Pete Owens wrote:Actually I compared the whinging motorists posting here to a D***y M**l editorial rather than a reader.
On ANY issue you can pretty much guarantee that they will side with the well off and powerful and bestow victim status on any attempt to restrain the subsidies and privileges that they enjoy. Whether this is home-owners vs social tenants, bosses vs unions... or motorists vs cyclists. Even the most modest charge, restriction, tax.
Now, in the case of transport this translates into a knee jerk support for the sense of entitlement displayed by some of the car-owning classes. Even the most moderate curtailment to the privileges enjoyed by motorists to drive and park wherever they like in the most extreme language. Astonishingly, that sense of entitlement and extreme language is also evident in posters to a cycle campaigning forum of all places - whether it is the outrage expressed in this thread to a modest charge for the use of car parking (as a punishiment), or the increase the charges on polluting vehicles that are poisoning the population (as a ban) - or the frankly farcical attempts to justify car-dependency to a cycling audience ({FFE - family-friendly edit } you might get away with your off-hand dismissal of the practicality of cycling to "alt.petroleheads.org", but do you realise how absurd such a claim sounds here?). If we can see this level of auto-centric thinking here we should hardly be surprised when magistrates routinely accept that that a short curtailment of drivers licence would represent "exceptional hardship."
Specifically in this case we are talking about a public subsidy for car use. Car storage facilities cost money - to acquire the land, to build the facility, to light it, to maintain it and so on. The NHS is funded from taxation so if the cost of this is not met by the users then it is subsidy from by taxpayers. Any such subsidy represents a transfer of resources from people using sustainable means of getting to motorists - and thus a positive incentive to chose the most dangerous, polluting & anti-social means of getting to about.
Now of course once you own a car and are fortunate enough to have this choice available to you it will almost always be more convenient for the owner (especially if car-parking is available at the destination). And those owners will put their own needs above the negative consequences imposed on the population that has to suffer their contribution to pollution, road danger and congestion. This is why we need to take public measures to actively discourage car use. ie going far beyond modest charges for car use, but restricting car parking to blue badge holders. This is particularly true for the NHS, which is bearing the cost of excessive car use, whether this is treating accident victims, people made ill by pollution, or the escalating epidemic of type 2 diabetes brought on be sedentary lifestyles.
You talk about the spin put on things by the DM, but look at your own language. You talk of "the car owning classes" as if that is some elite group, but in every street I can think of "the car owning classes" is nearly every family with adults who are not too old and infirm to drive. Ordinary people, not just the wealthy. People of all political opinions and people of none. Do you realise how absurd it is to talk about car users as if they are a minority?They, or I should say we, are the majority of adults, the norm.
Maybe car ownership levels are lower in major cities with their dense network of public transport and buses every few minutes but not around here. If I had to get to work by 7am, I'd be at work before the first bus had passed my house. I could, and would, cycle. But some couldn't. Some would be dropping the kids off at the child minder's first. And in our low congestion area, where traffic queues are small, using a car can seem the most practical solution if the journey to work is to turn into a trip to the supermarket on the way home or something like that. Much of the time either my wife or I cycle to work, but one of us ends up taking the car because of the other errands that have to be done on the way there or on the way back. Being the one to cycle is the nice end of it.
At my own local hospital the staff come from a wide area of small towns and villages, some of them former coal mining settlements, not just the central town where the hospital is based. Getting to and from work by public transport or bike could take ages, in comparison to twenty minutes by car. You could be adding more than an hour a day to someone's commuting time. That may not matter to you, but it would matter to them and their family. I don't write people off simply because they commute by car, so it matters to me. What would happen, of course, is that staff would just pay the fee and take home less pay. They would be a bit poorer. That would be the extent of the achievement. Less money for the staff and a bit more to pay for some new trolleys or something. And just about the same number of cars on the road because there is, for many, no practical alternative in this area. Getting from the Princess of Wales Hospital, a mile form the centre of Bridgend, to Kenfig Hill or Gilfach Goch late in the evening will always be a trial for those using public transport.
Your way of speaking about motorists is "them and us" talk. You clearly never drive, but most on this forum do, and don't share your extreme philosophy. You do not have a right to tell other cyclists on a cycling forum what they should or should not think. You represent a strand of thought, which you are free to express and we will take on board, but you are deluded in the extreme if you think most cyclists don't use cars. We do.