basically benign.
Would you care to inform the birmingham 6 that, or the brazilian electrician executed by the order of cressida dick or anyone else subject to state abuse. No such thing as a benign state
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
Of course, but almost all towns are surrounded by green space so have plenty of green land able to build by-passes/roads on if people are just willing to build on land.
Remove the traffic going through town to get to a different town or city, and you free up traffic for the traffic that needs to be in that town or city.
This applies to cities, not just towns too. Almost all motorways in the North West converge upon Manchester and link to each other in Manchester. As a result roads meant for Manchester (including the M60 ring road) are loaded up with traffic that has no reason to be in Manchester at all.
Build extra motorways and roads and you could eliminate from Manchester (and other towns and cities) traffic that has no reason to be in that town and city at all.
I'm interested in what specific routes would avoid Manchester that currently use it? Or is this more the M60 J22-18 parallel motorway with no junctions?
Plenty want to go past Manchester but are obliged to go through it.
Yes absolutely build parallel motorways but they should have junctions.
Take a random example, if you want to go from Knowsley to Rochdale (not Manchester) the current route is:
South on M57 East on M62 North on M60 East on M62 North on A627(M)
Rochdale is to the North of Knowsley but first thing you do is go directly South, in the complete opposite direction of where you want to go! In order to then drive back North in Manchester. 🤦♂️
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Yes no one now....again without trying to godwin I am sure jews would have felt the same in the 1920's...come 20 years later however. You have nothing to fear now....you dont know what you have to fear in 20 years time
I do take your point but it's a question of judgement and balance. If democracy failed and we ended up with a dictator or one-party state I would be more cautious; though smartphones would be the least of our worries in that situation.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Capacity is ultimately limited. Ultimately, logically, congestion does become the norm.
No, capacity is potentially effectively infinite, it's only limited by land which we have an abundance of.
Demand is absolutely limited. If everyone is in their car already and you build extra capacity then they aren't going to magically be in two places at once.
"No, capacity is potentially effectively infinite, it's only limited by land which we have an abundance of. " Where do I begin with that sentence...? I mean...seriously?
It speaks to a potential alternative solution to our road woes, I suppose. People who wish to spend their lives driving can have a fifteen lane freeway, but it will be in the North Pennines. If that does not reflect the desired start and end point of their journey, well, these things happen.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Yes no one now....again without trying to godwin I am sure jews would have felt the same in the 1920's...come 20 years later however. You have nothing to fear now....you dont know what you have to fear in 20 years time
I do take your point but it's a question of judgement and balance. If democracy failed and we ended up with a dictator or one-party state I would be more cautious; though smartphones would be the least of our worries in that situation.
Democracy is totally irrelevant. Tap the red button on your smartphone... Or think of either "bouba" or "kiki" (your choice) and your Musko-Neuralink chip will register your preference.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Well I used to think like that. And then in 2020 the state essentially criminaliaed meeting other people. So I'm now much more cautious about anything which could allow me to be tracked. The state is not some benign organisation. The British state may be less sinister than the Chinese state but it is only a matter of degree.
I fundamentally disagree. I think the British state is a benign organisation. Inept at times, not always fair, not very efficient, but basically benign.
Would you care to inform the birmingham 6 that, or the brazilian electrician executed by the order of cressida dick or anyone else subject to state abuse. No such thing as a benign state
Unless absolutely no abuses or mistakes ever exist, general benign intent and action is irrelevant?
I think it is pretty pointless to declare 'no such thing as a benign state', because it then makes distinguishing between different states meaningless, when there are in fact stark differences. I think that's the kind of argument overtly hostile states would love promulgated to excuse their natures - to make the difference one of degree, not kind.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Well I used to think like that. And then in 2020 the state essentially criminaliaed meeting other people. So I'm now much more cautious about anything which could allow me to be tracked. The state is not some benign organisation. The British state may be less sinister than the Chinese state but it is only a matter of degree.
I fundamentally disagree. I think the British state is a benign organisation. Inept at times, not always fair, not very efficient, but basically benign.
I don't like referring too much to Germany or democracy vs fascism, but would you have said otherwise about the German state in 1932?
I find the idea there should not be parallel motorways rather amusing.
To put it in a way out London anti car brigade might understand, the existing motorway network is rather like the M6 is the Northern line, the M62 is the Central line and ... That's kinda it except other routes.
As if the Hammersmith & City, Circle, District and Picadilly lines didn't exist and everyone on them wanting to go West to East or vice versa was instead routed only onto the Central line.
Oh and of course if the Central Line ever got closed due to a breakdown ...
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
So, just before large-scale fusion generation then?
He had his own son Alexei flogged so bad with a knotted whip it tore half the flesh off his back. Then he did it again. And again. The bone of his spine was exposed. Alexei was essentially shredded
Then Peter personally showed up for a final torture session but Alexei died of his wounds before the torturer could get to work
Alexei’s friends were sent to Red Square and publicly “broken with hammers, then nailed to spiked planks, and finally impaled with iron spears up the anus” but they were wrapped in furs so it took them longer to die
Just to give my inner Yorkshireman a spin: anyone who buys Farrow and Ball paints because they think the colours look classy has got more money than sense.
All you need is a camera, a graphics program that allows you to fiddle about with RGB colours (which is practically any graphics program), and a knowledge of how to convert between RGB and the Swedish NCS colour system (which is easy enough), and then you can go to your local Brewers and get whatever Farrow and Ball colour you want (or even one you like a bit better) for a fraction of the price.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
Of course, but almost all towns are surrounded by green space so have plenty of green land able to build by-passes/roads on if people are just willing to build on land.
Remove the traffic going through town to get to a different town or city, and you free up traffic for the traffic that needs to be in that town or city.
This applies to cities, not just towns too. Almost all motorways in the North West converge upon Manchester and link to each other in Manchester. As a result roads meant for Manchester (including the M60 ring road) are loaded up with traffic that has no reason to be in Manchester at all.
Build extra motorways and roads and you could eliminate from Manchester (and other towns and cities) traffic that has no reason to be in that town and city at all.
