Lets talk about car-free transport...

[maddocgrotsnik]

I genuinely cannot do without my car.

Once a week, I have to commute to and from London. Living in Folkestone, that’s a 65ish mile trip each way.

Whilst I do live close enough to Folkestone Central station? The greedy cunts want £50 for a return ticket. Fifty. Fucking. Quid. Or if it’s an “Anytime Day Return”?? £85.20.

And so, even with Road tax, insurance and petrol? Driving makes the most cost efficient method of transport.

I’m all for going car less. But there needs to be decent, reliable, non-extortionate public transport first.

[herzlos]

I'm pretty similar; I need the car for a lot of stuff, particularly due to crap public transport (my fault for living in the sticks), but I try and use the car as little as possible otherwise.

When I lived in the city centre I cycled everywhere, with the exception of the weekly shop (I lived near everything but a supermarket, and taking 6 bags of shopping on the bus just isn't practical), and the odd day trip, so the car barely moved. 

The stats for car use is pretty depressing though, the average UK journey is 7.7 miles, with the average commute somehow being 20 miles. Average commute speed in London is 14m/h, which is easily achieved on a bike.

I've been cycling the last part of my commute for a while, and it takes more or less the same time to cycle as it does to drive because the traffic is horrendous. You can see the average speed on my GPS dropping every time we pass a major junction. On the motorway it's 70, then 30 in the suburbs, then 20 and barely 10mph for the last couple of miles of tedious stop start traffic light misery, before factoring in the inevitable roadworks and diversions. I'm averaging about 12-15mph on the bike (depending on the bike, weather, tiredness etc), and that's mostly on cycle paths through parks and away from the road.

The other interesting thing I've noticed is that driving is almost adversarial - you're fighting to beat the traffic but using various tricks, hoping people don't cut you up etc, whilst the cycling is more sociable. I'll quite often get chatting to another cyclist that happens to get close enough until our routes diverge. It's a completely night and day experience.

Then there's the spending 30 minutes sat on my ample rear end vs 30 minutes of exercise.

I'd seen some claim that most people lived within 3 miles of their work, but I can't find any reference to that now.

There are plenty of people who could cycle to work, but don't because the infrastructure isn't suitable, whether that's facilities on trains, secure parking at work, etc.

But we could also do so much better with public transport. Germany has apparently now introduced a 49 Euro travel card that lets you use everything except inter-city trains for a whole month for no charge. In comparison my monthly rail card just from home train station to work train station is £300. It's outrageous.

[Haighus]

Improved public transit is definitely needed. I'd use the bus to work a lot more if it didn't get stuck in the same traffic I end up driving in, came more frequently, and didn't cost more than driving.

As it is, the stress of missing the bus outweighs the benefit of not driving in traffic.

The German integrated travel pass is brilliant and absolutely should be emulated here. Affordable public transit is a societal good with loads of positive externalities, and should be invested in.

[semipotentwalrus]

On the subject of public transport, I'm currently working in a neighbouring town that's about an hour away, whether bu bus, train, or car. If I'd been driving that'd have been more than two hours of commute that I'd just lose every day, but because I can take the bus or train I can work remotely while going to my job, effectively "saving" two hours of spare time every day. I fully understand that not every job can be done remotely and that this isn't possible to achieve for everyone yadda yadda yadda but there's plenty of people like me. Being able to get to a job that isn't immediately in the vicinity of where you live and being able to use the time spent travelling to and from work to work is a colossal benefit both to individuals and to society, and helps making life in rural areas remain viable.

[Haighus]

Definitely.

Can also be used for leisure time/some life admin if your work cannot be done remotely.

By way of example, I am currently typing this sitting on a tram, which I obviously wouldn't be able to do if I was negotiating inner-city traffic in my car.

[maddocgrotsnik]

The U.K. of course has particularly shitty road networks because we used to have more ubiquitous, reliable and importantly, cheaper public transport.

To get to my office for instance, I have to contend with the Blackwall Tunnel. Northbound was dug and opened in 1897. And them fuckers did not dig it straight. At all. Nor did or could they have had anything like modern motoring in mind. The now southbound tunnel was completed in 1967. That one is much straighter, and of course suited to modern day HGVs. Why the original was left as-is I’ll never know, but it’s been decades since it could be described as anything like Fit For Purpose. Indeed, the approach northbound filters multiple lanes of traffic into just two. Which is of course a bottleneck. HGVs, due to height restrictions, can only travel in the left hand lane.

It’s also why I set off so early in office days. If I can get to it by around 6am? It’s not too bad, most of the time, and would be considerably better if folk learned just baring your way into another lane fucks up the queue.

For those not familiar, it’s also Pretty Much Your Only Choice. Westward your next nearest crossing is Tower Bridge in central London, or the Dartford Tunnel in…erm…Dartford. A new crossing us underway (Silvertown if memory serves), but man. It’s 20 years too late.

