"Motorists have ruined England"

[SuperHangOn]

Dog Star said:

otolith said:

Can we not just ban cars from London so they can stop trying to impose solutions for their local problem on the rest of the country?

Bing!!!! Post of the year!

Correct. These idiot journalists don't seem to realise there is a world beyond their Richmond or Highgate wine bars. Its as if they live in a parallel universe.

(I say this as someone born in London and unfortunately lived most of my life in)

[lamboman100]

Public transport sucks. It is slow, unclean and tedious.

Cycling sucks. It is slow, sweaty / freezing and damages the prostate.

The private car wins every time.

[Sheepshanks]

NinjaPower said:

el stovey said:

NinjaPower said:

Yeah right, I want to spend an hour just getting to a friends house... and then an hour to get home. And as said above, maybe I don't want to arrive sweaty and probably soaked with rain.

The point is, there are other methods for you to get to you friends house, just that you can't be arsed using them.

There is virtually no public transport that runs from where I live to where he lives, except for very few busses which only run a few times during the day. not evenings or weekends.

My only other option, as has been pointed out, is cycling, which frankly I'm not going to do as I don't have the time to spend 2 hours of my evening in just travelling time. That is ridiculous.

The other example is that my parents live exactly 40 miles away, a journey which on a slow day can take about 40-45 minutes if everyone sits at the regulation 60mph, or about 35 minutes if the roads are deserted in the evenings and I open the taps a bit.

I do this journey at least once or twice a week as I work on business projects with my dad.

My only other alternative if I had no car, would be to walk to the train station (20 minutes), get the train which incredibly takes over 1 hour and 15 minutes to do the 40 miles and a few stops, then at the other end I would still be around 5 miles away, meaning I would need a taxi as my parents live in the middle of nowhere and there is no bus route. Overall the 'public transport' route would take me around 1 Hour 45 minutes.

All those hours add up, and all I can think of is 'what a waste of my life'.

The poster above said this is yet again a 'London problem' being thrust upon the rest if the UK, and he is correct.

The thing is, you're taking the situation as it is now, and removing the car.

If you'd never had a car, you'd live your life in a different way, and wouldn't live in a relatively isolated place. You'd have more nearby friends, you'd live nearer work, you'd visit your parents less often etc.

[Sheepshanks]

Pit Pony said:

Cost? I'm guessing £3 of fuel.

Be careful with that argument. The fuel cost isn't the real cost of making a journey, it just appears that way as so much of motoring costs are fixed rather than variable.

There's an easy solution to that...road pricing.

[vournikas]

I sensed the geographic metric of the article even before I opened it, and sure enough :

writer said:

I love London

Well, colour me unsurprised that a dweller of the capital has a downer on cars. I would, if I lived there, but I don't; as do 52 million other UK residents who - unlike the author of the article - may not have the luxury of riding a bicycle or using the underground.

I use the word "luxury" with tongue firmly wedged in cheek, as I don't consider fighting London traffic on a bike, nor being canned like a pilchard on the tube every day to be my ultimate definition of luxury.

The guy isn't trying hard enough, as enjoyable drives can be had everywhere if you apply yourself.

[Negative Creep]

Or, and stop me if this sounds likes ridiculous notion, we live in a civilised democracy so I can make a journey by any means I see fit?

[paranoid airbag]

Dog Star said:

Jesus! What a crock of st that article is! London London LONDON!!!! fk OFFFFFFFFFF! I don't live in London!

Cyclists "make no imposition" on other road users?!? What the actual fk?!? Apart from having acres of road space turned over to their self righteous selves, holding up traffic endlessly and then pushing back in front again at every set of lights and holding everyone up again - fk OFFFFFFF!

Not all motorists ruin england, but tts like you certainly do. Listen to yourself and then consider how ridiculous you sound when you call others "self righteous".

Anyway, I can understand why journalists do it but the hyperbole still bothers me. Sure, I promote cycling. Partly because it seems inherently the right-wing-friendly solution to me - aside from dealing with thieves and bad drivers (aka a core function of government), and/or building infrastructure to mollify their respective effects, almost no government is needed. Additionally there's acres of good clean private sector growth to be had from it.

