Congestion

[Mr Lobster]

Trouble is we have allowed ourselves to be squeezed. Both parents have to work - longer hours and further away. Tax cuts have meant school cuts, price wars have killed local shops. Etc. None of what I am saying is politically driven, its just a fact. We have become squeezed - the pressure of life today is killing us and nobody who ever wants to be voted for again will have the will to change what needs to be changed....

This.

 

Congestion is a symptom of modern life and quite what you do to change that I don't know. 

 

I don't imagine that many people want to spend three hours a day commuting but many don't have the choice.

[theorganist]

Freight trains don't work in the UK because the country is not big enough. 

Until the 1960's every station had goods yards even village stations. So much was carried by rail so it did work. There used to be trains called pick up goods which would drop wagons off at every station and the goods then picked up locally.

 

Everything was carried, milk, cattle, perishables, oil, chemicals, consumer goods.

 

It would mean probably more short distance goods vehicles on the roads but would cut down on long distance travel.

[cros]

All the good ideas here will get ground into the dust because government solutions will be based on the option easiest to sell to the electorate.  Expect to be riding in the next generation Prius with the option of synthesized exhaust soundtrack for the occupants. You won't actually be driving it yourself, but you'll be able to project Top Gear videos on the head up display. My preference is to fall into the threshing machine.

[320touring]

I think you are missing the benefit of congestion..

 

For every peak there is a trough. Few things beat a decent b road with the sun rising and not a car in sight:)

 

That said, we are somewhat spoiled up here

[Taff]

Public transport needs to be affordable and reliable. Outside of major urban centres, it is currently neither. Until they are both improved, I’ll use my car, thanks.

A couple of years ago, the missus thought it would be a “Good Thing†to sell her car and use public transport for work. This would help save the planet, raise a few quid from the sale of her car, take some of the strain out of driving to work, lots of very sound reasons. So she gave it a go.

At the time, we lived in West Wilts and she worked in Bath. The journey was only 4 miles but it crossed the county border and so the buses could be from one of two firms, depending on the cycle. This also allowed the bus companies to blame each other for any late arrivals (it isn’t our fault, our schedule was pushed right by First Great Western etc etc). This happened at least four times a week (ten journeys a week as her commute).

A return ticket was £6 a day, a weekly ticket was £30 a week (a saving of exactly £0), monthly worked out the same rate. It was obvious that the weekly & monthly tickets were only saving money for the bus company who no longer had to produce a daily ticket, I suppose if enough people fall for it will provide a saving over the course of a year. No refunds if a bus is late or fails to arrive at all (this would happen once a week).

So after a couple of months of being messed about by the bus companies, we started looking for a new car. In the meantime, she used my 1965 Chevy pick-up truck to get to work. This truck had a 265ci motor in it, 4 speed g/box, it would do 20mpg if nursed.  It speaks volumes for just how fucking dire privatised  public transport has become when driving a 40 year old gas-guzzler is cheaper and more reliable. And I can’t see it changing any time soon.

[Junkman]

1. 90% of all congestion in the UK is caused because people just don't drive the fuck ON.

 

2. Whatever tax money was spent on the past 50 years, infrastructure it was not.

[Felly Magic]

Where I work, we do school runs for Bury St Edmunds schools, and they come from Haverhill, a journey (via the villages) of around 25 miles or so, parents have to buy bus passes for the kids, which must cost them a small fortune, and yes the schools involved are of the swinging flaming handbag/invisible man in the sky variety, and are no better than the local schools in Haverhill either

[MarvinsMom]

When I briefly had a job working for Barclay card in Thornaby, it was cheaper for me to take the train to get to work than it was to use the car.

 

if anyone knows Teesside, the office block was one of those built down by the river, and the entrance to the estate is the same exit off of the A66 as is the one for Teesside park shops.

 

it was a bloody nightmare at all times of the day, plus when I was finishing around 10pm I didn't always know if the car would still be parked where I had left it.

