The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I quite literally said an uncontrolled shut down is better than a controlled one, and now Rochdale just keeps repeating that if we hadn't had a controlled shut down we'd have had uncontrolled ones as if that's a killer argument. Yes, if we hadn't had a controlled shut down, we'd have had what is better. That's a better choice.
If the choice is scenario (A) shut down all schools, all the time, for months, or scenario (B) shut down individual classes in individual schools for a week if the teacher is off sick and no cover is available that week, then return back afterwards - then I prefer scenario B.
I'm not pretending that you could 'wish away' the pandemic, just live with it. And if the vulnerable choose to isolate, then let them choose that, free choice.
Thanks for the clarification. How does an uncontrolled shut down of education serve kids education better than a controlled one?
The piece you seem to be missing is that (1) it isn't that odd teachers are off for a few weeks then return - its a lot of teachers off an awful lot as the virus tears through schools as super spreader nodes, and (2) kids being off means working parents can't work. And then get sick from their kids anyway. I assume your argument is that business should also have carried on as normal?
We could have let the thing rip through us. Perhaps that would have been a shorter disruption to the economy and education. But the disruption would have been harder and deeper than we had.
At least with "you must stay at home" we had furlough and CBILS and other support. "people die so what" just means empty cinemas and pubs and no support and mass bankruptcies. I know that as a libertarian you support businesses going bankrupt as a sign of a market economy doing its job, but it isn't good when a lot fail within a short space of time. Does tend to have a very negative effect on the economy.
The independent enquiry needs to get into all of this. But the "it would have been fine" scenario still feels like wishful thinking on your part.
Yes a lot of teachers might be off for a few days while they're actually sick.
That does not equate to months of shutdown of all classes in all schools.
You keep saying this thing. It did not happen. Schools remained open throughout.
Remote learning, children trying to share one laptop on the kitchen table between three, if they had laptops. Eton moved seamlessly to remote learning and I'm not sure anyone there noticed the difference (although developmentally I'm sure they suffered like everyone else). Hartlepool High? Less so.
Schools remained open in person.
Only for vulnerable children.
So. They weren't shut then.
Don't be a twat. They were effectively closed to 98% of children. Parents home schooled their offspring.
I think in the winter wave of 2020-21 close to half of pupils were attending in person, at least in England.
So over half not in school and all suffering one way or another.
So you’ve admitted you’re talking utter bollocks oh this as you’ve gone from 2% to 50% in an hour.
I’d stop hiking up Mount Wrong any further.
The only people talking bollocks are those who are saying "but schools never closed what's the big problem".
If that includes you then so be it
No, you’re talking more shite.
No option in March 2020 we had no good options, lockdowns was the least worst option.
I agree we had no good options in Mar 2020. I also remember that period: we were having to come up with ideas on the fly without the time available for detailed analysis of all the implications, while a huge amount was still unknown about the disease. However, with the considerable benefit of hindsight, there were a lot of things we could have been doing better that would have reduced the need for lockdowns.
For the future, if people want to avoid lockdowns, invest now in public health provision and pandemic preparedness.
Off the top of my head:
- HEPA ventilation for schools and hospitals at the least and recommended for any other indoor environment. - More research into far-UV treatment of air (any negatives, etc) - Research to disentangle the effects of various NPIs (this one is a good start) - More investment into vaccine research and capability
All of that would help with any respiratory pandemic in future.
Oh, and decent public education on vaccines. The contemptible shits and grifters doing their best to misinform and scare the public are fortunately not as effective here as they are in the US (that study published the other day was sickening), but they have had some traction.
I’d also add research into non-disposable protective gear. Instead of trying to stockpile vast amounts of PPE made of plastics which are intentionally designed to degrade.
Such equipment could be designed to fit properly and even be integrated to complete protection systems to deal with a truly airborne disease.
Look at the patch work quilt of visors, masks etc that are currently used - a mess of gaps and must take and age to get on and off.
The issues of face visibility, fogging, hearing, comfort etc have been solved multiple times for protective gear in other contexts.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
One reason is that we live in a much more 24 hour world. Do we need a rush hour anymore? Staggered office times and flexible working offer potential to absorb traffic in existing infrastructure.
Are the schools going to stagger open and closing times ?
It was a speech at City Hall, not "Sadiq Khan's Office". His office is in the building admittedly but I somehow doubt they could fit a speech in.
Presumably this was just a small part of the speech in which he ran through all the injustices in history, starting with what the Macedonians did under that sod Alexander, and putting a monetary value on the reparations necessary to square things up.
In some cases there would of course be a netting out. We could use the money the Romans owe us for their invasion to set off against our colonial bill. The Normans must owe us a few quid for 1066 and all that..
The North in particular is owed on that score. Add in the Tudor depredations, and it's time for some serious levelling up.
Though if course if the UK is on the hook for a trillion a year (as claimed) for the next decade, we're all going to be living in grinding poverty.
Not a bit of it, Nigel.
Those wealthy Yanks must owe us a ton for the War of Independence, The French for the Napoleonic Wars, the Germans for u know what, and of course the Japanese.
We'll be quids in, mate, by the time it's all reckoned up. We'll be able to afford a few trillion a year, and then some.
Can't wait to see the figures. When's the UN publishing them?
Plus the Turks and Moroccans for the slaves taken by the Barbary Corsairs, the Danes for the slaves the Vikings took and the Italians for the slaves the Romans took
I think I can safely say that whoever thought up the reparations wheeze which inspires exactly the same defensive, lazy banalities every time from the same people has created the perfect pwning the rightards vehicle. Sir (or madam), I salute you.
Pretty much what I was thinking re the Males Online. It sure has supercharged the whole slavery thing in that airt; one would almost think it had got cross-wired with the EXECUTE MASS MURDERERS NOW BEFORE THE DODGY EVIDENCE GETS FOUND OUT! stuff. It will be very interesting to see what KCIII and the C of E have to say.
Poll: two thirds of public back death penalty for Letby
So we know where the Tories will go next. Utterly despicable.
'Half the public (49 per cent) would support reinstating the death penalty for ‘any murder’, a figure that has risen by eight points since February. More than half (52 per cent) back capital punishment for anyone who assassinates a Royal, a figure that rises to 54 per cent for those who kill a police officer, 59 per cent for a multiple murderer and 63 per cent for a child murderer. This last figure is up by six points since February. Other crimes have also been affected by this surge in support for the noose, with 59 per cent of the public saying they back the death penalty for those convicted of terrorism or multiple rapes.'
The Tories however despite 13 years in government have not reintroduced the death penalty for any crime and likely will not have a manifesto commitment to restore it either and nor will Labour make a promise to do so in their manifesto.
Just be grateful we have representative not direct democracy, with only RefUK perhaps likely to even consider restoring the death penalty for some crimes. If we went to a referendum on it it certainly would be back for some crimes. Another reason we don't need more referendums
Support for the death penalty usually rises, once some heinous crime gets reported.
Letby deserves to be put to death, but bring back hanging, and you run into all kinds of practical difficulties. The jury spent days poring over the evidence. Would they have given her the benefit of the doubt, had they known she'd be hanged?
It's easy enough to agree that the Letbys of this world deserve to be hanged, but do all murderers deserve to be hanged? In most cases, if we examined the evidence, we would probably say no. Most murders take place in a terrible moment of madness, rather than the kind of ruthless cold-blooded killing that Letby practised. So, we'd be left arguing over which murderers deserved death and which didn't, since we're obviously not going to hang 6-700 people a year.
Then, you get the miscarriages of justice.
Hanging probably lasted a generation longer in this country than it would otherwise, because of the Nuremberg trials. No one disputed that leading Nazis deserved the rope (and most of them got away with their crimes).
The start point of 6-700 can be immediately discounted, as people currently receiving a whole life tariff might get the death penalty. That's 68 people right now.
I quite like that there’s only 68 people who will never get out of prison. I suspect that this forum can probably name most of them pretty quickly as well. They’re generally terrorists, child murderers, and serial killers. And Wayne Couzens.
I think murder both of and by police officers should be dealt with most seriously by the courts. Hence I support the tariffs for Couzens and de Zoysa.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
One reason is that we live in a much more 24 hour world. Do we need a rush hour anymore? Staggered office times and flexible working offer potential to absorb traffic in existing infrastructure.
