All day they have discussing this subject on radio 2, apparently the Govt wants to fit every vehicle with a Black box so that its movements can be tracked ( by satellite ) and you will recieve an invoice every month related to the amount of time you have been sitting in a traffic jam ? ? ?
I can only assume it is a cruel wind-up intended to deflect the spotlight from Mr Byers who has been telling fibs........
does anyone know otherwise ?
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Take a look at Growler's 'Time to emigrate' thread below.
Andy.
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Just dont emigrate to Brazil
Re: Mark(from Brazil) - car hijacking.
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It's obvious really.
If your train (subsidised with motorists taxes) is delayed: you get a refund on your subsidised (by motorists) ticket, (paid for out of motorists taxes).
So if your car is delayed by 24 hour bus lanes (where are the 24 hour buses?) or traffic "calming" (all paid for with motorists taxes) it's only right that you should be taxed for the privilege (on top of wasting all that petrol taxed at around 350%)!
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This was a report, and unlikely to be implemented. But alongside the congestion charging was abolishing road fund licence and reducing the tax on fuel. If it eases traffic at peak times, I'd say it's a good idea. For other reasons it's bad. Even so, we have to do *something,* surely. The economy is losing billions of pounds every year because of traffic, especially in city centres.
Chris
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Sorry about posting this in two threads but I posted it originally in Growlers 'Time to Emigrate' thread and on second thoughts it is probably more appropriate here.
I just wonder when these people are going to realise that to get people off the roads there has to be a viable alternative and in this country that just does not exist.
In my home town I live two miles from the town centre, my local bus 'service' starts at 07:10 runs every half hour and finishes at 18:40 except on Saturday when it finishes at 17:10 and of course on a Sunday there aren't any at all. Cost of commuting to London, cheap day return with all sorts of restrictions on time of travel etc., c £11.
Compare that to recent experiences in Europe, in Bruges last October stayed a couple of miles outside city centre, bus every 10 minutes 06:00 till 23:30 every day. Bus service in France last week where we were skiing, so contributed to by local lift passes etc, FREE from 07:30 till 23:45, 15 minute service. Friend lived about 40 miles outside Berlin a couple of years back, reckoned he never even considered commuting by car, said that would be daft as it only cost him about £2.50 a day by train.
In Bruges and France, hardly any cars in town or city centre unless required for shopping etc, my home town choc-a-bloc with vehicles day and night.
The question is, which countries are serious about encouraging people out of their vehicles?
Which seems to be working better, the carrot or the stick?
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Just how have we got into this situation?
Did road conjestion suddenly happen in the last month.
Its been obvious for the last 25 years what the situation would be like if action wasn't taken. A road building programme for the next millenium should have been started then and not wait for gridlock to happen and then come out with crackpot schemes. But we should expect it when politicians are in charge.
A few years ago they handed responsibility for interest rates over to the B.O.E. and what a good move it was to take important decisions away from people who would make them based on short termism for political gain.
What should we expect with people like Prescott and Byers in charge.
alvin
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My local railway line runs two trains a day, at enormous expense and mostly nearly empty. The line serves the ferry port at Fishguard, but the trains do not serve the station at the time the ferry arrives or departs leaving foot passengers to hang round for hours waiting for a connection. Surely a better solution would be to tarmac the trackbed and run buses from the ferry at a fraction of the cost. The road could also be used for frieght traffic, thus freeing up the existing road space. There are many under-used railway lines in Britain which could also be turned into roads dedicated to commercial traffic only. Apart from the Inter City lines and the big city commuter routes the rail system is an inefficeint and outdated transport method which will always consume vast sums of cash for very little benefit.
It's time polititicians stopped pandering to the public transport lobby, and woke up to the fact that the best and most efficeint method for people to travel is by private car. We need better road systems which will pay for themselves many times over by allowing people to go about their business quickly and cheaply, rather than throwing good money after bad on politically correct "Integrated Transport Solutions", which few people want and which don't work.
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Depends on how you define "efficient". In terms of energy efficiency, apart from a fully laden train, I believe that the most efficient mode of transport is the bicycle.
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Journeys haven't increased over the last decade, apart from possibly freight on motorways.
But congestion has grown enormously.
They brought in bus lanes, supposedly, because of congestion.
If a road is congested, and you halve its capacity, what happens?
If it isn't congested, and you halve its capacity, what happens?
And the answer ISN'T that it doubles, think about it:
You now have ALL vehicles jammed behind ANY vehicles trying to turn.
And as soon as traffic backs up to the previous junction it blocks that junction, which backs up traffic in all directions, blocking more junctions, which........
..................is what causes Gridlock!
If they really wanted to cure congestion, and get people onto public transport, they would scrap fares (buses are subsidised - no fuel duty - it costs money to collect, process, account for, and bank fares - how much does that cost?), stop buying great big heavy diesel engined new buses, or maintaining clapped out old ones...............
..............and buy loads of minibuses, and loads more passenger trailer units.
Run the minibuses as flexible taxi type buses during off peak hours.
And use them, and council vehicles to tow the engineless trailers on commuter routes during the rush hour.