 

but the train was ace, 5 minutes walk from home, and another 5 minutes walk at Thornaby, plus I reckoned it was a damn sight cheaper too.

 

as I remember the train was something like £3 or £3.50 return. it will have gone up since then, this was like 4 years ago but it was much more convenient to get there and back.

 

for the record, it was working on the phones, and it was the shittiest job I have ever had. Barclaycard are fuckers to work for, and the customers were nearly always arseholes. I wasn't sad when I got finished.....

[Tartan58]

Public transport definitely needs to improve both in cost and service.

 

I live 5mins walk from one of the busiest commuter routes in Scotland (probably) - the Forth Road Bridge - and I work right on one of the busiest roads into Edinburgh (A8 Glasgow Road) however there is not one single bus which can take me from one to the other. If there was I'd gladly use it - Instead I drive. Takes me 20mins or so to do 7 miles which all told isn't really too bad but I resent having to run an extra car just to get me to work and back when I could instead use the money for something better (i.e. another car that doesn't need to get me to work and back)

[theorganist]

To get to work I purchase a 4 week train pass which costs me £60. I would struggle to do the same journey in the car on £15 per week that is for certain unless I purchased a Moped, especially when you factor in wear and tear on the car.

 

So I don't think it is bad value at all.

[dollywobbler]

I think the 'being pushed' thing is bob on. With both parents working, because they have to due to the housing market, there's less time for actually looking after your own children. A dreadful state of affairs really. Bit chicken and egg though. I doubt prices would keep rising if it had remained the norm for only one parent to work (and I'm not sexist - no reason why dad shouldn't stay at home). Not only does it mean more school-run chaos, but also more congestion generally, because now every household has two cars. There's no more parking room though!

[theorganist]

Where I work, we do school runs for Bury St Edmunds schools, and they come from Haverhill, a journey (via the villages) of around 25 miles or so, parents have to buy bus passes for the kids, which must cost them a small fortune, and yes the schools involved are of the swinging flaming handbag/invisible man in the sky variety, and are no better than the local schools in Haverhill either

 

The two most popular schools in Stourbridge where pupils travel from outside the town to get to are both secular! Pupils all over the Black Country travel to the King Edward Grammar Schools in Birmingham, which are all secular, so what?!

[inconsistant]

Also, I'm a bit surprised by the number of people advocating banning or restricting peoples ability to do various things. Presumably if a government banned all cars over ten years old on safety or environmental grounds you'd be in an absolutely frenzy of horror and fury?  

 

But if you look at it the other way around, by telling people repeatedly that their own needs are the most important thing and that they can do whatever they want whenever they want to as long as they can afford to do so, then you end up with congestion amongst many other things as part of a society that values personal gain over social responsibility. 

[garbaldy]

I think the 'being pushed' thing is bob on. With both parents working, because they have to due to the housing market, there's less time for actually looking after your own children. A dreadful state of affairs really.

There is no such thing as have to.

Nobody has to own a house nobody has to own two cars nobody has to work 100s of miles away from home to earn more money to buy more shite they don't need.

People do it by choice, when I die I will still be in the same place as someone who has slaved away for 70 Hrs a week even though I only work 35.

[forddeliveryboy]

I think you are missing the benefit of congestion..

 

For every peak there is a trough. Few things beat a decent b road with the sun rising and not a car in sight:)

 

That said, we are somewhat spoiled up here

 

I agree, but isn't that the idea of the elite down the ages? - the land-owning classes have peace and quiet in the back of beyond while the 99% work hard in overcrowded, polluted concentrations of population to keep the country in money. In England rural spots have very high house prices, by and large. Not so much has changed since the 30s, except that farmers are now on the same subsidy-scheme as estate owners.

 

 

The Victorians realised that improving the average person's quality of life meant increasing his and the nation's wealth. So barriers were knocked down and mass rapid (for the time) transport and mass communication (flat rate next-day postal service) were rolled out. The idea was that these services were all inclusive, whether you lived in the North of Scotland or the West of Cornwall.