Very much so. Persuading companies to allow remote working and staggered shifts, would make a big difference to rush hours.
However, as I said the other day, remote working was the source of the most complaints landing on the PM’s desk during the pandemic. He’d get weekly calls from newspaper proprietors on the subject, and many more from those with interests in commercial real estate.
On which subject, it appears that WeWork are about to go properly bust, and they have £3bn in leases in London alone. Funnily enough, you can’t pretend to be a tech software company when you’re actually a property company.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
It was a speech at City Hall, not "Sadiq Khan's Office". His office is in the building admittedly but I somehow doubt they could fit a speech in.
Presumably this was just a small part of the speech in which he ran through all the injustices in history, starting with what the Macedonians did under that sod Alexander, and putting a monetary value on the reparations necessary to square things up.
In some cases there would of course be a netting out. We could use the money the Romans owe us for their invasion to set off against our colonial bill. The Normans must owe us a few quid for 1066 and all that.
We might even be in pocket rather than out of it at the end of the day, especially if you work out the compound interest.
The complete ledger will be very interesting. Has it been published yet?
The net wealth of the UK is £10.7 trn. These hucksters think that every household in the country should be fined twice what they own because of what some people did hundreds of years ago.
There is , as you imply, not a country in the world that would not be paying out vast sums of money on this basis. The Middle East and North Africa would presumably owe a shedload of money to Mediterranean and Balkan Europe.
Maybe we could just sell the population into slavery ?
Didn’t Cassius (Caesar assassin), during the Civil War, go round demanding money, at sword point, from cities to the point that they had to sell their own citizens into slavery to pay him
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Not least because it makes public transport easier. It's not as if the roads are built out into the North Atlantic, after all. Or the Thames Estuary, aka LBO airport.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
All of 38 years old, Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full MAGA wingspan but not quite there yet. His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
One reason is that we live in a much more 24 hour world. Do we need a rush hour anymore? Staggered office times and flexible working offer potential to absorb traffic in existing infrastructure.
Are the schools going to stagger open and closing times ?
There is no need for all primary or all secondary schools to keep the same hours.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
All of 38 years old, Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full MAGA wingspan but not quite there yet. His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.
It was a speech at City Hall, not "Sadiq Khan's Office". His office is in the building admittedly but I somehow doubt they could fit a speech in.
Presumably this was just a small part of the speech in which he ran through all the injustices in history, starting with what the Macedonians did under that sod Alexander, and putting a monetary value on the reparations necessary to square things up.
In some cases there would of course be a netting out. We could use the money the Romans owe us for their invasion to set off against our colonial bill. The Normans must owe us a few quid for 1066 and all that..
The North in particular is owed on that score. Add in the Tudor depredations, and it's time for some serious levelling up.
Though if course if the UK is on the hook for a trillion a year (as claimed) for the next decade, we're all going to be living in grinding poverty.
Not a bit of it, Nigel.
Those wealthy Yanks must owe us a ton for the War of Independence, The French for the Napoleonic Wars, the Germans for u know what, and of course the Japanese.
We'll be quids in, mate, by the time it's all reckoned up. We'll be able to afford a few trillion a year, and then some.
Can't wait to see the figures. When's the UN publishing them?
Plus the Turks and Moroccans for the slaves taken by the Barbary Corsairs, the Danes for the slaves the Vikings took and the Italians for the slaves the Romans took
I think I can safely say that whoever thought up the reparations wheeze which inspires exactly the same defensive, lazy banalities every time from the same people has created the perfect pwning the rightards vehicle. Sir (or madam), I salute you.
Pretty much what I was thinking re the Males Online. It sure has supercharged the whole slavery thing in that airt; one would almost think it had got cross-wired with the EXECUTE MASS MURDERERS NOW BEFORE THE DODGY EVIDENCE GETS FOUND OUT! stuff. It will be very interesting to see what KCIII and the C of E have to say.
Have you read Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore? One element that he explores is the extreme anger felt by elements of modern Australian society towards any recognition of the wrongs done to Aboriginal peoples. Istr that he considered much of that emanated from sublimated guilt. I sense a similar vibe about the 'Look what the Barbary Corsairs did' chat.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Sorry, I said roughly in another post. A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
It was a speech at City Hall, not "Sadiq Khan's Office". His office is in the building admittedly but I somehow doubt they could fit a speech in.
Presumably this was just a small part of the speech in which he ran through all the injustices in history, starting with what the Macedonians did under that sod Alexander, and putting a monetary value on the reparations necessary to square things up.
In some cases there would of course be a netting out. We could use the money the Romans owe us for their invasion to set off against our colonial bill. The Normans must owe us a few quid for 1066 and all that.
We might even be in pocket rather than out of it at the end of the day, especially if you work out the compound interest.
The complete ledger will be very interesting. Has it been published yet?
The net wealth of the UK is £10.7 trn. These hucksters think that every household in the country should be fined twice what they own because of what some people did hundreds of years ago.
There is , as you imply, not a country in the world that would not be paying out vast sums of money on this basis. The Middle East and North Africa would presumably owe a shedload of money to Mediterranean and Balkan Europe.
Maybe we could just sell the population into slavery ?
Didn’t Cassius (Caesar assassin), during the Civil War, go round demanding money, at sword point, from cities to the point that they had to sell their own citizens into slavery to pay him
He always had a lean and hungry look, right enough.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Sorry, I said roughly in another post. A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
0.1:1 does not though.
What level of road building would you want to achieve before you started putting cycle infrastructure on existing roads? Can you provide a rough cost estimate for that road building?
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Sorry, I said roughly in another post. A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
0.1:1 does not though.
But later in that sentence you bemoan the fact it hasn't gone up by 20%.
Anyway, my point was that road demand is far from 100% of capacity, so the argument that population has gone up by x% so road capacity must go up by x% (or something so close to x% that it's effectively the same thing) is too simplistic.
All of 38 years old, Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full MAGA wingspan but not quite there yet. His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.
ny times
They’re seriously worried about him.
He denies climate change exists and has dabbled in 9/11 and Jan 6 conspiracy theories. So… your kind of guy?
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Sorry, I said roughly in another post. A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
0.1:1 does not though.
Forget the ratio. The question is what road building can be done which has a positive return on the investment. An awful lot of roadbuilding has been done which directly ties into new developments - Norwich Northern route as one example. Those are roads which tie into others which have spare capacity to generate traffic and drive economic growth.
There are quite a few strategic routes which could be built but almost all are upgrades - A9, A1, A66 etc. What you seem most excited by is the idea of more roads in urban and suburban areas. We could do so - build tunnels as they are doing in various Australian city projects.
We could - but we won't. As we have a broken economy where we largely refuse to invest and most projects are at rip-off prices that other countries wouldn't accept, we get nothing. What we won't do is bulldoze homes to slap motorways next to people's neighbourhoods for through traffic to whizz by. There's literally no political will for that. So no M580 or M62 bypass or M58 to Bootle or any of those.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Sorry, I said roughly in another post. A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
0.1:1 does not though.
What level of road building would you want to achieve before you started putting cycle infrastructure on existing roads? Can you provide a rough cost estimate for that road building?
We should start immediately with existing new roads but build this up. Before there was an example of the 12 mile A14 road built which has unlocked 24 miles of cycling routes.
I think as a general rule 2:1 or 3:1 of new cycling for new roads could be entirely reasonable on average. Apart from motorways all new roads in my view should have cycling provision as standard, so that's automatically 1:1, and then relieving old roads of traffic allows them to be converted too, so 2:1 or 3:1.
The Dutch have been doing this for 50 years, so its not an overnight project, but my rough estimate is I think over a decade maybe we should be considering investing a trillion into our roads and cycle network to boost our infrastructure and improve economic growth and unlock the potential for entirely new towns too. We're investing hundreds of billions into new rail lines and roads represent more than 10x the economic activity of rails.
Record numbers of asylum claims waiting to be assessed. More people living in limbo, here, dependent upon our funds but unable to work. It is not just shameful, it is a financial disgrace.
All of 38 years old, Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full MAGA wingspan but not quite there yet. His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.
ny times
They’re seriously worried about him.
He denies climate change exists and has dabbled in 9/11 and Jan 6 conspiracy theories. So… your kind of guy?
