FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It's a completely asinine suggestion. You can get vehicles you can summon today, they're called taxis. People don't generally want them unless they can't afford their own vehicle, are inebriated, or for extreme circumstances.
I got a train for the first time in about five years recently, to take my family to the airport. Taxi to get to the train station. Was far cheaper than spending £250 on parking at the Airport.
In those circumstances I'll take a taxi, but why the hell would I want one in normal circumstances? That's what Leon doesn't grasp.
It's completely price elastic, as the early years of Uber when it was heavily subsidised showed. Particularly in the US young people were starting to use Uber as their primary means of transport because it was so cheap and available. These days that doesn't work because it's a. too expensive for daily use, b. too unreliable.
People go off Uber immediately the one day it turns up late or not at all.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It doesn't have to be like that in places outside London though.
When I was in Germany, we lived in a medium-sized town, and we were able to get along perfectly well without our own car because the infrastructure (public transport, cycling provision, school and shop locations) was set up to allow this. On the occasions when we did need a car, we'd take a taxi or hire a car (or van). After moving back to the UK, I immediately bought a car because our social structure and infrastructure make it so difficult for most people to live without one (outside London).
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected.
Ahh. I get it. While pounding the roads on your bike in all weathers you developed an enduring and intense dislike and resentment of the motorists passing you all the time.
If indeed you did travel four miles to the local Spar by bike for a curly wurly.
I'm regularly held up by car drivers when cycling round Edinburgh. They should stop being so selfish and leave the car at home.
We lived in Fairmilehead and my daily journey to St Andrews Square was by bus
Even today cycling to and from work to Fairmilehead would be unrealistic, unless you are a tour de France cyclist
Google maps right now: Car 32 mins. Bike 26 mins. Bus 41 mins.
Only a fool wouldn't cycle that.
So anyone that has any disability , cannot cycle is a fool then smartypants.
"I'll be flying as I normally would" - Rishi on the way to Scotland.
From 'Fuck Business' to 'Fuck The Planet'. What are the Conservatives actually *for*? Must check the manifesto they were elected with...
This pro pollution and climate crisis pivot is obviously a core voter turnout strategy.
They know it's all over and just want to save the furniture.
Well, there's a logic in that, if that's true.
If he just played solely and softly for the waverers he might get no votes at all.
His tightrope walk here is to avoid alienating the blue wall types who might just have been drifting back home half heartedly in self-interest from fear of Labour tax rises and relief that Boris is gone. I can see some logic in appealing to car owners in that respect, rather than banging on too much about stopping boats or Brexit. But those car owners also want clean air and watercourses so he can't go too far.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Yet 9 years ago they told us the oil and gas had run out and suddenly it has been found again, typical Tories lying through their teeth.
Good morning Malc
Hope you and your family are well
As a matter of interest do you support the granting of the new licences
Morning G, yes all well though July weather has been depressing , hope all well with you and family. For an independent Scotland , YES. Sending more money to Westminster to squander whilst we continue to decline NO. They are ripping us off on renewables now as well and next they will come for our water, absolute parasites.
Thanks Malc and yes we are OK though age doesn't come alone
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It doesn't have to be like that in places outside London though.
When I was in Germany, we lived in a medium-sized town, and we were able to get along perfectly well without our own car because the infrastructure (public transport, cycling provision, school and shop locations) was set up to allow this. On the occasions when we did need a car, we'd take a taxi or hire a car (or van). After moving back to the UK, I immediately bought a car because our social structure and infrastructure make it so difficult for most people to live without one (outside London).
Yet German transportation statistics are almost identical to ours. And cars reign supreme in Germany too.
Seems your experience is NOT the typical German lifestyle any more than it's the typical British one.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
That is a disgraceful comment.
It is a fact , many cyclists are irresponsible and ignore the rules of the road/ pavements. They are not all injured by cars either.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It's a completely asinine suggestion. You can get vehicles you can summon today, they're called taxis. People don't generally want them unless they can't afford their own vehicle, are inebriated, or for extreme circumstances.
I got a train for the first time in about five years recently, to take my family to the airport. Taxi to get to the train station. Was far cheaper than spending £250 on parking at the Airport.
In those circumstances I'll take a taxi, but why the hell would I want one in normal circumstances? That's what Leon doesn't grasp.
We are not talking about now but sometime in the distant future. It clearly doesn't apply now, but who knows what the future might bring (I'm still waiting for those flying cars to happen as predicted many decades ago) when we can get them near instantly at a fraction of the cost.
@HYUFD made a good point below which is similar to yours. If you can't get a car within a minute you are going to use your own.
You and @hyufd are right as things stand at the moment and I agree as I am a good example of that. We are both retired and have two cars sitting on the drive most of the time. It is rare that both cars are out at the same time. It makes no sense to have two cars, but we do because we don't want the hassle or inconvenience of waiting for a car to return or waiting for a taxi.
So as things stand you are right. Who knows what the future may bring though? Instant personal transport for an annual fee? Maybe it is as likely as the flying car.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
Well said!
The fact the anti car obsessives miss is that their city and non car life is that of a tiny proportion of the country. Outside London less people proportionately take the train to work, or live in cities, than vote Liberal Democrat. But they think they're normal, and engage in a circle jerk of backslapping that convinces themselves they're normal too.
I think you miss that we want to change that fact. Or at least halt the never-ending cycle of more roads= more cars = more roads = more cars.
That such a large proportion of people rely on their cars is a huge policy failure. It's frankly embarrassing when you see the public and active travel provision in Europe.
80% of us live in built up areas. That means a very large majority would benefit from this kind of investment.
Sunak has two choices, as I see it. Go full on populist and hope that can save the election or accept that the Tories are toast and both do something useful with the time left (also building a Sunak legacy) and put the Tories in a place to be a sane electoral force for the GE after if Labour cock up or are overtaken by events.
He seems to be going for the first. A legacy of unwinding the progress made on environmental issues over the last two decades. Contrast with Major, who led the Tories to a huge defeat in 1997 but also laid the foundations for peace in Northern Ireland over that period, in addition to doing much good work on the economy.
Major is now widely respected. Sunak, it seems, will be better off forgotten, if Labour can quickly unwind the policy disasters of his tenure.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo.
They are going to get tealed and will thoroughly deserve it.
There was a recent article in the FT (I can't be arsed to find it so any pass-agg demands for 'Link?' can stick it) showing how the long trend of people aging into toryism has stopped. It's because of stupid shit like this.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It's a completely asinine suggestion. You can get vehicles you can summon today, they're called taxis. People don't generally want them unless they can't afford their own vehicle, are inebriated, or for extreme circumstances.
I got a train for the first time in about five years recently, to take my family to the airport. Taxi to get to the train station. Was far cheaper than spending £250 on parking at the Airport.
In those circumstances I'll take a taxi, but why the hell would I want one in normal circumstances? That's what Leon doesn't grasp.
It's completely price elastic, as the early years of Uber when it was heavily subsidised showed. Particularly in the US young people were starting to use Uber as their primary means of transport because it was so cheap and available. These days that doesn't work because it's a. too expensive for daily use, b. too unreliable.
People go off Uber immediately the one day it turns up late or not at all.
Which is where, one would imagine, driverless cars might be less of a problem.
It's a tipping point I think. Something like 50% of Londoners don't own a car so already rely on public transport and taxis. If ride sharing / autonomous vehicles became that much cheaper and more reliable the number might well increase, generation by generation as kids reach 17 and don't bother to learnt to drive. Once you've foregone the effort (and investment) of learning to drive you don't have a choice anyway.
One of my friends recently moved from London to Totnes. She never learned to drive here - no need - so is now managing transport around the poorly served South Hams without a car. A bit too late now, in her 40s, to change the habit of a lifetime. If she'd grown up in Devon she would of course have learned to drive at 17.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Just for the record, while I have posted here with critical comments about the ULEZ expansion, not in principle but because of the rushed and botched way it has been handled and its irrelevance (at best) to tackling climate change, I absolutely agree with your post above on climate change and the need to focus on it. Sunak has been emboldened to sanction an expansion of fossil fuel extraction by the reaction to a separate environmental issue that should be regarded as a sideshow.
Like you, I think that Sunak will come an electoral cropper. However I also think that it's not only those in their 30s and the next generation of voters who are alarmed by global warming, I think the concern is across the board now.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Another one that thinks cyclists are perfect and even when they fall off themselves it must be a car a few miles away that caused it.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
Well said!
The fact the anti car obsessives miss is that their city and non car life is that of a tiny proportion of the country. Outside London less people proportionately take the train to work, or live in cities, than vote Liberal Democrat. But they think they're normal, and engage in a circle jerk of backslapping that convinces themselves they're normal too.
I think you miss that we want to change that fact. Or at least halt the never-ending cycle of more roads= more cars = more roads = more cars.
That such a large proportion of people rely on their cars is a huge policy failure. It's frankly embarrassing when you see the public and active travel provision in Europe.
80% of us live in built up areas. That means a very large majority would benefit from this kind of investment.
Sunak has two choices, as I see it. Go full on populist and hope that can save the election or accept that the Tories are toast and both do something useful with the time left (also building a Sunak legacy) and put the Tories in a place to be a sane electoral force for the GE after if Labour cock up or are overtaken by events.
He seems to be going for the first. A legacy of unwinding the progress made on environmental issues over the last two decades. Contrast with Major, who led the Tories to a huge defeat in 1997 but also laid the foundations for peace in Northern Ireland over that period, in addition to doing much good work on the economy.
Major is now widely respected. Sunak, it seems, will be better off forgotten, if Labour can quickly unwind the policy disasters of his tenure.
Alas, you are right. Sunak flunked his leadership test.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It doesn't have to be like that in places outside London though.
When I was in Germany, we lived in a medium-sized town, and we were able to get along perfectly well without our own car because the infrastructure (public transport, cycling provision, school and shop locations) was set up to allow this. On the occasions when we did need a car, we'd take a taxi or hire a car (or van). After moving back to the UK, I immediately bought a car because our social structure and infrastructure make it so difficult for most people to live without one (outside London).
Yet German transportation statistics are almost identical to ours. And cars reign supreme in Germany too.
Seems your experience is NOT the typical German lifestyle any more than it's the typical British one.
Suspect that's just population distribution. Britain's non drivers largely concentrated in one very large metropolis. Germany doesn't have one very large metropolis but lots of little ones.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It's a completely asinine suggestion. You can get vehicles you can summon today, they're called taxis. People don't generally want them unless they can't afford their own vehicle, are inebriated, or for extreme circumstances.
I got a train for the first time in about five years recently, to take my family to the airport. Taxi to get to the train station. Was far cheaper than spending £250 on parking at the Airport.
In those circumstances I'll take a taxi, but why the hell would I want one in normal circumstances? That's what Leon doesn't grasp.
Doesn't it depend on price? The reason taxis are quite expensive, I'd assume, is less the cost of the vehicle and fuel, and more the cost of the chauffeur.
As if drivers will be gone any time soon. And no, not just that.
Even if a taxi were the same price, I'd far, far prefer my own vehicle, with my own equipment, my own booster seats in it, my own settings in it etc, available on demand than someone else's random other one.
Yet there are far more alternative options than "taxis", and they are being taken up. I don't think anyone wants drivers to be "gone"; it's about appropriate usage and having freedom to choose.
The process of shifting away from space inefficient, and expensive, private vehicles continues. Though I'd say we are still at the "replace the 2nd car with another option" stage for a lot of people, or 'use the car less' and try something else. Going car-free is still quite unusual.
For example, car sharing clubs in the UK are now up to nearly a million members - 750k in 2022, growth rate 20%.
