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Has Sunak been too influenced by Uxbridge? – politicalbetting.com

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  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    edited August 2023

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    80% of us live in built up areas :)
    Where built up overwhelmingly means towns not cities.

    And where cars drive far, far faster than bikes, not slower than them.

    Idiot.
    I'm a big fan of public transport. It's a shame it's got more expensive, while driving has got cheaper.
    Public transport is subsidised by taxes on my driving.

    Which just goes to show once again how efficient driving is and how inefficient public transport is.

    If both were left to their own devices, there'd be far more driving, and far less public transport.
    Not to the same extent as driving :)

    And check out how much public transport costs have gone up :O

    (I'll try and update this to 2022)


  • Options
    kle4 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Woo, by-election klaxon alert!!!

    I actually know Rutherglen quite well, my late gran lived there.

    IIRC the constituency is a rather funny shape, and extends further out into the green stuff than one might expect.

    Too soon to see if the new boundaries will make any difference in 2024?


    My favourite Scottish station name = Cambuslang. Said with a strong Sean Connery intonation :lol:
  • Options
    Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,718
    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    I've worked on Lower Thames Crossing.

    It's worse than that. Nearly £1bn of sunk costs so far, and no guarantees it will go ahead.

    Biggest culprits?

    Central government.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,086
    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    One for Leon.


    If your safety was guaranteed why would someone say no?

    We could introduce them to cricket as an icebreaker.
    Make the aliens sit there for five days, drinking beer and reading the newspaper, wondering what exactly is happening in front of them, and why all of the people sometimes make noise all at the same random time.
    It's a common sci-fi trope that aliens might be very long lived and find humans overly hasty and energetic, it might be very sensible to slow the pace down (Mass Effect interestingly had it both ways, with some alien races living only 20-30 years, and others for 1000).
  • Options
    BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,822
    edited August 2023
    Phil said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    80% of us live in built up areas :)
    Where built up overwhelmingly means towns not cities.

    And where cars drive far, far faster than bikes, not slower than them.

    Idiot.
    I'm a big fan of public transport. It's a shame it's got more expensive, while driving has got cheaper.
    Public transport is subsidised by taxes on my driving.

    Which just goes to show once again how efficient driving is and how inefficient public transport is.

    If both were left to their own devices, there'd be far more driving, and far less public transport.
    Be interesting to see how this balanced out if drivers had to pay to rent the land the roads used. I suspect driving would be cheaper in much of the countryside, but trains / trams would be much cheaper in the cities. Land used for roads can’t be put to productive use after all & cities make very productive use of land.
    Interesting concept, though again considering that buses require roads and public transport primarily = buses in urban areas, and using Eabhal's logic that 85% live in urban areas, then I think we'll have to count that as a draw.
  • Options
    MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    Phil said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    80% of us live in built up areas :)
    Where built up overwhelmingly means towns not cities.

    And where cars drive far, far faster than bikes, not slower than them.

    Idiot.
    I'm a big fan of public transport. It's a shame it's got more expensive, while driving has got cheaper.
    Public transport is subsidised by taxes on my driving.

    Which just goes to show once again how efficient driving is and how inefficient public transport is.

    If both were left to their own devices, there'd be far more driving, and far less public transport.
    Be interesting to see how this balanced out if drivers had to pay to rent the land the roads used. I suspect driving would be cheaper in much of the countryside, but trains / trams would be much cheaper in the cities. Land used for roads can’t be put to productive use after all & cities make very productive use of land.
    Cool idea.
  • Options
    Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,718

    One for Leon.


    Depends. If it was a Ridley Scott Alien and Private Hudson was assuring my safety, then no.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,086

    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    I've worked on Lower Thames Crossing.

    It's worse than that. Nearly £1bn of sunk costs so far, and no guarantees it will go ahead.

    Biggest culprits?

    Central government.
    I shall pretend to be astonished. You'd think politicians would be outraged at how expensive everything is on this sort of thing, as they are about other things, but no.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,337

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    80% of us live in built up areas :)
    Where built up overwhelmingly means towns not cities.

    And where cars drive far, far faster than bikes, not slower than them.

    Idiot.
    I'm a big fan of public transport. It's a shame it's got more expensive, while driving has got cheaper.
    Public transport is subsidised by taxes on my driving.

    Which just goes to show once again how efficient driving is and how inefficient public transport is.

    If both were left to their own devices, there'd be far more driving, and far less public transport.
    Your driving is subsidised by everyone who pays any sort of tax, whether a driver or not, to build and maintain roads. And you don’t put anything specific back, vehicle excise duty and tax on fuel going straight back into the general taxation fund. Left to their own devices there’d be no roads built either.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    edited August 2023
    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Great find. Interesting - 17.4 mph is faster than your average cycling speed, but you'd probably find that is mitigated by cyclists filtering to the front of all the queues.
  • Options
    BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,822
    edited August 2023
    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
  • Options
    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    We have only ~70 miles of high speed railway in the UK, compared with 1,000s of miles in France, Spain and Germany.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 27,058
    O/T

    "Britain's NEWEST Station - Portway Park & Ride is OPEN!
    Geoff Marshall"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIwyON6SA-k
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,207
    edited August 2023

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Interesting poll today on past PMs:



    Sunak running at 24% better place/38% worse place but not yet done.

    5% think Truss made Britain a better place!

    (Not sure how valid anyone under 50's opinion is on Mrs Thatcher BTW, but interestingly not well thought of by the under 55s)

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/most-britons-think-boris-johnson-and-liz-truss-changed-britain-worse-during-their-time-office

    I expect Sir John Major would have been delighted if you had told him on Friday, 2nd May 1997 that by a +7% margin 26 years later more UK voters would say he changed Britain for the better than the worse. That that would beat the +6% who thought Blair did a net good job and that every other PM since 1997 (including 4 later Tory PMs) would have a net negative rating would no doubt have delighted and astonished him even more
    Not only that but that very few people seem to dislike him, unlike all the rest.

