OAP NIMBYS ruin everything

[adolf hamster]

This is very interesting post because it underlines everything that's wrong with town planning and council/gov outlook on travel. The poster seemingly understands why public transport is archaic and not suitable for journeys in modern world, he seemingly understands that cycling will never be treated by general public as a method of transport and remain niche activity, but his preferred solution is still to "push them away from the car" and force them into inconvenient, slow, unsuitable for modern life ways of travelling because that's his job. In official capacity he doesn't see the approach, the reasons behind his very job and task at hand as wrong - it's the people who need to get to their work, schools, daily tasks in timely fashion that are wrong, they are the problem.

i think the problem is that once you've put all the resources needed into running a car (depreciation, servicing, insurance, mot, consumables etc) then there's little point in going with public transport and making life more difficult whilst simultaneously not using an asset you're paying so much to have the benefit of.

for example if i had no car, my daily commute will be considerably cheaper on a yearly basis compared to running a car, however due to a complete lack of public transport availability for many of the places i go on a regular basis, therefore i need a car, and once i've paid the overheads and have it sitting on the drive ready to go, then its also cheaper to make use of it for the daily commute as well, public transport cant compete with the fuel cost let alone the convenience factor.

this is forgetting the fact that said commute is a ~30 min trip by car (40 with heavy traffic) wheras the public transport option is a 14 minute bus followed by a 50 minute train interspersed with several miles of walking.

 

[Roar87]

Perhaps they should account for this by perhaps having the meetings seeking views the evening. Maybe at, I dunno, about 19:00?

I don't think in this day and age that a week night is acceptable for a meeting to be held. A lot of people work late or have children to look after. Personally about half of my shifts involve getting home at 7pm or later.

 

[Dis86]

I don't think in this day and age that a week night is acceptable for a meeting to be held. A lot of people work late or have children to look after. Personally about half of my shifts involve getting home at 7pm or later.

Lol and you need to understand that you're in the vast minority.

 

[almoststew1990]

This is very interesting post because it underlines everything that's wrong with town planning and council/gov outlook on travel. The poster seemingly understands why public transport is archaic and not suitable for journeys in modern world, he seemingly understands that cycling will never be treated by general public as a method of transport and remain niche activity, but his preferred solution is still to "push them away from the car" and force them into inconvenient, slow, unsuitable for modern life ways of travelling because that's his job. In official capacity he doesn't see the approach, the reasons behind his very job and task at hand as wrong - it's the people who need to get to their work, schools, daily tasks in timely fashion that are wrong, they are the problem.

Spoiler: Long text

My point was that the car is so much better than public transport, that in order to make sustainable modes of travel more appealing than the car, there would be an unthinkable amount of money required not to mention decades of 'agreed' planning and forward thinking, which if we're honest, is hardly a strong point of UK's politics. Lets use Southampton as an example:

I sadly live in the north of the town in Lordshill. I work in Fareham, which is about 25 minutes away by car in the School holidays, 45 in term time. If I was to get the train I would need to catch bus (every 10 minutes, so an average wait of 5 minutes every day), travel to the station for 20 minutes, get the train (every hour, and lets assume the bus could drop me off at the station 10 minutes early, given its high frequency). The train journey takes 25 minutes. I then have a 20 minute walk from the station to the edge of the business park where I work. This is total travel time of 1 hour and 25 minutes.

The thing is, I can't see how this can be improved. The bus service is very frequent and provides a reasonably direct route to the station. The frequency of the trains is irrelevant, as long as the bus is frequent (or vice versa). The bus needs to route through suburbs in order to pick enough enough people to make money. The train has one line to follow and stops at the little towns, of which my destination is one. The walk at the other end - this could be improved by having the planning in place 100 years ago to put a train station nearer the estate or vice versa.

So lets say that billions of £££ are spent, families uprooted, Great Crested Newts get squished, the council somehow manages to make a decision within a period of five years instead of deferring it for someone else to make in the future (London airport expansion, nuclear power...), and a train line installed to the northern section of Southampton. I could have a 10 minute walk to the station, which would be followed by a 5 minute wait and a 15 minute ride to Southampton, all change. Let's assume the rail planners had their thinking caps on and schedule the train to Fareham to arrive 5 minutes after the northern Southampton one does. A 25 minute journey with a 20 minute walk. Journey time = 1h 15 minutes.