A small amount of money has been invested in mobility infrastructure in Central / Inner London, and the cycling modal share there is now up to ~10% from ~2%.
If I can find them, modal shares for Nottingham will be of interest, as the local Councils are keen on buses, trams and cycles, and have invested over time.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected.
Ahh. I get it. While pounding the roads on your bike in all weathers you developed an enduring and intense dislike and resentment of the motorists passing you all the time.
If indeed you did travel four miles to the local Spar by bike for a curly wurly.
I'm regularly held up by car drivers when cycling round Edinburgh. They should stop being so selfish and leave the car at home.
We lived in Fairmilehead and my daily journey to St Andrews Square was by bus
Even today cycling to and from work to Fairmilehead would be unrealistic, unless you are a tour de France cyclist
Google maps right now: Car 32 mins. Bike 26 mins. Bus 41 mins.
Only a fool wouldn't cycle that.
Electric boosted cycle with decent gears; it's hardly Mont Ventoux. The worst part is presumably from the Canny Man up to Wrichtshooses but otherwise it's a fairly steady gradient overall.
Burn your house down when battery explodes Carnyx , stick with the car.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
My rural roads are packed with urban cyclists at the weekends. Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
Bit harsh. Those rural cyclists are proficient, quiet, efficient, usually polite, and are gone before you know it. Plus they bring custom to rural enterprises.
Err no
They are usually middle class professionals with attitude. They hog the roads and are more likely to ram in to walkers using the same road space. And why can they never use a bell ?
Typical is a peloton of cyclists coming down a hill and threatening one of our local farmers because his cows were the crossing at milking time and they had to stop. Apparently he shouldnt have had them on the road ( and they might sue him ) despite signs either side of his farm warning road users that cows crossing the road was a hazard.
Not seen this and is the exception I have no doubt.
I have lived in my village for 30 years and quite frankly the cyclist problem has been getting steadily worse. Mostly its one of attitude as they think they have priority over other users.
Horse riders are the worst imo, often side-by-side, chatting, oblivious to their surroundings, or on their mobiles, texting or talking. Or leading one or two other horses over which they seem to have little control.
They act as if they own the road and everyone else is an annoying inconvenience.
I find horse riders ok. Youre judging the mood of the horse not the rider so out in the sticks we always slow down and pass slowly. Roumd my area he horse riders always pull in at the nearest drive or layby and let traffic pass.
The only dnagerous ones are usually nervy horses or inexperienced riders. But L Plate riders are usually accompanied by an expeirenced adult.
I have an odd experience with that; when I am hiking, I often have my walking poles strapped to the side of my rucksack if I don't need them. Horses *really* don't like this, for some reason, and it seems to spook them. If I have the poles in my hands they seem fine, which is counter-intuitive. I chatted to a rider about this once, and she said that horses sometimes get spooked by rucksacks.
Our dog reacts to stuff on or above people's head: head torch, umbrella, large hat. Not a big issue. He just barks, but remains friendly, although if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic.
I note with the exception of @TOPPING there seems to be an anti cyclist theme. My experience is cyclists are normally considerate and friendly. I am always. Of course you get the odd jerk. You always will.
I'm not anti-cyclist. It'd be hard for me to be, as I cycle. I'm not anti-car or anti-pedestrian either, for similar reasons.
All users of roads or paths need to be considerate of others. I see inconsiderate cycling all the time; then again, I live near Cambridge which probably has far more cyclists than other areas. I also see inconsiderate driving all the time as well.
This applies to cyclists as much as it does pedestrians or drivers.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
Well said!
The fact the anti car obsessives miss is that their city and non car life is that of a tiny proportion of the country. Outside London less people proportionately take the train to work, or live in cities, than vote Liberal Democrat. But they think they're normal, and engage in a circle jerk of backslapping that convinces themselves they're normal too.
I think you miss that we want to change that fact. Or at least halt the never-ending cycle of more roads= more cars = more roads = more cars.
That such a large proportion of people rely on their cars is a huge policy failure. It's frankly embarrassing when you see the public and active travel provision in Europe.
80% of us live in built up areas. That means a very large majority would benefit from this kind of investment.
"Built up area" != City.
I live in my red brick semi that @Leon is so jealous of in a built up area. Towns not cities are those built up areas.
And outside cities cars are supreme all across Europe. That's the fact of life.
That people rely on cars is a huge success. Cars are great, why shouldn't they be relied upon? It's as Luddite as saying that people relying upon electricity is a failure.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It doesn't have to be like that in places outside London though.
When I was in Germany, we lived in a medium-sized town, and we were able to get along perfectly well without our own car because the infrastructure (public transport, cycling provision, school and shop locations) was set up to allow this. On the occasions when we did need a car, we'd take a taxi or hire a car (or van). After moving back to the UK, I immediately bought a car because our social structure and infrastructure make it so difficult for most people to live without one (outside London).
Yet German transportation statistics are almost identical to ours. And cars reign supreme in Germany too.
Seems your experience is NOT the typical German lifestyle any more than it's the typical British one.
A quick Google shows that you are talking bollocks, e.g:
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I am with G on this one, perfectly sensible post. The best available research, from the Transport Research Laboratory, indicates that around half of all one-on-one collisions involving a cyclist were attributed in some part to the cyclist,
Sunak has two choices, as I see it. Go full on populist and hope that can save the election or accept that the Tories are toast and both do something useful with the time left (also building a Sunak legacy) and put the Tories in a place to be a sane electoral force for the GE after if Labour cock up or are overtaken by events.
He seems to be going for the first. A legacy of unwinding the progress made on environmental issues over the last two decades. Contrast with Major, who led the Tories to a huge defeat in 1997 but also laid the foundations for peace in Northern Ireland over that period, in addition to doing much good work on the economy.
Major is now widely respected. Sunak, it seems, will be better off forgotten, if Labour can quickly unwind the policy disasters of his tenure.
Alas, you are right. Sunak flunked his leadership test.
Don't forget Major by this point was banging on about back to basics, and cocking up a rail privatisation so badly that the aftermath is not entirely unconnected to the issues we are talking about today. We forget the bad bits of his latter years because he was a magnanimous loser and his internal enemies were objectionable.
Seems to me that the political parties are providing cover from those who really, really want to do something about the imminent climate catastrophe but actually, are going to do fuck all apart from vote for a party that *says* it is going to undertake all these actions but in reality either a) wont'; or b) will find substitutes and it will be situation no change.
Simply, no political party is going to jeopardise economic growth in the name of green policies.
Just that with Labour we will all be paying slightly more to import Venezuelan oil and gas, or wherever it comes from.
The Green Party is the only party I'm aware of that literally argues for a planned national recession which is also designed to divert wealth from the rich to the poor at the same time. Not that they have a hope in hell in getting into government, but it is an interesting position.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
Green socialist: I don't need to give up my car/computer/annual holiday because I am a tiny part of the whole and I am working towards a better society where we all give up these things.
Also Green socialist: it doesn't matter that the UK is responsible for only a tiny proportion of emissions it must cease these because every little helps.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I am with G on this one, perfectly sensible post. The best available research, from the Transport Research Laboratory, indicates that around half of all one-on-one collisions involving a cyclist were attributed in some part to the cyclist,
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
Well said!
The fact the anti car obsessives miss is that their city and non car life is that of a tiny proportion of the country. Outside London less people proportionately take the train to work, or live in cities, than vote Liberal Democrat. But they think they're normal, and engage in a circle jerk of backslapping that convinces themselves they're normal too.
I think you miss that we want to change that fact. Or at least halt the never-ending cycle of more roads= more cars = more roads = more cars.
That such a large proportion of people rely on their cars is a huge policy failure. It's frankly embarrassing when you see the public and active travel provision in Europe.
80% of us live in built up areas. That means a very large majority would benefit from this kind of investment.
"Huge policy failure" = the voters don't want it.
Voters don't want it due to policy failure. You first have the constant cuts made towards public transport and its mass privatisation, creating the need for individual car ownership. Then you have years of underfunding of any infrastructure which teaches the electorate that the government is incapable of doing good things, and therefore the electorate becomes suspicious about anything that could improve things (like the 15 minute city conspiracists) because they can only see the potential in authoritarian outcomes as that is what all policy has been for the last decade or so. If people had faith in government and public transport then they would be more willing to forgo their cars - and that is a result of policy failures.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
I'm not sure town vs city is a particularly helpful way to divide things compared with urban, suburban and rural.
I mean, Wells is a city whereas West Bromwich is a town, Ely is a city whereas Bolton is a town, St Asaph is a city whereas St Helens is a town etc.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Miniscule minority? wtf?
Just roughly added up the top ten urban areas in the UK and it came to 21m. Not including noted non-towns such as Bristol, Leicester, Belfast and Cardiff.
Now, that 21m will include town-ish places of course - yer Keighleys and yer Leighs - but I don't understand how you can possibly characterise it as 'miniscule'.
Sunak has two choices, as I see it. Go full on populist and hope that can save the election or accept that the Tories are toast and both do something useful with the time left (also building a Sunak legacy) and put the Tories in a place to be a sane electoral force for the GE after if Labour cock up or are overtaken by events.
He seems to be going for the first. A legacy of unwinding the progress made on environmental issues over the last two decades. Contrast with Major, who led the Tories to a huge defeat in 1997 but also laid the foundations for peace in Northern Ireland over that period, in addition to doing much good work on the economy.
Major is now widely respected. Sunak, it seems, will be better off forgotten, if Labour can quickly unwind the policy disasters of his tenure.
Alas, you are right. Sunak flunked his leadership test.
Don't forget Major by this point was banging on about back to basics, and cocking up a rail privatisation so badly that the aftermath is not entirely unconnected to the issues we are talking about today. We forget the bad bits of his latter years because he was a magnanimous loser and his internal enemies were objectionable.
Rail usage has more than doubled since the ?good? old days of BR. I am far from convinced that growth would have occurred under the old nationalised system.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I have no idea the statistics and certainly I do not accuse anyone of intentionally causing an accident, but cyclists do contribute to accidents and to infer it is car drivers who are all at fault is unfair
Any Tory who whines about an anti-car narrative is channelling Conservative HQ at the moment, whether this is intentional or not. The next step is to stop all spending on cycle ways and active stuff because cyclists are a bunch of selfish kamikaze woke types. Or so the narrative is shaping out.
Sorry but that is the other extreme
16 million is being spent on a dedicated cycle track between Llandudno Junction and Betws y Coed and that is the way to go
By that nice Mr Drakeford, though. Not the Tories.
Actually the 16 million is coming from The UK government
Just returning SOME of Welsh taxpayers money. So it will have cost Welsh about 30 million to get their 16 million cycletrack.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
Yep. Plus camber gets a fair few.
The mad design of road humps is an issue.
Often they are those “mound” ones - which are always place to encourage drivers to swerve out of their lane.
Many humps are so sharp that they penalise small cars, mopeds and bikes severely. Way back, when I was living in Hampstead, a nasty outbreak of such bumps led all the rich people to start buy giant American c
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
The benefit is to get cyclist attuned to respecting the laws we have.
Cyclists round me quite regularly come through in bunches which will mow pedestrians down, yelling at the last moment instead of slowing down and using a bell, In some places where the speed limit is 20mph for cars they dont think it applies to them. And on one local stretch of road which is up hill and round corners they could at least spread out to let cars pass but instead hog the width of the road so everyone is doing 15 mph and drivers in a hurry get frustrated and do daft things.
Cyclists need to be trained on road use since we have so many more of them on the road and theyre no longer people going to work.. I dread when the Tour de France starts as they all come out and think theyre Bradley Wiggins.
Spreading out increases overtaking distance and is more dangerous.
The speed limit does not apply to cyclists.