    Certainly wasn't like that at the time.
    I don't think even most of his opponents really disliked Major they just thought he was unable to manage a divided party at the time and was a bit boring. Now however his legacy left in 1997 of low inflation and low unemployment, winning the Gulf War as part of the US led and UN endorsed coalition and setting the way for peace in Northern Ireland and staying in the EU but with opt outs from elements like the Single Currency seems reasonably good for the average voter compared to what his successors achieved or left
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 9,896
    This interminable car vs cycling conversation is the very definition of dialogue of the deaf.

    Most of us are drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.
  • Options
    BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,822
    edited August 2023
    DougSeal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    80% of us live in built up areas :)
    Where built up overwhelmingly means towns not cities.

    And where cars drive far, far faster than bikes, not slower than them.

    Idiot.
    I'm a big fan of public transport. It's a shame it's got more expensive, while driving has got cheaper.
    Public transport is subsidised by taxes on my driving.

    Which just goes to show once again how efficient driving is and how inefficient public transport is.

    If both were left to their own devices, there'd be far more driving, and far less public transport.
    Your driving is subsidised by everyone who pays any sort of tax, whether a driver or not, to build and maintain roads. And you don’t put anything specific back, vehicle excise duty and tax on fuel going straight back into the general taxation fund. Left to their own devices there’d be no roads built either.
    *Cough* Bullshit!!! *Cough*

    Don't lie. Drivers pay farm more in taxes than the cost of roads. Of course VED and Fuel needs to be taken into account, without roads there'd be none of those taxes, so to claim one but not the other is just a lie.

    Lets keep honest please. Especially since public transport drives on roads too.
  • Options
    TimS said:

    This interminable car vs cycling conversation is the very definition of dialogue of the deaf.

    Most of us are drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

    I haven't ridden a bike since an A-level Biology field-trip to the Isle of Arran in 1993. I did ride a camel in Egypt 10 years later :)
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    edited August 2023

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    That's such a silly comment it's almost as if you were being disingenuous!

    The average speed on the SRN was 58.9mph. That's mainly motorways and major A-roads, most of which have speed limits of 70mph.

    Exactly the kind of journey we would want to see drivers making, particularly if there isn't (yet) a train they could use :)
  • Options
    Eabhal said:

    a

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    That's such a silly comment it's almost as if you were being disingenuous!

    The average speed on the SRN was 58.9mph. That's mainly motorways and major A-roads, most of which have speed limits of 70mph.

    Exactly the kind of journey we would want to see drivers making, particularly if there isn't (yet) a train they could use :)
    Yes, and precisely the sort of journey people drive to get to work, with the last mile or last couple of miles maybe being on local A roads. 🤦‍♂️

    But you want to replace that with cycling? Oookaayyy ...
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 27,058
    HYUFD said:

    Labour leads by 4% in Blue Wall seats.

    Blue Wall VI (30 July):

    Labour 35% (-1)
    Conservative 31% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 24% (+1)
    Reform UK 6% (+1)
    Green 3% (-2)
    Other 1% (+1)

    Sunak and Starmer tied as preferred PM in Bluewall seats on 36% each

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-blue-wall-voting-intention-30-july-2023/

    We need to know the changes from the general election.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006

    DougSeal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    80% of us live in built up areas :)
    Where built up overwhelmingly means towns not cities.

    And where cars drive far, far faster than bikes, not slower than them.

    Idiot.
    I'm a big fan of public transport. It's a shame it's got more expensive, while driving has got cheaper.
    Public transport is subsidised by taxes on my driving.

    Which just goes to show once again how efficient driving is and how inefficient public transport is.

    If both were left to their own devices, there'd be far more driving, and far less public transport.
    Your driving is subsidised by everyone who pays any sort of tax, whether a driver or not, to build and maintain roads. And you don’t put anything specific back, vehicle excise duty and tax on fuel going straight back into the general taxation fund. Left to their own devices there’d be no roads built either.
    *Cough* Bullshit!!! *Cough*

    Don't lie. Drivers pay farm more in taxes than the cost of roads. Of course VED and Fuel needs to be taken into account, without roads there'd be none of those taxes, so to claim one but not the other is just a lie.

    Lets keep honest please. Especially since public transport drives on roads too.
    Maybe you wouldn't have a cough if it wasn't for all the air pollution?
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    edited August 2023

    Eabhal said:

    a

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    That's such a silly comment it's almost as if you were being disingenuous!

    The average speed on the SRN was 58.9mph. That's mainly motorways and major A-roads, most of which have speed limits of 70mph.

    Exactly the kind of journey we would want to see drivers making, particularly if there isn't (yet) a train they could use :)
    Yes, and precisely the sort of journey people drive to get to work, with the last mile or last couple of miles maybe being on local A roads. 🤦‍♂️

    But you want to replace that with cycling? Oookaayyy ...
    No - trains! Especially trains with somewhere to put your bike :)
  • Options
    PhilPhil Posts: 1,945

    Phil said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    80% of us live in built up areas :)
    Where built up overwhelmingly means towns not cities.

    And where cars drive far, far faster than bikes, not slower than them.

    Idiot.
    I'm a big fan of public transport. It's a shame it's got more expensive, while driving has got cheaper.
    Public transport is subsidised by taxes on my driving.

    Which just goes to show once again how efficient driving is and how inefficient public transport is.

    If both were left to their own devices, there'd be far more driving, and far less public transport.
    Be interesting to see how this balanced out if drivers had to pay to rent the land the roads used. I suspect driving would be cheaper in much of the countryside, but trains / trams would be much cheaper in the cities. Land used for roads can’t be put to productive use after all & cities make very productive use of land.
    Interesting concept, though again considering that buses require roads and public transport primarily = buses in urban areas, and using Eabhal's logic that 85% live in urban areas, then I think we'll have to count that as a draw.
    Yes, not trying to say one is automatically better / worse than the other here, just that what makes sense in one context may not make sense in another & land value might be an interesting lens through which to view that trade-off.

    Everywhere needs space given over to some kind of transport network otherwise nothing would work at all!
  • Options
    BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,822
    edited August 2023
    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    a

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    That's such a silly comment it's almost as if you were being disingenuous!

    The average speed on the SRN was 58.9mph. That's mainly motorways and major A-roads, most of which have speed limits of 70mph.

