More roads...

[karlt]

You speak as if you imagine that "can't" is just an excuse and not what employers have an annoying habit of actually saying.

... and the solution is?

A lot more complicated than we would like.

A lot of societal changes have exacerbated this problem. Parental choice of school means it's no longer logistically simple to bus children to school, because the kids from a given area go to lots of different schools. A move from long term employment to frequent changes of employer and "portfolio careers" means that people often find themselves working a considerable distance from home - I'm 15 miles away and cannot physically cope with commuting by bike more than twice a week, so I'm wickedly clogging up the M1 on the other days - the train is prohibitively expensive and takes twice as long.

[horizon]

You speak as if you imagine that "can't" is just an excuse and not what employers have an annoying habit of actually saying.

... and the solution is?

A lot more complicated than we would like.

Yes I agree, though continuing to queue is a simple solution of sorts. The really peculiar thing to my mind is that the internet hasn't slashed travel to work. Many people (not all or not even most) could sit at home and face the same screen as they do at work all day. Yet the same 9 -5 rigid thinking continues. If those who could work at home, even just one or two days a week did so (or even worked the first hour at home until after rush hour!), it would leave the roads a bit clearer for those who needed to be at a place of work. However what we do know is that even if say 10% of people withdrew from the roads, they would fill back up to normal, i.e. 12 mph and 1.5 hours per day travel - those figures haven't changed since 1700.

[karlt]

... and the solution is?

A lot more complicated than we would like.

Yes I agree, though continuing to queue is a simple solution of sorts. The really peculiar thing to my mind is that the internet hasn't slashed travel to work. Many people (not all or not even most) could sit at home and face the same screen as they do at work all day. Yet the same 9 -5 rigid thinking continues. If those who could work at home, even just one or two days a week did so (or even worked the first hour at home until after rush hour!), it would leave the roads a bit clearer for those who needed to be at a place of work. However what we do know is that even if say 10% of people withdrew from the roads, they would fill back up to normal, i.e. 12 mph and 1.5 hours per day travel - those figures haven't changed since 1700.

A lot of us predicted that the internet should have those effects, but it hasn't. Most people - perhaps not some of the misanthropic types who hang out on internet boards discussing the effects of the internet, present company naturally excepted - do not go to work just to work; they do it to socially interact. Working from home is not as attractive for a social species.

Expanding on that theme a bit - humans think less than they think they do. Much justification is post hoc. People drive the kids to school and do all sorts of other things that negatively impact the situation because everyone else does. Simply pointing that out won't actually change much because people believe their own post hoc justifications. We are a social animal. We learn how to be by observing others. To a greater or lesser degree some individuals are less constrained by implicit standards of normality, but in the main there's a good reason why people watch soaps and glorified talent shows and read celebrity gossip - because that's what people do.. Even when we rebel against "normality" in our adolescent years (as many of us do) we only adopt the norms of a different subculture. Whilst deriding the "squares" (God, I'm showing my age) in their suits we looked to our peers and approved rock bands to work out how we should look, speak and behave. This is our species. We are apes, not cats.

A lot of cycle encouragement misses this. Whatever reasons people give for not cycling, and I'm sure they believe them themselves, the underlying reason is people don't cycle. I also harbour a suspicion that a lot of antagonism towards cyclists is actually down to the very act of riding a bicycle, outside of somewhere like Sherwood Pines or CentreParcs, marks you out as an outlier. You've made yourself like the weird kid at school that everyone bullied even though they didn't really know why. Humans copy each other to show they belong to the same tribe. Someone marking themselves out as an outlier is less part of the same tribe, and throughout much of human history, "not your tribe" meant "the tribe over the hill there", who were the enemy.

[reohn2]

There are still some people who believe that building more road capacity will decrease congestion. There are still some people (mainly young children but some sad adults too) who believe in Father Christmas. After 90 years of roadbuilding to relieve jams you would think that they might have learnt. Unfortunately they are like First World War generals who believed that failure on the Western Front was due to not having sent more young men to their deaths. Actually I don't even think that Cameron himself believes this - he is pandering to the marginal-voting nutters out there and to pay off the roadbuilding contributors to Tory party funds. It is even more sad that we have to destroy a lot more of our land to prove to them that it doesn't work. All the academic studies say that road building increases congestion. All the academic studies say that petrol price increases or recession reduces it. There are probably some people who believe that when sitting in a traffic jam on the M25 they are not really in a jam - they cannot be according to their theory. Enough said - what a sad world we live in.

+1
Sooner or later,probably later,that public transport run as a service is the real answer,of course we'll have to turn our back on unbridled capitalism as a system of government and believe that a social conscience should come first.

[Steady rider]

About 40 years ago it was apparent that people could work from home if using computers with little need to travel. persons employed from home and working via computer could be given a lower tax band but no car allowance or similar.