Cycling has fallen by 8x since the 1950s.
The vast majority of cyclists hold driving licences and have insurance (usually through their home insurance).
100% of your post was nonsense.
Cycling registration will happen, but not for these reasons.
While I was away, there was a collision between a rider of a souped up electric bike and a child on a bike, locally. Head on in a segregated bike lane. Child is ok. Electric bike rider left the scene. According to eye witnesses, he was exceeding 20mph, and had been pulling wheelies.
Since there will be all kinds of games played registering everything on 2 wheels will be the simple answer.
The "souped up electric bike" is a motorcycle or moped, and already subject to registration, insurance and the rider wearing prescribed safety gear such as an approved motorcycle helmet.
An interesting point is that taking it outside the pedal cycle definition (ie assistance at >15.5mph) means that the rider has lost the liability insurance cover from which the vast majority of cyclists benefit under their home insurance policy.
For two wheelers more widely, the DFT - even under our recent run of nutty Transport Ministers - is clear that it will not happen; they have said so to the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee - immediately after Grant Shapps was tickling the Daily Mail's crotch with the idea during last summer's silly season.
In the end, there is little benefit and a huge cost.
“little benefit and a huge cost”
So it’s guaranteed to happen.
This is because policing the small, but growing numbers, of DIY electric mopeds/motorcycles would require discretionary policing.
Much easier from the State point of view to put a license plate on everything.
Not everything. Putting a licence plate on any powered vehicle including any electric power-assisted bike is a good idea, in my opinion. If you do a DIY conversion you should by law be required to get a licence plate for your converted bike. Putting a licence plate on an ordinary cycle is not a good idea.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
My rural roads are packed with urban cyclists at the weekends. Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
Bit harsh. Those rural cyclists are proficient, quiet, efficient, usually polite, and are gone before you know it. Plus they bring custom to rural enterprises.
Err no
They are usually middle class professionals with attitude. They hog the roads and are more likely to ram in to walkers using the same road space. And why can they never use a bell ?
Typical is a peloton of cyclists coming down a hill and threatening one of our local farmers because his cows were the crossing at milking time and they had to stop. Apparently he shouldnt have had them on the road ( and they might sue him ) despite signs either side of his farm warning road users that cows crossing the road was a hazard.
Not seen this and is the exception I have no doubt.
I have lived in my village for 30 years and quite frankly the cyclist problem has been getting steadily worse. Mostly its one of attitude as they think they have priority over other users.
Horse riders are the worst imo, often side-by-side, chatting, oblivious to their surroundings, or on their mobiles, texting or talking. Or leading one or two other horses over which they seem to have little control.
They act as if they own the road and everyone else is an annoying inconvenience.
I find horse riders ok. Youre judging the mood of the horse not the rider so out in the sticks we always slow down and pass slowly. Roumd my area he horse riders always pull in at the nearest drive or layby and let traffic pass.
The only dnagerous ones are usually nervy horses or inexperienced riders. But L Plate riders are usually accompanied by an expeirenced adult.
I have an odd experience with that; when I am hiking, I often have my walking poles strapped to the side of my rucksack if I don't need them. Horses *really* don't like this, for some reason, and it seems to spook them. If I have the poles in my hands they seem fine, which is counter-intuitive. I chatted to a rider about this once, and she said that horses sometimes get spooked by rucksacks.
Our dog reacts to stuff on or above people's head: head torch, umbrella, large hat. Not a big issue. He just barks, but remains friendly, although if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic.
I note with the exception of @TOPPING there seems to be an anti cyclist theme. My experience is cyclists are normally considerate and friendly. I am always. Of course you get the odd jerk. You always will.
I'm not anti-cyclist. It'd be hard for me to be, as I cycle. I'm not anti-car or anti-pedestrian either, for similar reasons.
All users of roads or paths need to be considerate of others. I see inconsiderate cycling all the time; then again, I live near Cambridge which probably has far more cyclists than other areas. I also see inconsiderate driving all the time as well.
This applies to cyclists as much as it does pedestrians or drivers.
And if you want to push back on that, who has been more right wing?
Certainly not Major or Cameron. Not Johnson.
If you want a more right-wing Conservative PM, you need to make a case for May or Truss. Not sure either of those is easy.
Not May, I think Truss' actions were more right wing whilst in Gov't though, as was the rhetoric before on the campaign trail. And, though it didn't end well she did deliver on the rhetoric about cutting taxes for the richest.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I am with G on this one, perfectly sensible post. The best available research, from the Transport Research Laboratory, indicates that around half of all one-on-one collisions involving a cyclist were attributed in some part to the cyclist,
That's not the raw data; that's data that has been compiled by a cycling campaigning organisation.
In addition, it states: ",the figures show that in nearly three quarters of all collisions between bikes and vehicles the person driving is at fault." Which is different from what Malc wrote: "attributed in some part to the cyclist".
Incidents frequently have more than one causal factor.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Nutters like you would prefer we import from elsewhere and have 3 times the impact or else we go back to living in huts.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
Well said!
The fact the anti car obsessives miss is that their city and non car life is that of a tiny proportion of the country. Outside London less people proportionately take the train to work, or live in cities, than vote Liberal Democrat. But they think they're normal, and engage in a circle jerk of backslapping that convinces themselves they're normal too.
I think you miss that we want to change that fact. Or at least halt the never-ending cycle of more roads= more cars = more roads = more cars.
That such a large proportion of people rely on their cars is a huge policy failure. It's frankly embarrassing when you see the public and active travel provision in Europe.
80% of us live in built up areas. That means a very large majority would benefit from this kind of investment.
"Huge policy failure" = the voters don't want it.
Voters don't want it due to policy failure. You first have the constant cuts made towards public transport and its mass privatisation, creating the need for individual car ownership. Then you have years of underfunding of any infrastructure which teaches the electorate that the government is incapable of doing good things, and therefore the electorate becomes suspicious about anything that could improve things (like the 15 minute city conspiracists) because they can only see the potential in authoritarian outcomes as that is what all policy has been for the last decade or so. If people had faith in government and public transport then they would be more willing to forgo their cars - and that is a result of policy failures.
You have identified several policies which would help to achieve your aim. People have to date failed to vote for them. So my point holds.
All part of the democratic process. And you know what they say about democracy so we are stuck with it.
But fear not. If enough people see the light as you have done then we will have this thing sorted before the end of the week.
Sunak has two choices, as I see it. Go full on populist and hope that can save the election or accept that the Tories are toast and both do something useful with the time left (also building a Sunak legacy) and put the Tories in a place to be a sane electoral force for the GE after if Labour cock up or are overtaken by events.
He seems to be going for the first. A legacy of unwinding the progress made on environmental issues over the last two decades. Contrast with Major, who led the Tories to a huge defeat in 1997 but also laid the foundations for peace in Northern Ireland over that period, in addition to doing much good work on the economy.
Major is now widely respected. Sunak, it seems, will be better off forgotten, if Labour can quickly unwind the policy disasters of his tenure.
Utterly absurd, particularly as Sunak negotiated the Windsor Framework.
It's a fascinating human trait to dismiss all evidence that doesn't fit the thesis or conclusion that people have already determined they want to reach.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected.
Ahh. I get it. While pounding the roads on your bike in all weathers you developed an enduring and intense dislike and resentment of the motorists passing you all the time.
If indeed you did travel four miles to the local Spar by bike for a curly wurly.
I'm regularly held up by car drivers when cycling round Edinburgh. They should stop being so selfish and leave the car at home.
We lived in Fairmilehead and my daily journey to St Andrews Square was by bus
Even today cycling to and from work to Fairmilehead would be unrealistic, unless you are a tour de France cyclist
Google maps right now: Car 32 mins. Bike 26 mins. Bus 41 mins.
Only a fool wouldn't cycle that.
So those unable to cycle due to mobility or even confidence are 'fools'
Disabled people have lower rates of car access than the general population.
For those disabled people who do have a car, the best thing for them is for able-bodied folk to stop needlessly clogging up the roads.
I see we're veering towards a day of cyclist derangement syndrome today though, so I'll pop back tomorrow when we've moved onto something less inflammatory like cashless society.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
My rural roads are packed with urban cyclists at the weekends. Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
Bit harsh. Those rural cyclists are proficient, quiet, efficient, usually polite, and are gone before you know it. Plus they bring custom to rural enterprises.
Err no
They are usually middle class professionals with attitude. They hog the roads and are more likely to ram in to walkers using the same road space. And why can they never use a bell ?
Typical is a peloton of cyclists coming down a hill and threatening one of our local farmers because his cows were the crossing at milking time and they had to stop. Apparently he shouldnt have had them on the road ( and they might sue him ) despite signs either side of his farm warning road users that cows crossing the road was a hazard.
Not seen this and is the exception I have no doubt.
I have lived in my village for 30 years and quite frankly the cyclist problem has been getting steadily worse. Mostly its one of attitude as they think they have priority over other users.
Horse riders are the worst imo, often side-by-side, chatting, oblivious to their surroundings, or on their mobiles, texting or talking. Or leading one or two other horses over which they seem to have little control.
They act as if they own the road and everyone else is an annoying inconvenience.
I find horse riders ok. Youre judging the mood of the horse not the rider so out in the sticks we always slow down and pass slowly. Roumd my area he horse riders always pull in at the nearest drive or layby and let traffic pass.
The only dnagerous ones are usually nervy horses or inexperienced riders. But L Plate riders are usually accompanied by an expeirenced adult.
I have an odd experience with that; when I am hiking, I often have my walking poles strapped to the side of my rucksack if I don't need them. Horses *really* don't like this, for some reason, and it seems to spook them. If I have the poles in my hands they seem fine, which is counter-intuitive. I chatted to a rider about this once, and she said that horses sometimes get spooked by rucksacks.
Our dog reacts to stuff on or above people's head: head torch, umbrella, large hat. Not a big issue. He just barks, but remains friendly, although if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic.
I note with the exception of @TOPPING there seems to be an anti cyclist theme. My experience is cyclists are normally considerate and friendly. I am always. Of course you get the odd jerk. You always will.
I'm not anti-cyclist. It'd be hard for me to be, as I cycle. I'm not anti-car or anti-pedestrian either, for similar reasons.
All users of roads or paths need to be considerate of others. I see inconsiderate cycling all the time; then again, I live near Cambridge which probably has far more cyclists than other areas. I also see inconsiderate driving all the time as well.
This applies to cyclists as much as it does pedestrians or drivers.
Cycling is treated too much as a pastime in Britain rather than simply a means of getting from A to B. It's become the preserve of people who either want to get fit, or emulate the Tour de France, or save the planet. Rather than simply being a way of getting to the shops and back. That leaves it open to political and tribal capture.
It seems to be more the case outside London. One of the better things about our social attitudes to transport in the capital is that most people will happily drive, cycle, take the tube or bus without feeling that one mode belongs exclusively to a particular segment of society (contrast that with taking a bus in NYC). My colleagues with bikes in the North all seem to use them to go off doing etapes around the Pennines with their mates at the weekend.
For most people the idea of getting 'from A to B' via bike is a non-starter.
I have the benefit of a workplace who provides changing tooms, showers and lockers to allow me to commute on my bike. without proper changing facilities with showers this wouldn't be an option for me.
even given that there are people who I work with who could cycle to work but can't do the distances because it'd take too much time out of their day. I do 6-7 miles and it takes me an hour (each way) to do my commute and to get changed at either end. most people can't afford to lose 2-4 hours on their commute every day.
Then it comes to infrastructure, while there are some dedicated cycle routes near me there's not enough and it's mostly not been thought through properly. you can't always get close to where you want to go, or you can but the quality of the route isn't good enough to make it usable.
