Reducing Congestion - how would you do it?

Reducing Congestion - how would you do it?

Author
Discussion

Paul O

Original Poster:

2,705 posts

182 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Say you wanted to reduce congestion, I mean really reduce it, not find another way to keep the tax coming in. What would you do?

More lanes on motorways? Ban lorries at peak times? Tax people off the roads? Driverless cars? Etc.

If I was in charge of the world, id be looking at why there is so much car use in the first place and start the order to build new stuff around what people want. So mixing business hubs with new build property, incentivising office based companies with tax relief by enabling/enforcing working from home to reduce long commutes. Investing in better rail links, not the hs2 nonsense. Maybe even build more premium council flats in popular cities that can only ever be rented - and are only available to city workers who don't commute.

And maybe ban lorries at peak times. biggrin

What would you do to make the roads less busy and the air cleaner?

SonicShadow

2,452 posts

153 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Get people on public transport. There is no realistic way to reduce congestion on the roads without getting people out of cars.

designforlife

3,734 posts

162 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Make public transport cheap enough to actually incentivize its use.

I work next to a train station, and live next to a different one.

It would be quicker for me to commute 5 minutes by train rather than a 25 minute drive, but a return ticket on the train costs over double the journey cost by car!

theboss

6,878 posts

218 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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I think building new roads has to be part of the solution - there are so many inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Modern out of town business parks, housing estates and so on all seem to have been developed to dis-incentivise driving when there are few alternatives - I work on a modern business park development right now which seems to have been purposefully designed to be gridlocked at key hours with cars parked wherever they can get away with it. It seems the councils want to attract the jobs and collect vast business rates but then make it practically very difficult for people by imposing big restrictions on the number of parking spaces for example. This ought to change.

I would also suggest investing in comms infrastructure nationally and incentivising flexible working as so many organisations refuse to embrace it - why not reduce employers NICs for those who are able to work from home for example.

Edited by theboss on Friday 20th October 10:16

Dr Tad Winslow

52 posts

77 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Remove bus lanes. I always wonder why im sat there in a massive queue of traffic with an empty lane to my left, maybe one bus every 5 minutes goes down there. I'm sure my trip to work is more important to their trip to the methadone clinic biggrin

Dr Tad Winslow

52 posts

77 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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theboss said:
I would also suggest investing in comms infrastructure nationally and incentivising flexible working as so many organisations refuse to embrace it - why not reduce employers NICs for those who are able to work from home for example.
This is probably the only actual workable solution to the problem, all things considered.


mgv8

1,631 posts

270 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Electric cars, fully automated. No one owns a car but using them like a taxi.
Use trains and public transport and when you need to get from the station (stop) to destination you get a taxi.
Also of note is remote working is starting to take off. The cost saving on not having an office is starting to kick in.

With the emission charges coming in to London we will start to see things change in the city.

Torquey

1,888 posts

227 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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On a smaller scale than building roads, my suggestion would be around car sharing and public transport.

If buses were free I'd probably consider using them to commute. They'd have to be completely free and reliable though.
Trains need to far cheaper than they are. Cheaper than the cost to fuel your car for a given journey.

Every morning I pass bus stops full of people who are likely to be going to the same place I am. I'm in a car with 4 spare seats.
It would be weird to pull up and offer lifts but I'm sure with some open car sharing/hitch hiking scheme things could be better.

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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SonicShadow said:
Get people on public transport. There is no u way to reduce congestion on the roads without getting people out of cars.
designforlife said:
Make public transport cheap enough to actually incentivize its use.
These 2 suggestions, just about cover it.
Central Manchester and Stockport now have free buses running every few minutes in a roundrobbin fashion and are an excellent idea.
http://www.tfgm.com/buses/Pages/metroshuttle.aspx
Unfortunately our local council next to Greater Manchester have just consulted on slashing 'supported' bus services despite rife congestion.
I don't see much changing as London seems to has a decent albeit expensive transport system.
There is a government quango Transport focus who are about as much use as a chocolate teapot in addressing any of the fragmented rail issues.
https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/
Eta as above we need much more car sharing rather than ownership, there are 14 houses on our close and always a minimum of 12 cars parked up after everyone has gone to work etc 2-3 small pool cars would suffice with an online booking app.

Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 20th October 10:34

Bennet

2,119 posts

130 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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This article makes a lot of sense ot me.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/110644...

Limpet

6,293 posts

160 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Paul O said:
S, incentivising office based companies with tax relief by enabling/enforcing working from home to reduce long commutes.
I've been saying this for years. Combine it also with incentives to allow flexible hours (i.e. people can do 7-4 instead of 9-6) so the traffic gets spread out).

I used to work for a company that despite issuing all staff with laptops, smartphones with access to business e-mail and VPN access, wouldn't even entertain the idea of home working, or flexible working. 300+ people trekking to an office for 8:45 AM to do a day's work, and then leaving at 5:30-6:00 to drive home. At least half of them had absolutely no need to be there to do their jobs, but were doing it to follow a rule. I'm sure if you extrapolated this across industry as a whole, you'd find a significant number of the cars sitting in gridlock on our motorways and town centres in rush hour have absolutely no practical need to be there.

I know most people do have to commute, but if the people who don't need to were to stop doing it, it would make the roads quieter and quicker for those who do.