I could cycle at the other end and reduce the time to the office to say 8 minutes. But then I would have to carry my bike on the train and bus, and wear suitable clothing, and not fall off. This is added inconvenience.

Finally, sustainable modes of travel still has numerous inherent weaknesses over private vehicle:

Firstly, people like the privacy of their car, with comfy seats, heating, music, and whatever else a new car's computer can do! Buses (and bus stations) and trains (and train stations) will never, ever, be able to provide that sort of travel. There is also the security aspect of travelling with other people.

Secondly, there is the weather - walking or cycling between facilities will get you wet or cold etc.

Thirdly, would you still own a car? For trips to the dump, long distance trips, buying a new TV from currys, if you have a dog, if you're elderly and need a wheelchair. It would also become more of a status symbol, or a hobby, to drive.

Edit - Fourthly, a phased switch between predominately private vehicle to SMOT would be required; it isn't going to happen over night from an infrastructure point of view. Which politician with a four year term is going to vote to build a cycleway which will provide no benefit (and reduce car capacity) for the next 10 years?

I would love if sustainable modes of travel received billions of investment over decades and made SMOT more attractive to use than public transport for inter-urban, but I can't see it ever happening.

We have been spoiled by cars. Cars are unbelievably, mindbogglingly good. The car (and lorry) is largely responsible for life as we know it. Saying that "cycle lanes should be provided everywhere" despite being largely undeliverable, is not going to cut it.

I think it will need an absolutely huge effort for people to permanently switch.

Would you travel by bus or train, at a cost of additional journey time, if you knew you would have to pay £15 a day to park at the shops? I know I would.
Would you travel by bus or train if you knew you would most likely not have a parking space waiting at the other end?
Would you travel by bus if you were only allowed one car in the household and it is in use by someone else? Well, you'd be forced to!

edit - would the masses vote in a politician who said they would tax the balls off the motorist? Would anyone have the guts to do it?

Ultimately I think it will be a mix of push and pull factors that will be required, as the oil runs out, with pull factors maybe being employed to improve the infrastructure to an extent that the country doesn't grind to a halt.

 

[Roar87]

Lol and you need to understand that you're in the vast minority.

You think it's a vast minority of people who might not be able to attend a week day meeting at 7pm? Seriously?

 

[Dis86]

You think it's a vast minority of people who might not be able to attend a week day meeting at 7pm? Seriously?

Yeah. Most people work 9-5 and most people that have kids (not all do) have 2 parents. One could stay and look after the kids whilst the other goes.

 

[v0n]

Would you travel by bus or train, at a cost of additional journey time, if you knew you would have to pay £15 a day to park at the shops? I know I would.
Would you travel by bus or train if you knew you would most likely not have a parking space waiting at the other end?
Would you travel by bus if you were only allowed one car in the household and it is in use by someone else? Well, you'd be forced to!

All of these things were tried in south east already. And they failed. Cost of parking in London and many towns in Kent is sky high, parkings at the shops are gone, in many estates it's nigh impossible to have a second car as you won't be able to park it, penalties for driving into town (CC charge), penalties for crossing between counties (dart charge) and all it created was more cars on the road - it gave rise to empire of Uber and Addison Lee. Public transport is inherently flawed and not compatible with realities of modern life in areas created by city/town planners. It could be sustained for a little while if it was frequent and the cost was £1 per day, and redeemable (as in - your local Tesco would pay for your bus ticket like they pay car park charges while shopping) thus attractive enough for school runs, shopping trips etc for people who have time in their life for such activities. Literally - terrible transportation needs to be dirt cheap. Or perish. But ultimately, decades of bad work of city planners moving essential services out of populated urban areas, paired with housing prices (you will buy where it's cheaper, not where it's closer to work and shops) cannot be counter measured with public transport.

Otherwise this approach to penalise and outprice cars from the roads won't switch people to use other methods, it will simply destroy quality of life beyond repair - it will repeat the pattern of "London and bedrooms of London" - inner city of immobile council estate dwellers surrounded by thick ring of Barkings and Newhams full of freshly outpriced, unemployed people that can no longer afford to get to minimum wage work subsidised by miserable folk wasting hours on commuting from 30-50 miles away.