 

What would our C19th forebears do to solve today's infrastructure problems? Lots of jobs don't need people to be in the office everyday if ultra-fast broadband internet is available for all. Large parts of the country are economically stagnant while pockets overheat - wouldn't our bolder forebears simply drive fast transport routes through the middle of remote, stagnating places? They'd probably see where factories/warehouses could once again ship by rail to the docks and vice-versa rather than clogging up the roads, and rebuild our rail network to relieve the roads of what they were never intended to carry. The more enlightened would probably suggest making cars half as wide.

 

Not least, leisure and tourism would no doubt be recognised as big business. Much of the world is to some extent based on British ways, the internet has established English as the lingua franca. I imagine lost opportunities would be identified and our amazing history would be properly acknowledged. Tourists should find it quick and easy to access Brunel's and other Victorians' marvels, the awe and beauty of industrial architecture, WW2 relics or ancient battlegrounds on which our Islands' histories (and in turn that of the world) turned. Trying to cram the hundreds of thousands of tourists who venture outside London into Stratford, York and Stonehenge is missing a massive opportunity.

 

A fast railway from London past Cambridge (with a spur to Norwich) and then east of the Lincolnshire Wolds and across the Humber to Hull would start to bring about opportunity for millions. The motorway the Humber Bridge was intended for, extending the M11 up to Tyneside through Lincolnshire, eastern Yorkshire, Cleveland and Teeside as well as motorway the A1 to Edinburgh would further relieve congested roads and alleviate the housing crisis. Finishing off the M65 and A66 and building the M57 would help connect a revived economy in the East of England with the other side of the Pennines. No doubt Victorian foresight would also rebuild the Great Central using the original trackbed where economically viable - so much more sensible than HS2.

 

As plenty noted in the controversial 'Is England short of space' thread, many places are overheating/overcrowding while others fester as backwaters - so we pour subsidies into deprived areas just sufficient to stop people deserting altogether, but preventing any meaningful development. Surely that's crazy? We're increasing our population rapidly, but failing to do anything about the infrastructure - a route to chaos?

[barefoot]

Until the 1960's every station had goods yards even village stations. So much was carried by rail so it did work. There used to be trains called pick up goods which would drop wagons off at every station and the goods then picked up locally.

 

Everything was carried, milk, cattle, perishables, oil, chemicals, consumer goods.

 

It would mean probably more short distance goods vehicles on the roads but would cut down on long distance travel.

 

Point taken, but I don't think that wouldn't work any more.

It's this 'Just In Time' ordering thing that means that no-one actually carries any stock any more.

Everything is done in 'real time'.

Trains run to timetables which are enforced more strictly than feeder lorry times.

Also, if a parcel/item misses the main feeder lorry, you can run a chase - a transit/sprinter

Can't do that with the trains.

They still have their place in heavy bulk freight stuff, but their days of shifting washing machines, clothes and the like are over.

the M&S distribution centre referred to in my previous post was built on the old power station site, it has a rail line and a 

brand new still shiny freight rail terminus. I am lead to believe that not a single train has yet come in or gone out. 

Plan A 'cos there is no plan B my arse!

[plasticvandan]

[Coprolalia]

Interesting thoughts.

I live in deepest darkest Devon, but commute and stay on the M4 corridor during the week for work.

All the towns and cities along the M4 corridor are easily accessed and people can work realistically 70-80 miles from their home. Lots of big distribution centres being thrown up around the M5/M4 interchange as well. Morrisons, Tesco, to name a couple. People living on big estates near the towns on the corridor, then driving an hour to work in offices 50 miles away.

Contrast that to darkest Devon. One railway line and two dual-carriageways in and out of the west, down to single carriageway in places. Vast tracts of land that used to be mined now waste. Whole towns with very little economic output. 100 years ago Devon was cris-crossed with railway lines ferrying mineral ore, farm produce etc. Now all closed down. Come summer all the single carriageway roads clog up with tourists, while in winter it can be a ghost town. See the Dawlish railway line debacle for evidence of how tenuous transport links are.