    Exactly the kind of journey we would want to see drivers making, particularly if there isn't (yet) a train they could use :)
    Yes, and precisely the sort of journey people drive to get to work, with the last mile or last couple of miles maybe being on local A roads. 🤦‍♂️

    But you want to replace that with cycling? Oookaayyy ...
    No - trains! Especially trains with somewhere to put your bike :)
    PMSL.

    Get into the real world and experience some real urban life.

    Mind if I ask where are you based? Which urban town?

    Trains are terribly inefficient in towns, there's a reason nobody uses them.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373
    TimS said:

    This interminable car vs cycling conversation is the very definition of dialogue of the deaf.

    Most of us are drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

    Exactly. I usually cycle to and from work, or will walk when the weather is good in the middle of summer, but tomorrow with a forecast of 45-55 mph winds and rain all day I will drive. Irrespective of what the active travel brigade think I should do. There are a small element of the cycling lobby who are just car hating fanatics.
  • Options
    MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855
    edited August 2023

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    LOL, the 58.9 is STRATEGIC roads. Motorways and a few serious trunk roads like the the A303. Entirely irrelevant to your claim. Local urban A roads, 17.4 MPH. Most town roads are not A roads. All are subject to speed limits of 30, probably soon 20. The lived experience of anyone who drives or cycles in their local town confirms that 17.4 is pretty good going in a car, and matchable on a bike (if you are going the same way as a car, you expect to both pass and be passed by it repeatedly).

    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a
  • Options
    BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,822
    edited August 2023
    Miklosvar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    LOL, the 58.9 is STRATEGIC roads. Motorways and a few serious trunk roeds like the the A303. Entirely irrelevant to your claim. Local urban A roads, 17.4 MPH. Most town roeads are not A roads. All are subject to speed limits of 30, probably soon 20. The lived experience of anyone who drives or cycles in their local town confirms that 17.4 is pretty good going in a car, and matchable on a bike (if you are going the same way as a car, you expect to both pass and be passed by it repeatedly).

    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a
    "All are subject to speed limits of 30".

    Well that's fascinating as I drive across town 50mph most of the way to my kids school, with speed cameras, and have never got a speeding ticket. I wonder why that is?
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    edited August 2023

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    a

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    That's such a silly comment it's almost as if you were being disingenuous!

    The average speed on the SRN was 58.9mph. That's mainly motorways and major A-roads, most of which have speed limits of 70mph.

    Exactly the kind of journey we would want to see drivers making, particularly if there isn't (yet) a train they could use :)
    Yes, and precisely the sort of journey people drive to get to work, with the last mile or last couple of miles maybe being on local A roads. 🤦‍♂️

    But you want to replace that with cycling? Oookaayyy ...
    No - trains! Especially trains with somewhere to put your bike :)
    PMSL.

    Get into the real world and experience some real urban life.

    Mind if I ask where are you based? Which urban town?
    Have you not worked it out yet?

    I grew up in a small remote town in Scotland. I am acutely aware of how important cars are for people in these areas.

    The best thing about moving to a city is the great public transport and the close proximity of the pub. No need to get in the car at all, really. I want to share this experience with others.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,207
    edited August 2023
    Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:

    Labour leads by 4% in Blue Wall seats.

    Blue Wall VI (30 July):

    Labour 35% (-1)
    Conservative 31% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 24% (+1)
    Reform UK 6% (+1)
    Green 3% (-2)
    Other 1% (+1)

    Sunak and Starmer tied as preferred PM in Bluewall seats on 36% each

    We need to know the changes from the general election.
    Tories down 18% on 2019 in Bluewall seats, Labour up 15%, LDs down 3%. It looks like the swing against the Tories in the Bluewall to Labour and the LDs will be even worse than the national swing to Labour and the swing in the redwall given they were mainly Remain seats and Starmer is now Labour leader not Corbyn
    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-blue-wall-voting-intention-30-july-2023/
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    Taz said:

    TimS said:

    This interminable car vs cycling conversation is the very definition of dialogue of the deaf.

    Most of us are drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

    Exactly. I usually cycle to and from work, or will walk when the weather is good in the middle of summer, but tomorrow with a forecast of 45-55 mph winds and rain all day I will drive. Irrespective of what the active travel brigade think I should do. There are a small element of the cycling lobby who are just car hating fanatics.
    Most cyclists are motorists (me included!)
  • Options
    MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855

    Miklosvar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    LOL, the 58.9 is STRATEGIC roads. Motorways and a few serious trunk roeds like the the A303. Entirely irrelevant to your claim. Local urban A roads, 17.4 MPH. Most town roeads are not A roads. All are subject to speed limits of 30, probably soon 20. The lived experience of anyone who drives or cycles in their local town confirms that 17.4 is pretty good going in a car, and matchable on a bike (if you are going the same way as a car, you expect to both pass and be passed by it repeatedly).

    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a
    "All are subject to speed limits of 30".

    Well that's fascinating as I drive 50mph most of the way to my kids school, with speed cameras, and have never got a speeding ticket. I wonder why that is?
    Your children go to school in a cardboard box on the central reservation of a strategic road?
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,701
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    I've worked on Lower Thames Crossing.

    It's worse than that. Nearly £1bn of sunk costs so far, and no guarantees it will go ahead.

    Biggest culprits?

    Central government.
    I shall pretend to be astonished. You'd think politicians would be outraged at how expensive everything is on this sort of thing, as they are about other things, but no.
    Such projects support a pyramid of companies and consultancies.

    These companies and consultancies are then nice to politicians.

    The great advantage of this is that no actual stuff has to be built. It it is, some arsehole is always complaining about rail lines costing a billion a mile. Much easier to not build stuff for a billion.

    What we have is the Senate Launch System methodology applied to infrastructure. The actual moon rocket is an accidental buy product.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,990
    edited August 2023
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    I've worked on Lower Thames Crossing.

    It's worse than that. Nearly £1bn of sunk costs so far, and no guarantees it will go ahead.

    Biggest culprits?

