Diesel - seriously thinking of giving up cycling

[Bonefishblues]

I cannnot speak for all parts of the country by any means, but we've gone in quite a short time from pavement parking being verboten to qite acceptable. FWIW, the obvious answer to on-street charging would be to suspend the cable above head height. In some places, there are terrace houses with a caravan more or less permanently connected to the mains like that.

But it's futile to imagine the future as an inevitable continuation of the present. Driverless cars might change car ownership patterns completely. Or not. Or there might be something else. Transport by flying pig. Who knows?

As petrol used to be pumped in streetside stations

[kwackers]

But it's futile to imagine the future as an inevitable continuation of the present. Driverless cars might change car ownership patterns completely. Or not. Or there might be something else. Transport by flying pig. Who knows?

Exactly and that sums up the point I've been trying to make (but in a long winded laborious way).

Whenever anything new arrives the gloom and doom merchants are out in droves and thus it has ever been.
The truth as always is it almost certainly won't be the paradise some of us would like but neither will it be the unmitigated disaster others fear.

Humans are great at turning both opportunity and adversity into mediocrity.

[Psamathe]

Take a look at some of the pics in this article. Look at the ones on public streets. Then imagine if there were lots of charging points, and the effect on a blind person crossing the road and having to re-mount the pavement between two parked cars plugged in to a shared charging point. Or, as someone said, someone pushing a pushchair.....

I can understand why the charge points in those photos have been position so far back from the pavement. Position them right up by the kerb and the would present far less of an obstruction.

As for the cable lying around - then that would present a trip hazard for anybody. But given we claim to be an "intelligent species", been to the Moon, built the Large Hadron Collider, etc. I cannot believe we can't find a solution to avoid a few feet of spare cable lying around.

Ian

[Mark R]

The UK government has just been defeated in the High Court for the THIRD time over it's inadequate plans to tackle air pollution

https://twitter.com/ClientEarth

Maybe now they will stop pandering to industry lobby groups and squandering public funds trying to defend the indefensible. Perhaps now they will finally get on and start dealing with the problem.

[Vorpal]

So the UK government has just been defeated in the High Court for the THIRD time over it's inadequate plans to tackle air pollution

https://twitter.com/ClientEarth

Maybe now they will stop pandering to industry lobby groups and squandering public funds trying to defend the indefensible. Perhaps now they will finally get on and start dealing with the problem.

That's something I can certainly agree on!

[reohn2]

So the UK government has just been defeated in the High Court for the THIRD time over it's inadequate plans to tackle air pollution

https://twitter.com/ClientEarth

Maybe now they will stop pandering to industry lobby groups and squandering public funds trying to defend the indefensible. Perhaps now they will finally get on and start dealing with the problem.

That's something I can certainly agree on!

And me!

[mjr]

[...] leads draped between posts in the pavement and an adjacent car will be come a common thing. And for blind and partially sighted people that will be a nightmare. Crossing a road with parked cars, they will be risking crossing leads as they go for the curb between two parked vehicles.

A few low leads will be child's play compared to what they currently have to deal with. For example, a manhole cover on my street collapsed about two months ago and is basically still unrepaired, but now occasionally accompanied by a traffic cone or two and sometimes an often-path-blocking oversized hi-viz fence until it blows into the hedge again. It's more of a danger to sighted-but-unobservant people who may dodge the blown fence and/or cone/s and put their foot down the hole, than to people walking with a stick who have to test the ground for the near-universal trip-hazard ridges and holes.

It could even be a helpful thing for blind and partially sighted people if charging posts were put along the kerb because it would deter pavement motoring and parking, which would both avoid the sickening sight of someone falling over a high-bumper car's front wing (as the wheel is an awful long way back where the stick might not tap it in time) and avoid many of the footway potholes currently caused by pavement motorists.

[mjr]

So the UK government has just been defeated in the High Court for the THIRD time over it's inadequate plans to tackle air pollution

https://twitter.com/ClientEarth

Maybe now they will stop pandering to industry lobby groups and squandering public funds trying to defend the indefensible. Perhaps now they will finally get on and start dealing with the problem.

Norfolk has responded: by welcoming proposals for yet another new road. Bypass, they say. It should be a diversion and the old road closed to through traffic.

[mjr]

I think it's futile to look for any logic in car ownership and use, now or in the future. It's irrational and I'll put my hand up here.

There is some logic: some journeys become near-impossible, while others become more expensive in some ways (time and money using other modes of transport or hiring a car), and yet others may become cheaper (like my bike ride to town). How you value those journeys not made and the additional expenses (which vary immensely depending on what car hire/share, public transport and cycling facilities you have locally) have big parts to play in whether you think car use is logical for any particular journey.