I'm interested in what specific routes would avoid Manchester that currently use it? Or is this more the M60 J22-18 parallel motorway with no junctions?
Plenty want to go past Manchester but are obliged to go through it.
Yes absolutely build parallel motorways but they should have junctions.
Take a random example, if you want to go from Knowsley to Rochdale (not Manchester) the current route is:
South on M57 East on M62 North on M60 East on M62 North on A627(M)
Rochdale is to the North of Knowsley but first thing you do is go directly South, in the complete opposite direction of where you want to go! In order to then drive back North in Manchester. 🤦♂️
This assumes you want to take a longer route to go at a higher speed. The shorter route would be about 20% shorter in miles albeit probably a couple of minutes slower, traffic depending. We have better things to spend our taxes on than an extra 20 miles of motorway to duplicate what almost entirely already exists.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
How will people travel?
Who said there would still be people?
Funny. We've just been discussing a TV show where AI almost destroyed humanity, which was saved by a single vessel that refused to accept networked technology. Maybe Pagan2 has a point,
How will I keep up with my NPC-fad toktok's if I don't have network though?
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Well I used to think like that. And then in 2020 the state essentially criminaliaed meeting other people. So I'm now much more cautious about anything which could allow me to be tracked. The state is not some benign organisation. The British state may be less sinister than the Chinese state but it is only a matter of degree.
I fundamentally disagree. I think the British state is a benign organisation. Inept at times, not always fair, not very efficient, but basically benign.
Would you care to inform the birmingham 6 that, or the brazilian electrician executed by the order of cressida dick or anyone else subject to state abuse. No such thing as a benign state
Falls under 'inept at times, not always fair'.
If the UK state was not fundamentally benign we would not have heard of the Birmingham Six nor Jean Charles de Menezes, and you would certainly not be able to post about it on here.
Just to give my inner Yorkshireman a spin: anyone who buys Farrow and Ball paints because they think the colours look classy has got more money than sense.
All you need is a camera, a graphics program that allows you to fiddle about with RGB colours (which is practically any graphics program), and a knowledge of how to convert between RGB and the Swedish NCS colour system (which is easy enough), and then you can go to your local Brewers and get whatever Farrow and Ball colour you want (or even one you like a bit better) for a fraction of the price.
If you go down to a paint shop like Brewers they can replicate F&B colours in a much cheaper and easier to apply paint brand like Johnson's. F&B are good at coming up with nice colours (or at least convincing us that they are, which is perhaps the same thing) but every professional painter I know complains about them being hard to apply and they are clearly a rip off.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
Don't be stupid.
You can already summon cars with an app today. Its called a Taxi.
Unsurprisingly people don't want that. Only city dwellers and drunks do that.
I find the idea there should not be parallel motorways rather amusing.
To put it in a way out London anti car brigade might understand, the existing motorway network is rather like the M6 is the Northern line, the M62 is the Central line and ... That's kinda it except other routes.
As if the Hammersmith & City, Circle, District and Picadilly lines didn't exist and everyone on them wanting to go West to East or vice versa was instead routed only onto the Central line.
Oh and of course if the Central Line ever got closed due to a breakdown ...
In this analogy the buses (A Roads) run almost point to point everywhere in London and are only about 15% slower, though.
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
Of course, but almost all towns are surrounded by green space so have plenty of green land able to build by-passes/roads on if people are just willing to build on land.
Remove the traffic going through town to get to a different town or city, and you free up traffic for the traffic that needs to be in that town or city.
This applies to cities, not just towns too. Almost all motorways in the North West converge upon Manchester and link to each other in Manchester. As a result roads meant for Manchester (including the M60 ring road) are loaded up with traffic that has no reason to be in Manchester at all.
Build extra motorways and roads and you could eliminate from Manchester (and other towns and cities) traffic that has no reason to be in that town and city at all.
I'm interested in what specific routes would avoid Manchester that currently use it? Or is this more the M60 J22-18 parallel motorway with no junctions?
Plenty want to go past Manchester but are obliged to go through it.
Yes absolutely build parallel motorways but they should have junctions.
Take a random example, if you want to go from Knowsley to Rochdale (not Manchester) the current route is:
South on M57 East on M62 North on M60 East on M62 North on A627(M)
Rochdale is to the North of Knowsley but first thing you do is go directly South, in the complete opposite direction of where you want to go! In order to then drive back North in Manchester. 🤦♂️
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
Of course, but almost all towns are surrounded by green space so have plenty of green land able to build by-passes/roads on if people are just willing to build on land.
Remove the traffic going through town to get to a different town or city, and you free up traffic for the traffic that needs to be in that town or city.
This applies to cities, not just towns too. Almost all motorways in the North West converge upon Manchester and link to each other in Manchester. As a result roads meant for Manchester (including the M60 ring road) are loaded up with traffic that has no reason to be in Manchester at all.
Build extra motorways and roads and you could eliminate from Manchester (and other towns and cities) traffic that has no reason to be in that town and city at all.
I'm interested in what specific routes would avoid Manchester that currently use it? Or is this more the M60 J22-18 parallel motorway with no junctions?
Plenty want to go past Manchester but are obliged to go through it.
Yes absolutely build parallel motorways but they should have junctions.
Take a random example, if you want to go from Knowsley to Rochdale (not Manchester) the current route is:
South on M57 East on M62 North on M60 East on M62 North on A627(M)
Rochdale is to the North of Knowsley but first thing you do is go directly South, in the complete opposite direction of where you want to go! In order to then drive back North in Manchester. 🤦♂️
This assumes you want to take a longer route to go at a higher speed. The shorter route would be about 20% shorter in miles albeit probably a couple of minutes slower, traffic depending. We have better things to spend our taxes on than an extra 20 miles of motorway to duplicate what almost entirely already exists.
But the shorter route is not a motorway, so it takes longer, and involves driving through towns on their main roads, precisely the thing people want to avoid.
So yes building a new motorway is the solution, which was the entire point.