London has a truly integrated transport system so all of it is treated with similar esteem. some of the other larget cities are getting there but anywhere else it's really hard to work out. for instance, Derby doesn't even have an integrated bus system. I can't get on a bus from where I live and then change in the city centre to go to some other parts of the system without it costing £8 return (it was nearer £11 prior to the bus cap).
when it comes to e-bikes (and scooters) it's the ones who have been sold/built according to the law (no assistance above 15mph) but have been modified to allow unrestricted assistance. the people riding those are more likely to ride recklessly. more enforcement on that is required.
Liz Truss seemed more right wing to me, particularly on taxation policies.
I couldn't say where she is on the spectrum.
Truss is the interesting one. We don't know how her premiership would have played out, but her instincts seemed to be libertarian rather than conservative. Quite happy to dump Braverman when given the chance, for example.
But in terms of Thatcherite re-enactment, Sunak is more convincing across the board. And the urge to overrule local government when it comes up with the "wrong" answers is very on-brand.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
My rural roads are packed with urban cyclists at the weekends. Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
Bit harsh. Those rural cyclists are proficient, quiet, efficient, usually polite, and are gone before you know it. Plus they bring custom to rural enterprises.
Err no
They are usually middle class professionals with attitude. They hog the roads and are more likely to ram in to walkers using the same road space. And why can they never use a bell ?
Typical is a peloton of cyclists coming down a hill and threatening one of our local farmers because his cows were the crossing at milking time and they had to stop. Apparently he shouldnt have had them on the road ( and they might sue him ) despite signs either side of his farm warning road users that cows crossing the road was a hazard.
Not seen this and is the exception I have no doubt.
I have lived in my village for 30 years and quite frankly the cyclist problem has been getting steadily worse. Mostly its one of attitude as they think they have priority over other users.
Horse riders are the worst imo, often side-by-side, chatting, oblivious to their surroundings, or on their mobiles, texting or talking. Or leading one or two other horses over which they seem to have little control.
They act as if they own the road and everyone else is an annoying inconvenience.
I find horse riders ok. Youre judging the mood of the horse not the rider so out in the sticks we always slow down and pass slowly. Roumd my area he horse riders always pull in at the nearest drive or layby and let traffic pass.
The only dnagerous ones are usually nervy horses or inexperienced riders. But L Plate riders are usually accompanied by an expeirenced adult.
I have an odd experience with that; when I am hiking, I often have my walking poles strapped to the side of my rucksack if I don't need them. Horses *really* don't like this, for some reason, and it seems to spook them. If I have the poles in my hands they seem fine, which is counter-intuitive. I chatted to a rider about this once, and she said that horses sometimes get spooked by rucksacks.
Our dog reacts to stuff on or above people's head: head torch, umbrella, large hat. Not a big issue. He just barks, but remains friendly, although if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic.
I note with the exception of @TOPPING there seems to be an anti cyclist theme. My experience is cyclists are normally considerate and friendly. I am always. Of course you get the odd jerk. You always will.
I'm not anti-cyclist. It'd be hard for me to be, as I cycle. I'm not anti-car or anti-pedestrian either, for similar reasons.
All users of roads or paths need to be considerate of others. I see inconsiderate cycling all the time; then again, I live near Cambridge which probably has far more cyclists than other areas. I also see inconsiderate driving all the time as well.
This applies to cyclists as much as it does pedestrians or drivers.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
Yes, quite. Once you sit down and think about it, the advantages are so huge - personal and public - all that new green space! - it is bound to happen. The only way it won’t is if some OTHER as yet unknown transport technology takes over. Quite possible
Who would ever have guessed that high speed trains would come back to replace lots of shorter plane journeys? But so it is
There are so many straws in the wind already. Car clubs. Kids not learning to drive. Etc
Here in Ukraine Bolt is seamlessly integrated with local cab services so, yes, you just summon a car with your app. Even in small towns. Eventually it will be autonomous and electric
And now I must coffee and brunch because later I’m taking Bolt to the station to get on a bus!
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
Yep. Plus camber gets a fair few.
The mad design of road humps is an issue.
Often they are those “mound” ones - which are always place to encourage drivers to swerve out of their lane.
Many humps are so sharp that they penalise small cars, mopeds and bikes severely. Way back, when I was living in Hampstead, a nasty outbreak of such bumps led all the rich people to start buy giant American c
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
The benefit is to get cyclist attuned to respecting the laws we have.
Cyclists round me quite regularly come through in bunches which will mow pedestrians down, yelling at the last moment instead of slowing down and using a bell, In some places where the speed limit is 20mph for cars they dont think it applies to them. And on one local stretch of road which is up hill and round corners they could at least spread out to let cars pass but instead hog the width of the road so everyone is doing 15 mph and drivers in a hurry get frustrated and do daft things.
Cyclists need to be trained on road use since we have so many more of them on the road and theyre no longer people going to work.. I dread when the Tour de France starts as they all come out and think theyre Bradley Wiggins.
Spreading out increases overtaking distance and is more dangerous.
The speed limit does not apply to cyclists.
Cycling has fallen by 8x since the 1950s.
The vast majority of cyclists hold driving licences and have insurance (usually through their home insurance).
100% of your post was nonsense.
Cycling registration will happen, but not for these reasons.
While I was away, there was a collision between a rider of a souped up electric bike and a child on a bike, locally. Head on in a segregated bike lane. Child is ok. Electric bike rider left the scene. According to eye witnesses, he was exceeding 20mph, and had been pulling wheelies.
Since there will be all kinds of games played registering everything on 2 wheels will be the simple answer.
The "souped up electric bike" is a motorcycle or moped, and already subject to registration, insurance and the rider wearing prescribed safety gear such as an approved motorcycle helmet.
An interesting point is that taking it outside the pedal cycle definition (ie assistance at >15.5mph) means that the rider has lost the liability insurance cover from which the vast majority of cyclists benefit under their home insurance policy.
For two wheelers more widely, the DFT - even under our recent run of nutty Transport Ministers - is clear that it will not happen; they have said so to the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee - immediately after Grant Shapps was tickling the Daily Mail's crotch with the idea during last summer's silly season.
In the end, there is little benefit and a huge cost.
Registering everything on two wheels is far, far from a simple answer anyway. And solves nothing.
A lot of the mopeds masquerading as bikes are simply illegal and shouldn't be available to buy.
They are not necessarily bought as is. Conversion kits. Often sold with warnings that they would potentially create a moped class vehicle.
The police are leary of the issue - because it means confronting the kind of individuals who are all up for a bit of a kick off.
Apparently the local drug dealers are big into these.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I have no idea the statistics and certainly I do not accuse anyone of intentionally causing an accident, but cyclists do contribute to accidents and to infer it is car drivers who are all at fault is unfair
Any Tory who whines about an anti-car narrative is channelling Conservative HQ at the moment, whether this is intentional or not. The next step is to stop all spending on cycle ways and active stuff because cyclists are a bunch of selfish kamikaze woke types. Or so the narrative is shaping out.
Sorry but that is the other extreme
16 million is being spent on a dedicated cycle track between Llandudno Junction and Betws y Coed and that is the way to go
By that nice Mr Drakeford, though. Not the Tories.
Actually the 16 million is coming from The UK government
No, it's not - it's coming from taxpayers and the bank lenders. Ultra vires money, too, breaching the devolution legislation.
Correcting my previous note, it is money from a bid to the Levelling-Up fund.
This actually highlights an issue: it is being referred to as a 'cycle path', but it is actually a "shared-use walking and cycling path". It is not just for cycling. That's an important distinction, especially for the idiots who will want to use it as a velodrome (I'd assume horse riders can also use it, but cannot find information).
That's important; there are very few exclusive away-from-road cycle usage facilities in the country - though there's a rarely used road-sign to designate them. Something like a mandatory cycle lane (marked out by solid painted line on a road) used to be exclusive, but the current Govt f*cked up the laws in 2016 so anything created since is optional; it's quite the saga.
It's about specification and quality for the traffic level.
Even something like the Bristol and Bath railway path, which has 1-2 million cycle trips a year, is a 3m wide shared path. There are several similar width cycle tracks in London with higher traffic levels.
What is the spec of the Llandudno to Bets-y-Coed path?
English standards LTN 1/20 say such should be a 3m-wide minimum sealed machine laid surface, at which width it will be fine. Welsh standards probably say the same but they are a 475-page document covering both walking and cycling, so I'm not going to look.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm looking at the current stats - ice loss in the arctic, sea temperatures in the Atlantic, rising global temperatures beating new records, Sicily and Rhodes on fire and losing electricity due to melting infrastructure. The AMOC could fail in my lifetime. I have no belief that I'll retire, get a pension, that by the time I'm in my 60s or 70s food stability will be a thing.
And the PM seems to be saying he'll invest in fossil fuels and design the country for more car use out of spite.
If this is how the Tories want to continue, they will go the way of the dodo. The next generation of voters care about having a habitable planet (unsurprisingly) and the turn towards climate antagonism if not outright climate change denial will go down like a lead balloon with a lot of middle class suburbanites who look at the world and what is happening and start thinking about their kids.
The material reality is that we will have to significantly change our infrastructure and the organisation of society to try to prevent and to react to climate catastrophe. That will include sacrifices from many people, but we can (and should) put the greater burden on those who can afford it. An economic change on par with WW2 or the New Deal is the only real solution. We need a government that accepts that and starts preparing now.
Sounds terrifying. If everyone thought about it as you do then we would solve our problem. The UK would as from tomorrow stop using all that fossil fuel stuff and we would have at least a chance of saving ourselves.
War footing is the only way to do this, I absolutely agree.
Can you please share with us a suggested draft of the manifesto, before of course you go dark and switch off your computer for the common good.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
Anyone touching my meat and chocolate can fuck right off.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It doesn't have to be like that in places outside London though.
When I was in Germany, we lived in a medium-sized town, and we were able to get along perfectly well without our own car because the infrastructure (public transport, cycling provision, school and shop locations) was set up to allow this. On the occasions when we did need a car, we'd take a taxi or hire a car (or van). After moving back to the UK, I immediately bought a car because our social structure and infrastructure make it so difficult for most people to live without one (outside London).
Yet German transportation statistics are almost identical to ours. And cars reign supreme in Germany too.
Seems your experience is NOT the typical German lifestyle any more than it's the typical British one.
A quick Google shows that you are talking bollocks, e.g:
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I am with G on this one, perfectly sensible post. The best available research, from the Transport Research Laboratory, indicates that around half of all one-on-one collisions involving a cyclist were attributed in some part to the cyclist,
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected.
Ahh. I get it. While pounding the roads on your bike in all weathers you developed an enduring and intense dislike and resentment of the motorists passing you all the time.
If indeed you did travel four miles to the local Spar by bike for a curly wurly.
Not really. 4 miles is really not far on a bicycle, is it? I do a lot more than that daily now, even though I now live in the city and have a car. Bad weather is very rarely a problem, especially cycling in the south or east of England.
In my experience there is a small but vocal minority of motorists who have a weird resentment of anyone on a bicycle. The mere existence of people getting around not in a car seems to send them into an irrational rage.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
Yep. Plus camber gets a fair few.
The mad design of road humps is an issue.
Often they are those “mound” ones - which are always place to encourage drivers to swerve out of their lane.
Many humps are so sharp that they penalise small cars, mopeds and bikes severely. Way back, when I was living in Hampstead, a nasty outbreak of such bumps led all the rich people to start buy giant American c
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
The benefit is to get cyclist attuned to respecting the laws we have.