Logical car ownership becomes a question of totalling up an estimate of those additional costs and deciding if they're less than the £x000/year a car costs in depreciation, servicing, insurance and other mostly-fixed costs (and yes, I know lower use means lower costs in some ways, but the penalties for underestimating when buying insurance tend to be fairly painful so don't be overoptimistic).

Then there's the question of which car to buy. When we changed car a few years ago, I worked out some numbers for electric cars (the Leaf of the time, I think) and couldn't quite make them add up, especially as we didn't have a guaranteed parking place then, it didn't look like you could easily remove the batteries to charge them indoors and charging points were still very few in that area. The cars have moved on, we now have a parking place and charging points seem much more common. I suspect the numbers might work out next time and the extra cost in time and money of 30 minute fast-recharge stops doesn't seem a huge barrier now that some cars can go longer than 2ish hours I usually drive between breaks.

So you can be logical about this. I doubt many are yet. They just buy the popular type because of widespread marketing that it's the best and if you do that and it goes wrong (as forecasts always can), people tend not to point out the mistake, possibly because they followed the herd too, but if you make a logical decision to try an innovative solution, there will be far more willing critics

[Mick F]

I hear that the price of secondhand diesel cars has dropped, and the price of secondhand petrol cars has risen.
10% or thereabouts.

[Mark R]

There is another important day in court tomorrow in Germany.

The German federal courts will have the final say on whether cities (including Stuttgart - home of the mighty Mercedes Benz) are allowed to ban certain types of vehicles as a response to chronically bad air pollution problems.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2018/02/20/european-auto-industry-on-edge-ahead-of-german-court-decision-on-diesel-bans/#1da14dff237e

[reohn2]

I hear that the price of secondhand diesel cars has dropped, and the price of secondhand petrol cars has risen.
10% or thereabouts.

I've no plans to sell my diesel car yet so it doesn't matter,however I've no problem with diesel vehicles of all kinds being banned from town and city centres and where pollution is above legal levels,and I've no problem with those levels being tightened so private petrol vehicles can't enter either.
This kind of restriction shouldn't be looked on as a stop gap until better solutions can be found for transporting people about the country,ATM going off the number of large fuel guzzling pollution producing vehicles on UK roads,motoring is way too cheap.

[Mick F]

We went out shopping in Tavistock this afternoon. Driving.

Coming out of the town, there was a car a few cars in front of us at the Drake's Monument roundabout, and as it pulled away up the hill, a huge plume of black smoke poured out. The black yuck left a big black smear on the road.

It turned right at the Spar Shop, where we turned left for home.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.54561 ... a=!3m1!1e3

[irc]

ATM going off the number of large fuel guzzling pollution producing vehicles on UK roads,motoring is way too cheap.

Not sure driving is cheap. I''d estimate my costs over the last 5 years as

Depreciation 7.5k
fuel 7.5k
Insurance 1.2k
Excise duty 0.7k
Servicing &
Repairs 2.2

Total £19'100 or 38p per mile. Which is astonishingly close to the AA guide for cars under £13k doing 10k miles a year of 37.68p

http://www.theaa.com/resources/Document ... ol2014.pdf

Local train journeys are cheap - peak time into Glasgow is 31p per mile. Though factor in that my 38p per mile includes many fixed costs and driving may be cheaper. Local bus slightly cheaper but again not if I discount the fixed costs for the car.

But cars are all about convenience. My car lets me get to a job which I can't get to by public transport and is too far to ride to.

My car will take me up to Loch Lomond tomorrow to an area public transport doesn't go. Because it gets me there in under 1 hour I can get some things done locally in the morning and be bivvying beside a fire at the lochside in the evening.

My car got me home from Torridon on new Year's day when public transport wasn't running. Probably in half the time or less the train would have taken.

Etc, etc.

People like the convenience of cars and won't easily give them up. Other than the center of major cities car bans will just result in people shopping somewhere else.

[mjr]

Will it, though?

Don't other people do what I do and park in the car park on the edge of the city centre nearest their entry point and walk from there? The shops, restaurants and so on are usually scattered over the centre so I'd have to walk similar distance wherever I parked the car. There's a slight effect by car park price but not enough to make me drive through or around the city.

This doesn't quite apply to Cambridge, which has far more congested arterial roads. You'd need to be a special kind of irrational to drive into that city when a train service is available and it's been like that for at least 25 years. Even the park and rides and busways beat driving and they're pretty clunky still, hobbled by commercial decisions and political timidity.