Instead of spending hundreds of millions of borrowed money on multi-carriage trams which won't get round corners during the rush hour, won't get any passengers off peak, and won't get past any obstuctions, like broken down trams, at anytime.
And cause CARnage for years while the tram lines are built.
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Glad someone mentioned trams. About as useless a method of transportation as could possibly be imagined. If it was nescessary to invent a rolling road block that served no purpose imaginable it would be the tram. The guy who invented steering must be shaking the whole cemetry with laughter.
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The trouble with charging is that it will only deter those unfortunate not to be on a high salary, those with money, as now, will still arrive in their cars no matter what the charge, it will hit the pensioner hard as do these rises in parking charges and fuel duty. There is also the question of fines levied for traffic offences it makes me angry to see some company director or footballer fined £200 for speeding, its like fining me 20p. There should be a scale of fines like say £50 fine for an income of £10,000 and for every say £1000 above that the fine should go up in proportion, that way it makes the deterrent fair for all road users. The first thing this Government should do is to make all it's MPs use public transport and ban them from their cars as an example to us all.
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Bogush,
Are you sure journeys aren't increasing? I can think of many places locally that have no bus lanes or any other clutter but they seem far busier than 10+ years ago, perhaps everyone is travelling closer to the same time then.
Congestion in many places is a very directional and a time related situation.
David
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This happens in Finland - a top executive at Nokia was stopped for speeding and copped an enormous fine as he was so well paid.
Another Nokia exec. was stopped on a different occasion, he too copped a considerable sum of monery as a fine. The only problem was that they calculated the fine based on his previous year?s earnings which included exercising of share options etc. and by the time it got to court Nokia?s share price had plummeted he?d had to take a pay cut and it was a much greater proportion of his income.
Read all about it here :
makeashorterlink.com/?Q59722C4
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Over the last twenty years or so, we've made some big mistakes. Here are some of them:
1. We now routinely build housing estates with no close access to public transport. People say I'm "lucky" to be able to use the train to get into Liverpool. No I'm not. I chose to live near a railway line deliberately. Luck doesn't come into it. In the 1930s/1940s (the last big new suburb-building period), new developments were almost always on railway lines. Not any more.
2. We've moved shopping centres out of city centres. City centres (and their suburbs) are all (still) served by existing railway lines and established, regular bus routes. New shopping malls are not.
3. The job and housing markets were "deregulated" in the 1980s. It now takes two incomes to run the average middle-class household. That means two commuters, often going in different directions, and often travelling many miles. Bad management of the housing market, and the wild rises in house prices that have followed are mostly responsible for this, but short-term contracts and job insecurity are also to blame.
That's just three. There are plenty more. This is not just a car problem, it's a society problem. We are going to have to change our behaviour in order to fix the problem, and that will be painful and expensive for some, for a while.
Chris
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Chris,
Some really good points there I'd like to follow up on but flat out so no time at the moment. Might come back to you.
David
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David W
I've no references to hand, but I've seen it in various places. And as goods traffic has increased, car traffic must have decreased.
If you've got no "clutter" and lots more traffic you might *just* have spotted the traffic "planners" big mistake!
Just as Red Ken will have reduced congestion where he's charging, but increased it everywhere else.
ChrisR
The people who live near to a selection of bus, train and tube routes aren't "lucky" either.
Not unless you count being able to "choose" to live within walking distance of a bus stop, train and tube station, and being able to afford to pay the associated housing costs.
Then there are the ones who aren't "lucky" enough to do that, but are able to "choose" to live within driving distance of a commuter station, and pay the associated housing costs.
Then there are the people who aren't un"lucky" enough to "choose" live nowhere near any "public" transport links, and scrape together enough to pay for whatever is left over.
I take it that they are the ones you are thinking of when you say:
"that will be painful and expensive for some, for a while"
So not unlucky at all then!:-(
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Bogush
My point is that in recent years we've built housing away from commuter services. In fact a great deal of that housing is really quite expensive. In my case I could have chosen between houses at 35K and (if I could have afforded it) 350K, and still been within walking distance of the same railway station. I can't imagine that's too unusual outside of the South East.
The car has allowed people to live in places that are not easily accessible to their place of work by other forms of transport, and that's it's advantage. But as the car makes itself unviable though congestion (ain't social Darwinism great?) those people will find they have problems; either the pain of sitting in a jam for hours, or moving house. As I say, it's free market economics in action. UK Plc will eventually have to force these changes, or become ever more inefficient through congestion.
Chris
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ChrisR
It has been obvious for years that the South East of England has as much population as it can handle.
The logic would have been a moratorium on new building.
Instead John Prescott has dictated to Counties how many tens of thousands of new houses they must find space for in the next few years.
The argument used against new roads is that you cannot build your way out of congestion, even though, in fact, demand is finite (limited by the number of licence holders).
What a pity the same logic is not applied to houses (and airports) where demand is virtually infinite.
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And that's another point:
Why *does* London have four international airports, and the rest of the country pretends to?
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Bogush
Why indeed?.
A fifth terminal at Heathrow, extra runways at Gatwick and Stansted, is only going to attract traffic (air and road) plus development (including housing for thousands of airport workers, plus their families with school runs) to the places where there is already high population density and inadequate services.
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