Unless you're now on the side of using towns as rat runs?
If duplicating what already exists is pointless why did we bother with Crossrail?
I find the idea there should not be parallel motorways rather amusing.
To put it in a way out London anti car brigade might understand, the existing motorway network is rather like the M6 is the Northern line, the M62 is the Central line and ... That's kinda it except other routes.
As if the Hammersmith & City, Circle, District and Picadilly lines didn't exist and everyone on them wanting to go West to East or vice versa was instead routed only onto the Central line.
Oh and of course if the Central Line ever got closed due to a breakdown ...
The H&C, Circle and District all use the same tracks, so are essentially the same “road”, and the Piccadilly doesn’t go to East London. Or at least no definition of East London I’ve ever come across.
He had his own son Alexei flogged so bad with a knotted whip it tore half the flesh off his back. Then he did it again. And again. The bone of his spine was exposed. Alexei was essentially shredded
Then Peter personally showed up for a final torture session but Alexei died of his wounds before the torturer could get to work
Alexei’s friends were sent to Red Square and publicly “broken with hammers, then nailed to spiked planks, and finally impaled with iron spears up the anus” but they were wrapped in furs so it took them longer to die
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Well I used to think like that. And then in 2020 the state essentially criminaliaed meeting other people. So I'm now much more cautious about anything which could allow me to be tracked. The state is not some benign organisation. The British state may be less sinister than the Chinese state but it is only a matter of degree.
I fundamentally disagree. I think the British state is a benign organisation. Inept at times, not always fair, not very efficient, but basically benign.
Would you care to inform the birmingham 6 that, or the brazilian electrician executed by the order of cressida dick or anyone else subject to state abuse. No such thing as a benign state
A recent encounter with social services has convinced me of this.
Kangaroo court doesn't even cover it. And they have the power to strip parents of their children? Jeez.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
Don't be stupid.
You can already summon cars with an app today. Its called a Taxi.
Unsurprisingly people don't want that. Only city dwellers and drunks do that.
He had his own son Alexei flogged so bad with a knotted whip it tore half the flesh off his back. Then he did it again. And again. The bone of his spine was exposed. Alexei was essentially shredded
Then Peter personally showed up for a final torture session but Alexei died of his wounds before the torturer could get to work
Alexei’s friends were sent to Red Square and publicly “broken with hammers, then nailed to spiked planks, and finally impaled with iron spears up the anus” but they were wrapped in furs so it took them longer to die
I find the idea there should not be parallel motorways rather amusing.
To put it in a way out London anti car brigade might understand, the existing motorway network is rather like the M6 is the Northern line, the M62 is the Central line and ... That's kinda it except other routes.
As if the Hammersmith & City, Circle, District and Picadilly lines didn't exist and everyone on them wanting to go West to East or vice versa was instead routed only onto the Central line.
Oh and of course if the Central Line ever got closed due to a breakdown ...
The H&C, Circle and District all use the same tracks, so are essentially the same “road”, and the Piccadilly doesn’t go to East London. Or at least no definition of East London I’ve ever come across.
I was looking at a map on my phone. Looking down the middle of the map I can see 6 parallel East-West lines on the map even disregarding those using the same tracks. Diverting everyone onto the same track as it "already exists" provides a lack of capacity and a lack of redundancy and forces people to take detours onto routes they don't have any business being on - which is precisely why parallel tracks do and should exist and parallel motorways should exist too.
“A coming influx of Chinese electric cars represents a security risk as they could be remotely controlled to “paralyse” Britain, according to the head of the industry’s professional body.
“Britons face “major security issues” from Chinese cars, warned Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“In a report due to be shared with car makers and regulators, Prof Saker said there was “no way” of stopping Chinese cars coming under remote control.
“He said: “The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country.”
“While regulators can test samples of cars for spyware or other security vulnerabilities, testing thousands of vehicles is not feasible, he said.
“A similar frailty of testing samples allowed Volkswagen to cheat emissions tests ahead of the Dieselgate scandal.
This is all like Battlestar Galactica when the Cylons wrote a line of code into the Colonial defence software allowing them to shut it down and destroy humanity. But there was Tricia Helfer which made it a bit better.
Lucy Lawless.
They were both Cylons, but Tricia Helfer was the first seen.
And the most seen, save maybe for Grace Park.
In terms of nekkid, yes. Although there was a shot where Boomer/Athena (I forget which) sees multiple versions of herself
That was when Boomer was sent to deliver the nuke onto the basestar above Kobal, right before she came back and shot Adama.
Indeed. I went for years without watching it (no dish) then when it went on iPlayer I binged all of the episodes. The plot makes absolutely no sense and they were obviously making shit up as they went along. But I still rate it very highly.
The ending is terrible - although compared to GoT it’s almost Shakespearean.
I'm quite fond of the ending tbh. Although - famously - it does require Starbuck to be an actual angel.
I 100% agree. But the possibility of uncanniness has been hinted at, actually almost all the way but certainly in that piano episode,
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work. You can see that from the consultation response postcodes - make sure your council collects both home address and workplace.
It boils down to an inverse NIMBYism, I suppose.
If you cannot drive an SUV through one of these new LTNs, what about an ambulance or fire engine, or do the bollards and planters magically disappear on seeing a blue light? What about delivery vans for your online shopping?
LTNs have had no negative impacts on response times. The whole point is to reduce traffic, which is fantastic for emergency services.
The single best thing in London for response times is fully segregated two-way cycle lanes - you can chuck an Ambulance down one, skipping the traffic and the cyclists just lift the bikes onto the pavement.
And if the emergency services (or delivery vans) need to reach a house inside the LTN? It's not like they were rat-running in the first place.
They go in one way, do whatever they need to do, then go out the same way they came in.
All LTNs do is retrofit culs de sac to road networks that were put in place before the idea was invented. There are a couple of car filters near me (yes, even in Romford). Main road traffic stays on the main road (which happens to be called... Main Road), but it's not possible to jump any queues that build up by cutting through residential roads.
Retrofitting through roads by building by-passes to those roads is eminently reasonable.