[Haighus]

May 29, 2023 20:52:39 GMT -5 maddocgrotsnik said:

The U.K. of course has particularly shitty road networks because we used to have more ubiquitous, reliable and importantly, cheaper public transport.

To get to my office for instance, I have to contend with the Blackwall Tunnel. Northbound was dug and opened in 1897. And them fuckers did not dig it straight. At all. Nor did or could they have had anything like modern motoring in mind. The now southbound tunnel was completed in 1967. That one is much straighter, and of course suited to modern day HGVs. Why the original was left as-is I’ll never know, but it’s been decades since it could be described as anything like Fit For Purpose. Indeed, the approach northbound filters multiple lanes of traffic into just two. Which is of course a bottleneck. HGVs, due to height restrictions, can only travel in the left hand lane.

I am not convinced the UK has an unusually crap road network, but due to population density and travel policy it is very congested. There are also a lot of historical hang-overs from times before cars where roads and urban areas had to be walkable.

The tunnel was probably built wonky because that was the only way they could do it with the technology of the time. There were probably pockets of material that were too hazardous or difficult to bore through, so they went round them. There is a great example from construction of one of the tunnels in New York where a worker digging at the tunnel head hit a gravel patch and was ejected to the surface of the river! This particular individual somehow survived but usually such incidents were fatal (the tunnels were pressurised and people would get decompression sickness as well as physical injuries or drowning/suffocating).

Retroactively straightening a tunnel in such a complex environment is almost certainly more expensive than just building a new tunnel. I am not surprised they left it alone.

It’s also why I set off so early in office days. If I can get to it by around 6am? It’s not too bad, most of the time, and would be considerably better if folk learned just baring your way into another lane fucks up the queue.

For those not familiar, it’s also Pretty Much Your Only Choice. Westward your next nearest crossing is Tower Bridge in central London, or the Dartford Tunnel in…erm…Dartford. A new crossing us underway (Silvertown if memory serves), but man. It’s 20 years too late.

From what I understand of induced demand, the new capacity will improve conjestion for maybe a handful of years before it becomes as bad as before, if it doesn't just immediately shift the congestion onto the next choke point.

Rather than building new car infrastructure, we should be encouraging modal shift to more efficient and green alternatives (particularly things involving steel wheels on steel rails or pedal bikes). For example, make the train significantly cheaper and from what you have told us you wouldn't need to drive at all!

[herzlos]

Yeah there's this phenomenon where traffic will expand to fill any road capacity. You add another lane at huge expense and because it suddenly becomes quicker people move to that route until it's just as congested as it ever was. You can, counterintuitively, speed up a lot of journeys by removing traffic capacity.

Lots of the UK road network predate cars to some extent, particularly around older towns. The solution of course, is to try and change things such that cars aren't needed in those towns and can bypass those towns. Or you can flatten everything and start again but then you'll almost certainly end up with a car-centric concrete nightmare.

If I was going to do a drastic overhaul I'd put huge park and ride car parks outside each big city on each arterial road in, and make the city centre itself traffic free (with exceptions for taxis, deliveries and busses), and back that up with near constant bus/tram/subway/train services between the car parks and key points in the city.


I've honestly no idea why the train is (a) so expensive and (b) so inconvenient unless you're going to/from a rail hub. We've lost a lot of old rail network, likely more than we've added, and it just doesn't run often enough to make it easy to get from one satellite station to another, since you potentially have 1 train an hour and a narrow transfer window which is easy to miss.

Japan on the other hand, has such a vast, punctual and regular train network that there's no concern with hopping on 6 trains to get from A to B, because you know it'll get to each intermediate point exactly on time and that the next train will turn up exactly on time. Here you'd be lucky to make it to the 3rd train.

[Haighus]

Trains are, in part, so expensive because the market will support it. They are essentially running full the majority of the time despite the high prices, so the franchises try to squeeze out as much profit as they can (and are still making losses in many cases). The franchises have no incentive to invest in infrastructure to improve the service when they get better value for money on crammed expensive trains, and slow returns on investment for infrastructure spending.

Trains should be in public ownership and subsided as a public good, with an overarching network plan aimed at modal shift from planes and cars.

Also, I am not sure about allowing taxis into town centres. Good, accessible public transit should make them unnecessary. I certainly disagree with taxis in bus lanes, because they have all of the inbuilt inefficiences of other cars and just clog up the lanes.

[herzlos]

Absolutely agreed on the trains. Scotland nationalized it's railways last year, after them being owned by Abellio (a Dutch transport company) which meant in effect we were subsidizing the Dutch service.
It's been too early to tell how well it's going, since the pandemic and all, but even Abellio were a vast improvement over the previous owner.


On the taxi front I don't quite agree - I'd love for them to be made unecessary, but they are great for accessibility reasons, people who are carrying too much stuff to get a bus, and so on. They also aren't as bad as cars; yes they use the road network but they won't then take up 12m^2 of parking space for hours until needed again.