Cyclists round me quite regularly come through in bunches which will mow pedestrians down, yelling at the last moment instead of slowing down and using a bell, In some places where the speed limit is 20mph for cars they dont think it applies to them. And on one local stretch of road which is up hill and round corners they could at least spread out to let cars pass but instead hog the width of the road so everyone is doing 15 mph and drivers in a hurry get frustrated and do daft things.
Cyclists need to be trained on road use since we have so many more of them on the road and theyre no longer people going to work.. I dread when the Tour de France starts as they all come out and think theyre Bradley Wiggins.
Spreading out increases overtaking distance and is more dangerous.
The speed limit does not apply to cyclists.
Cycling has fallen by 8x since the 1950s.
The vast majority of cyclists hold driving licences and have insurance (usually through their home insurance).
100% of your post was nonsense.
Cycling registration will happen, but not for these reasons.
While I was away, there was a collision between a rider of a souped up electric bike and a child on a bike, locally. Head on in a segregated bike lane. Child is ok. Electric bike rider left the scene. According to eye witnesses, he was exceeding 20mph, and had been pulling wheelies.
Since there will be all kinds of games played registering everything on 2 wheels will be the simple answer.
The "souped up electric bike" is a motorcycle or moped, and already subject to registration, insurance and the rider wearing prescribed safety gear such as an approved motorcycle helmet.
An interesting point is that taking it outside the pedal cycle definition (ie assistance at >15.5mph) means that the rider has lost the liability insurance cover from which the vast majority of cyclists benefit under their home insurance policy.
For two wheelers more widely, the DFT - even under our recent run of nutty Transport Ministers - is clear that it will not happen; they have said so to the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee - immediately after Grant Shapps was tickling the Daily Mail's crotch with the idea during last summer's silly season.
In the end, there is little benefit and a huge cost.
“little benefit and a huge cost”
So it’s guaranteed to happen.
This is because policing the small, but growing numbers, of DIY electric mopeds/motorcycles would require discretionary policing.
Much easier from the State point of view to put a license plate on everything.
Putting a licence plate on an ordinary cycle is not a good idea.
We had these in Belgium when I was a kid. As far as I can recall they cost 30 francs per year but I always used to steal mine off some other kid's bike at school. Les Belges gave up on them in the mid-80s but they would be a lot easier to implement now with technology.
A note re Uber. Their price advantage has disappeared. BUT that was never the reason they were and are important
Their importance is that they introduced the idea of the taxi you can summon and follow and pay with an app. Vastly more convenient than “calling a minicab” let alone “hailing a taxi on the street”
THAT - the app - has entirely survived. These app-based cab services are everywhere in the world now. Even small towns
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
I think you are mistaken in putting all towns in the same category.
The town of Totnes was mentioned earlier - living there, in rural Devon, is qualitatively different from living in the town of Gateshead in the Tyneside urban area.
Whilst I accept quite a lot of people live in towns in slightly more sparsely populated areas, quite a lot also live in towns which form part of an essentially contiguous, large urban area.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
When I was in Connecticut early this month we stayed at an AirBnb in Branford which is on the coast a few miles outside New Haven. Semi-rural, no buses, a station but miles from the centre. My wife's folks live in a small house in New Haven so we spend a lot of time shuttling to and fro the 10 or so miles. For the first time we didn't hire a car but got the train down from Boston and relied on Uber when we got to CT which turned out to be (a) cheaper and (b) more convenient. Even in sleepy Branford, one was at your door within 5 minutes of ordering. They don't have Uber in Kent yet, but I saw the future.
So, you went on holiday and hired a taxi?
You really are a soothsayer.
I might be a soothsayer but you need an English teacher. Or just a teacher. Again - read what's posted before exploding in your customary righteous anger - it just exposes your idiocy. And chill out. It's going to be a tough few years for you anyway and your anger management issues will not assist.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected. Obviously this isn't possible for many, but the sad truth is that driving tends to make people selfish, unhealthy, aggressive, and disconnected. As well as imposing harm on others.
Also, the last time I looked road accidents were the leading cause of death among 5-18 year olds in the UK, and current traffic imposes a kind of permanent semi lockdown on millions of children.
With respect I utterly reject your observations about car drivers and indeed this is an anti car narrative that is developing mainly from cyclists and none of my grandchildren have any kind of lockdown
If there is a "war" between drivers and cyclists, then drivers are winning comprehensively.
16,000 cyclists were injured or killed last year.
I do not see it as a competition and many cyclists will no doubt have been responsible for the outcome themselves
Pretty horrible comment.
Why unless you think all these accidents are the car drivers fault
You did say 'many', clearly indicating - intentionally or otherwise - that a high proportion of the accidents - at least half, say - were the cyclist's fault.
I am with G on this one, perfectly sensible post. The best available research, from the Transport Research Laboratory, indicates that around half of all one-on-one collisions involving a cyclist were attributed in some part to the cyclist,
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
My rural roads are packed with urban cyclists at the weekends. Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
Bit harsh. Those rural cyclists are proficient, quiet, efficient, usually polite, and are gone before you know it. Plus they bring custom to rural enterprises.
Err no
They are usually middle class professionals with attitude. They hog the roads and are more likely to ram in to walkers using the same road space. And why can they never use a bell ?
Typical is a peloton of cyclists coming down a hill and threatening one of our local farmers because his cows were the crossing at milking time and they had to stop. Apparently he shouldnt have had them on the road ( and they might sue him ) despite signs either side of his farm warning road users that cows crossing the road was a hazard.
Not seen this and is the exception I have no doubt.
I have lived in my village for 30 years and quite frankly the cyclist problem has been getting steadily worse. Mostly its one of attitude as they think they have priority over other users.
Horse riders are the worst imo, often side-by-side, chatting, oblivious to their surroundings, or on their mobiles, texting or talking. Or leading one or two other horses over which they seem to have little control.
They act as if they own the road and everyone else is an annoying inconvenience.
I find horse riders ok. Youre judging the mood of the horse not the rider so out in the sticks we always slow down and pass slowly. Roumd my area he horse riders always pull in at the nearest drive or layby and let traffic pass.
The only dnagerous ones are usually nervy horses or inexperienced riders. But L Plate riders are usually accompanied by an expeirenced adult.
I have an odd experience with that; when I am hiking, I often have my walking poles strapped to the side of my rucksack if I don't need them. Horses *really* don't like this, for some reason, and it seems to spook them. If I have the poles in my hands they seem fine, which is counter-intuitive. I chatted to a rider about this once, and she said that horses sometimes get spooked by rucksacks.
Our dog reacts to stuff on or above people's head: head torch, umbrella, large hat. Not a big issue. He just barks, but remains friendly, although if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic.
I note with the exception of @TOPPING there seems to be an anti cyclist theme. My experience is cyclists are normally considerate and friendly. I am always. Of course you get the odd jerk. You always will.
I'm not anti-cyclist. It'd be hard for me to be, as I cycle. I'm not anti-car or anti-pedestrian either, for similar reasons.
All users of roads or paths need to be considerate of others. I see inconsiderate cycling all the time; then again, I live near Cambridge which probably has far more cyclists than other areas. I also see inconsiderate driving all the time as well.
This applies to cyclists as much as it does pedestrians or drivers.
Cycling is treated too much as a pastime in Britain rather than simply a means of getting from A to B. It's become the preserve of people who either want to get fit, or emulate the Tour de France, or save the planet. Rather than simply being a way of getting to the shops and back. That leaves it open to political and tribal capture.
It seems to be more the case outside London. One of the better things about our social attitudes to transport in the capital is that most people will happily drive, cycle, take the tube or bus without feeling that one mode belongs exclusively to a particular segment of society (contrast that with taking a bus in NYC). My colleagues with bikes in the North all seem to use them to go off doing etapes around the Pennines with their mates at the weekend.
For most people the idea of getting 'from A to B' via bike is a non-starter.
I have the benefit of a workplace who provides changing tooms, showers and lockers to allow me to commute on my bike. without proper changing facilities with showers this wouldn't be an option for me.
even given that there are people who I work with who could cycle to work but can't do the distances because it'd take too much time out of their day. I do 6-7 miles and it takes me an hour (each way) to do my commute and to get changed at either end. most people can't afford to lose 2-4 hours on their commute every day.
Then it comes to infrastructure, while there are some dedicated cycle routes near me there's not enough and it's mostly not been thought through properly. you can't always get close to where you want to go, or you can but the quality of the route isn't good enough to make it usable.
London has a truly integrated transport system so all of it is treated with similar esteem. some of the other larget cities are getting there but anywhere else it's really hard to work out. for instance, Derby doesn't even have an integrated bus system. I can't get on a bus from where I live and then change in the city centre to go to some other parts of the system without it costing £8 return (it was nearer £11 prior to the bus cap).
when it comes to e-bikes (and scooters) it's the ones who have been sold/built according to the law (no assistance above 15mph) but have been modified to allow unrestricted assistance. the people riding those are more likely to ride recklessly. more enforcement on that is required.
Cambridge is nine miles away from my home (eight from other parts of the village). It involves a ride along a road that has been bypassed, and then Madingley Road into Cambridge. Eight miles there and back *should* be an easy commute, even with a slight hill on the way back.
But it can be a nasty ride; a friend got injured in a collision with a car whilst riding it. The cycle path is either non-existent, disjointed, or jumps from one side of the road to the other at a busy junction. There is an off-road bridleway route, but that is only suitable for mountain bikes.
If bike commuting cannot be got right here, what chance elsewhere?
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
And if you want to push back on that, who has been more right wing?
Certainly not Major or Cameron. Not Johnson.
If you want a more right-wing Conservative PM, you need to make a case for May or Truss. Not sure either of those is easy.
Truss was more pro cutting tax than Sunak but Sunak is more of a hawk on spending. Sunak is more socially conservative than Truss and harder on immigration even than May but less pro hard Brexit than Boris was.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
I think you are mistaken in putting all towns in the same category.
The town of Totnes was mentioned earlier - living there, in rural Devon, is qualitatively different from living in the town of Gateshead in the Tyneside urban area.
Whilst I accept quite a lot of people live in towns in slightly more sparsely populated areas, quite a lot also live in towns which form part of an essentially contiguous, large urban area.
One of the reasons designing transport policies for England is that our population by density decile is very flat.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
My rural roads are packed with urban cyclists at the weekends. Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
Bit harsh. Those rural cyclists are proficient, quiet, efficient, usually polite, and are gone before you know it. Plus they bring custom to rural enterprises.
Err no
They are usually middle class professionals with attitude. They hog the roads and are more likely to ram in to walkers using the same road space. And why can they never use a bell ?
Typical is a peloton of cyclists coming down a hill and threatening one of our local farmers because his cows were the crossing at milking time and they had to stop. Apparently he shouldnt have had them on the road ( and they might sue him ) despite signs either side of his farm warning road users that cows crossing the road was a hazard.
Not seen this and is the exception I have no doubt.
I have lived in my village for 30 years and quite frankly the cyclist problem has been getting steadily worse. Mostly its one of attitude as they think they have priority over other users.
Horse riders are the worst imo, often side-by-side, chatting, oblivious to their surroundings, or on their mobiles, texting or talking. Or leading one or two other horses over which they seem to have little control.
They act as if they own the road and everyone else is an annoying inconvenience.
I find horse riders ok. Youre judging the mood of the horse not the rider so out in the sticks we always slow down and pass slowly. Roumd my area he horse riders always pull in at the nearest drive or layby and let traffic pass.
The only dnagerous ones are usually nervy horses or inexperienced riders. But L Plate riders are usually accompanied by an expeirenced adult.