    Central government.
    I shall pretend to be astonished. You'd think politicians would be outraged at how expensive everything is on this sort of thing, as they are about other things, but no.
    That reminds me of when, roughly at the same time, it was announced that Heathrow would be building what’s now known as Terminal 5, and Dubai Airport would be building what’s now known as Terminal 3.

    Two projects of similar size and scope - a very big building on an existing airfield, with a couple of transport links to local road and rail.

    Dubai’s Terminal 3 was open to passengers, before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning enquiry had concluded.

    Sometimes, for these big infrastructure projects, you have to JFDI. See also: Hinkley Point, HS2, Stonehenge Tunnel, Heathrow’s 3rd runway, and many more.
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,819
    edited August 2023

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.
    I love this kind of argument. Exactly the same is true of a large proportion of roads.

    And both are bullshit.

    Look ! Look ! Look at empty, abandoned cycle track! It is inefficient !

    Then look at the cyclecounter which shows that at least 2.67 million people have passed down that 3.5m wide cycletrack in well under a year. And it's at nothing like capacity.





  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    edited August 2023

    Miklosvar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    LOL, the 58.9 is STRATEGIC roads. Motorways and a few serious trunk roeds like the the A303. Entirely irrelevant to your claim. Local urban A roads, 17.4 MPH. Most town roeads are not A roads. All are subject to speed limits of 30, probably soon 20. The lived experience of anyone who drives or cycles in their local town confirms that 17.4 is pretty good going in a car, and matchable on a bike (if you are going the same way as a car, you expect to both pass and be passed by it repeatedly).

    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a
    "All are subject to speed limits of 30".

    Well that's fascinating as I drive across town 50mph most of the way to my kids school, with speed cameras, and have never got a speeding ticket. I wonder why that is?
    You live in Basingstoke?
  • Options
    BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,822
    edited August 2023
    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    a

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    That's such a silly comment it's almost as if you were being disingenuous!

    The average speed on the SRN was 58.9mph. That's mainly motorways and major A-roads, most of which have speed limits of 70mph.

    Exactly the kind of journey we would want to see drivers making, particularly if there isn't (yet) a train they could use :)
    Yes, and precisely the sort of journey people drive to get to work, with the last mile or last couple of miles maybe being on local A roads. 🤦‍♂️

    But you want to replace that with cycling? Oookaayyy ...
    No - trains! Especially trains with somewhere to put your bike :)
    PMSL.

    Get into the real world and experience some real urban life.

    Mind if I ask where are you based? Which urban town?
    Have you not worked it out yet?

    I grew up in a small remote town in Scotland. I am acutely aware of how important cars are for people in these areas.

    The best thing about moving to a city is the great public transport and the close proximity of the pub. No need to get in the car at all, really. I want to share this experience with others.
    I said town.

    What experience of living in an urban town have you got?

    You keep preaching to us about urban life, and for the overwhelming majority of the country urban = towns, yet you seem to see the world in this great divide between rural and city. Which is a minority of the country. Most live in towns.

    So what experience of towns have you got? It seems the answer is none?

    PS everywhere I've ever lived (which includes city, town and rural) has always had a pub in walking distance. That's typical UK.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    Miklosvar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    LOL, the 58.9 is STRATEGIC roads. Motorways and a few serious trunk roads like the the A303. Entirely irrelevant to your claim. Local urban A roads, 17.4 MPH. Most town roads are not A roads. All are subject to speed limits of 30, probably soon 20. The lived experience of anyone who drives or cycles in their local town confirms that 17.4 is pretty good going in a car, and matchable on a bike (if you are going the same way as a car, you expect to both pass and be passed by it repeatedly).

    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a
    Strange how he got that one wrong.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373
    edited August 2023
    Eabhal said:

    Taz said:

    TimS said:

    This interminable car vs cycling conversation is the very definition of dialogue of the deaf.

    Most of us are drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

    Exactly. I usually cycle to and from work, or will walk when the weather is good in the middle of summer, but tomorrow with a forecast of 45-55 mph winds and rain all day I will drive. Irrespective of what the active travel brigade think I should do. There are a small element of the cycling lobby who are just car hating fanatics.
    Most cyclists are motorists (me included!)
    Same here, I’m just not a car hating fanatic.
  • Options
    Any PB Wulfrunians know when the tram extension to Wolverhampton station is going to open?
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    edited August 2023

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    a

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    That's such a silly comment it's almost as if you were being disingenuous!

    The average speed on the SRN was 58.9mph. That's mainly motorways and major A-roads, most of which have speed limits of 70mph.

    Exactly the kind of journey we would want to see drivers making, particularly if there isn't (yet) a train they could use :)
    Yes, and precisely the sort of journey people drive to get to work, with the last mile or last couple of miles maybe being on local A roads. 🤦‍♂️

    But you want to replace that with cycling? Oookaayyy ...
    No - trains! Especially trains with somewhere to put your bike :)
    PMSL.

    Get into the real world and experience some real urban life.

    Mind if I ask where are you based? Which urban town?
    Have you not worked it out yet?

    I grew up in a small remote town in Scotland. I am acutely aware of how important cars are for people in these areas.

    The best thing about moving to a city is the great public transport and the close proximity of the pub. No need to get in the car at all, really. I want to share this experience with others.
    I said town.

    What experience of living in an urban town have you got?

    You keep preaching to us about urban life, and for the overwhelming majority of the country urban = towns, yet you seem to see the world in this great divide between rural and city. Which is a minority of the country. Most live in towns.

    So what experience of towns have you got? It seems the answer is none?
    I grew up in a town - see my previous post :)

    I walked most places. Got the bus/train to Inverness or Aberdeen occasionally. Also had the car for some other trips.

    And this in the north of Scotland!
  • Options
    BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,822
    edited August 2023
    Eabhal said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    LOL, the 58.9 is STRATEGIC roads. Motorways and a few serious trunk roads like the the A303. Entirely irrelevant to your claim. Local urban A roads, 17.4 MPH. Most town roads are not A roads. All are subject to speed limits of 30, probably soon 20. The lived experience of anyone who drives or cycles in their local town confirms that 17.4 is pretty good going in a car, and matchable on a bike (if you are going the same way as a car, you expect to both pass and be passed by it repeatedly).