Equally, it sickens me that I'm expected to use a tonne of steel that I'm really not that good at controlling, clogging up the roads as I go, just to protect myself from other people doing likewise, or at least to dress up like the unholy union of an underground worker and a yoga teacher, because if you don't it's your fault, not, you know, the fault of idiots who should never have been given a license. I don't carry armour and a sword around anymore, I shouldn't have to do the equivalent on the roads. That a "civilised" nation stands for that is pretty depressing.

But be realistic. We're not going to run an economy on pedal power alone. Or public transport alone. Or even both alone.

Motoring has brought some unfortunate self-induced dependence - the move to out-of-town shopping centres, making the roads too dangerous for walking and cycling. That sucks for anyone who's old, young, or values their lungs, arteries or hates sitting in traffic - but it hasn't ruined england by a long stretch. We don't need a "revolution". We just need a little rebalancing.

[TommoAE86]

I left London because it's full of people like that... I hope he gets stuck in a hot, sweaty, pee stained, tube for an hour everyday... then he might miss air con and his own music.

[Rick1.8t]

Never mind Scottish independence, how about we gain some independence from London, getting quite sick of the ever increasing London-centric UK.....

[Negative Creep]

paranoid airbag said:

or at least to dress up like the unholy union of an underground worker and a yoga teacher, because if you don't it's your fault, not, you know, the fault of idiots who should never have been given a license. I don't carry armour and a sword around anymore, I shouldn't have to do the equivalent on the roads. That a "civilised" nation stands for that is pretty depressing.

Yeah, what kind of myopic idiot can't see a cyclist in dark clothing with no lights on in the pitch black? They stand out an absolute mile and should in no way take measures to allow them to be seen.

[Don]

I commented on this article. The poster below also did it and summed it up:

"London. London. London. London."

Yes. That's right. In urban centres you may not need a car. If you do need a car you may not need or want to drive it for many journeys. By all means it would be nice not to pay hefty road tax to drive five miles a week in London. Road tolling and charging would work out for people. It would also work for the enforcers as you have a limited area to cover.

All these criteria just don't apply away from urban centres. For road users outside the capital doing 50 miles a day road tolling would be a horrendous cost. It would fk the local economy through discouraging the right people from travelling to the right jobs and living in the right place.

Because this is not their experience (and to be fair it isn't) London journos do write stories that make the rest of us laugh or cry.

Luckily Parliament is made up of MPs from all over the country. Mostly they like their cushy little jobs. So this ain't happening unless assholes in Brussels make it mandatory.

[kambites]

I think he has a point in that cheap personal transport has turned us into a society which is now utterly reliant on being able to travel long distances whenever we want to. Now we're in this position it is hard to see a comfortable way out of it.

[GreigM]

otolith said:

Can we not just ban cars from London so they can stop trying to impose solutions for their local problem on the rest of the country?

This. Too many articles (and policies) are extremely London-centric and while 80% of the population live in urban areas, a huge amount of that statistic is skewed to London.

The UK has 69 "cities", how many of those have anything approaching a reasonable public transport infrastructure one, two?

The next time someone suggests taking a bike to work I'm going to ask them to live in Glasgow for a year, with 300+ days of rain a year it might dampen their enthusiasm for cycling.

[7mike]

Dear Londoncentric journo type; this was a big stretch of my 90 mile drive to work yesterday.


Note a fking tube station in sight.

[jamieduff1981]

lamboman100 said:

Public transport sucks. It is slow, unclean and tedious.

Cycling sucks. It is slow, sweaty / freezing and damages the prostate.

The private car wins every time.

This.

The inescapable fact is that nobody is issued with a car. Everyone who invests the minimum basic price to buy ANY car and keep it road legal has made an assessment and concluded that a private car is the best solution.