Retrofitting through roads but not bothering to build a new alternative route is not.
The problem is the lazy attitude of trying to do the latter and telling commuters not to drive.
But the sensible route to use, the Main Road, is still there. Historically, it's where the traffic flow has been. it's a bit wider than other roads, there's a decent sized verge between the road and the pavement, the houses are properly set back from the road.
The problem is that, sometimes, a queue forms. And previously, a number of sharp eyed, sharp elbowed drivers turned off the main road, drove through a parallel estate, along narrower roads with no verges and houses much closer to the roads. Yes, they're labelled roads on the map, but they are much less suitable for through traffic. And people cutting in and out of the main road interrupts the flow for drivers who stay on the main road. Tragedy of the commons- it's in the interest of individuals to take cutthroughs, but it makes things worse for everyone else.
All LTNs do is keep main road traffic on the main roads, rather than have it spill out onto roads that are a lot less suitable. And given that the whole area is built up, there's nowhere to put a bypass even if you wanted to.
Its entirely possible to reduce traffic on Main Roads without making people drive through estates, which is to build better alternatives to the Main Road.
I've said this before, but this was recently done by me. The Main Road through town was used as the A-road to Liverpool at 30mph. A bypass has been built which is 50mph to Liverpool and the road layout has been changed at both ends of the former main road to make it clear that traffic should be heading onto the new road rather than the old one. The new road is now the A-road.
The old one has been turned to 20mph and a lane removed and turned into a dedicated cycle route with a barrier separating cyclists from cars, so the former Main Road is now narrow not wide.
Everyone wins.
Cyclists have a safer route to take, with a dedicated cycle route. Pedestrians have low speed, low traffic along the main road, and cars are double-separated from the pedestrian path with cyclists in-between. Pedestrians also no longer have cyclists riding on the pavement. Cars heading to the shops or schools on the former Main Road have lower traffic they're competing with as the commuters are no longer on that road. Cars heading to Liverpool or vice-versa have a faster, purpose-built, wider A-road to take them along that route which removes the need to go through town or regular traffic lights and zebra crossings.
Win/win/win/win - nobody loses. But you can only do that by building more roads.
You do realise that road layouts are different in different places, don't you?
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
Of course, but almost all towns are surrounded by green space so have plenty of green land able to build by-passes/roads on if people are just willing to build on land.
Remove the traffic going through town to get to a different town or city, and you free up traffic for the traffic that needs to be in that town or city.
This applies to cities, not just towns too. Almost all motorways in the North West converge upon Manchester and link to each other in Manchester. As a result roads meant for Manchester (including the M60 ring road) are loaded up with traffic that has no reason to be in Manchester at all.
Build extra motorways and roads and you could eliminate from Manchester (and other towns and cities) traffic that has no reason to be in that town and city at all.
I'm interested in what specific routes would avoid Manchester that currently use it? Or is this more the M60 J22-18 parallel motorway with no junctions?
Plenty want to go past Manchester but are obliged to go through it.
Yes absolutely build parallel motorways but they should have junctions.
Take a random example, if you want to go from Knowsley to Rochdale (not Manchester) the current route is:
South on M57 East on M62 North on M60 East on M62 North on A627(M)
Rochdale is to the North of Knowsley but first thing you do is go directly South, in the complete opposite direction of where you want to go! In order to then drive back North in Manchester. 🤦♂️
East Lancashire Road...
Is a much slower road and not the route that Google Maps says to take.
An M580 is the first new motorway I'd build if it were up to me. Relieve the East Lancs Road to serve local traffic for each town, or people going short enough distances not to need to go on a motorway.
He had his own son Alexei flogged so bad with a knotted whip it tore half the flesh off his back. Then he did it again. And again. The bone of his spine was exposed. Alexei was essentially shredded
Then Peter personally showed up for a final torture session but Alexei died of his wounds before the torturer could get to work
Alexei’s friends were sent to Red Square and publicly “broken with hammers, then nailed to spiked planks, and finally impaled with iron spears up the anus” but they were wrapped in furs so it took them longer to die
You'll just love reading about the Assyrians.
The Russians are great because they combine it all with massive drinking bouts and surreal humour and endless sexual debauchery
As a joke Peter the Great once married a 70 year old friend to a beautiful 20 year old woman. The groom arrived in a carriage pulled by bears. The heralds were deliberately chosen as “the worst stammerers in Russia”, the running foot men were the fattest possible men etc and the couple were married by a demented old priest of 100 who had forgotten how to read scripture
All for the lolz
I kinda wish Peter the Great was MY friend. Tho the compulsory drinking of 1 litre of pure vodka IN ONE GO might have got tiresome
Just to give my inner Yorkshireman a spin: anyone who buys Farrow and Ball paints because they think the colours look classy has got more money than sense.
All you need is a camera, a graphics program that allows you to fiddle about with RGB colours (which is practically any graphics program), and a knowledge of how to convert between RGB and the Swedish NCS colour system (which is easy enough), and then you can go to your local Brewers and get whatever Farrow and Ball colour you want (or even one you like a bit better) for a fraction of the price.
If you go down to a paint shop like Brewers they can replicate F&B colours in a much cheaper and easier to apply paint brand like Johnson's. F&B are good at coming up with nice colours (or at least convincing us that they are, which is perhaps the same thing) but every professional painter I know complains about them being hard to apply and they are clearly a rip off.
Yep; when I got some of my rooms decorated the decorator was happy to do "Johnson's, colour match to F&B whatever-name". You can also get the colour-match done for sample pots, where you get more sample paint for less money (and if you're unsure about quality difference you can cross-compare sample pots of colour match vs F&B if you like). The paint shop has all the F&B colours pre-set-up in their computer and you can ask for them by name.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
Don't be stupid.
You can already summon cars with an app today. Its called a Taxi.
Unsurprisingly people don't want that. Only city dwellers and drunks do that.
I can understand why it appeals to you.
The future is going to be hard for you
People like you have been ranting against cars for a very long time.