I have an odd experience with that; when I am hiking, I often have my walking poles strapped to the side of my rucksack if I don't need them. Horses *really* don't like this, for some reason, and it seems to spook them. If I have the poles in my hands they seem fine, which is counter-intuitive. I chatted to a rider about this once, and she said that horses sometimes get spooked by rucksacks.
Our dog reacts to stuff on or above people's head: head torch, umbrella, large hat. Not a big issue. He just barks, but remains friendly, although if you don't know him that isn't obvious so we are always apologetic.
I note with the exception of @TOPPING there seems to be an anti cyclist theme. My experience is cyclists are normally considerate and friendly. I am always. Of course you get the odd jerk. You always will.
I'm not anti-cyclist. It'd be hard for me to be, as I cycle. I'm not anti-car or anti-pedestrian either, for similar reasons.
All users of roads or paths need to be considerate of others. I see inconsiderate cycling all the time; then again, I live near Cambridge which probably has far more cyclists than other areas. I also see inconsiderate driving all the time as well.
This applies to cyclists as much as it does pedestrians or drivers.
Cycling is treated too much as a pastime in Britain rather than simply a means of getting from A to B. It's become the preserve of people who either want to get fit, or emulate the Tour de France, or save the planet. Rather than simply being a way of getting to the shops and back. That leaves it open to political and tribal capture.
It seems to be more the case outside London. One of the better things about our social attitudes to transport in the capital is that most people will happily drive, cycle, take the tube or bus without feeling that one mode belongs exclusively to a particular segment of society (contrast that with taking a bus in NYC). My colleagues with bikes in the North all seem to use them to go off doing etapes around the Pennines with their mates at the weekend.
For most people the idea of getting 'from A to B' via bike is a non-starter.
I have the benefit of a workplace who provides changing tooms, showers and lockers to allow me to commute on my bike. without proper changing facilities with showers this wouldn't be an option for me.
even given that there are people who I work with who could cycle to work but can't do the distances because it'd take too much time out of their day. I do 6-7 miles and it takes me an hour (each way) to do my commute and to get changed at either end. most people can't afford to lose 2-4 hours on their commute every day.
Then it comes to infrastructure, while there are some dedicated cycle routes near me there's not enough and it's mostly not been thought through properly. you can't always get close to where you want to go, or you can but the quality of the route isn't good enough to make it usable.
London has a truly integrated transport system so all of it is treated with similar esteem. some of the other larget cities are getting there but anywhere else it's really hard to work out. for instance, Derby doesn't even have an integrated bus system. I can't get on a bus from where I live and then change in the city centre to go to some other parts of the system without it costing £8 return (it was nearer £11 prior to the bus cap).
when it comes to e-bikes (and scooters) it's the ones who have been sold/built according to the law (no assistance above 15mph) but have been modified to allow unrestricted assistance. the people riding those are more likely to ride recklessly. more enforcement on that is required.
Yes all the money has been spent on transport for London and the rest of us have to use cars as we have shitty transport, same as everything else.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
So you accept that you're wrong. 17 million isn't a miniscule minority by any reasonable definition of 'miniscule'.
8 million outside of London is miniscule when we have nutters on here repeatedly quoting bullshit like "85% live in urban areas so should have trams available to them".
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
Yep. Plus camber gets a fair few.
The mad design of road humps is an issue.
Often they are those “mound” ones - which are always place to encourage drivers to swerve out of their lane.
Many humps are so sharp that they penalise small cars, mopeds and bikes severely. Way back, when I was living in Hampstead, a nasty outbreak of such bumps led all the rich people to start buy giant American c
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
The benefit is to get cyclist attuned to respecting the laws we have.
Cyclists round me quite regularly come through in bunches which will mow pedestrians down, yelling at the last moment instead of slowing down and using a bell, In some places where the speed limit is 20mph for cars they dont think it applies to them. And on one local stretch of road which is up hill and round corners they could at least spread out to let cars pass but instead hog the width of the road so everyone is doing 15 mph and drivers in a hurry get frustrated and do daft things.
Cyclists need to be trained on road use since we have so many more of them on the road and theyre no longer people going to work.. I dread when the Tour de France starts as they all come out and think theyre Bradley Wiggins.
Spreading out increases overtaking distance and is more dangerous.
The speed limit does not apply to cyclists.
Cycling has fallen by 8x since the 1950s.
The vast majority of cyclists hold driving licences and have insurance (usually through their home insurance).
100% of your post was nonsense.
Cycling registration will happen, but not for these reasons.
While I was away, there was a collision between a rider of a souped up electric bike and a child on a bike, locally. Head on in a segregated bike lane. Child is ok. Electric bike rider left the scene. According to eye witnesses, he was exceeding 20mph, and had been pulling wheelies.
Since there will be all kinds of games played registering everything on 2 wheels will be the simple answer.
The "souped up electric bike" is a motorcycle or moped, and already subject to registration, insurance and the rider wearing prescribed safety gear such as an approved motorcycle helmet.
An interesting point is that taking it outside the pedal cycle definition (ie assistance at >15.5mph) means that the rider has lost the liability insurance cover from which the vast majority of cyclists benefit under their home insurance policy.
For two wheelers more widely, the DFT - even under our recent run of nutty Transport Ministers - is clear that it will not happen; they have said so to the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee - immediately after Grant Shapps was tickling the Daily Mail's crotch with the idea during last summer's silly season.
In the end, there is little benefit and a huge cost.
Registering everything on two wheels is far, far from a simple answer anyway. And solves nothing.
A lot of the mopeds masquerading as bikes are simply illegal and shouldn't be available to buy.
They are not necessarily bought as is. Conversion kits. Often sold with warnings that they would potentially create a moped class vehicle.
The police are leary of the issue - because it means confronting the kind of individuals who are all up for a bit of a kick off.
Apparently the local drug dealers are big into these.
That's more or less the story of the two lads that killed themselves on a Surron e-motorbike in Cardiff, without afaik the drugs. The motorbikes come with labels saying "use on private land only", and prepared for easy hacking to take them from say 28mph tops to 50 mph tops - eg cut a wire.
The parents gave one an e-motorbike they were not allowed to ride, and they rode it two-up at high speed without the safety kit, and ended up dead. A familiar story.
I may have mentioned before that police operations on this issue are usually called Operation Endurance, and Durham police have been a leader since the 1990s.
Until the police and the pols stop being leary, the deaths will continue.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
Good morning
I believe this forum has a strong London representation and of course with the tens of billions spent on its transport infrastructure it, in common with other large cities, provides the means to travel without a car and indeed why would anyone want to drive into cental London
However, move out of London and the country is very much car dependent, and the idea we can walk and cycle everywhere is not the case and in our area there are not many cyclists on the road anyway and of course cycle tracks are being built to separate them from cars, though some cyclists still use the roads
The move to ev's will be a long drawn out one as new ICE vehicles will be available throughout Europe until 2035, ( expect the UK to move the 2030 date to match Europe) and this does give space for the provision of the infrastructure needed plus hopefully a huge drop in their prices, as being green at present certainly is a wealthy person's domain
I notice the government have confirmed the granting of hundreds of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and this will be a challenge for Starmer, especially in Scotland, if he maintains his objection to these new licences, though this may be number 35 reverse of policy from him
Wenn I lived in the English countryside 4 miles from the nearest shop without any money I went everywhere without a car. It kept me fit and active and connected.
Ahh. I get it. While pounding the roads on your bike in all weathers you developed an enduring and intense dislike and resentment of the motorists passing you all the time.
If indeed you did travel four miles to the local Spar by bike for a curly wurly.
Not really. 4 miles is really not far on a bicycle, is it? I do a lot more than that daily now, even though I now live in the city and have a car. Bad weather is very rarely a problem, especially cycling in the south or east of England.
In my experience there is a small but vocal minority of motorists who have a weird resentment of anyone on a bicycle. The mere existence of people getting around not in a car seems to send them into an irrational rage.
We have done this before (heads off to join @Ghedebrav). Four miles might not be far on a bicycle but it is if you are unused to cycling, are going to Tescos, are older, unfit, nervous, have a disability, have children, don't have all the kit, don't know where you are going to park, or it's raining.
"Bad weather is very rarely a problem, especially cycling in the south or east of England" is a keeper.
And if you want to push back on that, who has been more right wing?
Certainly not Major or Cameron. Not Johnson.
If you want a more right-wing Conservative PM, you need to make a case for May or Truss. Not sure either of those is easy.
Truss was more pro cutting tax than Sunak but Sunak is more of a hawk on spending. Sunak is more socially conservative than Truss and harder on immigration even than May but less pro hard Brexit than Boris was.
The main difference between Sunak and his predecessors is that Sunak just believes what the polls tell him to believe, the others had agendas and ideas of their own (even if in Boris’ case it was to further Boris’ interest).
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
You really are naïve. The young are learning to drive, 80% have their drivers licence by the time they're 30 and that number has flatlined for years its not declining.
And many of the 1/5th that don't have a licence are people like my wife who never bothered because I can drive her instead, not because they don't travel in cars.
As an aside, got to go somewhere new (not too distant) for a gathering September and have been spending some time checking bus timetables etc. Except for Leeds having a huge number of City Square bus stations, not too difficult.
On the topic of “Is the state evil or just indifferent?”
The problem is, I think, the Mass State.
Something that is interesting, is how close to the ground sensible rulers were in past times. Medieval kings used to hear petitions from peasants and serfs on a regular basis.
Now we live in the age of “90% of 9 million people are OK. So all good here.”
In the age of the Mass State, you are a statistic. And the rulers and operators of the Mass State are innumerate.
So a percentage of people are wrongly sent to prison by corrupt policing. A percentage of people are denied banking at the drop of a hat. “But 97% are ok!”
Some politicians have wobbled about being like John Lewis. What they are actually, dimly, referring to, was a policy and training by John Lewis of their staff. Which was to be generous to customers & never leave them hanging - the infamous “no more I can do”
What this is about is creating a “tree” of outcomes. Each leaf is a resolution for the customer. No one is left hanging.
Changing to such a consumer focused State would require a massive cultural and structural change. But it is what people thing they deserve in the 21st cent.
A quick fix is the constituency size. We have 650MPs for ~68M people: 104K per constituency on average. If we reduced it to, say, 75K that's about 900MPs, which you can get into Westminster Hall.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
Yep. Plus camber gets a fair few.
The mad design of road humps is an issue.
Often they are those “mound” ones - which are always place to encourage drivers to swerve out of their lane.
Many humps are so sharp that they penalise small cars, mopeds and bikes severely. Way back, when I was living in Hampstead, a nasty outbreak of such bumps led all the rich people to start buy giant American c
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
Indeed, not everybody has access to the tube.
Nearest bus stop to me is a 1.4 mile walk.
Even for an idealist like myself who would like to go totes off grid, it's almost impossible to live rurally in this country without a car.
Surely the real green issue is not about having cars? It's how we power them.
It's equally about how and when we use them. I find that in normal daily life I cycle and walk perhaps twice as much as I drive; for journeys of less than a mile the proportion is higher.
Of course before long your e-car, when you have one, could be part of your off grid. Friends I know who explored the issue used to think of the grid as a seasonal battery store, and balance it over the year.
As a country which is 85% urbanised we need attractive alternatives in urban areas. We have hardly invested in anything else other than facilities for private motor vehicles for 60-70 years (I'm dating it to about 1965); the balance needs to be pushed back a hell of a long way.
Rural roads tend to simply be too dangerous for other modes than motor vehicles. Deaths on rural roads are much higher per mile travelled than urban roads - 60% of all fatalities occur on country roads. That brings me back to my main campaigning issue - people locked out of the network of public footpaths and bridleways.
As ever, the big need is to reform behaviour of drivers who put others (and themselves) at risk.