WINNERS: Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley MIDDLE OF THE PACK: Tim Scott and Chris Christie LOSERS: Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Sorry, I said roughly in another post. A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
0.1:1 does not though.
What level of road building would you want to achieve before you started putting cycle infrastructure on existing roads? Can you provide a rough cost estimate for that road building?
Before there was an example of the 12 mile A14 road built which has unlocked 24 miles of cycling routes.
I think as a general rule 2:1 or 3:1 of new cycling for new roads could be entirely reasonable on average. Apart from motorways all new roads in my view should have cycling provision as standard, so that's automatically 1:1, and then relieving old roads of traffic allows them to be converted too, so 2:1 or 3:1.
The Dutch have been doing this for 50 years, so its not an overnight project, but my rough estimate is I think over a decade maybe we should be considering investing a trillion into our roads and cycle network to boost our infrastructure and improve economic growth and unlock the potential for entirely new towns too. We're investing hundreds of billions into new rail lines and roads represent more than 10x the economic activity of rails.
Not the question I asked. You have repeatedly suggested that space cannot be taken away from cars until we have the same level of roads as the Dutch.
With your dubious 36% figure, that 90,000 additional miles. At £10 million a mile (not sure if that is correct?), that's £900 billion before you will even consider putting cycle lanes on existing roads.
We are in danger of focusing on the wrong things re: the lockdown debate. We can argue the toss endlessly about the official lockdowns – instinctively, I think the government overplayed its hand, but the evidence is mixed. As I say, we can argue the toss.
The real scandal came at the Christmas lockdown by stealth – in which a series of government health outriders were deployed to scare people from celebrating Christmas. The hospitality industry was hammered and received no compensation. Moreover, what evidence there was for a lockdown was wafer-thin at best: indeed the international evidence from South Africa was directly contradictory.
There were almost daily appeals from the SA medical professional body, which assured us that Omicron was milder, but the government chose to ignore it. The South Africans were proved absolutely right. Have we ever even apologised to them?
Christie might be a blowhard with a highly dubious record, but at least he's not terrified of Trump.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4168738-chris-christie-dismisses-boos-at-first-republican-debate/ ..Christie did not raise his hand when asked if he would still support Trump as the Republican nominee despite his legal troubles. Instead, the Republican former governor of New Jersey Christie criticized the former president’s conduct, promoting boos from the audience. He defended his comments at the debate, however, calling out other candidates for their lack of pushback against Trump — who has received four criminal indictments since April. Christie has made attacks on the former president a large focus of his presidential campaign. “If you’re not going to talk about that, then then then why bother running?” Christie said. “You should just see the race to Donald Trump, which is what a lot of those people did on the stage last night.” “Am I out after Trump? I am out to beat Donald Tump,” Christie continued. “And because I think he deserves to be beaten...
We are in danger of focusing on the wrong things re: the lockdown debate. We can argue the toss endlessly about the official lockdowns – instinctively, I think the government overplayed its hand, but the evidence is mixed. As I say, we can argue the toss.
The real scandal came at the Christmas lockdown by stealth – in which a series of government health outriders were deployed to scare people from celebrating Christmas. The hospitality industry was hammered and received no compensation. Moreover, what evidence there was for a lockdown was wafer-thin at best: indeed the international evidence from South Africa was directly contradictory.
There were almost daily appeals from the SA medical professional body, which assured us that Omicron was milder, but the government chose to ignore it. The South Africans were proved absolutely right. Have we ever even apologised to them?
Dec 2021 is what a no official lockdown policy looks like. People stay away, business gets no support.
As we have a broken economy where we largely refuse to invest and most projects are at rip-off prices that other countries wouldn't accept, we get nothing. What we won't do is bulldoze homes to slap motorways next to people's neighbourhoods for through traffic to whizz by. There's literally no political will for that. So no M580 or M62 bypass or M58 to Bootle or any of those.
Which is the problem. Do you actually think that's a good thing? Transport is a critical element of national infrastructure and our roads are the arteries of the economy.
Decades of neglect and failure to invest is harming the economy and retarding economic growth.
We need a Government brave enough to invest in our critical infrastructure. Which is not boosting spending on salaries, but actual infrastructure like our transportation network. And if NIMBYs say no, then override them.
Until we're willing to do that, the country will continue to stagnate.
re Dutch v English road densities and cycling propensity. This can also be explained by geography - the Netherlands is flat, even parts of England that we think of as relatively flat like Essex are far hillier than the Netherlands.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Sorry, I said roughly in another post. A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
0.1:1 does not though.
What level of road building would you want to achieve before you started putting cycle infrastructure on existing roads? Can you provide a rough cost estimate for that road building?
Before there was an example of the 12 mile A14 road built which has unlocked 24 miles of cycling routes.
I think as a general rule 2:1 or 3:1 of new cycling for new roads could be entirely reasonable on average. Apart from motorways all new roads in my view should have cycling provision as standard, so that's automatically 1:1, and then relieving old roads of traffic allows them to be converted too, so 2:1 or 3:1.
The Dutch have been doing this for 50 years, so its not an overnight project, but my rough estimate is I think over a decade maybe we should be considering investing a trillion into our roads and cycle network to boost our infrastructure and improve economic growth and unlock the potential for entirely new towns too. We're investing hundreds of billions into new rail lines and roads represent more than 10x the economic activity of rails.
Not the question I asked. You have repeatedly suggested that space cannot be taken away from cars until we have the same level of roads as the Dutch.
With your dubious 36% figure, that 90,000 additional miles. At £10 million a mile (not sure if that is correct?), that's £900 billion before you will even consider putting cycle lanes on existing roads.
Whether it's roads, train track, power stations, reservoirs or anything else the one certainty is that it'll be massively expensive, overbudget and late in this country.
WINNERS: Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley MIDDLE OF THE PACK: Tim Scott and Chris Christie LOSERS: Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
I am not saying there is no scaling relation between traffic/road density and population density. What I am saying is that your earlier argument that a 20% increase in roads is required because of a 20% increase in population is too simplistic.
Of course its simplistic which is why I said roughly, it was an approximation.
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
No, you didn't. You said:
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Sorry, I said roughly in another post. A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
0.1:1 does not though.
What level of road building would you want to achieve before you started putting cycle infrastructure on existing roads? Can you provide a rough cost estimate for that road building?
Before there was an example of the 12 mile A14 road built which has unlocked 24 miles of cycling routes.
I think as a general rule 2:1 or 3:1 of new cycling for new roads could be entirely reasonable on average. Apart from motorways all new roads in my view should have cycling provision as standard, so that's automatically 1:1, and then relieving old roads of traffic allows them to be converted too, so 2:1 or 3:1.
The Dutch have been doing this for 50 years, so its not an overnight project, but my rough estimate is I think over a decade maybe we should be considering investing a trillion into our roads and cycle network to boost our infrastructure and improve economic growth and unlock the potential for entirely new towns too. We're investing hundreds of billions into new rail lines and roads represent more than 10x the economic activity of rails.
Not the question I asked. You have repeatedly suggested that space cannot be taken away from cars until we have the same level of roads as the Dutch.
With your dubious 36% figure, that 90,000 additional miles. At £10 million a mile (not sure if that is correct?), that's £900 billion before you will even consider putting cycle lanes on existing roads.
I said start immediately, not in a decades time. 🤨
Apart from motorways that 90,000 additional miles should all have segregated cycling in my eyes as soon as its built (not on roads, not painted on pavement) and would unlock approximately another 90,000 - 180,000 miles of cycle paths from freeing up old roads.
How many miles of cycle paths do we have today?
And yes, £900bn sounds about right, lets round that up, what figure did I estimate?
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
Besides, isn't "new roads induce new demand" just an example of supply side economics? If you make travel "cheaper" (in broad, not just cash, terms) by increasing the availability of roads, people travel more.
Question for me is how much extra travel is a good thing in itself, and how much it's only good to the extent the travel is going somewhere. And whether it's more fruitful to bring more of those somewheres closer to where people are.
The exec summary of Royal Society report is very readable. I found p. 16 particularly interesting, with its case studies of countries that kept rates very low, like South Korea.
re Dutch v English road densities and cycling propensity. This can also be explained by geography - the Netherlands is flat, even parts of England that we think of as relatively flat like Essex are far hillier than the Netherlands.