I'd rather see city full of taxis than private cars. Assuming of course they were a bit less arrogant and terrifying from a pedestrian/cyclist POV.

[maddocgrotsnik]

It’s the sheer expense of the train that kills it for me. £82 return, because of how early I need to set off to be at work on time. That’s….that’s not sustainable.

And like where I used to live? Privatisation Doesn’t Bring In Competition When A Single Operator Runs A Track. All you’ve done there is give them a monopoly. Worse, one subsidised by the tax payer in the first place. And so we get “we think of a number” pricing, because what other alternative is there?

[herzlos]

£82 return is bonkers. You can fly to Europe for that - Here's a student that found it nearly 20% cheaper to fly from Sheffield to Essex via Berlin, than to catch the train - www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/teenager-flies-from-sheffield-to-essex-via-berlin-because-it-is-cheaper-than-getting-the-train-a6837836.html

I remember years ago, when I was driving a sporty car that did 15mpg, and it cost slightly less for me to drive to work as it would to take the train on a day return.
Moving to a more sensible car that did 35-40mpg and it was still cheaper driving than using an annual rail ticket (costing something like £2500, which is a huge investment up front).

That was for a single adult, the train just couldn't compete if I brought a passenger.

There's no way, if we actually care about being green, that the train should be the expensive option. But with the current private setup there's no incentive to make trains any good, which is why we're falling so far behind the rest of the civilized world (which I'd argue doesn't include the USA anymore).

[Haighus]

May 30, 2023 4:55:20 GMT -5 herzlos said:

Absolutely agreed on the trains. Scotland nationalized it's railways last year, after them being owned by Abellio (a Dutch transport company) which meant in effect we were subsidizing the Dutch service.
It's been too early to tell how well it's going, since the pandemic and all, but even Abellio were a vast improvement over the previous owner.


On the taxi front I don't quite agree - I'd love for them to be made unecessary, but they are great for accessibility reasons, people who are carrying too much stuff to get a bus, and so on. They also aren't as bad as cars; yes they use the road network but they won't then take up 12m^2 of parking space for hours until needed again.

I'd rather see city full of taxis than private cars. Assuming of course they were a bit less arrogant and terrifying from a pedestrian/cyclist POV.

Sort of? Taxis still need to park somewhere and they are mostly going to be utilised at peak times (rush hour and evenings). There will be some efficiency gains due to utilisation during the day by people not at work, but a lot of taxis will still sit in taxi ranks and car parks.

I was more referring to affects on congestion and environmental efficiency though. I am undecided about outright excluding from city centres, but definitely should be excluded from dedicated bus lanes as they just worsen traffic for the buses.

I think there is a place for inner-city taxis for accessibility at the present quality of public transit, but correctly-designed public transit has superb potential for people with disabilities and good service levels reduce crowding and make it easier to transport luggage. There are folks who will always struggle with public transit due to a low tolerance of crowded spaces (such as people who experience sensory overload easily), and I think alternative options should be available for them.

[herzlos]

I don't disagree that taxis aren't a great solution, but I'm not sure I can think of anything better. I'm not sure automated taxis would help much either because they'll still be causing congestion in the same ways.

I'm undecided on them using bus lanes - here at least the bus lanes are largely unused by busses, and I feel that they should get some priority in that they are potentially keeping a car out of the city*, but in the same vane they are still causing congestion and aren't great for bicycles who also use the bus lanes. We seem to be addressing that in Edinburgh at least by removing a lot of bus lanes and putting in completely separate cycle lanes.


*If you can get across the city just as quickly in a car as a taxi, then you're more likely to stick with the car and ideally if we can get rid of private cars entirely we can get rid of virtually all of the space wasted for car parking in cities, replacing it with greenery, cafes, etc. A quick look at street view or Google maps just highlights how much space we dedicate to cars that aren't in use.

[Haighus]

May 30, 2023 15:56:23 GMT -5 herzlos said:

I don't disagree that taxis aren't a great solution, but I'm not sure I can think of anything better. I'm not sure automated taxis would help much either because they'll still be causing congestion in the same ways.

I'm undecided on them using bus lanes - here at least the bus lanes are largely unused by busses, and I feel that they should get some priority in that they are potentially keeping a car out of the city*, but in the same vane they are still causing congestion and aren't great for bicycles who also use the bus lanes. We seem to be addressing that in Edinburgh at least by removing a lot of bus lanes and putting in completely separate cycle lanes.


*If you can get across the city just as quickly in a car as a taxi, then you're more likely to stick with the car and ideally if we can get rid of private cars entirely we can get rid of virtually all of the space wasted for car parking in cities, replacing it with greenery, cafes, etc. A quick look at street view or Google maps just highlights how much space we dedicate to cars that aren't in use.

That's fair.

Ideally, bus lanes have a high frequency of buses, which then becomes an issue with mixed use. Separate cycle lanes is also a good idea (not just painted bicycle gutters...).