The mines that were shut due to non-profitability can't re-open due to NIMBY's, despite the price in ore rise meaning it would now be profitable to do so.

The cynical part of me thinks this is all partly the MODs doing. Falmouth and Plymouth are two of the best deep water harbours in Europe. With no decent transport links and lots of military bases, it's very easy for them to remain defensible, self-sustaining and secure.

 

Either way I don't understand why the infrastructures not upgraded. Having all these areas of the UK with crap economic output due to lack of investment, and then just ignoring the problem and thinking central investment will fix it by trickle down smacks of sticking your head in the sand and backhanders the public don't see.

 

My two pennies.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

How do I deal with it?

 

I don't go to work. This morning I had to drive into town at 8.30 to take Mrs Bluejeans somewhere and it was just mental. All these poor bastards doing this every day - it would send me over the edge.

So I work from home, rarely start work before 9.30. I used to drive all over for work, but the final straw came in 2011 when I had to get from Sheffield to Aylesbury, a journey that took five hours. It was just fucking horrific. M1: tailbacks. Try to get off at the M42: tailbacks. Finally gave up and got onto the A5. Massive traffic queues. Where the A5 meets the A43 there is a cafe and I stopped there for a cigarette and breakfast but I sat in the Insignia for five minutes, shaking like a shitting dog with rage and utter frustration. Left at 6 and got there at 11. That should have been 2 hours tops.

 

Trying to get anywhere in this country now without some self righteous cunt sticking to 48 mph on a NSL road or bloody roadworks and Average speed cameras holding you up is so utterly futile I refuse to do it.

 

I passed my test in June 1985 and can still recall how great driving used to be. Now it is just utter shit and misery.

[captain_70s]

Buses would be great if they weren't shit.

 

Back when I living in something resembling a town and not an over glorified hamlet I found that using the bus service was a costly nightmare. At lunch time at college we'd go into town to get food because the college cafeteria was silly money and shit. One method was getting the bus, one came every 15 mins but it cost the best part of £3 as I recall and took you about a mile. Also you had to deal with the sort of people who use buses, the unemployed, drunkards, elderly people and the utterly insane.

Made far more economical sense for four of us to chuck our mate a quid each and squeeze in to his '99 Nissan Micra 1.0 which got use there twice as fast and, although a bit cramped, didn't stink of piss...

 

Haven't used a bus since I got my car license, I don't like paying more than I'd pay to drive to be taken to somewhere vaguely near my destination 2 hours too early sitting next to man who has shat himself accompanied by the soundtrack of a screaming baby and a drunken women yelling about how foreigners have ruined everything and that's why she can't get a job... Not that it bothers me any more because I now live in the countryside, since I last lived in here in 2004 the bus service has been cut drastically so it's practically useless anyway.

 

I've found trains to be a nicer experience overall but it'd cost me £80+ to get me to Englandshire by train and take 7 hours. I'd rather take the car and have it done in 5 hours and cost £50 in petrol... Also, my local station closed in 1968 so I'd have to drive to the nearest one too!

 

 

With the loss of small, local places of work came the the commute, usually into a big town or city. Most UK towns and cities are of a design that pre-dates traffic so no matter how nice the road network leading to town is you're always going to get choked up in some shit 17th century street plan which can't be changed because we apparently need to preserve the UK as some sort of historic theme park so Japanese tourists can come over and marvel at the sheer inefficiency of it all. Nobody is going to take buses because, as previously discussed, they are shit and trains will bankrupt you so the next sensible decision would to move everything OUT of the city centre to a nice business park type affair but on a bigger scale with massive provision for traffic and a functioning bus/train system OR spread places of employment rather than shoving them all in one place.

This won't happen though because that would mean using up some of the countryside and the Green brigade would lose their shit over the potential extinction of a newt that nobody knows or cares about.