Ultimately I think it will be a mix of push and pull factors that will be required, as the oil runs out, with pull factors maybe being employed to improve the infrastructure to an extent that the country doesn't grind to a halt.[/SPOILER]

Fuels won't run out. We can manufacture biodiesels and ethanol derrivatives (with massive benefit to emerging countries as well, if we wanted) for decades now. We'll need that infrastructure refocussed, not us penalised. Get to work my man.

 

[[TW]Fox]

I think it will need an absolutely huge effort for people to permanently switch.

Would you travel by bus or train, at a cost of additional journey time, if you knew you would have to pay £15 a day to park at the shops? I know I would.
Would you travel by bus or train if you knew you would most likely not have a parking space waiting at the other end?

Surely the most likely outcome is what already happens - people would shop elsewhere. City centres are less popular than they've ever been and constant parking charge hikes are partially to blame. People don't get the bus when the council yet again hikes the parking charges - they just go somewhere else.

I would love if sustainable modes of travel received billions of investment over decades and made SMOT more attractive to use than public transport for inter-urban, but I can't see it ever happening.

Because instead we go on the wrong direction. We continue this push to make fare payers shoulder more of the cost of providing public transport. This is counter productive and encourages car use.

I have a car. I like my car very much. I am not going to not have a car, it's a major source of interest for me if nothing else. However, I like to use a mix of transport modes where available. Until a few years ago, my mix was quite evenly split - for most long distance journeys I actually used the train instead of the car. It cost roughly the same, took over an hour longer for some journeys, but allowed me to read, watch films, etc.

But gradually the fares increased and increased and increased and it eventually got to the point where it was noticeably more expensive to catch the train than for most long journeys than it was to simply shoulder the marginal additional cost of simply using my car. How can this be right? Why do have a public transport system now with pricing structures that push me OFF the train and into my private car?! It's madness.

Some routes have it lucky - my last proper train journey was Manchester to London. It cost 15 quid. 15 quid! And took 2 hours - via the M6 was about 5 hours. Why was it so cheap? The train was packed, so they could obviously fill it. The service it offered was far superior to driving. Yet it was 15 quid. Great. Massively undervalued. Meanwhile, on other routes the fares are vastly in excess of car usage....

I'd have paid 30 quid for that journey and considered it good value.

 

[almoststew1990]

All of these things were tried in south east already. And they failed. Cost of parking in London and many towns in Kent is sky high, parkings at the shops are gone, in many estates it's nigh impossible to have a second car as you won't be able to park it, penalties for driving into town (CC charge), penalties for crossing between counties (dart charge) and all it created was more cars on the road - it gave rise to empire of Uber and Addison Lee.

Do we know whether the disparity between charging was a factor? If you park your car two streets away, it would be free? Rich people have access designed in and poor people have access designed out? My example had in mind that everyone would pay (on some sort of scale), and everyone would be immobile, if they refused to travel by another mode.

Public transport is inherently flawed and not compatible with realities of modern life in areas created by city/town planners. It could be sustained for a little while if it was frequent and the cost was £1 per day, and redeemable (as in - your local Tesco would pay for your bus ticket like they pay car park charges while shopping) thus attractive enough for school runs, shopping trips etc for people who have time in their life for such activities. Literally - terrible transportation needs to be dirt cheap. Or perish. But ultimately, decades of bad work of city planners moving essential services out of populated urban areas, paired with housing prices (you will buy where it's cheaper, not where it's closer to work and shops) cannot be counter measured with public transport.

I agree on both accounts. Urban transport needs to be beyond cheap. And town planning from the 50s onwards is fixated around the car, which was considered 'the future', and now we're paying the price. This does raise the question, if we build around public transport and cycling, will future generations pay the price in ways we can't imagine? Is there even a right answer?

Otherwise this approach to penalise and outprice cars from the roads won't switch people to use other methods, it will simply destroy quality of life beyond repair - it will repeat the pattern of "London and bedrooms of London" - inner city of immobile council estate dwellers surrounded by thick ring of Barkings and Newhams full of freshly outpriced, unemployed people that can no longer afford to get to minimum wage work subsidised by miserable folk wasting hours on commuting from 30-50 miles away.

Yes you're right that could be a problem. It would need to be such a large fee that your average person would need to be unable to afford the car for daily use, rather than just poorer people. London I feel is not a good example though - I would say it juxtaposes very poor people against very rich people. A town like Southampton would see poor people and average people living next to each other, neither of whom would be able to afford to drive. Like it would have been 110 years ago, I suppose.