I did a cycling holiday in Norfolk. It's bloody mountainous. Who knew?
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
One reason is that we live in a much more 24 hour world. Do we need a rush hour anymore? Staggered office times and flexible working offer potential to absorb traffic in existing infrastructure.
Are the schools going to stagger open and closing times ?
Not only that but for most companies I have worked for flexi time is actually a myth. For example we have a morning standup meeting everyday. Now theoretically we have flexi time and our core hours are 10 am to 3pm so I can start anytime before 10am however as I have a mandatory must attend meeting at 9am....
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
To be fair, Barty probably is close to a motorway - the NW is the most motorway dense part of the entire UK.
All of 38 years old, Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full MAGA wingspan but not quite there yet. His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.
ny times
They’re seriously worried about him.
He denies climate change exists and has dabbled in 9/11 and Jan 6 conspiracy theories. So… your kind of guy?
The exec summary of Royal Society report is very readable. I found p. 16 particularly interesting, with its case studies of countries that kept rates very low, like South Korea.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
Besides, isn't "new roads induce new demand" just an example of supply side economics? If you make travel "cheaper" (in broad, not just cash, terms) by increasing the availability of roads, people travel more.
Question for me is how much extra travel is a good thing in itself, and how much it's only good to the extent the travel is going somewhere. And whether it's more fruitful to bring more of those somewheres closer to where people are.
Problem is 90% of transportation is already by road.
So there's very little of the other 10% that can be induced.
Which is why countries that invest in roads have less congestion, not more. And can use those new roads to improve cycling and public transport etc too.
The myth of induced demand comes from failed studies comparing a few American cities that don't compare. Like looking at a city with 4 million population in one date, and 13 million at another, then not controlling for that fact.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
Besides, isn't "new roads induce new demand" just an example of supply side economics? If you make travel "cheaper" (in broad, not just cash, terms) by increasing the availability of roads, people travel more.
Question for me is how much extra travel is a good thing in itself, and how much it's only good to the extent the travel is going somewhere. And whether it's more fruitful to bring more of those somewheres closer to where people are.
New roads - or railways - allow journeys which simply don't happen otherwise. The M25 is crazy busy, but the other roads didn't have to cope with the population pro-rated traffic before it was built. It simply wasn't practicable to live in Watford and commute to Guildford, just as living in leafy parts and getting the train into London for work wasn't doable until we got 125mph trains.
We absolutely need to build more roads - infrastructure in the UK is shit compared to most western European countries (as are most things if we are honest). But unless we understand the role they play and the cost to fill the gaps in the network then none of it can happen.
We get stuck with short-termism and "who pays" stupidity. We can't build the M67 over the Pennines, but we could bypass Mottram and Tintwistle. Those bypasses absolutely would create more traffic for the A628 corridor which creates further problems, but the pressing immediate needs of the villagers has been there for decades. So to avoid the other problems we do nothing at all.
re Dutch v English road densities and cycling propensity. This can also be explained by geography - the Netherlands is flat, even parts of England that we think of as relatively flat like Essex are far hillier than the Netherlands.
I did a cycling holiday in Norfolk. It's bloody mountainous. Who knew?
I realised I didn't know TRUE "flatness" till I went to the Netherlands. It's more like looking out to sea than any UK landscape certainly those I've seen.
We are in danger of focusing on the wrong things re: the lockdown debate.
Yes, it's over and done.
And developments in sequencing and vaccine technology in the last three years will completely rewrite the rules for sensible pandemic response anyway.
Sadly it is not over and done. Lockdowns are now part of the government's policy armoury and we went some distance towards normalising the criminalisation of buying a coffee with your friend or inviting your aunt over for supper.
And of course I say this in despair because we the public consistently voted for longer and harsher lockdowns with the celebrated 13% of people never wanting nightclubs to open again.
It's no one's fault apart from our own. But sure tell us all how the schools stayed open.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The reason the Dutch have more cycling is because they have more cycle paths, not because they have more roads!
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
Besides, isn't "new roads induce new demand" just an example of supply side economics? If you make travel "cheaper" (in broad, not just cash, terms) by increasing the availability of roads, people travel more.
Question for me is how much extra travel is a good thing in itself, and how much it's only good to the extent the travel is going somewhere. And whether it's more fruitful to bring more of those somewheres closer to where people are.
Problem is 90% of transportation is already by road.
So there's very little of the other 10% that can be induced.
Which is why countries that invest in roads have less congestion, not more. And can use those new roads to improve cycling and public transport etc too.
The myth of induced demand comes from failed studies comparing a few American cities that don't compare. Like looking at a city with 4 million population in one date, and 13 million at another, then not controlling for that fact.
Build HS2, and rename it “Capacity 2030”. It will get something like 10,000 trucks off the roads every day.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The reason the Dutch have more cycling is because they have more cycle paths, not because they have more roads!
The reason the Dutch have more cycle paths is because they've been building roads!
The problem with UK road networks is that we have opted for single major arteries rather than smaller parallel routes. A distibuted network of D2 routes is far more capable than focussing on single D3/4 routes. Especially whrn things go wrong. The only obvious example in UK is M1/6 or M40 routes from London to Birmingham
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
To be fair, Barty probably is close to a motorway - the NW is the most motorway dense part of the entire UK.
He actually lives on the central reservation of the M6. Hence his obsession.
We are in danger of focusing on the wrong things re: the lockdown debate.
Yes, it's over and done.
And developments in sequencing and vaccine technology in the last three years will completely rewrite the rules for sensible pandemic response anyway.
And, of course, effective and cheap lateral flow tests.
The previously untested in public use technology is completely validated, and used suitably, ought to be able to make any future lockdown (beyond the first few weeks of a novel pandemic virus) unnecessary. Assuming we have the infrastructure to produce them.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
re Dutch v English road densities and cycling propensity. This can also be explained by geography - the Netherlands is flat, even parts of England that we think of as relatively flat like Essex are far hillier than the Netherlands.
I did a cycling holiday in Norfolk. It's bloody mountainous. Who knew?
I realised I didn't know TRUE "flatness" till I went to the Netherlands. It's more like looking out to sea than any UK landscape certainly those I've seen.
I have cycled across the Netherlands, from the bottom tip (the "Dutch Alps") to the Frisian coast in the north via the reclaimed polders making up Flevoland. The polders in particular are incredibly flat. A lot of sky.
All of 38 years old, Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full MAGA wingspan but not quite there yet. His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.
ny times
They’re seriously worried about him.
He denies climate change exists and has dabbled in 9/11 and Jan 6 conspiracy theories. So… your kind of guy?
He seems to think the US's vast arsenal of munitions should be prioritised for use at home rather than abroad. This would, of course, be a departure from historical precedent and vulnerable to the usual pettifogging objections by nimbys.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The reason the Dutch have more cycling is because they have more cycle paths, not because they have more roads!
The reason the Dutch have more cycle paths is because they've been building roads!
Can't have one without the other.
Actually, you can. As demonstrated so well in the UK.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The reason the Dutch have more cycling is because they have more cycle paths, not because they have more roads!
The reason the Dutch have more cycle paths is because they've been building roads!
Can't have one without the other.
Actually, you can. As demonstrated so well in the UK.
So cycling infrastructure is great in the UK?
Tell that to @Eabhal who keeps saying we should be like the Netherlands and that cycling is considered dangerous by Britons.
I think the Dutch have figured this out quite nicely. Build, build, build.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The reason the Dutch have more cycling is because they have more cycle paths, not because they have more roads!
The reason the Dutch have more cycle paths is because they've been building roads!
Can't have one without the other.
Actually, you can. As demonstrated so well in the UK.
So cycling infrastructure is great in the UK?
Tell that to @Eabhal who keeps saying we should be like the Netherlands and that cycling is considered dangerous by Britons.
I think the Dutch have figured this out quite nicely. Build, build, build.
All of 38 years old, Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full MAGA wingspan but not quite there yet. His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.
ny times
They’re seriously worried about him.
He denies climate change exists and has dabbled in 9/11 and Jan 6 conspiracy theories. So… your kind of guy?
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The reason the Dutch have more cycling is because they have more cycle paths, not because they have more roads!
The reason the Dutch have more cycle paths is because they've been building roads!
Can't have one without the other.
Actually, you can. As demonstrated so well in the UK.