 

The government will take the above situation into account and promptly close a lane of traffic in an already congested street and turn it in to a cycle lane for one of the 7 people who have decided they are mental enough to bike to work everyday despite the fact that the national weather ranges between "Fucking miserable" and "Sod it, I'm moving to Spain" because that's the easiest and cheapest thing to do and they can sat "oooooh, look at us doing things for you". 

[Justin Case]

The two most popular schools in Stourbridge where pupils travel from outside the town to get to are both secular! Pupils all over the Black Country travel to the King Edward Grammar Schools in Birmingham, which are all secular, so what?!

Even more ludicrous, a bus runs every day from Edgbaston in Birmingham, where the King Edward Grammar Schools are situated, to the equally prestigous Queen Mary's Grammar Schools in Walsall, ie right across town in the middle of the rush hour

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

...start off by forcibly re - nationalising the buses and rail network.

 

 

I would start in Sheffield by halving the number of buses. Much of the traffic nightmare here is cause by these bastard things marauding all over the citeh and almost always empty/half full. So, sell half of the buses. Make the redundant drivers into conductors. Bus pulls up, everyone gets on until it's full and if you have stand up for 7 minutes, tough shit. The bus isn't there getting in everyone's way whilst the drivers pisses about taking coins and giving tickets - that's what the conductor does as well as belting gobby kids and throwing them off the bus, preferably whilst doing 30 mph.

Half the buses = buses are full to capacity. Halve the fuel bill, halve the bus related emissions, lower bus fares, reduced traffic congestion.

 

Win, win, win, win, win, win.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

 I'm sure the update of driving amongst teenagers is lower than it ever has been. Plans to toughen up the driving regs for young folk is only going to increase that change.

 

You may well be right there. Teenagers I know aren't interested in cars anyway. They have computers and Game of Thrones so an 11 plate Corsa doesn't really do it.

 

I would love to avoid driving as much as I can, but I moved house in 2011 and live 26 miles from my workshop. I'd sell it and buy one here but I'd need to find another 20 or 30 grand.

[Andrew353w]

Some railway reopening can work - the Robin Hood line reopened from Nottingham via Mansfield to Worksop in stages, and it's regularly rammed full. Not all lines would be that profitable though.

 

Then, you can scrap the idea that parents get to choose schools. If the local school is crap, then make it better - but the difference in congestion between term time and school hols is incredible. My term time commute often averages less than 20mph average, because parents fire up the X5 and take Tarquin twenty miles to a school that excels in Greek Literature Studies. Holidays, double that speed. Again, rural areas differ but buses work here. 

OH YESSSSS!!!  We live at the end of a road where there's a primary school-DON'T get me started on this one.....

[gordonbennet]

Teenagers arn't interested in cars any more, presumably young men mainly?

 

Honestly can you effin well blame them, the choice for most might be between a Corsa or an Aygo or any other identikit boring modern shit that wouldn't pull your foreskin back and all sound like a strangled sewing machine, not exactly going to piss yersen in excitement are you...the highlight of desire being what a fuckin BINI?, please no.

 

Teach them right to look after stuff and show them the pleasures of proper engines and cars that yearn to be driven, sound like cars and are worth driving, and that can easily be reversed.

 

The problem with teenagers now is that just like modern cars are identical, its a job to tell if the youngster is male or female...the girls are no longer those feminine sexy things we grew up in painful yearning for, half of them dress and behave like blokes and drink more pints than men, the poor young blokes don't know whether they're punched or born...fuck me its bad enough knowing how to behave and what not to say when you're an old bugger, Christ knows how the young blokes manage, confusing doesn't begin to cover it.

[garethj]

Forcing people to use buses or trains will be tricky, and I don't think it's needed.  It was mentioned earlier that the delays in most town centres are down to a twat who's double parked and blocked a lane of traffic while unloading kids.  Delays on motorways are usually down to someone hogging the middle lane or a knob cutting across 2 lanes at the slip road forcing the rest of the traffic to jam on the brakes.