Fuels won't run out. We can manufacture biodiesels and ethanol derrivatives (with massive benefit to emerging countries as well, if we wanted) for decades now. We'll need that infrastructure refocussed, not us penalised. Get to work my man.

Which loops back around to my point that this would cost an insurmountable amount to refocus the infrastructure, especially if they have to be attractive enough to get people to switch with limited 'push' factors people out of cars, on the basis this can have significant consequences as you outlined.

I don't think there is a realistic answer for the problem for existing towns, cities and villages, and certainly one that doesn't result in 'winners' and 'losers'. To bring it back around to the OP, you can see why it is easier to just provide the infrastructure to cater for, and cause, an increase in cars.

The only solution I can think of is that new housing should not be provided in their 10s and hundreds on the edges of towns; they should be solely new 'self sufficient' towns with 50,000 homes, employment, retail and leisure based around a web of public transport and mixed use, walkable neighbourhoods with super fast broadband and forward thinking employers. Not that this is perfect.

 

[Roar87]

Yeah. Most people work 9-5 and most people that have kids (not all do) have 2 parents. One could stay and look after the kids whilst the other goes.

http://www.wellho.net/mouth/3188_Wh...ll-works-a-Monday-to-Friday-9-to-5-week-.html

Interesting article there. About 2/3 of people do 9-5, I'm not in a vast minority. When you add the fact that a lot of people have children to feed and put to bed between 7pm and 9pm, perhaps 7pm on a weekday isn't a fantastic time to hold a meeting that working people can attend.

 

[Dis86]

http://www.wellho.net/mouth/3188_Wh...ll-works-a-Monday-to-Friday-9-to-5-week-.html

Interesting article there. About 2/3 of people do 9-5, I'm not in a vast minority. When you add the fact that a lot of people have children to feed and put to bed between 7pm and 9pm, perhaps 7pm on a weekday isn't a fantastic time to hold a meeting that working people can attend.

2 to 1 is a pretty vast majority so yes, a vast minority. Like I say why can't one parent deal with the kid?

 

[StriderX]

7PM isn't a particularly amazing time for working parents, if you get off at say 5PM, then who knows how long your commute is, you don't want to be wasting it driving to this coffin dodging event for sure... though it'd unfortunate if you also accidentally crashed into the event stopping the dodging .

/does not sponsor potential savings of the public purse.

 

[Roar87]

2 to 1 is a pretty vast majority so yes, a vast minority. Like I say why can't one parent deal with the kid?

That's 1/3 (apparently 33% now constitutes a "vast minority", but ok) that may not even be home from work for 7pm, plus then on top you have the people who are looking after kids. It's a **** time to hold a meeting for working people to attend. Evidence of this is the fact that working people do not actually attend. It's not only the literal availability, it's the fact that after a long day at work people probably don't have the energy or willpower to get changed and attend a 7pm meeting. Sensibly they could just hold it on a Saturday or Sunday morning. This would seem blindingly obvious to most people.

 

[almoststew1990]

Surely the most likely outcome is what already happens - people would shop elsewhere. City centres are less popular than they've ever been and constant parking charge hikes are partially to blame. People don't get the bus when the council yet again hikes the parking charges - they just go somewhere else.

My example had a fee applied everywhere. You would have to pay to park at any shop, in town or edge of town. People need food and goods; they would have to travel to purchase them on another mode of transport. Or, have it delivered.

Because instead we go on the wrong direction. We continue this push to make fare payers shoulder more of the cost of providing public transport. This is counter productive and encourages car use.

Yes, I agree. Perhaps the cost could be provided by a variety of sources, which I suppose would ultimately come from some sort of taxation.

I have a car. I like my car very much. I am not going to not have a car, it's a major source of interest for me if nothing else. However, I like to use a mix of transport modes where available. Until a few years ago, my mix was quite evenly split - for most long distance journeys I actually used the train instead of the car. It cost roughly the same, took over an hour longer for some journeys, but allowed me to read, watch films, etc.

This would mean that you got your utility from the fact that you can read / watch films whilst travelling. That is what you wanted and valued. Is it what everyone in general else values though, which is typically journey time, reliability and cost. Was your trip a commute or leisure trip?