So cycling infrastructure is great in the UK?
Tell that to @Eabhal who keeps saying we should be like the Netherlands and that cycling is considered dangerous by Britons.
I think the Dutch have figured this out quite nicely. Build, build, build.
Er, no, the other way round, obviously.
Wait which is it?
Is cycling infrastructure demonstrated so well in the UK or not?
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
To be fair, Barty probably is close to a motorway - the NW is the most motorway dense part of the entire UK.
He actually lives on the central reservation of the M6. Hence his obsession.
I played on the M62 construction site many decades ago. It was great.
All of 38 years old, Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full MAGA wingspan but not quite there yet. His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.
ny times
They’re seriously worried about him.
He denies climate change exists and has dabbled in 9/11 and Jan 6 conspiracy theories. So… your kind of guy?
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The reason the Dutch have more cycling is because they have more cycle paths, not because they have more roads!
The reason the Dutch have more cycle paths is because they've been building roads!
Can't have one without the other.
Actually, you can. As demonstrated so well in the UK.
So cycling infrastructure is great in the UK?
Tell that to @Eabhal who keeps saying we should be like the Netherlands and that cycling is considered dangerous by Britons.
I think the Dutch have figured this out quite nicely. Build, build, build.
Er, no, the other way round, obviously.
Wait which is it?
Is cycling infrastructure demonstrated so well in the UK or not?
You said you can't have one without the other. That is incorrect. You quite obviously can have roads without cycle paths - as so well demonstrated in the UK. You can also have cycle paths without roads, typically along former railway tracks.
We are in danger of focusing on the wrong things re: the lockdown debate.
Yes, it's over and done.
And developments in sequencing and vaccine technology in the last three years will completely rewrite the rules for sensible pandemic response anyway.
And, of course, effective and cheap lateral flow tests.
The previously untested in public use technology is completely validated, and used suitably, ought to be able to make any future lockdown (beyond the first few weeks of a novel pandemic virus) unnecessary. Assuming we have the infrastructure to produce them.
Just such a shame that the Tories closed the pandemic response centre they opened with a great chorus from the media.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
Why? We build and upgrade roads where there is a need and where it is possible. Sadly the places where we most ned to build more roads - on the approaches to and in the centre of towns and cities - it usually isn't practical. Outside of cities I very rarely if ever run into traffic jams and those which I did all now seem to be the subject of planned or completed upgrades.
Of course it's practical, it's just not done as a matter of policy and because investment is expensive.
A lot of traffic in cities is because of throughout being driven there rather than it needing to be there. Most of the North West motorways converge in Manchester meaning even if you don't want to go to Manchester, realistically you have to drive through Manchester as there's no alternative.
Take the M62/M60 for instance. If you want to go from North Liverpool to Rochdale (which is further North) the route is start by going South, the complete wrong direction, then East on the M62, North through Manchester at the M60, then East again.
Build an "M580" motorway and a lot of cars currently on the M62 or M60 would no longer need to be on that route.
And that's just one random example. And of course the terrible lack of redundancy and alternative routes on our roads means in the event that the M62 is closed due to an accident then there is no alternative motorway to be used and people use towns as rat runs.
The big thing that stops so many road schemes is where does the traffic to / from that new road go? New roads drive traffic growth, so if we add an M580 then we need options at either end. At the west you can't just stop at the M57, so its then onwards likely towards Bootle - which practically speaking is impossible to build. At the east? M60 already at capacity, M62 bypass through Worsley and Prestwich cancelled as impossible.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
You are coming from the myth that new roads add pressure rather than relieve it.
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
If its a myth then its one validated by huge amounts of data from road engineers and planners. Your M580 cannot be built as there is nowhere for the traffic it generates to go. You say it won't, but you are wrong. Which is why they can't build it.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
The reason the Dutch have more cycling is because they have more cycle paths, not because they have more roads!
The reason the Dutch have more cycle paths is because they've been building roads!
Can't have one without the other.
Eh? Was out for a walk along a cycle parth this morning. It's not a road nor is it next to one.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
One reason is that we live in a much more 24 hour world. Do we need a rush hour anymore? Staggered office times and flexible working offer potential to absorb traffic in existing infrastructure.
We can start as late as 10, and finish as early as 3.
Sadly, 10-3 with a 1-hour lunch is not considered sufficient on an ongoing basis.
We are in danger of focusing on the wrong things re: the lockdown debate.
Yes, it's over and done.
And developments in sequencing and vaccine technology in the last three years will completely rewrite the rules for sensible pandemic response anyway.
Sadly it is not over and done. Lockdowns are now part of the government's policy armoury and we went some distance towards normalising the criminalisation of buying a coffee with your friend or inviting your aunt over for supper.
And of course I say this in despair because we the public consistently voted for longer and harsher lockdowns with the celebrated 13% of people never wanting nightclubs to open again.
It's no one's fault apart from our own. But sure tell us all how the schools stayed open.
My memory of the nightclubs poll was that it was even higher than 13%!
It was a speech at City Hall, not "Sadiq Khan's Office". His office is in the building admittedly but I somehow doubt they could fit a speech in.
Presumably this was just a small part of the speech in which he ran through all the injustices in history, starting with what the Macedonians did under that sod Alexander, and putting a monetary value on the reparations necessary to square things up.
In some cases there would of course be a netting out. We could use the money the Romans owe us for their invasion to set off against our colonial bill. The Normans must owe us a few quid for 1066 and all that..
The North in particular is owed on that score. Add in the Tudor depredations, and it's time for some serious levelling up.
Though if course if the UK is on the hook for a trillion a year (as claimed) for the next decade, we're all going to be living in grinding poverty.
Not a bit of it, Nigel.
Those wealthy Yanks must owe us a ton for the War of Independence, The French for the Napoleonic Wars, the Germans for u know what, and of course the Japanese.
We'll be quids in, mate, by the time it's all reckoned up. We'll be able to afford a few trillion a year, and then some.
Can't wait to see the figures. When's the UN publishing them?
Plus the Turks and Moroccans for the slaves taken by the Barbary Corsairs, the Danes for the slaves the Vikings took and the Italians for the slaves the Romans took
I think I can safely say that whoever thought up the reparations wheeze which inspires exactly the same defensive, lazy banalities every time from the same people has created the perfect pwning the rightards vehicle. Sir (or madam), I salute you.
Pretty much what I was thinking re the Males Online. It sure has supercharged the whole slavery thing in that airt; one would almost think it had got cross-wired with the EXECUTE MASS MURDERERS NOW BEFORE THE DODGY EVIDENCE GETS FOUND OUT! stuff. It will be very interesting to see what KCIII and the C of E have to say.
Have you read Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore? One element that he explores is the extreme anger felt by elements of modern Australian society towards any recognition of the wrongs done to Aboriginal peoples. Istr that he considered much of that emanated from sublimated guilt. I sense a similar vibe about the 'Look what the Barbary Corsairs did' chat.
No, haven't read that, so not familiar with it, thanks.
We are in danger of focusing on the wrong things re: the lockdown debate.
Yes, it's over and done.
And developments in sequencing and vaccine technology in the last three years will completely rewrite the rules for sensible pandemic response anyway.
And, of course, effective and cheap lateral flow tests.
The previously untested in public use technology is completely validated, and used suitably, ought to be able to make any future lockdown (beyond the first few weeks of a novel pandemic virus) unnecessary. Assuming we have the infrastructure to produce them.
Just such a shame that the Tories closed the pandemic response centre they opened with a great chorus from the media.
How urgent it is, none of us know - but it wouldn't cost a massive amount of money to put some infrastructure in place. If there is another pandemic, the same supply constraints for test kits etc will apply. If we don't have our own manufacturing capacity in place, we'll be waiting months again - with all that implies.
The economic cost which might be avoided is definitely massive, as we know.
The Dutch have had five decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, continuously building new roads and cycling infrastructure.
We have have had 3 decades of encouraging cycling as a matter of policy, but without bothering to build the roads or accompanying cycling infrastructure that goes with new roads.
Have we caught up with the Dutch? Is cycling as popular today in the UK as it was in the Netherlands in the 00s at a comparable stage of development of cycling as policy? I wouldn't say so.
Building roads & cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands has worked far better than telling people to ride a bike but without building roads.
