What a sentence.... You do realise that private individuals do not own the roads; they are built and maintained by the state, so by using them you are also being controlled by "underhand communistical stuff."
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15 Minute Cities
- Thread starter That Jekka Gal
- Start date
What a sentence.... You do realise that private individuals do not own the roads; they are built and maintained by the state, so by using them you are also being controlled by "underhand communistical stuff."
Calling this communist is absolutely ridiculous. Spend less time on X/Facebook.
It's really surprising the mental gymnastics that people have started doing since the algorithms got a hold of their attention. It's not a good situation for the future of our societies.
Critical thinking has died completely, people just believe whatever agrees with their outlook on life.
Nobody challenges anything anymore, and it's only getting worse.
Traffic reduction is a key part of implementing 15 minute cities, they help make non private car use more attractive and encourage the use of smaller more frequent purchases from local shops. Cars are of course used for more than just shopping so there is an impact on travel for other reasons such as visiting friends and family. In London, cross borough traffic is discouraged, road use by borough residents is preferred and promotion of local communities helps to localise activity and therfore reduce the demand for longer journeys.
Implementing 15 minute city planning is a key part of achieving traffic reduction
Agreed, which is why initiatives to encourage more local behaviours are important. You can't just stop people's movement, you have to encourage them to choose local alternatives. It's a lot more than just practical changes to the built environment.
Precisely this. The dog needs to wag the tail - not the other way around.
It needs to be at least just as fast/convenient/reasonable/possible to do the journey on foot/tram/train as in a car. Then it needs to become even better at those things, and the car usage will naturally fade away.
It’s not even that, you need to build the town/city in a way where the journey simply isn’t needed in the first place.
This because ‘making talking/cycling/bus just as easy’ can be achieved by ‘punishing’ driving to make it worse rather than making the alternative accessible and better.
This because ‘making talking/cycling/bus just as easy’ can be achieved by ‘punishing’ driving to make it worse rather than making the alternative accessible and better.
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I live in London and so have a London-centric view of things, not so sure what else is happening around the country and some strategy doesn't apply to less densely populated areas. Kerbside strategy is something that is being used to shape behaviour and the environment, many London boroughs are adopting this lever. (This strategy aims to reallocate a substantial % of its kerbside space to active travel, greening, and community spaces).
Its a bit more than just making cycling and public transport as good as car travel, its also about reducing people's desire to want to travel very far at all.
In council decision reports for low traffic neighbourhoods, you can see that one metric used is a count of vehicles registered to addresses in the borough, when traffic is mostly vehicles passing through the borough then a traffic reducing measure can be justified.
Its a bit more than just making cycling and public transport as good as car travel, its also about reducing people's desire to want to travel very far at all.
In council decision reports for low traffic neighbourhoods, you can see that one metric used is a count of vehicles registered to addresses in the borough, when traffic is mostly vehicles passing through the borough then a traffic reducing measure can be justified.
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Agreed, but I'm not advocating to penalise the motorist. That is folly and doesn't achieve anything. I'm saying that public infrastructure needs to be significantly improved to the point that the car organically becomes the worst choice.
There is undoubtedly an unnecessary persecution of the motorist when no other alternatives are available. Like expanding the ULEZ into Heathrow. That is a different agenda entirely, however.
I hear you and I'm not disagreeing (I have a car that is used appropriately, which amounts to about 2 return journeys a week, carrying more than one person and/or things like shopping for multiple households), but the initiatives being implemented show that there's no patience for that position to organically be achieved.
I didn’t mean to suggest you were.
I was mainly pointing out the fallacy that policy makers can fall down and this is mostly driven by financial realities and not necessarily flawed policy thinking.
If your objective is to reduce the number of cars in a given area, the quickest, cheapest and easiest way is to apply punitive costs on them. The ‘correct’ way is to build segregated cycle routes, secure cycle storage and have a decent public transit network.
Most families in places like Utrecht and Amsterdam still own a car, they just don’t use them for short journeys around town.
Edit; you also need a fast flowing road network which keeps cars out of town and routes through traffic away from city streets.
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There is much more nuance to it than that.
It’s also very closely related to the relationship between politicians and the U.K. media (and its owners vested interests).
If media priorities long term prosperity over short term gains (for its owners), the public discourse would be very different.
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Rush Hours and cars aren't on the agenda, it's all about walking or a bike with a basket and a bell.
Yes, I hate peak rush hour in the car in Cardiff,
I can walk quicker
in the summer the road bike is more convenient
I can imagine.
and rush hour is all traffic, not just fossil fuel cars and so fewer concessions are being made for EV vehicles. eg ending the exemption from the London congestion charge.
EVs are considered part of the problem as they equally cause congestion and therefore contribute to fossil fueled vehicles staying in areas for longer whilst putting out pollutants.
and rush hour is all traffic, not just fossil fuel cars and so fewer concessions are being made for EV vehicles. eg ending the exemption from the London congestion charge.
EVs are considered part of the problem as they equally cause congestion and therefore contribute to fossil fueled vehicles staying in areas for longer whilst putting out pollutants.
Rush hour in Cardiff has become unbearable. It has gotten so much worse in the past two years; more so since Churchill Way was changed around forcing a lot of the outbound traffic to Adam Street.
Walking and the train beats the car ride every time - I won't even entertain the idea of driving into town during/near rush hour.
Thats the thing though, its clearly not unbearable for most because they still do it. I simply do not believe that the insane amounts of traffic almost everywhere now are because people can't do it a different way. They just refuse to. The inconvenience of it would have to be absolutely huge to get most people to change. They don't see themselves as part of the problem, they look externally. Too many other cars, not enough roads, not being allowed to use cut throughs, cyclists, active travel taking their road.