Since cyclists have become prime road users based on the latest highway code. its time they were registered, taxed and made to sit a training course before being let loose on our roads.
To what road safety benefit on rural roads?
The road safety focus is overwhelmingly on people driving motor vehicles because that group, which I imagine includes nearly all of us on PB, is overwhelmingly the group that injures and kills on our roads.
The FATAL5 linked to road danger that are the police safety focus are careless driving, mobile phone use when driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and speeding.
The benefit is to get cyclist attuned to respecting the laws we have.
Cyclists round me quite regularly come through in bunches which will mow pedestrians down, yelling at the last moment instead of slowing down and using a bell, In some places where the speed limit is 20mph for cars they dont think it applies to them. And on one local stretch of road which is up hill and round corners they could at least spread out to let cars pass but instead hog the width of the road so everyone is doing 15 mph and drivers in a hurry get frustrated and do daft things.
Cyclists need to be trained on road use since we have so many more of them on the road and theyre no longer people going to work.. I dread when the Tour de France starts as they all come out and think theyre Bradley Wiggins.
Spreading out increases overtaking distance and is more dangerous.
The speed limit does not apply to cyclists.
Cycling has fallen by 8x since the 1950s.
The vast majority of cyclists hold driving licences and have insurance (usually through their home insurance).
100% of your post was nonsense.
Cycling registration will happen, but not for these reasons.
While I was away, there was a collision between a rider of a souped up electric bike and a child on a bike, locally. Head on in a segregated bike lane. Child is ok. Electric bike rider left the scene. According to eye witnesses, he was exceeding 20mph, and had been pulling wheelies.
Since there will be all kinds of games played registering everything on 2 wheels will be the simple answer.
The "souped up electric bike" is a motorcycle or moped, and already subject to registration, insurance and the rider wearing prescribed safety gear such as an approved motorcycle helmet.
An interesting point is that taking it outside the pedal cycle definition (ie assistance at >15.5mph) means that the rider has lost the liability insurance cover from which the vast majority of cyclists benefit under their home insurance policy.
For two wheelers more widely, the DFT - even under our recent run of nutty Transport Ministers - is clear that it will not happen; they have said so to the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee - immediately after Grant Shapps was tickling the Daily Mail's crotch with the idea during last summer's silly season.
In the end, there is little benefit and a huge cost.
“little benefit and a huge cost”
So it’s guaranteed to happen.
This is because policing the small, but growing numbers, of DIY electric mopeds/motorcycles would require discretionary policing.
Much easier from the State point of view to put a license plate on everything.
Not everything. Putting a licence plate on any powered vehicle including any electric power-assisted bike is a good idea, in my opinion. If you do a DIY conversion you should by law be required to get a licence plate for your converted bike. Putting a licence plate on an ordinary cycle is not a good idea.
But that will require discretion and judgement from public officials.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
When I was in Connecticut early this month we stayed at an AirBnb in Branford which is on the coast a few miles outside New Haven. Semi-rural, no buses, a station but miles from the centre. My wife's folks live in a small house in New Haven so we spend a lot of time shuttling to and fro the 10 or so miles. For the first time we didn't hire a car but got the train down from Boston and relied on Uber when we got to CT which turned out to be (a) cheaper and (b) more convenient. Even in sleepy Branford, one was at your door within 5 minutes of ordering. They don't have Uber in Kent yet, but I saw the future.
So, you went on holiday and hired a taxi?
You really are a soothsayer.
I might be a soothsayer but you need an English teacher. Or just a teacher. Again - read what's posted before exploding in your customary righteous anger - it just exposes your idiocy. And chill out. It's going to be a tough few years for you anyway and your anger management issues will not assist.
It's quite amusing that you took over 35 minutes to contemplate a response to this, craft this Wildean masterpiece of a comeback but, then, still not being wholly satisfied with it, went back to edit it as well.
Maybe taking a few moments more to sharpen your quill would have worked more wonders for you still - but I don't want to intrude on your "art".
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
As a parent of young children, I agree on the car seats. Having them out of the car is a pain as they're quite large and even with isofix etc they take a few minutes to install.
But not everyone has young children. Before we had children, we lived in a small city and the car went out perhaps 1-2 times/week at weekends. Possessions in the car were a few sweets and crossword books for longer journeys, tool kit, binoculars and a bird book. Most of the time none of those needed to be in there. A car on demand would have been perfectly fine of us then. Not now, but then. Probably fine in another 7-8 years, too, when the youngest can have a tiny lightweight booster and the others probably none.
So, I agree. Right now, I want my own car on the drive with all the kid stuff in it. But that will probably only be important for 10-12 years of my life, fewer years if I had fewer children. If others are anything like me - which they may not be, of course - then that's a minority of use cases.
Whether Leon's prediction comes to pass, outside big cities with parking issues, depends on costs versus owning a car.
This debate all feels very smoking ban to me. We'll look back at it and chuckle. The Dutch already are.
The difference is that it is the anti-car fanatics like yourself that are the ones who are fighting progress here though.
Just as clean air in buildings with a smoking ban has been widely adopted and successful, clean air on the streets with electric vehicles driving down them is the future too.
Not some naïve daydreams of people clinging to the past delusions that cars are polluting, who can't comprehend that 90% of powered transportation is via cars not public transportation - whether you're talking in England, or in Germany.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
People are attached to their cars. I was. Then I sold it and feel fine (and richer)
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
People use cars because they like them and find them convenient, not because of the standard of public transport.
No government is going to get elected, by telling people that they have to wear hair shirts.
Which is why it will be evolution not revolution. It will slowly but inexorably happen
The reason it will happen is that in many ways the alternatives are better, there is not a huge amount of freedom or convenience sitting in a traffic jam in a rapidly depreciating asset.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
@leon isn't talking about NOW, we are talking about some future. Stuff changes. You are always telling us we aren't thinking enough. Think about where it comes almost instantly, with a child seat if you want one, with a trailer if you want one. Waiting for you by the time you have put your shoes on and locked up. All paid for by an annual fee. No car not starting in the morning, or having a flat, no MOT, no service, no filling up or charging, etc, etc.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
It won't come "almost instantly" anywhere in the country because there'd never be enough fleet to supply everyone from regional depots to all who want it at peak times in an economical fashion. People sometimes need to leave their house in minutes, and not wait an unspecified time. Moreover, people like to choose their own seat, their own stuff, their own kids stuff, their own colour, with their own music, and they like it on their own drive RIGHT THERE so it's ready whenever they want it. People will pay for convenience. And all the issues you list with possessing a car there are either very rare or total non-issues.
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
You're doing it again. Not thinking of what the future may bring. I covered the issues you brought up before (child seat and going to the dump). Let's cover another you have just brought up; music. A few years ago that would have been an issue. You would have had to take your own CDs rather than leaving them in your car. Not now. All on the phone. What else may change in the FUTURE. Note we are talking about the FUTURE. So programmable seats. My car already has that. If it really bugs you it is not inconceivable you could change the colour of the car. I can already change the colour of the lighting in my car. How do you know we can't some time in the future get a car to you within minutes and one that hasn't got a flat battery or flat tyre?
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
If in the future a better alternative is invented, then yes it may change.
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
FPT - I see @Leon once again totally fails to comprehend anyone who lives outside London by predicting no-one will have cars by 2050.
People will always have cars.
I believe @leon was predicting self driving electric vehicles that you summon when you need one (I could have just made that all up). That isn't London centric prediction but applies everywhere. It seems a reasonable prediction for the future and a comparison with the end of the use of the horse seems apt. Doesn't mean it will happen, but reasonable.
It doesn't. In London, you only very occasionally need a car - i.e. where you travel somewhere out of town on a trip at the weekend, or need to carry heavy luggage and ferry friends - whereas everywhere else you use a car several times every day: to drop off the kids, drive to work, go shopping, pick up the kids, and then to head out to the gym later. Maybe drop stuff at the tip too.
You thus want one on the drive all the time with all your stuff in it, and the kids car seats, ready to use at any time - so you get your own.
It may be on a PCP or hire-purchase, rather than owned outright, but it's definitely "your" car and that's the model 90%+ of the country uses and will continue to use.
It's quite possibly a prescription for the future in large cities, which house a significant and growing proportion of the world's population. Even in suburbanised Britain London is about 15% of the population - add similarly built up zones of the other major cities plus well serviced towns like Oxford and Cambridge, Brighton, Bath etc and it's a decent number of people who could be living like that. Then consider somewhere like Japan where almost everyone lives in a city and people rarely go on long drives, and it makes some sense.
For the miniscule minority who live in cities, maybe.
Most Britons live in towns, not cities though.
Are you quite sure that only a "miniscule minority" live in cities? Have you got the figures? Doesn't match what I can find.
Source: ONS England and Wales figures.
9.0 million live in London. 8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
So you accept that you're wrong. 17 million isn't a miniscule minority by any reasonable definition of 'miniscule'.
No but 2/3 of the English and Welsh population live in towns and villages not cities so Bart does have a point there
However anything including a village or a rural area can support alternatives eg a car club, or a stop on a bus route. Never mind the many villages with railway stations.
Choice needs to be husbanded and made convenient. If done correctly, the 13 mile Llandudno -> Bets-y-Coed cycle route should be about an hour each way, depending on traffic, and far less time to the villages en route.
Sunak has two choices, as I see it. Go full on populist and hope that can save the election or accept that the Tories are toast and both do something useful with the time left (also building a Sunak legacy) and put the Tories in a place to be a sane electoral force for the GE after if Labour cock up or are overtaken by events.
He seems to be going for the first. A legacy of unwinding the progress made on environmental issues over the last two decades. Contrast with Major, who led the Tories to a huge defeat in 1997 but also laid the foundations for peace in Northern Ireland over that period, in addition to doing much good work on the economy.
Major is now widely respected. Sunak, it seems, will be better off forgotten, if Labour can quickly unwind the policy disasters of his tenure.
Utterly absurd, particularly as Sunak negotiated the Windsor Framework.
It's a fascinating human trait to dismiss all evidence that doesn't fit the thesis or conclusion that people have already determined they want to reach.
What's that quote about changing your mind when the evidence changes? I was, at worst, ambivalent on early Sunak and the WF was evidence of at least having some ability to do useful things* (let's ignore, for now, that merely fixed the thing his predecessor broke).
If you read carefully, you'll see it's his recent turn to populism that I'm critical of. I sincerely hoped for better from Sunak.
*I wouldn't quite equate it with the GFA though! Transformative energy policy could have been Sunak's GFA.
Comments
When I was in Germany, we lived in a medium-sized town, and we were able to get along perfectly well without our own car because the infrastructure (public transport, cycling provision, school and shop locations) was set up to allow this. On the occasions when we did need a car, we'd take a taxi or hire a car (or van). After moving back to the UK, I immediately bought a car because our social structure and infrastructure make it so difficult for most people to live without one (outside London).
We have a lot to be thankful for
Seems your experience is NOT the typical German lifestyle any more than it's the typical British one.
@HYUFD made a good point below which is similar to yours. If you can't get a car within a minute you are going to use your own.
You and @hyufd are right as things stand at the moment and I agree as I am a good example of that. We are both retired and have two cars sitting on the drive most of the time. It is rare that both cars are out at the same time. It makes no sense to have two cars, but we do because we don't want the hassle or inconvenience of waiting for a car to return or waiting for a taxi.
So as things stand you are right. Who knows what the future may bring though? Instant personal transport for an annual fee? Maybe it is as likely as the flying car.
That such a large proportion of people rely on their cars is a huge policy failure. It's frankly embarrassing when you see the public and active travel provision in Europe.
80% of us live in built up areas. That means a very large majority would benefit from this kind of investment.