We aren't going to catch up with the Dutch, unless we actually do what the Dutch are actually doing. Rather than a mythical version of what the Dutch are doing, pretending that they're simply telling people to ride a bike and that's that.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have. Indeed, that's precisely what the Dutch did when they ran out of money for new roads.
Happily, councils everywhere have worked this out as the cost-effective way to get more people moving through our towns and cities, and continue to make progress despite the fuss being kicked up.
You just can't face the truth that we would need to remove some space from drivers on current roads to achieve the rates of cycling and cycle safety that the Dutch have.
What are you talking about?
I have said so repeatedly! It's like you're not reading what I've been writing.
On this page alone
Once: More roads, built with cycling infrastructure as standard = safer cycling and better driving. It also allows retrofitting old roads once new roads (with cycling infrastructure) are built to alleviate the traffic which is a double-win for cycling, which is why the Dutch have been doing this for fifty years now.
Twice: Building new roads (with cycling infrastructure) relieves demand on old ones which can then be retrofitted to be low traffic roads with cycling infrastructrure too.
Three times a lady: Converting old roads to local access roads, once new roads are built, like the Dutch do is precisely what I've been recommending for weeks while we've been having this conversation.
I am entirely in favour of converting old roads once new ones are built. I have advocated it. I am not at all against converging old roads and am fully in favour of copying the Dutch and investing in our transportation so it's achievable.
The Dutch unlike us never ran out of money or stopped construction. Which is why their system works.
But we've already built the new roads?
Yeah. I agree with much of what Barty says but since the 1970s (when the Dutch started investing seriously in cycle infrastructure) we have had 50 years of new roads after new roads. Even right now we have a £27bn major roads programme, and that's just Highways England - i.e. not the many new roads being built by local authorities.
The difference is that our new roads have, by and large, not been built with cycling infrastructure.
What new roads?
We've had bugger all new roads as a matter of policy for decades now.
The few new roads we do get now come with cycling provision as standard, we need much, much more of that.
Not so.
There has been major road building all across England in the last decade. Just a few of the many examples that I have done bits of work for.
Lincoln Eastern ring road A14 project including the new Huntingdon bypass A46 Dualling from Widmerpool to Newark A6 to Manchester Airport relief road Gedling Access Road - which is effectively a Nottingham Eastern bypass Congleton Link road Norwich Northern Distributor Road
And being built at the moment
Inverness Trunk Road Link Silvertown Tunnel Stubbington bypass A585 Little Singleton bypass A120 Little Hadham bypass Preston Western Distributor Road Heyhouses Link Road Wichelstowe Southern Access Grantham Southern Bypass Etruria Valley Link Road North Northallerton Link Road Newtownards Movilla Road to Donaghadee Road and Bangor Road Link Larne Distributor (South) Ballyclare Western Relief Road M6-M54 Link road
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes minor bypasses and bits and pieces here and there. The A14 one is 12 miles and one of the biggest.
For a country that's added nearly 10 million population in the past two decades, that's pathetically little and barely scratching the surface of what is required.
And each of those typically comes with much cycling development, like the 24 miles of cycle paths to go with the 12 mile A14 project already discussed.
Rubbish. The A46 was 20 miles of new road. The Norwich Northern Distributor Road was 12 miles of new road.
Where do you expect to build brand new roads over any great distance when we already have such a dense road network? These are not 'minor' projects. They are exactly the sort of road building projects that we need to through take traffic away from town and city centres and to upgrade trunk routes. The A1 has been upgraded to motorway standard over much of its length over the past 30 years and that is still ongoing.
You seem to be looking for any excuse to avoid admitting you were wrong about the scale of roadbuilding.
We don't have a dense network. The Netherlands do, they have 36% more road miles per 100km^2 than we do.
We've added roughly ten million to our population. Proportionately that should have been many millions of new homes, and tens of thousands of miles of new roads.
We haven't kept pace in construction in either homes, nor infrastructure. We need both, because we have the people living here.
Yes the limited projects we have had are worthwhile but there should be an order of magnitude more of them.
The argument that a x% increase in population warrants a corresponding x% increase in the length of roads in the country is too simplistic. For starters, it assumes all the roads were at capacity to begin with, which clearly isn’t the case.
Well it generally scales with population density, which is why comparing UK to Netherlands (they have double the road density we do) is unreasonable, but comparing England to Netherlands (they have 36% more road density) seems more reasonable.
A 20% increase in population does roughly equate to a 20% increase in demand. But we've fallen well short of boosting either roads of housing supply by 20% to match the population growth.
Netting for population, our road capacity is going backwards not forwards. Just like our housing capacity.
Again, unless demand was already at 100% of road capacity, an increase in demand doesn’t necessarily require a one-to-one increase in capacity.
Then why does the Netherlands have 36% more road density than England?
Building roads works. Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't. Either way, quite patiently I was right and road construction (like housing) has been totally neglected relative to population growth.
We need mass construction of houses, roads and cycle paths, all of the above not either or to handle our population growth.
And as long as we keep getting population growth in the hundreds of thousands per annum, that will continue to remain true.
I don’t know, but it has nothing to do with the point I am making unless their policy is to expand their road capacity at exactly the same rate as their population is increasing.
I was also not saying “ Simply cramming more people into the same infrastructure doesn't [work].”, I was saying your argument early that a 20% increase in population requires a 20% increase in road capacity is too simplistic.
But both traffic and road density does scale with population density.
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
And a big part of the solution to this has to be to stop importing people and increasing the population density - but all the politicans are signed up for the cheap labour ponzi scheme, and humming la-la-la with their fingers in their ears.
It was a speech at City Hall, not "Sadiq Khan's Office". His office is in the building admittedly but I somehow doubt they could fit a speech in.
Presumably this was just a small part of the speech in which he ran through all the injustices in history, starting with what the Macedonians did under that sod Alexander, and putting a monetary value on the reparations necessary to square things up.
In some cases there would of course be a netting out. We could use the money the Romans owe us for their invasion to set off against our colonial bill. The Normans must owe us a few quid for 1066 and all that..
The North in particular is owed on that score. Add in the Tudor depredations, and it's time for some serious levelling up.
Though if course if the UK is on the hook for a trillion a year (as claimed) for the next decade, we're all going to be living in grinding poverty.
Not a bit of it, Nigel.
Those wealthy Yanks must owe us a ton for the War of Independence, The French for the Napoleonic Wars, the Germans for u know what, and of course the Japanese.
We'll be quids in, mate, by the time it's all reckoned up. We'll be able to afford a few trillion a year, and then some.
Can't wait to see the figures. When's the UN publishing them?
Plus the Turks and Moroccans for the slaves taken by the Barbary Corsairs, the Danes for the slaves the Vikings took and the Italians for the slaves the Romans took
I think I can safely say that whoever thought up the reparations wheeze which inspires exactly the same defensive, lazy banalities every time from the same people has created the perfect pwning the rightards vehicle. Sir (or madam), I salute you.
I quite literally said an uncontrolled shut down is better than a controlled one, and now Rochdale just keeps repeating that if we hadn't had a controlled shut down we'd have had uncontrolled ones as if that's a killer argument. Yes, if we hadn't had a controlled shut down, we'd have had what is better. That's a better choice.
If the choice is scenario (A) shut down all schools, all the time, for months, or scenario (B) shut down individual classes in individual schools for a week if the teacher is off sick and no cover is available that week, then return back afterwards - then I prefer scenario B.
I'm not pretending that you could 'wish away' the pandemic, just live with it. And if the vulnerable choose to isolate, then let them choose that, free choice.
Thanks for the clarification. How does an uncontrolled shut down of education serve kids education better than a controlled one?
The piece you seem to be missing is that (1) it isn't that odd teachers are off for a few weeks then return - its a lot of teachers off an awful lot as the virus tears through schools as super spreader nodes, and (2) kids being off means working parents can't work. And then get sick from their kids anyway. I assume your argument is that business should also have carried on as normal?
We could have let the thing rip through us. Perhaps that would have been a shorter disruption to the economy and education. But the disruption would have been harder and deeper than we had.
At least with "you must stay at home" we had furlough and CBILS and other support. "people die so what" just means empty cinemas and pubs and no support and mass bankruptcies. I know that as a libertarian you support businesses going bankrupt as a sign of a market economy doing its job, but it isn't good when a lot fail within a short space of time. Does tend to have a very negative effect on the economy.
