Reducing Congestion - how would you do it?

[Jazzy Jag]

All new business premises should have enough parking space for all it's staff and visitors.

An architect I spoke to said that it was not uncommon for planning permission to be refused if the development had too many parking spaces as the council felt that having a shortage of spaces would force employees to use public transport.

The fact that no busses or trains ran anywhere near the place didn't seem to matter

What happened was that all the local roads were lined with staff cars which annoys the residents and narrows streets.

[vikingaero]

Differential rating system for new builds. Build a new Aldi/Lidl type store and (subject to local noise and residential regs) they can pay rates of £50k to only have night time deliveries or £500k if they want lorries arriving during the day.

Wholesale revision of planning regs. When a Sainsburys near us was built they put the entrance/exit next to a bus depot and multi-storey when the sensible option would have been to allow entry/exit from a dual carriageway. Every time they build something there must be sufficient roadspace to hold queuing cars off the main carriageway.

[PF62]

CubanPete said:

PF62 said:

catso said:

InitialDave said:

PF62 said:

massive increase in bus lanes.

PF62 said:

So make parking far more expensive.

PF62 said:

reduce the number of spaces.

Do you work for a council by any chance?

Well if the medicine isn't working, increase the dose...

Exactly.

If you want to reduce congestion you need to reduce the number of cars on the road. The way to do that is make it so horrible to drive that the other options are better.

For those outside London, there aren't any other options. Very limited and expensive public transport, roads, topography and distances not suitable for cycling or walking.

Maybe the medicine is wrong and you need to consider an alternative one?

It is not my experience that the areas which have very limited public transport are the areas suffering from significant congestion. It is in fact the areas with good public transport, but public transport that is hampered by congestion.

So making driving in those congested areas so horrible that nobody in their right mind would do it would drive people onto public transport; public transport that could work efficiency because there was now no congestion for those vehicles.

You could achieve this with a combination of measures in those congested areas. Congestion charges, removing city centre car parking (or massive taxes to drive up costs), a massive expansion in bus lanes, prioritisation of junctions and traffic lights to give buses a constant green light.

[CubanPete]

PF62 said:

CubanPete said:

PF62 said:

catso said:

InitialDave said:

PF62 said:

massive increase in bus lanes.

PF62 said:

So make parking far more expensive.

PF62 said:

reduce the number of spaces.

Do you work for a council by any chance?

Well if the medicine isn't working, increase the dose...

Exactly.

If you want to reduce congestion you need to reduce the number of cars on the road. The way to do that is make it so horrible to drive that the other options are better.

For those outside London, there aren't any other options. Very limited and expensive public transport, roads, topography and distances not suitable for cycling or walking.

Maybe the medicine is wrong and you need to consider an alternative one?

It is not my experience that the areas which have very limited public transport are the areas suffering from significant congestion. It is in fact the areas with good public transport, but public transport that is hampered by congestion.

So making driving in those congested areas so horrible that nobody in their right mind would do it would drive people onto public transport; public transport that could work efficiency because there was now no congestion for those vehicles.

You could achieve this with a combination of measures in those congested areas. Congestion charges, removing city centre car parking (or massive taxes to drive up costs), a massive expansion in bus lanes, prioritisation of junctions and traffic lights to give buses a constant green light.

I live Bristol / Somerset / south Gloucestershire, for which I stand by my statement


[quote]

Very limited and expensive public transport, roads, topography and distances not suitable for cycling or walking.

Not sure where your experience is from, but it doesn't appear to be representative of around here.