Nothing has changed though. I'm not an alcoholic so I have no reason to rely upon taxis like you do.
Your future vision of a world of taxis is no different to what already exists, so why would people suddenly replace their own private transportation with taxis when they could do that today if they wanted to - and they don't?
He had his own son Alexei flogged so bad with a knotted whip it tore half the flesh off his back. Then he did it again. And again. The bone of his spine was exposed. Alexei was essentially shredded
Then Peter personally showed up for a final torture session but Alexei died of his wounds before the torturer could get to work
Alexei’s friends were sent to Red Square and publicly “broken with hammers, then nailed to spiked planks, and finally impaled with iron spears up the anus” but they were wrapped in furs so it took them longer to die
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
Don't be stupid.
You can already summon cars with an app today. Its called a Taxi.
Unsurprisingly people don't want that. Only city dwellers and drunks do that.
I can understand why it appeals to you.
The future is going to be hard for you
People like you have been ranting against cars for a very long time.
Nothing has changed though. I'm not an alcoholic so I have no reason to rely upon taxis like you do.
Your sad, dreary, pathetic, lower middle class provincial life in your red brick Barratt Home semi will only be improved when you have to get a TRAM to work because cars have been abolished
Bush Snr also left Clinton with a falling deficit by raising taxes, even if it partly cost him the election as some of his base went to Buchanan in the GOP primaries and Perot in the main 1992 Presidential election
The question isn't about the facts - it's about perceptions.
Like ULEZ - everyone thinks it's going to cost them financially until they find out their car is compliant and then it becomes a non-issue.
Even if inflation does fall (which it no doubt will), many voters will still see their costs rising especially as annual insurance renewals are put up 20% or more by gouging insurance companies and energy bills remain high while utility companies make enormous profits.
Yes - I've been pointing out to a few people on X today that we have been building LTNs everywhere since the 1960s, and arguably since the 1930/40s. Plus that we have been applying them to existing housing areas since the 1970s to my personal knowledge.
They don't like it very much !
They seem to want to live in Open All Hours with nurse Gladice Emmanuel cycling along to soothe their knitted brows.
Indeed. The anti-LTN campaigners in Oxford generally live or work in historic LTNs of the type you describe. The guy from "Reconnecting Oxford" lives in a cul-de-sac estate. The most egregious, Clinton Pugh (father of Florence Pugh, as the Oxford Mail never ceases to remind us), actually got Oxfordshire County Council to convert the street outside his cafe into an LTN back in the 1990s so there was more space for outdoor tables. But anyone else's street becoming an LTN so Clinton can't drive his SUV up it? Fetch the pitchforks.
LTN opponents in Edinburgh tend to be people who like to drive through other people's neighbourhoods to get to work...
I believe they're known as "commuters". Hang them, the perfidious [checks notes] people who drive to work. Bastards.
Though a big difference between commuters on through roads and those rat-running through residential areas.
Though that's the issue, is when existing through roads are converted without an alternative arranged.
That is entirely the point, though not I suspect in the way you think.
Residential streets became through roads about ten years ago for two reasons. One, Google Maps/Waze/Apple Maps started directing people down them to save seconds off their journey time. Two, the increase in courier vehicles (using those self-same apps).
If you look at historic AADT* figures on residential streets - you can get them from TomTom or Inrix or a couple of other third-party suppliers - then they are vastly up on what they used to be. So, yes: "existing roads were converted". Residential streets were converted to through roads.
That's the main driver behind LTN policy. If residential streets still had the traffic levels of 20 years ago I don't think you'd see such a clamour for LTNs.
(I consult on this sort of route optimisation for a living, inter alia.)
* Annual Average Daily Traffic
Google Maps seems to me to deliberately avoid residential roads, even if it saves a minute or two not seconds off your commute nowadays.
Courier vehicles are vehicles that are delivering to those residential addresses though!
If you don't want Amazon vehicles driving down your road, then don't order off Amazon and convince your neighbours not to either. But if Bob at Number 79 is ordering off Amazon every day, and Wendy at number 68 is ordering off Amazon and Etsy regularly, then you're going to see couriers using your road regularly and not just Bob and Wendy's vehicles using the road.
This is a good point - a big reason for the increase in mileage is delivery vans. Another reason for bringing our High Streets back to life.
While you're at it, why not destroy that new fangled machinery in cotton mills so that the people working there don't lose their jobs?
Amazon, Etsy etc are successful because they are a superior technology over High Streets. I can think of anything I want, absolutely anything, go on my phone or computer, and have it in my possession tomorrow.
Rather than having to drive to the High Street, find parking, go to a shop and hope they have that in stock which they may not.
Or let me guess, you wouldn't want me driving to the High Street anyway?
Superior technology and favourable tax treatment. These are the weapons of the online shopping revolution. Especially the latter.
Speaking from a customer view point the reason I shop online for all but food and clothes is simple. I need a new washing machine....on the high street I would have a choice of maybe 20 models.....online I can choose from maybe 400 models. I no longer have to put up with the shit dixons and curries want to palm off on me
How do you pay for that with cash?
I don't. I do not have an aversion to paying by card in the least or online shopping. I do have an aversion to everything having to be an electronic transfer.
Things I am happy to pay by card for....online purchases from reputable companies
Things I prefer to pay cash for all my local expenditure whether food shopping, buying a round in a bar, buying a vehicle, paying the guy that cuts my grass, bus and train tickets.
I don't have any loyalty cards, I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out. The only social media I participate in is PB. I regularly try and dox myself to ensure I haven't left a significant digital footprint and where I can I use tor.
It is not paranoia I just dont believe in letting anymore info escape than I absolutely have to because I know how much info is out there. Remember the case of tesco's outting someone as pregnant before even she knew due to the collected data.
Simply put...once your data is out there its too late to take it back
"I don't carry a mobile it stays on my desk when I go out." I think you may be missing the point there, but each to their own.
You're a very eccentric person - don't ever change, eccentricity is good.
It does rather miss the point of a phone being mobile!
Why not just turn it off when out, so it is in your pocket if needed, yet not traceable?