The independent enquiry needs to get into all of this. But the "it would have been fine" scenario still feels like wishful thinking on your part.
Yes a lot of teachers might be off for a few days while they're actually sick.
That does not equate to months of shutdown of all classes in all schools.
You keep saying this thing. It did not happen. Schools remained open throughout.
Remote learning, children trying to share one laptop on the kitchen table between three, if they had laptops. Eton moved seamlessly to remote learning and I'm not sure anyone there noticed the difference (although developmentally I'm sure they suffered like everyone else). Hartlepool High? Less so.
Schools remained open in person.
Only for vulnerable children.
So. They weren't shut then.
Don't be a twat. They were effectively closed to 98% of children. Parents home schooled their offspring.
I think in the winter wave of 2020-21 close to half of pupils were attending in person, at least in England.
So over half not in school and all suffering one way or another.
So you’ve admitted you’re talking utter bollocks oh this as you’ve gone from 2% to 50% in an hour.
I’d stop hiking up Mount Wrong any further.
The only people talking bollocks are those who are saying "but schools never closed what's the big problem".
If that includes you then so be it
No, you’re talking more shite.
No option in March 2020 we had no good options, lockdowns was the least worst option.
Now you're changing the subject. I said I understand the first lockdown. Not that it was right or wrong but I understand it.
You said "lockdowns" were the least worst option. Which is bollocks squared. After the first one there should have been no more mandated lockdowns.
But of course you are part of the doing very comfortably PB group who can't imagine what hell lockdowns inflicted upon those less fortunate.
So your response is no surprise whatsoever. Tell us about your last and next bonus again why don't you.
Lockdowns were terrible for me.
I saw my other half once in 13 months.
Then you of all people should appreciate that they are a horrible tool which likely inflicts more harm than good.
Poll: two thirds of public back death penalty for Letby
So we know where the Tories will go next. Utterly despicable.
I agree.
Utterly despicable that you should condemn a group in such strident terms based on something they haven’t done, said or indicated that they are even considering
It was a speech at City Hall, not "Sadiq Khan's Office". His office is in the building admittedly but I somehow doubt they could fit a speech in.
Presumably this was just a small part of the speech in which he ran through all the injustices in history, starting with what the Macedonians did under that sod Alexander, and putting a monetary value on the reparations necessary to square things up.
In some cases there would of course be a netting out. We could use the money the Romans owe us for their invasion to set off against our colonial bill. The Normans must owe us a few quid for 1066 and all that..
The North in particular is owed on that score. Add in the Tudor depredations, and it's time for some serious levelling up.
Though if course if the UK is on the hook for a trillion a year (as claimed) for the next decade, we're all going to be living in grinding poverty.
Obviously we can’t afford it - once we return the Indian pillage then we will be bankrupt
I quite literally said an uncontrolled shut down is better than a controlled one, and now Rochdale just keeps repeating that if we hadn't had a controlled shut down we'd have had uncontrolled ones as if that's a killer argument. Yes, if we hadn't had a controlled shut down, we'd have had what is better. That's a better choice.
If the choice is scenario (A) shut down all schools, all the time, for months, or scenario (B) shut down individual classes in individual schools for a week if the teacher is off sick and no cover is available that week, then return back afterwards - then I prefer scenario B.
I'm not pretending that you could 'wish away' the pandemic, just live with it. And if the vulnerable choose to isolate, then let them choose that, free choice.
In practice everyone would have self isolated. And there would have been no mechanism for government support so business would have collapsed
If everyone self-isolated then there'd be no difference, and there would have been a mechanism for support (like the Swedes had) if we did what I suggested and had a voluntary furlough scheme.
So what's the problem? It'd be the same, but voluntary, which is better than the same under compulsion.
In reality it wouldn't be the same as not everyone would have self-isolated and not for as long. A lot of people were itching to return to things before they could.
Hand waving… if only everyone had done what I would have said then the magical hand waves would have solved all the problems and it would all be sunshine and rainbows
Poll: two thirds of public back death penalty for Letby
So we know where the Tories will go next. Utterly despicable.
Let's hope it's the idea that's left hanging.
I know this sort of thing always polls well, but I'd be shocked if the Tories pulled the trigger on reinstating the death penalty.
In practice, governments that do reintroduce the death penalty, like those of Russia and the Phllippines, don't bother with passing laws to that effect.
re Dutch v English road densities and cycling propensity. This can also be explained by geography - the Netherlands is flat, even parts of England that we think of as relatively flat like Essex are far hillier than the Netherlands.
I did a cycling holiday in Norfolk. It's bloody mountainous. Who knew?
I realised I didn't know TRUE "flatness" till I went to the Netherlands. It's more like looking out to sea than any UK landscape certainly those I've seen.
I've done a 75 mile bike ride from my house which crossed a single contour line at the end of my road but no others. See username (and avatar).
Unlike the Netherlands you can see hills in the distance though.
Norfolk is mostly chalk and nowhere near flat. I don't know why it got that reputation. South Lincs and Cambridge, though...
Is anyone planning autumn/winter breaks in Greece? I need some Greek newspapers for props for a stage production next year so if anyone is heading out there and could bring some back, DM me so I can let you know what I need. Thanks!
WINNERS: Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley MIDDLE OF THE PACK: Tim Scott and Chris Christie LOSERS: Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum
Comments
After decades of neglect of our road network and rampant population growth, comparing England to peer nations, with our peer population density, like the Netherlands and Japan, we come up woefully short in road density. We do not have a dense road network.
And that's despite the fact those nations do better than we do in both cycling and public transport, which just goes to show that both of those are not alternatives to roads. Quite the opposite, building infrastructure makes public transport and cycling easier not harder.
Such equipment could be designed to fit properly and even be integrated to complete protection systems to deal with a truly airborne disease.
Look at the patch work quilt of visors, masks etc that are currently used - a mess of gaps and must take and age to get on and off.
The issues of face visibility, fogging, hearing, comfort etc have been solved multiple times for protective gear in other contexts.
However, as I said the other day, remote working was the source of the most complaints landing on the PM’s desk during the pandemic. He’d get weekly calls from newspaper proprietors on the subject, and many more from those with interests in commercial real estate.
On which subject, it appears that WeWork are about to go properly bust, and they have £3bn in leases in London alone. Funnily enough, you can’t pretend to be a tech software company when you’re actually a property company.
RamaSMARMY perhaps ?
But we've come nowhere close, which is why our roads are too busy and why cyclists don't feel safe.
Had we kept up with road construction to match population growth, like the Dutch have, we'd have safer roads, more cycling opportunities and less congestion.
ny times
"But yes, our population has grown by nearly 20% in a generation, our road capacity should have grown by 20% too accordingly. Building a 12 mile bypass and a few other piddly things here and there is nothing to shout home about, there should be much more than that done."
Implying the need for a 1-to-1 increase in road capacity because of an increase in population.
Manchester to Sheffield is terrible to drive, with horrendous queues through places like Mottram most of the day. You can bypass those, but the previous M67 motorway across the top can't go ahead because again what do you do with the traffic it generates?
At the Manchester end there will not be a Hyde Road motorway or inner ring motorway - both dead. Which leaves the M60 which is at capacity. And at the eastern end the M1 is full and if you keep going to the A1 that is already at crush loading.
We would need to spend a vast fortune doing compulsory purchases before we could even think about building these roads, and people simply do not want that. Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
Here’s quite a combative interview between Ramaswarmy and Bill Maher. He comes across very well.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lrpW-SUchFo
Yes maybe 19% or 21% would be better, its an approximation, it needn't be exactly 1:1, 0.9:1 may work.
0.1:1 does not though.
Anyway, my point was that road demand is far from 100% of capacity, so the argument that population has gone up by x% so road capacity must go up by x% (or something so close to x% that it's effectively the same thing) is too simplistic.
DJT's veep selection will be a fascinating inflexion point. MAGAKaren, Kari Lake, would be #classictrump
Again building more alternative routes doesn't increase demand on other routes, it can actually reduce it. Yes the M60 is at capacity which is precisely why alternative routes like an M580 I propose as an example should be built, because that would relieve the M60 of traffic that has no reason to be there.