 

I suggest we have town and traffic planners who are clever.  Then I suggest they are given the challenge of making traffic flow more smoothly.  Two massive changes and to be honest there's more chance of Julia Sawalha dropping that injunction against me, but think of the advantages.  Not to the star of Press Gang, to the traffic.

 

You should be able to drop kids off at a safe place which didn't block the traffic.  Same for parking at shops - make sure no fucker can park half on the pavement outside with their hazards on but they can be reasonably close and not block the rest of the road.

 

For motorways I genuinely think people believe they're more important than they really are, everyone wants to drive like the fucking Sweeney because what they're doing is so critical that they can't be delayed for a second.  Pull in behind that car half a mile before the exit?  Not likely mate, I'll sweep in across the chevrons, thanks.  Why shouldn't I?

 

Without snipers on motorway bridges or a long dark night of knives (both a little harsh for a moderate government) I think automated cars on the motorways are the only way to do it.  Or programmable door locks so anyone with a shiny suit, gel in their hair and a massive wristwatch isn't allowed to get into an Audi.

 

Can I look forward to your support on polling day?

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Teenagers arn't interested in cars any more, presumably young men mainly?

 

Honestly can you effin well blame them, the choice for most might be between a Corsa or an Aygo or any other identikit boring modern shit that wouldn't pull your foreskin back and all sound like a strangled sewing machine, not exactly going to piss yersen in excitement are you...the highlight of desire being what a fuckin BINI?, please no.

 

Teach them right to look after stuff and show them the pleasures of proper engines and cars that yearn to be driven, sound like cars and are worth driving, and that can easily be reversed.

 

The problem with teenagers now is that just like modern cars are identical, its a job to tell if the youngster is male or female...the girls are no longer those feminine sexy things we grew up in painful yearning for, half of them dress and behave like blokes and drink more pints than men, the poor young blokes don't know whether they're punched or born...fuck me its bad enough knowing how to behave and what not to say when you're an old bugger, Christ knows how the young blokes manage, confusing doesn't begin to cover it.

 

If I were to have an Off Spring, he or she would have an early seventies BMW 2500 (him) or a 1300 Allegro (her). They could fix it themselves in between buying me a pale hoppy ale in the pub and they'd know who Jimi Hendrix is.

 

They would be stand out kids Fo Sho.

[lisbon_road]

Many good points made.

 

One hasn't been touched.  I reckon that the tax on moving house, stamp duty, has a lot to blame for even though it has come down.  You need to be certain of a job to move when it costs so much and at a time when certainty in employment is falling - lots of commuting results.  If it was free-ish to move, there would be less commuting.

 

I live in a small boring suburb (Chandlers Ford).  There is a bus that runs a circuit.  Nice, clean often double deck with one old lady on it.  For me and the two children to go to the centre, which takes just a few minutes, is £7.60 return.  We walk, most people would drive.  And we watch the bus go past with perhaps one old dear on it.  Madness.  And of course the old dear doesn't pay - but the bus company get paid for her six months in arrears I believe.

 

No sense at all.

[Andrew353w]

If I were to have an Off Spring, he or she would have an early seventies BMW 2500 (him) or a 1300 Allegro (her). They could fix it themselves in between buying me a pale hoppy ale in the pub and they'd know who Jimi Hendrix is.

 

They would be stand out kids Fo Sho.

My daughter's first car after she passed her test in 1999 was an FSO 125! Later she "upgraded" to a Lada 1500. Child cruelty? Possibly..... 

[Mr Lobster]

The other thing about buses and as far as I am concerned the major problem with them is thus - they are filled with other people.

 

Even if they were free I would still rather spend an hour in my own company, in my own space with my own music than on a slightly too small seat next to someone who considers showering daily as massively excessive whilst travelling too slowly to a bus station that bears a rough approximation as to where I actually want to go as opposed to just driving to my destination.