Because even if it is off the gps can still be activated likewise the microphone
What? You're saying that a hacker can access the GPS and microphone on my iPhone (and presumably send themselves the data from those) at any time? Even when the phone's switched off?
I'd like to see the evidence for that claim.
I didnt claim hackers could in particular but certainly state agencies like for example the NSA or GCHQ certainly can. State agencies leaving a backdoor into devices however does mean a hacker could use the same.....a backdoor is usable by anyone.
States have been increasingly trying to increase their surveillance powers of everyone. This is why e2e encryption is under attack, Kosa law in the states, online safety bill in the uk. Spain pushing for it in the eu who have at least backtracked.
When states are pushing for more and more data to be available from us all for them to ferret through I think I have a point
The bit I never get with this 'not-paranoia' is who exactly is going to be ferreting through the smartphone data of 70m people in this country?
Sorry are you serious do you know how echelon works?
Sorry, let me put it another way: who's going to give a shit about me, what I do, where I go, who I meet, who I call, what I buy?
Now, if I was a budding terrorist, well, maybe. Even if I were an ordinary criminal then yes maybe the state would be interested.
But I'm not. No one is going to be the slightest bit interested in me.
So I will keep carrying my smartphone round with me. I'm even going to keep it on. And I may use it from time to time to, make calls, look things up, pay for shopping, find my way around, listen to books, pay for car-parking... Amazing things smartphones.
Well I used to think like that. And then in 2020 the state essentially criminaliaed meeting other people. So I'm now much more cautious about anything which could allow me to be tracked. The state is not some benign organisation. The British state may be less sinister than the Chinese state but it is only a matter of degree.
I fundamentally disagree. I think the British state is a benign organisation. Inept at times, not always fair, not very efficient, but basically benign.
I don't like referring too much to Germany or democracy vs fascism, but would you have said otherwise about the German state in 1932?
Yes, of course. I am note saying all states are benign, far from it, but I think western democracies generally are. They are, however, constantly at risk from malign influences. 1930s Germany is a clear example of that.
I find the idea there should not be parallel motorways rather amusing.
To put it in a way out London anti car brigade might understand, the existing motorway network is rather like the M6 is the Northern line, the M62 is the Central line and ... That's kinda it except other routes.
As if the Hammersmith & City, Circle, District and Picadilly lines didn't exist and everyone on them wanting to go West to East or vice versa was instead routed only onto the Central line.
Oh and of course if the Central Line ever got closed due to a breakdown ...
In this analogy the buses (A Roads) run almost point to point everywhere in London and are only about 15% slower, though.
So why did we bother with Crossrail?
Why not tell people "tracks already exist, oh and stop taking trains just get a bus instead".
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
Don't be stupid.
You can already summon cars with an app today. Its called a Taxi.
Unsurprisingly people don't want that. Only city dwellers and drunks do that.
I can understand why it appeals to you.
The future is going to be hard for you
People like you have been ranting against cars for a very long time.
Nothing has changed though. I'm not an alcoholic so I have no reason to rely upon taxis like you do.
Your sad, dreary, pathetic, lower middle class provincial life in your red brick Barratt Home semi will only be improved when you have to get a TRAM to work because cars have been abolished
Just rejoice. Rejoice at that news
LOL.
My wonderful new build semi I live in has not one but two private off-road parking spaces. And is future-proofed with an electric car charger port built in to the property as standard.
He had his own son Alexei flogged so bad with a knotted whip it tore half the flesh off his back. Then he did it again. And again. The bone of his spine was exposed. Alexei was essentially shredded
Then Peter personally showed up for a final torture session but Alexei died of his wounds before the torturer could get to work
Alexei’s friends were sent to Red Square and publicly “broken with hammers, then nailed to spiked planks, and finally impaled with iron spears up the anus” but they were wrapped in furs so it took them longer to die
Nobody calls him Peter the Great Dad.
Genuine lol
Did he ever worry about his “parenting skills” and spending “quality time with the kids”?
What’s so great about The Great (the TV series) is that it includes all this melancholy brutality - and terrible sadness - but it also captures and wraps it in the mad drunken hilarity. In its own way it is entirely faithful to the truth
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
Don't be stupid.
You can already summon cars with an app today. Its called a Taxi.
Unsurprisingly people don't want that. Only city dwellers and drunks do that.
I can understand why it appeals to you.
The future is going to be hard for you
People like you have been ranting against cars for a very long time.
Nothing has changed though. I'm not an alcoholic so I have no reason to rely upon taxis like you do.
Your sad, dreary, pathetic, lower middle class provincial life in your red brick Barratt Home semi will only be improved when you have to get a TRAM to work because cars have been abolished
Just rejoice. Rejoice at that news
LOL.
My wonderful new build semi I live in has not one but two private off-road parking spaces. And is future-proofed with an electric car charger port built in to the property as standard.
Just rejoice at that.
God, you really DO live in a new red brick semi? Sometimes I scare myself
Just to give my inner Yorkshireman a spin: anyone who buys Farrow and Ball paints because they think the colours look classy has got more money than sense.
All you need is a camera, a graphics program that allows you to fiddle about with RGB colours (which is practically any graphics program), and a knowledge of how to convert between RGB and the Swedish NCS colour system (which is easy enough), and then you can go to your local Brewers and get whatever Farrow and Ball colour you want (or even one you like a bit better) for a fraction of the price.
If you go down to a paint shop like Brewers they can replicate F&B colours in a much cheaper and easier to apply paint brand like Johnson's. F&B are good at coming up with nice colours (or at least convincing us that they are, which is perhaps the same thing) but every professional painter I know complains about them being hard to apply and they are clearly a rip off.
Yep; when I got some of my rooms decorated the decorator was happy to do "Johnson's, colour match to F&B whatever-name". You can also get the colour-match done for sample pots, where you get more sample paint for less money (and if you're unsure about quality difference you can cross-compare sample pots of colour match vs F&B if you like). The paint shop has all the F&B colours pre-set-up in their computer and you can ask for them by name.