Edited by Limpet on Friday 20th October 10:39

Conscript

1,378 posts

120 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Most motorway congestion I encounter daily is aresult of people driving too close to each other - it means unnecessary braking which ripples back through the traffic, whenever someone attempts to change lanes, merge from a sliproad or just brake a bit too early. Not even mentioning the safety aspect. So many times I end up in a traffic queue where there has't been an accident that I can see - I've just hit a braking zone caused by people driving too close as they pass an on slip or similar.

So my suggestion would be (not entirely seriously tongue out), that every car must be fitted with an electronic warning buzzer that sounds continuously (think like a loud seatbelt alarm) whenever you are within a 2 second gap of the car in front, dependent on your current speed. Disable it under say, 5MPH to allow queuing in traffic. Make it tamper proof so it cant be disabled, and a requirement on the MOT. It wouldn't solve congestion outright, as someone said, the primary problem is just too much traffic, but it would make it a hell of a lot easier to smooth out the traffic flow.

Also, lane hogging to be a capital offence.

2Btoo

3,410 posts

202 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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I think there is yet more to be squeezed out of the current transport system. Maximise the existing road use, and by that I mean removing anything that causes congestion. Speed bumps, traffic calming schemes, potholes etc.

There is a LOT of wasted road space on motorways; how many times a week do we have a 'MLM' rant on here? Enforce lane discipline and I estimate you will gain an extra 15% capacity.

I'd also suggest a crack down on cars that shouldn't be on the roads. If you removed every car that was lacking an MOT, or tax, or a driver with a licence, or insurance, then I reckon you would reduce demand by 35% in parts of London. That goes a way towards solving the congestion problem in a stroke.

Doing all this will give time to invest heavily in both workable (and by that I mean affordable) public transport and a significantly expanded road network, both of which will be very expensive but badly overdue.

55palfers

5,892 posts

163 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Remove bus lanes and traffic calming measures.

Enforce urban speed limits properly

J4CKO

41,284 posts

199 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Promote cycling and walking more, so many journeys and tasks can be done without a car if able bodied and not carrying loads of stuff. How many people spending 30/40 mins to drive 2 or 3 miles are there, worked with loads, "traffic was murder today, took me an hour to get in", er, dont you live just round the corner ?

Plan roadworks better, its chaos round here due to several big projects that seemingly were not coordinated.

Promote working from home more.

Promote being less of a selfish ahole.

I think the real issue is that cars are too big, one average sized person usually, driving something the size of a small bungalow in a lot of cases, all that road space to move one person, not an issue a lot of the time, but get a few together and its gridlock, maybe a few hundred people stuck waiting to get where they are going, if all those folk were stood together, they would only take up the space of maybe five cars, motorbikes are a better solution but leave you open to the elements and injury.

Kind of need, small, safe autonomous pod type things, in different sizes for differing numbers of people, with a central system that works to get the maximum number of people moved in the shortest times, like Ants are cooperative, not like Gareth in his X5 charging down the queue of traffic as he needs to get to his next sales meeting.




kambites

67,461 posts

220 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Introduce incentives for businesses to move their workforces into areas people can actually afford to live in so they don't have to commute as far and/or to allow people to work from home.

While doing that, put money into improving cycling facilities to allow people with the new shorter commutes to get there without using a car.

Increase taxation on car use in city centres in some way and use the funds to improve commuter bus services.

Enforce proper lane discipline and clamp down on tailgating.


ETA: The first of those things is by far the most important.

Edited by kambites on Friday 20th October 10:59

valiant

10,068 posts

159 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Remove all traffic lights.

Yeah, there will be carnage to start off with but people will learn and adapt.

Also, three strikes and you’re out. Three offences like using mobiles, mlms, driving like an arse and that’s it - banned forever.

Carlton Banks

3,640 posts

235 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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Spent the last 10 years living in London and congestion has increased greatly.

Without doing real analysis I believe it is down to a few things such as:

1. Traffic light phasing - too many major lights have either phasing for too long or too short

2. Introduction of Bus and cycle lanes - the space for other vehicles has greatly reduced

3. Constant road maintenance across for repairs or install of utilities causing diversions

4. Cyclists - sorry!

5. Cost of rail / tube

6. Empty buses constantly running

akirk

5,376 posts

113 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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stop the current political short-termism of dealing with symptoms (e.g. congestion charge / etc.) as that only makes it harder for the poor and is less of an issue for the wealthy...

instead deal with the underlying issues - rebuild local communities / look at why people move around - school run / commute / etc. and then restructure the underlying issues - it might benefit society in many other ways...

milfordkong

1,221 posts

231 months

Friday 20th October 2017
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I agree with previous posters that home-working needs to be encouraged and perhaps incentivised too.

So many office based jobs could be carried out just as effectively from home (often more effectively with the absolutely insane meeting culture rampant in so many companies). I realise it's not ideal for everyone, people want and often need colleague interaction etc and I understand that completely - but it doesn't have to be every day, if every job that could be home based switched to 2 or 3 home based days out of 5 that would take a colossal load off the road network.

On top of that, as others have said, public transportation is just too expensive - Even with the most pessimistic calculation and considering all costs involved I could drive to London and back from my home in Leicestershire for probably half of what it costs to take a train during peak hours. I fear the result of that situation will be driving becoming more expensive rather than public transport getting cheaper though.