    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a
    Strange how he got that one wrong.
    I didn't get it wrong.

    Living in the real world of towns, I drive down strategic A roads all the frigging time at either 50mph and 70mph.

    Most of my time driving is 50mph or 70mph. That's the entire point of the word strategic, the 20mph or 30mph is for local traffic, the A to B is 50mph or 70mph typically.

    Default town speeds for travelling at a distance is 50mph, 70mph is more rural, hence the average of 58.9. Local roads may be slower, but you don't and shouldn't drive down local roads if travelling across town, use the fast roads instead.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    edited August 2023
    MattW said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.
    I love this kind of argument. Exactly the same is true of a large proportion of roads.

    And both are bullshit.

    Look ! Look ! Look at empty, abandoned cycle track! It is inefficient !

    Then look at the cyclecounter which shows that at least 2.67 million people have passed down that 3.5m wide cycletrack in well under a year. And it's at nothing like capacity.





    Yep, road outside my flat currently has ZERO cars driving down it (4 pedestrians on the pavements).

    Waste of money.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,086
    edited August 2023
    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    I've worked on Lower Thames Crossing.

    It's worse than that. Nearly £1bn of sunk costs so far, and no guarantees it will go ahead.

    Biggest culprits?

    Central government.
    I shall pretend to be astonished. You'd think politicians would be outraged at how expensive everything is on this sort of thing, as they are about other things, but no.
    That reminds me of when, roughly at the same time, it was announced that Heathrow would be building what’s now known as Terminal 5, and Dubai Airport would be building what’s now known as Terminal 3.

    Two projects of similar size and scope - a very big building on an existing airfield, with a couple of transport links to local road and rail.

    Dubai’s Terminal 3 was open to passengers, before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning enquiry had concluded.

    Sometimes, for these big infrastructure projects, you have to JFDI. See also: Hinkley Point, HS2, Stonehenge Tunnel, Heathrow’s 3rd runway, and many more.
    IIRC one idea floated for planning reform during Boris's tenure was essentially a trade off - local communities would get broader powers to refuse things in their areas, but big strategic projects would have expedited timescales and reduced opportunities for judicial review and the like, and they would get less say locally. The justification being, well, as you put it sometimes you need to JFDI.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 6,006
    Taz said:

    Eabhal said:

    Taz said:

    TimS said:

    This interminable car vs cycling conversation is the very definition of dialogue of the deaf.

    Most of us are drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

    Exactly. I usually cycle to and from work, or will walk when the weather is good in the middle of summer, but tomorrow with a forecast of 45-55 mph winds and rain all day I will drive. Irrespective of what the active travel brigade think I should do. There are a small element of the cycling lobby who are just car hating fanatics.
    Most cyclists are motorists (me included!)
    Same here, I’m just not a car hating fanatic.
    Nor me. Using my car all weekend.
  • Options
    MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855

    Eabhal said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    LOL, the 58.9 is STRATEGIC roads. Motorways and a few serious trunk roads like the the A303. Entirely irrelevant to your claim. Local urban A roads, 17.4 MPH. Most town roads are not A roads. All are subject to speed limits of 30, probably soon 20. The lived experience of anyone who drives or cycles in their local town confirms that 17.4 is pretty good going in a car, and matchable on a bike (if you are going the same way as a car, you expect to both pass and be passed by it repeatedly).

    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a
    Strange how he got that one wrong.
    I didn't get it wrong.

    Living in the real world of towns, I drive down strategic A roads all the frigging time at either 50mph and 70mph.

    Most of my time driving is 50mph or 70mph. That's the entire point of the word strategic, the 20mph or 30mph is for local traffic, the A to B is 50mph or 70mph typically.
    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a

    Can you never admit to making a mistake? The above is an exhaustive map of strategic roads as defined. If you are in Warrington your claim can only be true if you literally live on the M6 or M62. which nobody does.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,972
    On the topic of WWI and the Ottoman Empire, I didn't know that the guy who might well have been one of our greatest physicists was killed at Gallipoli.

    Henry Moseley, the inventor of the modern periodic table, was killed at the age of 27 by a sniper in the Gallipoli battle in 1915.

    Moseley was a brilliant physicist who worked at the University of Manchester under Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics...

    https://twitter.com/PhysInHistory/status/1686405563616473088
  • Options
    Clutch_BromptonClutch_Brompton Posts: 426
    edited August 2023
    Absolutely agree on Uxbridge being a LD campaign run by the Cons. I note that the ever-popular vote-winner Mr Sunak devoted his main attention to Selby. Whether they can hide him quite so easily in a GE campaign seems unlikely
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,164
    MattW said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.
    I love this kind of argument. Exactly the same is true of a large proportion of roads.

    And both are bullshit.

    Look ! Look ! Look at empty, abandoned cycle track! It is inefficient !

    Then look at the cyclecounter which shows that at least 2.67 million people have passed down that 3.5m wide cycletrack in well under a year. And it's at nothing like capacity.



    That sniffs wrong. Given that there are 525,600 minutes in a year. If we take the 2.67 million to be in a year, then it means approximately five bikes a minute, including at nights. Or one every twelve seconds. Given there will be fewer at night, you would be looking at seven or eight per minute during 'day'.

    As I say, that sniffs wrong. even for, as I believe that is, the Embankment.
  • Options
    stodgestodge Posts: 12,916
    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:

    Labour leads by 4% in Blue Wall seats.

    Blue Wall VI (30 July):

    Labour 35% (-1)
    Conservative 31% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 24% (+1)
    Reform UK 6% (+1)
    Green 3% (-2)
    Other 1% (+1)

    Sunak and Starmer tied as preferred PM in Bluewall seats on 36% each

    We need to know the changes from the general election.
    Tories down 18% on 2019 in Bluewall seats, Labour up 15%, LDs down 3%. It looks like the swing against the Tories in the Bluewall to Labour and the LDs will be even worse than the national swing to Labour and the swing in the redwall given they were mainly Remain seats and Starmer is now Labour leader not Corbyn
    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-blue-wall-voting-intention-30-july-2023/
    Yes, last evening's R&W poll had a national swing from Conservative to Labour of 13.5% (14.5% in England as I recall) so it seems worse in the "Blue Wall". The Conservative - Liberal Democrat swing is 7.5% in the Blue Wall and 8% overall.