I didn't realise Brewers actually have the F&B colours by name now. So you don't even have to know the rudiments of colour theory. What a curious business model F&B have got - literally catering for customers who are relatively rich and ignorant with it. I bet there are painters and decorators who charge for F&B colours and don't mention they buy them at Brewers.
The 'review of LTN' thing. In my field many 'professionals' and trade organisations have given up on any attempt at impartiality or objectivity, and have got in to the habit of deriding opposition to LTN's as 'conspiracy theorists' and 'misinformation', egging each other on and basically creating their own echo chamber in a sort of pseudo FBPE model. It has been interesting to watch the horror unfold in some circles that the government might actually be listening to the people.
Though there is a definite nutcase wing to the anti LTN movement.
Just as there is a definite nutcase wing to the pro LTN movement.
There's nutcases attracted to most movements.
The key is to learn how to filter out the nutcases and pay attention to those with legitimate arguments.
Just as you can lower traffic by filtering out commuters who don't need to be on that road by giving them a newer, alternative route, leaving the old road available for those who actually need it.
Except its not flawed, it does work. Extra lanes does fix it. 🤦♂️
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
Extra lanes, where these are possible, temporarily fix the congestion point where the extra lane is built.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
Sorry but that's absolutely false and demonstrably false too.
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Cars as we know them are history. They will all be gone in 20-25 years. Electric autonomous cars which you can summon with an app will replace them. Get ready
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
Don't be stupid.
You can already summon cars with an app today. Its called a Taxi.
Unsurprisingly people don't want that. Only city dwellers and drunks do that.
I can understand why it appeals to you.
The future is going to be hard for you
People like you have been ranting against cars for a very long time.
Nothing has changed though. I'm not an alcoholic so I have no reason to rely upon taxis like you do.
Your sad, dreary, pathetic, lower middle class provincial life in your red brick Barratt Home semi will only be improved when you have to get a TRAM to work because cars have been abolished
Just rejoice. Rejoice at that news
LOL.
My wonderful new build semi I live in has not one but two private off-road parking spaces. And is future-proofed with an electric car charger port built in to the property as standard.
Just rejoice at that.
God, you really DO live in a new red brick semi? Sometimes I scare myself
Yes, I really do and I love it. It wasn't built by Barratt though, not that it makes a difference either way.
I'm a big advocate of building more new semis so others have the same opportunity I have.
Would it make a big difference if the bricks were another colour other than red?
Comments
Cut into 4-5cm lengths. Clean out seeds. Stuff with stuff of your choice; I like savoury mince based filling. Cook on a baking tray until the tops are crisp.
Can be served with a liquid sauce or with other trimmings.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/one-more-lane-bro-one-more-lane-will-fix-it
Frankly for me Shapps has such a history of deception, and posing as other people, that I wouldn't touch him with a bargepole.
Your bypass works for you, and that's lovely. In other places, and the road I'm talking about is one, there is nowhere to put another bypass, and then the question becomes how to best manage the exisiting network.
Which, going back to the news story that set all this off this morning, is why local government should be thinking about this question, rather than Downing Street.
The fact that anti-car zealots like you always jump to Los Angeles as a contradiction, while disregarding the huge population growth in LA is staggering. Its like people who think the only systems that exist on the planet is the NHS or American healthcare.
LA is not the alternative. The population of LA Metro Area has gone from 4 million to 13 million, in the same time as Greater London has gone from 8 million to 9 million.
For towns without a 300% population growth yes absolutely extra lanes handle the traffic. If you have 300% population growth, then no shit Sherlock that you need extra transport capabilities.
a) Who will pay for any of this?
b) Argh, people are opposing it, let's just drop it.
Though I do laugh at one area I know where people successfully fought tooth and nail to prevent a bypass decades ago, and now many locals and representatives (some still from that period) spend a lot of time complaining about the lack of a bypass causing traffic and air quality problems.
Gotta seize the moment with big projects.
Remove the traffic going through town to get to a different town or city, and you free up traffic for the traffic that needs to be in that town or city.
This applies to cities, not just towns too. Almost all motorways in the North West converge upon Manchester and link to each other in Manchester. As a result roads meant for Manchester (including the M60 ring road) are loaded up with traffic that has no reason to be in Manchester at all.
Build extra motorways and roads and you could eliminate from Manchester (and other towns and cities) traffic that has no reason to be in that town and city at all.
By making the journey faster and more appealing, they usually generate a compensating amount of traffic which worsens the jams at the points leading to and from the point where capacity has been expanded. Then the demand is for more motoring provision at those points, and the cycle repeats. This is not an LA-specific phenomenon.
If Greater London is your example, it's a poor one, since it is not exactly crawling with available affordable land in congested areas where those lanes could even go.
For a city which tried the "provide as many roads and lanes as motorists want" solution, you can look to Leeds, whose own publicity billed it as "The Motorway City of the 70s". In the long run it was a catastrophe. https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/terrible-legacy-turning-leeds-motorway-18295535
They are a sort of greeny yellow mix
Drive around and most of the motorway network is clear almost all of the time. The roads have been built but they're not utterly congested, they work smoothly.
The only places that congestion is a major problem is where capacity is insufficient for the population. And yes, if you then have high population growth then what was sufficient capacity may become insufficient for the increase once more, but if population is stable or population growth is matched by construction then congestion does not become a problem.
Leeds may be a poor example but its also an old fashioned city, Milton Keynes is a pretty good counter-example. Driving through Milton Keynes is very pleasant, I've never personally been stuck in traffic any time I've driven there, it has plenty of cycle paths too if that's your interest. Again a place where everyone wins.
And many towns all over the country are similar too, including my own.
The idea that congestion is the natural state of roads is a naïve belief only held by anti-car zealots. Driving at 30mph to 70mph is the natural state of roads and congestion is the exception not the norm and is due to a lack of capacity and can be fixed.
Owning a car in 2050 will be like owning a horse now. A weird anachronism that was once universal
It’s a bit of both.