As well building new motorways allows building alternative destinations and new towns. Not everything has to be going to or located in Manchester if you people more new towns for people to put their home and business instead, a reluctance to build new towns is part of the reason why existing towns and cities are becoming overpopulated and overcrowded - because as you say people have to go somewhere.
Motorways past people's houses are seen as a Bad Thing.
We need as a country to tell NIMBYs to f*** off.
Something about the pilot suffering from myocarditis induced by the vaccine.
https://twitter.com/markito0171/status/1694654819112263847
Trump crowns Ramaswamy the debate’s winner — for praising him
“Thank you Vivek!”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/24/trump-ramaswamy-republican-debate-00112716
There are quite a few strategic routes which could be built but almost all are upgrades - A9, A1, A66 etc. What you seem most excited by is the idea of more roads in urban and suburban areas. We could do so - build tunnels as they are doing in various Australian city projects.
We could - but we won't. As we have a broken economy where we largely refuse to invest and most projects are at rip-off prices that other countries wouldn't accept, we get nothing. What we won't do is bulldoze homes to slap motorways next to people's neighbourhoods for through traffic to whizz by. There's literally no political will for that. So no M580 or M62 bypass or M58 to Bootle or any of those.
Further proof Brits are the best and Ruskies are soft arses.
I think as a general rule 2:1 or 3:1 of new cycling for new roads could be entirely reasonable on average. Apart from motorways all new roads in my view should have cycling provision as standard, so that's automatically 1:1, and then relieving old roads of traffic allows them to be converted too, so 2:1 or 3:1.
The Dutch have been doing this for 50 years, so its not an overnight project, but my rough estimate is I think over a decade maybe we should be considering investing a trillion into our roads and cycle network to boost our infrastructure and improve economic growth and unlock the potential for entirely new towns too. We're investing hundreds of billions into new rail lines and roads represent more than 10x the economic activity of rails.
Record numbers of asylum claims waiting to be assessed. More people living in limbo, here, dependent upon our funds but unable to work. It is not just shameful, it is a financial disgrace.
We can and do build new roads for new developments, and I want to see more Milton Keynes developments built. There's bags of room at the eastern end of the M62 corridor and that would have a stack of new roads. That we can do. A motorway past your house? No.
Because here is the truth. You want NIMBYs to fuck off. But if they decide to build a new expressway next to you then you wouldn't be there welcoming it with open arms. You want the right to smash roads through places that *other people* live. Its easy to draw fantasy motorways - fun even. But it isn't going to happen. The political will is not there because we all learned from the hell that are American cities.
With your dubious 36% figure, that 90,000 additional miles. At £10 million a mile (not sure if that is correct?), that's £900 billion before you will even consider putting cycle lanes on existing roads.
The real scandal came at the Christmas lockdown by stealth – in which a series of government health outriders were deployed to scare people from celebrating Christmas. The hospitality industry was hammered and received no compensation. Moreover, what evidence there was for a lockdown was wafer-thin at best: indeed the international evidence from South Africa was directly contradictory.
There were almost daily appeals from the SA medical professional body, which assured us that Omicron was milder, but the government chose to ignore it. The South Africans were proved absolutely right. Have we ever even apologised to them?
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4168738-chris-christie-dismisses-boos-at-first-republican-debate/
..Christie did not raise his hand when asked if he would still support Trump as the Republican nominee despite his legal troubles. Instead, the Republican former governor of New Jersey Christie criticized the former president’s conduct, promoting boos from the audience.
He defended his comments at the debate, however, calling out other candidates for their lack of pushback against Trump — who has received four criminal indictments since April. Christie has made attacks on the former president a large focus of his presidential campaign.
“If you’re not going to talk about that, then then then why bother running?” Christie said. “You should just see the race to Donald Trump, which is what a lot of those people did on the stage last night.”
“Am I out after Trump? I am out to beat Donald Tump,” Christie continued. “And because I think he deserves to be beaten...
This is the thanks he gets.
Trump adviser Jason Miller: ‘We saw the death of Ron DeSantis’s campaign tonight’
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4168691-trump-adviser-jason-miller-we-saw-the-death-of-ron-desantiss-campaign-tonight/
Decades of neglect and failure to invest is harming the economy and retarding economic growth.
We need a Government brave enough to invest in our critical infrastructure. Which is not boosting spending on salaries, but actual infrastructure like our transportation network. And if NIMBYs say no, then override them.
Until we're willing to do that, the country will continue to stagnate.
And developments in sequencing and vaccine technology in the last three years will completely rewrite the rules for sensible pandemic response anyway.
Apart from motorways that 90,000 additional miles should all have segregated cycling in my eyes as soon as its built (not on roads, not painted on pavement) and would unlock approximately another 90,000 - 180,000 miles of cycle paths from freeing up old roads.
How many miles of cycle paths do we have today?
And yes, £900bn sounds about right, lets round that up, what figure did I estimate?
Question for me is how much extra travel is a good thing in itself, and how much it's only good to the extent the travel is going somewhere. And whether it's more fruitful to bring more of those somewheres closer to where people are.
The exec summary of Royal Society report is very readable. I found p. 16 particularly interesting, with its case studies of countries that kept rates very low, like South Korea.
The full report, https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/impact-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-covid-19-transmission/the-royal-society-covid-19-examining-the-effectiveness-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-report.pdf , goes into further detail.
Excuse me, but I would and I do and I did.
I stand by my principles. I have lived next to motorways in the past and I live next to a new expressway now - there aren't anywhere near enough of them, but yes one was built next to my house and I am delighted and I enjoy being able to use it, its much better than having to use old congested roads which I no longer use, so it has relieved the traffic on those and I can now travel on a free moving expressway easily accessed right from by my house, we should have much more of it.
And it is a myth. The Dutch have been building roads for decades and far from making their existing roads more congested, its meant they suffer less from congestion (and have more cycling) than we do.
So there's very little of the other 10% that can be induced.
Which is why countries that invest in roads have less congestion, not more. And can use those new roads to improve cycling and public transport etc too.
The myth of induced demand comes from failed studies comparing a few American cities that don't compare. Like looking at a city with 4 million population in one date, and 13 million at another, then not controlling for that fact.
We absolutely need to build more roads - infrastructure in the UK is shit compared to most western European countries (as are most things if we are honest). But unless we understand the role they play and the cost to fill the gaps in the network then none of it can happen.
We get stuck with short-termism and "who pays" stupidity. We can't build the M67 over the Pennines, but we could bypass Mottram and Tintwistle. Those bypasses absolutely would create more traffic for the A628 corridor which creates further problems, but the pressing immediate needs of the villagers has been there for decades. So to avoid the other problems we do nothing at all.
And of course I say this in despair because we the public consistently voted for longer and harsher lockdowns with the celebrated 13% of people never wanting nightclubs to open again.
It's no one's fault apart from our own. But sure tell us all how the schools stayed open.
Can't have one without the other.
The previously untested in public use technology is completely validated, and used suitably, ought to be able to make any future lockdown (beyond the first few weeks of a novel pandemic virus) unnecessary.
Assuming we have the infrastructure to produce them.
Tell that to @Eabhal who keeps saying we should be like the Netherlands and that cycling is considered dangerous by Britons.
I think the Dutch have figured this out quite nicely. Build, build, build.
"...demand that Putin exit his military alliance with Xi Jinping..."
Is the guy on drugs ?
Is cycling infrastructure demonstrated so well in the UK or not?
It was great.
Is there any polling on it yet?
Sadly, 10-3 with a 1-hour lunch is not considered sufficient on an ongoing basis.
If there is another pandemic, the same supply constraints for test kits etc will apply. If we don't have our own manufacturing capacity in place, we'll be waiting months again - with all that implies.
The economic cost which might be avoided is definitely massive, as we know.
😉
Utterly despicable that you should condemn a group in such strident terms based on something they haven’t done, said or indicated that they are even considering
I suspect you are biased in your presentation
Unlike the Netherlands you can see hills in the distance though.
Norfolk is mostly chalk and nowhere near flat. I don't know why it got that reputation. South Lincs and Cambridge, though...
I rather like this map of Britain during the ice age:
https://shefuni.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=fd78b03a74bb477c906c5d4e0ba9abaf
(Zoom in a bit to see the details)
It shows the really flat bits well, as they were mostly a lake...