    This suggests Conservative losses of between 170 and 210 seats - severe certainly but a long way from an extinction event - probably close to 1997 or 2001.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,899
    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    I've worked on Lower Thames Crossing.

    It's worse than that. Nearly £1bn of sunk costs so far, and no guarantees it will go ahead.

    Biggest culprits?

    Central government.
    I shall pretend to be astonished. You'd think politicians would be outraged at how expensive everything is on this sort of thing, as they are about other things, but no.
    That reminds me of when, roughly at the same time, it was announced that Heathrow would be building what’s now known as Terminal 5, and Dubai Airport would be building what’s now known as Terminal 3.

    Two projects of similar size and scope - a very big building on an existing airfield, with a couple of transport links to local road and rail.

    Dubai’s Terminal 3 was open to passengers, before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning enquiry had concluded.

    Sometimes, for these big infrastructure projects, you have to JFDI. See also: Hinkley Point, HS2, Stonehenge Tunnel, Heathrow’s 3rd runway, and many more.
    Of course it is so much easier without the trouble of democracy.
  • Options

    NEW THREAD

  • Options
    MiklosvarMiklosvar Posts: 1,855

    MattW said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.
    I love this kind of argument. Exactly the same is true of a large proportion of roads.

    And both are bullshit.

    Look ! Look ! Look at empty, abandoned cycle track! It is inefficient !

    Then look at the cyclecounter which shows that at least 2.67 million people have passed down that 3.5m wide cycletrack in well under a year. And it's at nothing like capacity.



    That sniffs wrong. Given that there are 525,600 minutes in a year. If we take the 2.67 million to be in a year, then it means approximately five bikes a minute, including at nights. Or one every twelve seconds. Given there will be fewer at night, you would be looking at seven or eight per minute during 'day'.

    As I say, that sniffs wrong. even for, as I believe that is, the Embankment.
    "We won funding for the first fully protected cycle tracks in London: the North-South & East-West cycle 'superhighways' in central London, along the Embankment and over the river. These routes now average 10,000+ journeys per day."

    https://lcc.org.uk/impact/

    That's the cycle lobby talking, and it sounds like it's possibly an aggregate of 2 routes, but that still yields 1.8m/route/year
  • Options
    FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,942
    edited August 2023
    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    I think Norway had a state tunnelling group that moved from project to project, so all they did was look for the next location that needed a tunnel before getting to work. By doing it this way the expertise was kept busy.

    I drove through the Laerdal tunnel not long after it opened. Quite impressive (although not a motorway by any means).

    Some of the older tunnels are unlined and unlit, which makes them quite exciting. Particularly the spiral ones...


    Shame we don't seem to be able to borrow them to cross the Pennines a few times.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,899
    edited August 2023
    stodge said:

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:

    Labour leads by 4% in Blue Wall seats.

    Blue Wall VI (30 July):

    Labour 35% (-1)
    Conservative 31% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 24% (+1)
    Reform UK 6% (+1)
    Green 3% (-2)
    Other 1% (+1)

    Sunak and Starmer tied as preferred PM in Bluewall seats on 36% each

    We need to know the changes from the general election.
    Tories down 18% on 2019 in Bluewall seats, Labour up 15%, LDs down 3%. It looks like the swing against the Tories in the Bluewall to Labour and the LDs will be even worse than the national swing to Labour and the swing in the redwall given they were mainly Remain seats and Starmer is now Labour leader not Corbyn
    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-blue-wall-voting-intention-30-july-2023/
    Yes, last evening's R&W poll had a national swing from Conservative to Labour of 13.5% (14.5% in England as I recall) so it seems worse in the "Blue Wall". The Conservative - Liberal Democrat swing is 7.5% in the Blue Wall and 8% overall.

    This suggests Conservative losses of between 170 and 210 seats - severe certainly but a long way from an extinction event - probably close to 1997 or 2001.
    It depends very much on if voters can actually identify who is the chief rival to the Tories in any particular constituency. Not an extinction event but 100-125 Tory seats left is very possible with a bit of tactical voting.

    These leads seem very static over the year. I suspect that trying for the anti-green vote might work for Captain 'Copter, but it does risk motivating the anti-Tory vote to turn out.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,990
    kle4 said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    I really hope this isn't true, but it is believable

    I've worked on Lower Thames Crossing.

    It's worse than that. Nearly £1bn of sunk costs so far, and no guarantees it will go ahead.

    Biggest culprits?

    Central government.
    I shall pretend to be astonished. You'd think politicians would be outraged at how expensive everything is on this sort of thing, as they are about other things, but no.
    That reminds me of when, roughly at the same time, it was announced that Heathrow would be building what’s now known as Terminal 5, and Dubai Airport would be building what’s now known as Terminal 3.

    Two projects of similar size and scope - a very big building on an existing airfield, with a couple of transport links to local road and rail.

    Dubai’s Terminal 3 was open to passengers, before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning enquiry had concluded.

    Sometimes, for these big infrastructure projects, you have to JFDI. See also: Hinkley Point, HS2, Stonehenge Tunnel, Heathrow’s 3rd runway, and many more.
    IIRC one idea floated for planning reform during Boris's tenure was essentially a trade off - local communities would get broader powers to refuse things in their areas, but big strategic projects would have expedited timescales and reduced opportunities for judicial review and the like, and they would get less say locally. The justification being, well, as you put it sometimes you need to JFDI.
    That’s a sensible way forward. For the big key projects, you pass an Act of Parliament that details generous compensation for those affected by the development, but accept that the national interest is over-riding. Paying people a 50% premium for their house, is much cheaper than seeing the whole project delayed by years with court cases and planning reviews.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 40,056
    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:

    A by-election has been triggered after MP Margaret Ferrier, who was suspended from the Commons for breaking Covid lockdown rules, lost her seat in a recall petition.