Trains, buses, trams and bikes are all st. They are extremely limiting. Whoever tried to make the suggestion that if it wasn't for cars we'd all happily be living in slums and kept friends with the next door neighbours is disingenious too - nobody was happy with that. If there were no cars, the cities would be even bigger and it would still take forever to get anywhere and we'd still all stink.

Cars are so popular - even in traffic jams - because they're still by far the best way to get about. They really do represent freedom in the sense that they make is so quick to get from A to B whenever suits that we can achieve so much more in our short life times. Cycling an hour each way to see a friend is bks. We simply wouldn't see our friends. We wouldn't have any friends.

I'm not sure just how low some peoples' personal standards are - but I lived in a town for 9 years and left without knowing most of my neighbours' last names. Why? Because I didn't care about getting to know them beyond the superficial "Good evening" level. We were highly unlikely to have anything in common given how specialised my own interests are so really why should I waste my time trying to artificially force a friendship with some random strangers who share only a postcode with me. I simply do not spend my life socialising with acquaintences just because they're close by and easy to access. I do however spend a lot of time making efforts to be with far more special people - which would be nigh on impossible without the private car.

[hairyben]

As ever, the foolish little journo finds his "demon" in cars but misses the point, why we find ourselves in this situation, entirely.

The problem in london (and elsewhere but not yet to the same degree) is that while cars have increased in number -doubled people say and I can believe it- there has been no investment in road improvement in 20 years, excused largely with limp greenwash.

I have no choice but to drive for my job, London traffic is utterly ridiculous now, there are 3rd world countries that manage better. Pissant little cities in unimportant countries seem to be spending more on road improvement than london. I move across large swathes of london using totally mental routing avoiding all arterials that I "should" use- a406, m25, a1, a10 etc as it's quicker to use backrooads to avoid them

The long-term lack of investment in roads and the pigging mess we find ourselves in could be viewed to be a short sighted as many consider the beeching cuts were to the rail network.

[McClure]

otolith said:

Can we not just ban cars from London so they can stop trying to impose solutions for their local problem on the rest of the country?

Difficulty is no-one in London seems to realise there is a "rest of the country".

[98elise]

el stovey said:

NinjaPower said:

Yeah right, I want to spend an hour just getting to a friends house... and then an hour to get home. And as said above, maybe I don't want to arrive sweaty and probably soaked with rain.

The point is, there are other methods for you to get to you friends house, just that you can't be arsed using them.

Alternatives are just not practical in a lot of cases.

For me to get the bus to my local trainstation, its a 45 minute journey, or 10 minutes in the car. I'm not adding 1.5 hours to my commute. To get to my mothers house its 15 minutes by car, or well over an hour by bus.

I'm in and out of B&Q etc most weekends as well. I cant see the bus company being happy with me dragging a 3m kitchen counter on, and I really don't think they will appreciate me dragging the remains of a conifer on to take a trip to the dump!

I don't have enough spare time at the moment, so wasting more of it on trasport is just not practical.

[0000]

Rick1.8t said:

Never mind Scottish independence, how about we gain some independence from London, getting quite sick of the ever increasing London-centric UK.....

The sooner these rest of us get to vote on kicking them out the better. I mean, fk me, can you imagine if the rest of us started demanding London had more fields and less tall buildings and charging them more based on walking distance to the nearest blackberry bush? For green reasons, of course. Egotistical bds.

[0000]

transportdirect.info said:

Journey(s) found for Aston Somerville, Worcestershire to Cheltenham General Hospital

Sorry we are unable to obtain public transport options for your journey.
...
Option Transport Changes Leave Arrive Duration
1 Car 0 08:00 08:33 33 mins / 15.9miles

I don't even live in Aston Somerville, but near it. Just 15.9 miles away to a major town and it can't find a public transport option leaving near 8am on a weekday. I tried 10am too in case bus drivers get a lie in. Previously it's given me ~4 hour estimates but maybe a bus route's closed since then.

I don't think public transport is viable when you need to commute for the geographical majority. Do I believe his road charging scheme would be cheap? No chance. Even if they tried to make it free they'd need to cover setup, installation and administration costs and they'd be extortionate.