And I've certainly been stuck in traffic in Milton Keynes whose roads might have been laid out by a drunk slug trying to follow a contour.
Congestion *is* very much the natural state of our roads. Although that does tend to support your earlier point that we don't have enough of them for the traffic we carry.
I like to imagine the angelic/demonic intervenors being really annoyed, as it came so close to working.
All you need is a camera, a graphics program that allows you to fiddle about with RGB colours (which is practically any graphics program), and a knowledge of how to convert between RGB and the Swedish NCS colour system (which is easy enough), and then you can go to your local Brewers and get whatever Farrow and Ball colour you want (or even one you like a bit better) for a fraction of the price.
Sunak is a fucktard.
Unfortunately, this is also the time - tautologically - that most people want to travel. In the same way as the average population density of the UK suggests we should have an acre each, but the experience of the average person is very different.
Still, if you would like to fight the road wars on the referendum question "Would you like your town to be more like Milton Keynes?", I'm game.
Most congested places do not have space for significant new road-building; where they do have that space, it usually wouldn't help; where it would help, there are usually other things which would help more, for less money.
Are you a highheeler or a lowheeler?
Google did suggest the following, which seems far more reasonable of a position than your inaccurate quotation implies.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2023/07/30/sunak-says-uk-needs-oil-and-gas-for-energy-security-to-reduce-reliance-on-hostile-states/?outputType=amp
Demand is absolutely limited. If everyone is in their car already and you build extra capacity then they aren't going to magically be in two places at once.
Under "PM gives green line for more North Sea drilling"
Everybody should read at least a pamphlet or a book chapter about the oppression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang and then think for a while about the mentality that leads to tearing down a cartoon because it might make refugee children feel too much at home, or to a screw ignoring a call for medical help by a woman entering labour in a prison cell.
Even discourse about fear about what might happen is too soft. World society is definitely going in a certain direction.
If you have lots of roads and only one car - zero congestion.
Just extrapolate from there….
Because the expensive bit of having a car is owning it in the first place, it's rational to use your car lots. So congestion is pretty much the only limiting factor on the amount of driving that happens.
So if you widen roads, you get temporary relief before the roads fill up again. See MK, which is about as driver-friendly layout as you could wish for.
And if you enact a road diet sort of policy, it doesn't tend to lead to worse congestion. People find other ways of achieving their life goals.
Yes absolutely build parallel motorways but they should have junctions.
Take a random example, if you want to go from Knowsley to Rochdale (not Manchester) the current route is:
South on M57
East on M62
North on M60
East on M62
North on A627(M)
Rochdale is to the North of Knowsley but first thing you do is go directly South, in the complete opposite direction of where you want to go! In order to then drive back North in Manchester. 🤦♂️
And that's not 20 years away either.
I think it is pretty pointless to declare 'no such thing as a benign state', because it then makes distinguishing between different states meaningless, when there are in fact stark differences. I think that's the kind of argument overtly hostile states would love promulgated to excuse their natures - to make the difference one of degree, not kind.
To put it in a way out London anti car brigade might understand, the existing motorway network is rather like the M6 is the Northern line, the M62 is the Central line and ... That's kinda it except other routes.
As if the Hammersmith & City, Circle, District and Picadilly lines didn't exist and everyone on them wanting to go West to East or vice versa was instead routed only onto the Central line.
Oh and of course if the Central Line ever got closed due to a breakdown ...
Am reading Montefiore’s The Romanov’s
He had his own son Alexei flogged so bad with a knotted whip it tore half the flesh off his back. Then he did it again. And again. The bone of his spine was exposed. Alexei was essentially shredded
Then Peter personally showed up for a final torture session but Alexei died of his wounds before the torturer could get to work
Alexei’s friends were sent to Red Square and publicly “broken with hammers, then nailed to spiked planks, and finally impaled with iron spears up the anus” but they were wrapped in furs so it took them longer to die
Also, another recommendation for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
If the UK state was not fundamentally benign we would not have heard of the Birmingham Six nor Jean Charles de Menezes, and you would certainly not be able to post about it on here.
You can already summon cars with an app today. Its called a Taxi.
Unsurprisingly people don't want that. Only city dwellers and drunks do that.
I can understand why it appeals to you.
So yes building a new motorway is the solution, which was the entire point.
Unless you're now on the side of using towns as rat runs?
If duplicating what already exists is pointless why did we bother with Crossrail?
Kangaroo court doesn't even cover it. And they have the power to strip parents of their children? Jeez.
An M580 is the first new motorway I'd build if it were up to me. Relieve the East Lancs Road to serve local traffic for each town, or people going short enough distances not to need to go on a motorway.
As a joke Peter the Great once married a 70 year old friend to a beautiful 20 year old woman. The groom arrived in a carriage pulled by bears. The heralds were deliberately chosen as “the worst stammerers in Russia”, the running foot men were the fattest possible men etc and the couple were married by a demented old priest of 100 who had forgotten how to read scripture
All for the lolz
I kinda wish Peter the Great was MY friend. Tho the compulsory drinking of 1 litre of pure vodka IN ONE GO might have got tiresome
Nothing has changed though. I'm not an alcoholic so I have no reason to rely upon taxis like you do.
Your future vision of a world of taxis is no different to what already exists, so why would people suddenly replace their own private transportation with taxis when they could do that today if they wanted to - and they don't?
Just rejoice. Rejoice at that news
Why not tell people "tracks already exist, oh and stop taking trains just get a bus instead".
That's like what your attitude is to drivers.
My wonderful new build semi I live in has not one but two private off-road parking spaces. And is future-proofed with an electric car charger port built in to the property as standard.
Just rejoice at that.
Did he ever worry about his “parenting skills” and spending “quality time with the kids”?
What’s so great about The Great (the TV series) is that it includes all this melancholy brutality - and terrible sadness - but it also captures and wraps it in the mad drunken hilarity. In its own way it is entirely faithful to the truth
I'm a big advocate of building more new semis so others have the same opportunity I have.
Would it make a big difference if the bricks were another colour other than red?