All news roads should ensure each minor road keeps at least a crossing for pedestrians and cyclists, keeping all links unless closer than say 0.5 km.

All new roads should have seperate cycle paths as they will be catering for high volume traffic and may provide direct links.

[Mike Sales]

Even if people do work from home, commuting is just one of the reasons to use a car. Shopping, leisure, school run etc. If the net allows people to work from home it can allow them to live away from employment centres, but all these other trips can cause an increase in traffic.

[snibgo]

So what would be people do if they were in Government.

DfT's 2008 Delivering a Sustainable Transport System isn't a bad start, although I'd say it is deficient in not discussing car-centrism, and paying mere lip-service to active travel.

If I ruled our transport system, a primary goal would be to ensure that the automatic choice for a journey didn't involve dragging around a tonne of metal. Another would be the priciple that users of roads and other transport infrastructure should pay all the associated costs.

Following the above report, in 2009 DfT produced Britain’s Transport Infrastructure: Motorways and Major Trunk Roads, which I'd summarise as, "Traffic will increase, making congestion get worse, so we'll implement hard-shoulder running and other measures to increase capacity."

Personally, I don't know or care much about motorways, but I'd question (a) why traffic increase is inevitable, (b) perhaps congestion (ie queueing, as horizon says) is inevitable thus incurable unless we massively increase capacity and (c) perhaps demand reduction is a more obvious way to tackle congestion and other problems.

Of course, the Conservatives are ideologically opposed to road-tolls or other measures to reduce demand, and the other major parties are also wary, perhaps because overriding political philosophy is driven by tabloid journalists: "war on the motorist" etc. It seems we are stuck with business as usual.

[Richard Mann]

They know roadbuilding is daft, they just can't help themselves. It's kind of a relief for them when the nimbys stop them.

However, what they really need is a distraction. Which is why I think the focus should be on improving urban areas: our towns and cities can be made into much more civilised places by taming the traffic. It's much more practical to build a consensus around that. And when alternatives to car use in towns have been made more practical, and towns themselves have been made more attractive places to be, then motorways will cease to matter.

[thirdcrank]

I see it's now being reported that the Highways Agency intends to extend its use of hard shoulder running to increase motorway capacity. So far, this has only been done in active management schemes like te one on the M42 near Brum.

The new set-up will be a much simplified (ie significantly cheaper to build) arrangement, without the full-width gantries and individual lane signs. Apparently, there will just be one variable speed limit sign at the nearside of the carriageway applying to every lane. The refuges for the drivers of broken-down vehicles will be much more widely spaced.

Rightly or wrongly, hard shoulder running is something that the police opposed. Over the last decade or so, the Highways Agency has taken over running the motorway control rooms from the police and it now has its own force of company police - or rather quasi-police.

[daveg]

The problem is simple, in my view. We have managed to build a society that is now so reliant on the motor car that any restrictions make life difficult. People now work further away from home than they used to; local shops are reduced in number - most where I live are now takeaway food shops on mini supermarkets. We used to attned local schools but now parents have choice and little Johnny needs transport to and from the place of learning.

I was out to lunch yesterday at a hostelry on the approach to Ilkely Moor. It was full of retired folk and by the look of the car park, all had arrived by car.

There's a lot of other stuff that needs rethinking if we are to get on top of the roads situation.

Strikes me as similar to South East house prices and lack of water. Given that part of the problem may well be there are just too many people in that corner sucking water out of the ground and adding to the housing shortage, wouldn't it make sense to encourage folk to move away?

[horizon]

On a more optimistic note, I've noticed (after a year or two of vitually not driving at all) that most of what society bemoans (fuel prices, traffic jams, parking, obesity, school runs etc) exists in a modern version of Bedlam all on its own. You really can get away from it all by getting on a bike. Of course, this has its own "joys" such as the problem of integrating a journey with rail, but for me the biggest challenge is still people's reaction - "Ah, hah... so you've come on a bike. Right ... I'm sure we have somewhere where we can put it ... maybe ..." But for the most part many of the stresses of so called modern life evaporate when you ditch the car - you don't even see the madness. Hard shoulder running on motorways is one such example - it's a problem that is well hidden away within the secure, well fenced grounds of the asylum and you cannot even hear the screams.

[thelawnet]

On a more optimistic note, I've noticed (after a year or two of vitually not driving at all) that most of what society bemoans (fuel prices, traffic jams, parking, obesity, school runs etc) exists in a modern version of Bedlam all on its own. You really can get away from it all by getting on a bike. Of course, this has its own "joys" such as the problem of integrating a journey with rail, but for me the biggest challenge is still people's reaction - "Ah, hah... so you've come on a bike. Right ... I'm sure we have somewhere where we can put it ... maybe ..." But for the most part many of the stresses of so called modern life evaporate when you ditch the car - you don't even see the madness. Hard shoulder running on motorways is one such example - it's a probelm that is well hidden away withing the secure, well fenced grounds of the asylum and you cannot even hear the screams.