He seems to be going for the first. A legacy of unwinding the progress made on environmental issues over the last two decades. Contrast with Major, who led the Tories to a huge defeat in 1997 but also laid the foundations for peace in Northern Ireland over that period, in addition to doing much good work on the economy.
Major is now widely respected. Sunak, it seems, will be better off forgotten, if Labour can quickly unwind the policy disasters of his tenure.
There was a recent article in the FT (I can't be arsed to find it so any pass-agg demands for 'Link?' can stick it) showing how the long trend of people aging into toryism has stopped. It's because of stupid shit like this.
It's a tipping point I think. Something like 50% of Londoners don't own a car so already rely on public transport and taxis. If ride sharing / autonomous vehicles became that much cheaper and more reliable the number might well increase, generation by generation as kids reach 17 and don't bother to learnt to drive. Once you've foregone the effort (and investment) of learning to drive you don't have a choice anyway.
One of my friends recently moved from London to Totnes. She never learned to drive here - no need - so is now managing transport around the poorly served South Hams without a car. A bit too late now, in her 40s, to change the habit of a lifetime. If she'd grown up in Devon she would of course have learned to drive at 17.
Like you, I think that Sunak will come an electoral cropper. However I also think that it's not only those in their 30s and the next generation of voters who are alarmed by global warming, I think the concern is across the board now.
As to my personal manifesto - I'm not a policy expert but CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology) has had a Zero Carbon Britain plan that would take 20 years to implement (that version was published in 2010, which would have been the perfect time to start it).
https://cat.org.uk/info-resources/zero-carbon-britain/research-reports/
I think we do need to seriously fund public transport and infrastructure, and incentivise against individual car use. I think we need to tackle the behaviours of the extremely wealthy, as the top 1% have the same carbon footprint as the poorest 50% (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-carbon-emissions-one-percent-wealthiest-pollution-b1767733.html). I think we need to accept that things like meat and chocolate are going to be luxuries and not staples. I also think that economic growth cannot be the only factor in considering what is important - what is the benefit of a profit margin when the planet is burning; what can you buy on a desert island?
Obviously some of these solutions will require still using fossil fuels for the short term, but we need to calculate how much and how to offset that as we use it, and not just use it inconsiderately.
The process of shifting away from space inefficient, and expensive, private vehicles continues. Though I'd say we are still at the "replace the 2nd car with another option" stage for a lot of people, or 'use the car less' and try something else. Going car-free is still quite unusual.
For example, car sharing clubs in the UK are now up to nearly a million members - 750k in 2022, growth rate 20%.
A small amount of money has been invested in mobility infrastructure in Central / Inner London, and the cycling modal share there is now up to ~10% from ~2%.
If I can find them, modal shares for Nottingham will be of interest, as the local Councils are keen on buses, trams and cycles, and have invested over time.
I live in my red brick semi that @Leon is so jealous of in a built up area. Towns not cities are those built up areas.
And outside cities cars are supreme all across Europe. That's the fact of life.
That people rely on cars is a huge success. Cars are great, why shouldn't they be relied upon? It's as Luddite as saying that people relying upon electricity is a failure.
Main Means of Transportation to Work or School:
Car UK: 42.06% Germany: 27.54%
https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=Germany
The best available research, from the Transport Research Laboratory, indicates that around half of all one-on-one collisions involving a cyclist were attributed in some part to the cyclist,
Also Green socialist: it doesn't matter that the UK is responsible for only a tiny proportion of emissions it must cease these because every little helps.
I mean, Wells is a city whereas West Bromwich is a town, Ely is a city whereas Bolton is a town, St Asaph is a city whereas St Helens is a town etc.
Just roughly added up the top ten urban areas in the UK and it came to 21m. Not including noted non-towns such as Bristol, Leicester, Belfast and Cardiff.
Now, that 21m will include town-ish places of course - yer Keighleys and yer Leighs - but I don't understand how you can possibly characterise it as 'miniscule'.
Go on do what you tell us to do. Think out of the box. It is like saying in 1918 that planes are no use for public transport because they only carry one or two people, don't go far and you would have to learn to fly them.
9.0 million live in London.
8.0 million live in any other city combined other than London.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/understandingtownsinenglandandwalespopulationanddemographicanalysis/2021-02-24#towns-and-cities-analysis
The rest is towns and villages.
English people overwhelming live in towns, not that you'd know it from how some on this website think and act.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1685934026811449344
Rishi Sunak once again failing to understand that as a billionaire people already think he is out of touch.
In addition, it states: ",the figures show that in nearly three quarters of all collisions between bikes and vehicles the person driving is at fault." Which is different from what Malc wrote: "attributed in some part to the cyclist".
Incidents frequently have more than one causal factor.
All part of the democratic process. And you know what they say about democracy so we are stuck with it.
But fear not. If enough people see the light as you have done then we will have this thing sorted before the end of the week.
It's a fascinating human trait to dismiss all evidence that doesn't fit the thesis or conclusion that people have already determined they want to reach.
I have the benefit of a workplace who provides changing tooms, showers and lockers to allow me to commute on my bike. without proper changing facilities with showers this wouldn't be an option for me.
even given that there are people who I work with who could cycle to work but can't do the distances because it'd take too much time out of their day. I do 6-7 miles and it takes me an hour (each way) to do my commute and to get changed at either end. most people can't afford to lose 2-4 hours on their commute every day.
Then it comes to infrastructure, while there are some dedicated cycle routes near me there's not enough and it's mostly not been thought through properly. you can't always get close to where you want to go, or you can but the quality of the route isn't good enough to make it usable.
London has a truly integrated transport system so all of it is treated with similar esteem. some of the other larget cities are getting there but anywhere else it's really hard to work out. for instance, Derby doesn't even have an integrated bus system. I can't get on a bus from where I live and then change in the city centre to go to some other parts of the system without it costing £8 return (it was nearer £11 prior to the bus cap).
when it comes to e-bikes (and scooters) it's the ones who have been sold/built according to the law (no assistance above 15mph) but have been modified to allow unrestricted assistance. the people riding those are more likely to ride recklessly. more enforcement on that is required.
But in terms of Thatcherite re-enactment, Sunak is more convincing across the board. And the urge to overrule local government when it comes up with the "wrong" answers is very on-brand.
https://twitter.com/martinott/status/1685936020976529408
Who would ever have guessed that high speed trains would come back to replace lots of shorter plane journeys? But so it is
There are so many straws in the wind already. Car clubs. Kids not learning to drive. Etc
Here in Ukraine Bolt is seamlessly integrated with local cab services so, yes, you just summon a car with your app. Even in small towns. Eventually it will be autonomous and electric
And now I must coffee and brunch because later I’m taking Bolt to the station to get on a bus!
The police are leary of the issue - because it means confronting the kind of individuals who are all up for a bit of a kick off.
Apparently the local drug dealers are big into these.
It's about specification and quality for the traffic level.
Even something like the Bristol and Bath railway path, which has 1-2 million cycle trips a year, is a 3m wide shared path. There are several similar width cycle tracks in London with higher traffic levels.
What is the spec of the Llandudno to Bets-y-Coed path?
English standards LTN 1/20 say such should be a 3m-wide minimum sealed machine laid surface, at which width it will be fine. Welsh standards probably say the same but they are a 475-page document covering both walking and cycling, so I'm not going to look.
68% of Germans get to work via car, versus 14% for public transport.
Though your site doesn't cite its source.
Per European Commission figures
89% of passenger transportation in Germany is via cars (higher than the EU average), versus 6% for rail and 1% for tram/metro.
https://www.destatis.de/Europa/EN/Topic/Transport/Car.html
In my experience there is a small but vocal minority of motorists who have a weird resentment of anyone on a bicycle. The mere existence of people getting around not in a car seems to send them into an irrational rage.
Their importance is that they introduced the idea of the taxi you can summon and follow and pay with an app. Vastly more convenient than “calling a minicab” let alone “hailing a taxi on the street”
THAT - the app - has entirely survived. These app-based cab services are everywhere in the world now. Even small towns
The town of Totnes was mentioned earlier - living there, in rural Devon, is qualitatively different from living in the town of Gateshead in the Tyneside urban area.
Whilst I accept quite a lot of people live in towns in slightly more sparsely populated areas, quite a lot also live in towns which form part of an essentially contiguous, large urban area.
But it can be a nasty ride; a friend got injured in a collision with a car whilst riding it. The cycle path is either non-existent, disjointed, or jumps from one side of the road to the other at a busy junction. There is an off-road bridleway route, but that is only suitable for mountain bikes.
If bike commuting cannot be got right here, what chance elsewhere?
The future? No, this is just a myopic fantasy of some excitable Mets.
It might be a wrench for some. Tho I suspect it will happen so gradually and incrementally most won’t notice. But it is already happening. The young are not learning to drive
The parents gave one an e-motorbike they were not allowed to ride, and they rode it two-up at high speed without the safety kit, and ended up dead. A familiar story.
I may have mentioned before that police operations on this issue are usually called Operation Endurance, and Durham police have been a leader since the 1990s.
Until the police and the pols stop being leary, the deaths will continue.
"Bad weather is very rarely a problem, especially cycling in the south or east of England" is a keeper.
And many of the 1/5th that don't have a licence are people like my wife who never bothered because I can drive her instead, not because they don't travel in cars.
As an aside, got to go somewhere new (not too distant) for a gathering September and have been spending some time checking bus timetables etc. Except for Leeds having a huge number of City Square bus stations, not too difficult.
No trams, of course. Or underground.
No government is going to get elected, by telling people that they have to wear hair shirts.
Discretion is a dirty word. Like crevice.
Much easier to blanket hammer everyone.
As far as it being a met elite fantasy, well I live in a village with no bus service and a station a mile away so I drive a car everywhere except when going to London, but I can imagine a different future, even if it may not happen.
Maybe taking a few moments more to sharpen your quill would have worked more wonders for you still - but I don't want to intrude on your "art".
But not everyone has young children. Before we had children, we lived in a small city and the car went out perhaps 1-2 times/week at weekends. Possessions in the car were a few sweets and crossword books for longer journeys, tool kit, binoculars and a bird book. Most of the time none of those needed to be in there. A car on demand would have been perfectly fine of us then. Not now, but then. Probably fine in another 7-8 years, too, when the youngest can have a tiny lightweight booster and the others probably none.
So, I agree. Right now, I want my own car on the drive with all the kid stuff in it. But that will probably only be important for 10-12 years of my life, fewer years if I had fewer children. If others are anything like me - which they may not be, of course - then that's a minority of use cases.
Whether Leon's prediction comes to pass, outside big cities with parking issues, depends on costs versus owning a car.
Just as clean air in buildings with a smoking ban has been widely adopted and successful, clean air on the streets with electric vehicles driving down them is the future too.
Not some naïve daydreams of people clinging to the past delusions that cars are polluting, who can't comprehend that 90% of powered transportation is via cars not public transportation - whether you're talking in England, or in Germany.
They are everywhere around the world. Even in small towns
Not in Britain. In Britain you still - absurdly - have to call a minicab like it’s 1985, outside of really big cities - as far as I can see
Taxis are not a better alternative. They already exist, and people don't like them and don't use them by and large. Except in inner cities, or when inebriated, or in other very limited circumstances.
Taxis becoming driverless isn't going to change that fact.
Choice needs to be husbanded and made convenient. If done correctly, the 13 mile Llandudno -> Bets-y-Coed cycle route should be about an hour each way, depending on traffic, and far less time to the villages en route.
If you read carefully, you'll see it's his recent turn to populism that I'm critical of. I sincerely hoped for better from Sunak.
*I wouldn't quite equate it with the GFA though!