    If only she would stand as an independent and win it. SNP will get humped. Bad thing is Labour are crap and tehir candidate is a bellend extrodinaire and a slimeball to boot.
    Has she said she’s not standing? 11986 of constituents who voted for a recall doesn’t seem overwhelming, eg it wouldn’t even have got you second place in the last 3 GEs.
    It's lower than the other two recalls so far, in that link I just posted, apart from the Paisley one which might or might not have special factors. But that's just anecdata.
    I believe Salmond has said Ferrier was treated badly by the SNP. Her coming out as an Alba candidate would put the feline amongst the Columbidae.
    Could Alba win it? Or at least put the SNP into third place?

    Would be very surprised at either, given Alba results in elections. And the incumbency issue is somewhat neutralised. Ms Ferrier hasn't been a SNP MP for three years, and they turfed her out pdq..

    One would assume Labout would win - but the niggle is that SKS has diverged quite badly from Slab core values, and the possibility of pissed off Labour voters and Greens reacting adversely to Brexiter, anti-referendum, alleged child-starver and future oil-driller SKS and helicopter enthusiast Mr Sunak. There aren't that many Tories to make up for any such defections. Even the LDs would find it hard to make a good (for them) bar chart for their leaflet, from past voting, and there's no other party to cover that side of life but the SNP.

    2019 results -

    SNP Margaret Ferrier 23,775
    Labour Co-op Ged Killen 18,545
    Conservative Lynne Nailon 8,054
    Liberal Democrats Mark McGeever 2791
    UKIP Janice MacKay 629
    On those numbers Tory tactical voting for SLab would defeat the SNP even without a single SNP voter defecting and Scottish Tories are far more likely to vote for Starmer Labour than they were for Corbyn Labour.

    Notwithstanding most polls have at least a 10% swing from SNP to SLab since 2019 on top of that
    All polls *before* the latest stage in the transformation of SKS into full-out Tory.
    Latest Scotland only poll this month has SNP 35% Labour 32% Conservative 21% LD 7% Green 2% RefUK 2%.

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/scottish-independence-referendum-westminster-voting-intention-1-2-july-2023/

    That compares to SNP 45% Labour 18% in 2019 ie a swing of 12% from SNP to Labour since the last UK general election in Scotland which would see Labour easily gain Rutherglen in the by election with a majority of 14% over the SNP
    https://electionresults.parliament.uk/election/2019-12-12/results/Location/Constituency/Rutherglen and Hamilton West
    That is almost a month ago. Kindly go away and find something *after* the oil news.
  • Options
    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Miklosvar said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    148grss said:

    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Cons are absolutely right to pick a fight over this, and car ownership, and the JSO-type entreaties because most of us have a car and for very good reasons, and many of us realise the impracticalities of acting too quickly to dispossess us of them, or of penalising ownership because no one thinks it will stop at 10-yr old diesels when there are regulations and fines to impose for zealous councils. All of which the furore over ULEZ has shown so clearly.

    This is the coincidence of green politics and the pound in your pocket (not you @Anabobazina), and the latter usually and especially now will win.

    Going far beyond that now, and the car issue, though, as the news this mornign shows.
    People are wary of money making on the one hand and money costing schemes on the other.

    ULEZ, LTNs, etc are money making schemes and people are very cautious about them. Extra taxes, meanwhile, for green initiatives, or higher prices for green energy are money costing schemes and people loathe them.
    I view the issue around ULEZ and LTNs as less about money and more about the undealt with post-covid trauma. People who disliked lockdown are now hyper sensitive to anything that smells like top down loss of freedoms. The conspiratorial wing have jumped off the deep end, but even the average person I think is now just risk averse to such things and want "normality". The problem is that "normality" is gone - covid was an example of what a climate catastrophic world could look like. Cars are a big issue - both from an emissions POV but also from the POV of how much infrastructure we dedicate to this highly inefficient (but profitable) mode of transportation.
    We keep having this bullshit about cars being highly inefficient quoted on this website by the anti-car fanatics.

    Cars are supremely efficient.

    There is no other mode of transport so efficient as to quickly, affordably and reliably get you from A to B.

    Cars are extremely efficient at transporting lots of people, very quickly. A road travelling at 30mph, let alone 70mph, can have an extremely high throughput of both people and goods/services.

    No other mode of transport matches the efficiency of cars, which is why they are so extremely popular despite the fact that car drivers pay massively more in taxes than they get back in investment, while the polar opposite is true for other less efficient in almost all the country modes of transport like rail.
    Nonsense, like usual.

    1) Cycling is the most energy efficient form of transport, by miles.

    2) Check this out:


    Nonsense on stilts by someone with an agenda to push as normal.

    I have absolutely no qualm with cycling routes being added, but the cold reality is that they're frequently then left empty 99% of the time whereas the cars roads are not.

    As I've said a bike route has recently been added towards my kids school on what used to be an A road. I completely support this and its great to see kids feeling safer to ride to school. But efficient it is not. If you stand outside Tesco's on the road and count the number of bikes that go past, and count the number of cars/vans/buses on the one remaining road for them that go past then you'll end up counting about 50 to 100+ cars for every bike - and outside of school times, its not even that close.

    Its great to support cycling as an option but lets not overegg the pudding with fallacious claims that its efficient. And lone bikes on the same road as a car reduce efficiency by slowing down the cars too until they can overtake the bike. Again, no harm in people having the option - but its not efficient.

    If a cycling route is totally maximised in usage then it might be theoretically efficient but that is a result that only works like spherical chickens in a vacuum.
    And I want to fix that! Once you have a coherent cycle network, like in the Netherlands, along come the masses.

    An equivalent road to your cycle lane would be one that starts and ends in the middle of a field.

    Cycling is not an option for most people - it's just too scary mixing with drivers.


    The cycle lane runs the entire length of the town now. Its still not used much apart from kids going to school.

    Cars travelling at 30mph or 40mph are more efficient at carrying more people than cyclists going at 15mph.
    Perhaps all the cyclists have already got to work/school?

    Check this cycle lane out: https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1679020569822371842?s=20

    In 40 seconds, 12 pedestrians, 30 cyclists, 3 scooters and 0 cars pass one point.
    Clearly not representative of British roads, the cars are stationery.