I'm not sure about that.

I was riding my bike yesterday, there was a coach stopped five or six car lengths ahead but the big FU Range Rover behind me still overtook at speed before slamming in behind the coach. I rolled slowly past his window, to my surprise he then seemed to let a passenger out himself.

We are largely immune from the tedium of queues of various kinds, I'd agree, and also parking (although in some places bike parking can be a frustrating experience, due to the lack of suitable things to lock a bike to) but we still suffer the stresses of the motorist, vicariously, when they drive near us....

[horizon]

That's true - we are part of it and in it but at the same time we are out of it. It's a bit like visiting someone in hospital (to use another psycho-medical analogy): you have to put up with the restrictions and strangeness of it all but you're a long way from the predicament of the patient. And, to extend the analogy, you can walk away.

[CREPELLO]

Of course, the Conservatives are ideologically opposed to road-tolls or other measures to reduce demand, and the other major parties are also wary, perhaps because overriding political philosophy is driven by tabloid journalists: "war on the motorist" etc. It seems we are stuck with business as usual.

Ideologically the Tories should actually be all for road tolls. It fits in with utilities being sold off to private companies who then charge the public for usage. It's only the idea of a government charging the public for a service that they think is wrong, because it's seen as another tax.

This is a good example of what should be a green tax, where general taxation is lowered in favour of taxing polluting activities. So the overall tax burden should stay neutral and in reality I'm sure it would reduce, given time. A more sustainable society is one that has fewer external costs such as ill health, crime and poverty - IMO.

Of course, this policy proposal is driven by selling another public asset to private business (the Chinese principally) in order to use the sales proceeds to patch up a small part of the deficit. That's not really going to amount to much in the short term and in the long term it will cost much more to use the road utility than it would otherwise. Maybe that should be no bad thing, but as the policy will be commercially driven, the social/environmental factors won't be considered.

It's all cock-eyed as a policy, because the charges won't be going to the government as a green taxation, but to private companies and their share holders.

[AlanD]

Apologies if this may be going slightly off-thread, but I am more concerned with how motorists use the roads and I think this also crosses over into another thread in 'Tea shop' about vehicles being weapons.
Firstly, I need to drive to work, no practical alternative. Too far to cycle. No bus route that I know of and no direct train route. However, I carshare with one other to try and minimise my impact.
Since seeing this thread, i have been thinking about it and how to put my thoughts into suitable words, so I decided to briefly mention some of the things I experience whilst driving.
For the greater part, it's along narrow & twisty single carriageway A roads that carry a lot of traffic, with several sets of traffic lights, junctions a busy mini roundabout and a couple of pinch-points. so plenty to hold up the flow of traffic. I drive to the speed limit, not only that, I drive within the limits of what I consider to be safe & appripriate for road conditions, but I still manage to make normal and acceptable progress. What I find is that other drivers just cannot go fast enough! They are glued less than a cars length from my rear at speeds approaching 50mph. They pull wide to overtake me as I am 'recovering' from taking a turning at a junction. They drive with offside wheels over the centre line, as if being offset really makes any difference. Rather than wait to see what I will do, they seize any chink to make progress. I am not driving slow. Yet when these drivers get past, I will frequently see them just ahead behind something big, or I catch them at the next set of lights.

Only two days ago I had this scenario:
I was behind a big lorry for about 3 miles, doing 40mph in a 50 limit. No safe opportunity to overtake, so I allowed a safe clearance. Close on my tail was a growing crocodile of cars. The lorry indicates left and slows down to take a sharp turn into an entrance driveway. I was going to overtake, since I could see the road ahead was clear, but then abandoned this idea because the lorry started to swing right into the opposing lane. I braked and the driver of the car behind seized his opportunity, shooting passt me and the lorry in the narrow gap, blaring his horn as he went. "Was that for my benefit? I asked my companion"
I have also had various incidents of Mr Self-important-bmw/audi/white-van-ton-up-johnny leapfrogging me, just to fill the stopping distance between myself and the vehicle in front.
I think what is happening is that many drivers want to optimise their progress such that their speed is kept as high as constantly possible and their line through every curve is as efficient as possible. However that would only work if theirs was the only vehicle on the road, but that does not stop them trying. I also think that drivers are only reacting to what is immediately in front of them and not considering the whole journey, or the possible consequences of their actions. i.e. a crash!

I would have hoped that with increasing fuel costs, drivers would start to ask themselves what the cost of getting to the office a munite or so earlier is in terms of fuel consumption? However, judging by the way I see motorists drive, there is a huge gap between how they tread on the right pedal and how they constantly bleat about rising fuel costs.