But gradually the fares increased and increased and increased and it eventually got to the point where it was noticeably more expensive to catch the train than for most long journeys than it was to simply shoulder the marginal additional cost of simply using my car. How can this be right? Why do have a public transport system now with pricing structures that push me OFF the train and into my private car?! It's madness.

Yes, it is.

Some routes have it lucky - my last proper train journey was Manchester to London. It cost 15 quid. 15 quid! And took 2 hours - via the M6 was about 5 hours. Why was it so cheap? The train was packed, so they could obviously fill it. The service it offered was far superior to driving. Yet it was 15 quid. Great. Massively undervalued. Meanwhile, on other routes the fares are vastly in excess of car usage....

I'd have paid 30 quid for that journey and considered it good value.

Again, was this a daily commute?

On a related note, I feel trains can offer great "short long" (as in up to 400 miles lets say) distance travel. Faster than the car, more comfortable than the car (you can get up), wifi, sleep etc. Less faff and more comfortable than flying. However, most commutes and school runs are not 400 miles![/quote]

 

[Dis86]

That's 1/3 (apparently 33% now constitutes a "vast minority", but ok) that may not even be home from work for 7pm, plus then on top you have the people who are looking after kids. It's a **** time to hold a meeting for working people to attend. Evidence of this is the fact that working people do not actually attend. It's not only the literal availability, it's the fact that after a long day at work people probably don't have the energy or willpower to get changed and attend a 7pm meeting. Sensibly they could just hold it on a Saturday or Sunday morning. This would seem blindingly obvious to most people.

It's evidence of nothing! How do you know working people don't attend? You're trying to say working age people can't do anything between say 6 and 8? Bugger me, I must be seeing ghosts at the gym, in swimming pools, restaurants, running along the beach, surfing, kayaking, walking their dogs and cycling. I better call Ghostbusters because on an evening the beach near me is rammed until sunset!

Or it could just be as striderx put it 'you don't want to waste your time' driving to it.

Also please feel free to contact the main tv channels who see peak audiences for their soaps between 7 and 9.

 

[Freakbro]

7PM isn't a particularly amazing time for working parents, if you get off at say 5PM, then who knows how long your commute is, you don't want to be wasting it driving to this coffin dodging event for sure... though it'd unfortunate if you also accidentally crashed into the event stopping the dodging .

/does not sponsor potential savings of the public purse.

Well, you wouldn't get there in time because the roundabout hasn't been upgraded!

 

[[TW]Fox]

My example had a fee applied everywhere. You would have to pay to park at any shop, in town or edge of town.

This would never happen and of course the idea is patently nonsense.

This would mean that you got your utility from the fact that you can read / watch films whilst travelling. That is what you wanted and valued. Is it what everyone in general else values though, which is typically journey time, reliability and cost. Was your trip a commute or leisure trip?

Again, was this a daily commute?

All leisure.

 

[Nitefly]

I kind of sympathise with the OP. You're only ever going to go to these meetings if you have a problem with proposals. Surely it's not up to the OP to go along and debate / champion the idea - that's the council's job!

Online consultations are much better. Submitted online feedback for a town planning issue last year from the comfort of my bed.

 

[dasyad]

Twist: OP missed the consultation due to bad traffic

 

[almoststew1990]

This would never happen and of course the idea is patently nonsense.

I did say previously which politician would have the stones to do it? No-one, because it would be hideously unpopular. So yes it will probably not happen. But that does not mean it wouldn't be effective or unreasonable. But I don't see why the theory of it is nonsense. I can't think of a more efficient way to make people change travel modes than to make driving prohibitively expensive. It doesn't have to be parking related.

One option could be through "Road Tax". This will in the future become a pay-as-you-go model, whether it is in 10 years or 50 years, and you will basically pay more if you travel further (or perhaps for more time). These costs could increase year on year to make you travel less and less each year until you can only afford to do so for journeys where a car is absolutely necessary. These funds fund the necessary improvements to infrastructure for public transport and sustainable modes of travel.

So come on then, what is your suggestion for making people travel sustainably?

All leisure.

Whilst your point on costs is valid, your leisure journeys are not representative of most day to day journeys (i.e. commuting and business, school runs and shopping) when you want to minimise journey time, arrive at a precise time and travel as quickly as possible over a distance usually less than say 40 miles.