    I drive faster than a cyclist, not slower than it. 🤦‍♂️

    Perhaps you need to leave your city bubble and join the real world?
    Also very unrepresentative as the pavement is wide and suitable for walkers, runners, people in wheelchairs or pushing prams.

    It's not just about cyclists, whatever the cycle-lobby tend to think.
    Indeed people like @Eabhal seem to have this naïve view of the world that bikes are scooting past cars as they move fast, while cars are stuck in congestion, and pedestrians basically don't exist.

    The truth could not be further from that.

    The truth is that cars move at 30-70mph depending on the speed limit not 0mph. When bikes and cars are near each other, the question drivers have is "how can I safely overtake this bike" not "why is that bike overtaking me".

    But Eabhal found a statistic for urban and as he's so incapable of comprehending that urban means towns and in towns cars drive without congestion almost all the time, he's not able to wrap his head around why his proposals fail in the real world.

    So we're constantly back to his spherical chicken in a vacuum nonsense. Rinse and repeat until he's back in a corner and then claims 80% urban as a get out of jail free to show that he doesn't understand what urban actually means.
    2.3 Average speed on urban and rural roads
    On urban classified Local ‘A’ roads, average speed was 17.4 mph in 2021. On rural classified Local ‘A’ roads, the average speed was 34.3 mph in 2021. Despite the differences in speed between the two road types, drivers on urban and rural Local ‘A’ roads may perceive changes in speed levels differently.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/travel-time-measures-for-the-strategic-road-network-and-local-a-roads-january-to-december-2021

    seems to negate your claim.
    Per your link: The average speed is estimated to be 58.9 mph

    There's more than just A-roads available. Indeed A roads are often the slowest of the roads.

    I'm curious how many cyclists travel at 58.9 mph?
    LOL, the 58.9 is STRATEGIC roads. Motorways and a few serious trunk roads like the the A303. Entirely irrelevant to your claim. Local urban A roads, 17.4 MPH. Most town roads are not A roads. All are subject to speed limits of 30, probably soon 20. The lived experience of anyone who drives or cycles in their local town confirms that 17.4 is pretty good going in a car, and matchable on a bike (if you are going the same way as a car, you expect to both pass and be passed by it repeatedly).

    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a
    Strange how he got that one wrong.
    I didn't get it wrong.

    Living in the real world of towns, I drive down strategic A roads all the frigging time at either 50mph and 70mph.

    Most of my time driving is 50mph or 70mph. That's the entire point of the word strategic, the 20mph or 30mph is for local traffic, the A to B is 50mph or 70mph typically.
    https://dft.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=16a310f850d04521bff5d70a39577d4a

    Can you never admit to making a mistake? The above is an exhaustive map of strategic roads as defined. If you are in Warrington your claim can only be true if you literally live on the M6 or M62. which nobody does.
    Do you need to live in the M6 or M62 to get from A to B? Or [and this may be a novel idea to you] can you drive onto and off the motorways to get about?

    If someone wanted to drive from say Winwick to Widnes would the only option be to drive along A roads or would getting onto and then off the motorway be an option?

    And what would be the speed limit of say the Weston Point Expressway once you get off the motorway?
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,207
    edited August 2023
    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:

    A by-election has been triggered after MP Margaret Ferrier, who was suspended from the Commons for breaking Covid lockdown rules, lost her seat in a recall petition.

    If only she would stand as an independent and win it. SNP will get humped. Bad thing is Labour are crap and tehir candidate is a bellend extrodinaire and a slimeball to boot.
    Has she said she’s not standing? 11986 of constituents who voted for a recall doesn’t seem overwhelming, eg it wouldn’t even have got you second place in the last 3 GEs.
    It's lower than the other two recalls so far, in that link I just posted, apart from the Paisley one which might or might not have special factors. But that's just anecdata.
    I believe Salmond has said Ferrier was treated badly by the SNP. Her coming out as an Alba candidate would put the feline amongst the Columbidae.
    Could Alba win it? Or at least put the SNP into third place?

    Would be very surprised at either, given Alba results in elections. And the incumbency issue is somewhat neutralised. Ms Ferrier hasn't been a SNP MP for three years, and they turfed her out pdq..

    One would assume Labout would win - but the niggle is that SKS has diverged quite badly from Slab core values, and the possibility of pissed off Labour voters and Greens reacting adversely to Brexiter, anti-referendum, alleged child-starver and future oil-driller SKS and helicopter enthusiast Mr Sunak. There aren't that many Tories to make up for any such defections. Even the LDs would find it hard to make a good (for them) bar chart for their leaflet, from past voting, and there's no other party to cover that side of life but the SNP.

    2019 results -

    SNP Margaret Ferrier 23,775
    Labour Co-op Ged Killen 18,545
    Conservative Lynne Nailon 8,054
    Liberal Democrats Mark McGeever 2791
    UKIP Janice MacKay 629
    On those numbers Tory tactical voting for SLab would defeat the SNP even without a single SNP voter defecting and Scottish Tories are far more likely to vote for Starmer Labour than they were for Corbyn Labour.

    Notwithstanding most polls have at least a 10% swing from SNP to SLab since 2019 on top of that
    All polls *before* the latest stage in the transformation of SKS into full-out Tory.
    Latest Scotland only poll this month has SNP 35% Labour 32% Conservative 21% LD 7% Green 2% RefUK 2%.

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/scottish-independence-referendum-westminster-voting-intention-1-2-july-2023/

    That compares to SNP 45% Labour 18% in 2019 ie a swing of 12% from SNP to Labour since the last UK general election in Scotland which would see Labour easily gain Rutherglen in the by election with a majority of 14% over the SNP
    https://electionresults.parliament.uk/election/2019-12-12/results/Location/Constituency/Rutherglen and Hamilton West
    That is almost a month ago. Kindly go away and find something *after* the oil news.
    Yougov finds Scots back more oil and gas licenses in the North Sea by a huge 48% to 27% margin, even more than the 42% to 27% margin UK wide
    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/07/31/aac1f/1
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,677
    Test
This discussion has been closed.