Neil Harding is discussing Boris Johnson’s comments on cycling. Some of the comments make interesting reading. This, in particular from STAG:
Cars are a blight. It will require legislation to make them go away. But such legislation will be VERY unpopular.
That’s putting it mildly, to say the least. Any government bringing in such legislation would be buying themselves a one way ticket to the opposition benches – and quite rightly, too.
What you HAVE to do is to make it better, sexier, easier, a lot cheaper to take Public Transport than it is now. One place in Norway actually made P.T. free….another funded it from property tax…EVERY taxpayer gets a bus pass every month. This made the bus passes very affordable. So you see…there ARE ways.
Yeah, right… Despite knowing full well that cars are polluting our atmosphere, we still use them and still buy new ones. Legislation won’t change that, because at the bottom of it is the human condition.
Let’s start with buses. Not least because they are the spawn of the devil and I detest them absolutely and utterly – particularly those godawful bendy things. They are big, noisy, smelly polluting monsters that clog up the roads. They are a part of the problem, not the solution. Frankly, you could give me a pile of gold plated bus passes for my council tax payments, and nothing would persuade me to use one – ever. The theory is that one bus will carry several car loads of people, thereby reducing the amount of traffic on the roads. The problem is that to adequately cope, you will still need lots of buses clogging up the roads. On the rare occasions that I wish to travel the 5 miles or so into town, I want to get it over with as efficiently as possible; get in there, get on with it and get out as soon as I can. This does not mean sitting in a polluting, noisy, drafty interminably slow bus dragging about the outskirts of the city on a convoluted route taking half a day to do it. Also, I don’t wish to be bound by the bus company’s timetable. So, I use my motorcycle, taking a direct route and filter past any traffic queues that I encounter. Private transport versus public transport? No contest, I’m afraid. And a bus will never be as sexy as a motorcycle, no matter how hard you might wish it otherwise.
Bristol was promised a light rail system. And we are still waiting. Putting aside the issues about how electricity is generated, the light rail system has a number of advantages over a bus. Firstly, they don’t use the roads, secondly, they don’t belch out fumes and thirdly, their routes tend to be more direct. The plan was to go straight down Filton Bank – you don’t get much more direct than that. Squabbles over funding appear to have killed it, unfortunately.
Legislation will never make public transport sexy – ever (unless you are a train spotter, I guess). Now, while I will happily use the train for intercity travel for work (and would be prepared to take a train into town), I also have 20 free tickets per annum as a consequence of my erstwhile BR employment. And how many of these do I use? A couple at the most – the others go to waste. This is because, having endured public transport for work, the last thing I want to do is endure it in my leisure time.
It isn’t just that a relatively small problem can completely clog the system, causing missed connections and hours waiting for trains that don’t arrive. It’s the “public†bit. I, like many, I suspect, really do not want to travel in close proximity to other people – or, at least, strangers. Not being gregarious, I’m of the Jean Paul Sartre mindset:
Hell is other people.
And I detest being in the company of crowds of them for any length of time. I could regale you with stories of the pig ignorant and boorish behaviour I’ve encountered during rail journeys, but I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say that I like my space (lots of it).
The car is an extension of personal space. In it, people can smoke if they wish, play whatever music they wish, and, importantly, go where they want to their own personal timetable. Legislating against this is to legislate against one of the most basic of our human desires; that of personal freedom.
For some – and I suspect from his writing, Neil is one of them, the bicycle is an effective means of personal transport. Mrs Longrider and I have bikes but we don’t use them for serious transport. We value our lives too much to ride on the city streets. The cycle path will get us into town, but once there, playing tag with the traffic is enough to put us off. More separated cycle ways are a good thing and Sustrans are doing a fine job. But, before we get too carried away, cycles are useful if you are relatively fit and don’t need to carry too much. Cycling to work if there is a means of freshening up once you get there is fine, otherwise you have to spend the day congealing in your own sweat (ugh). Last year I saw a piece on the local news about businesses wanting to encourage employees to cycle to work rather than use cars. One thing those businesses could do, is to provide incentives that include shower facilities along with the secure cycle shed. If I worked in Bristol and such facilities were available, then, yes, I’d use a cycle – otherwise, it’s the motorcycle.
I wonder why people cannot understand that private transport is simply better than public, and can be shown so numerically. Metcalf’s Law states that the usefulness of a network is equal to the square of the number of nodes. In the case of a transport network a node is where you can get on or off, for trains that is one per town, for busses one every few streets, but for cars it is just about every single house plus car parks and lay-bys, for bikes it is even more. Private transport starts off with much higher numbers, and then when you square them and the utility gap between public and private becomes insurmountable.
To make people choose public transport over private the government can either; make public more useful than private, which is technically unfeasible, or make it so cheap that the cost difference out weights how less useful it is, which is electoral suicide.
So instead of attempting the impossible in making public transport attractive they should try to mitigate the problems with private transport instead. Try to get more people on pedal and motorbikes. Try to reduce the incentives to buy Chelsea Tractors and carcinogen spewing diesels. Try to increase the incentives to buy hybrids etc.
I am quite a fan of trams having seen how well they work in many European cities. I’m also quite a fan of European tram fares ! Still I’m due for a FREE bus pass next month. 🙂
I hate the bendy-buses too. What always gets to me is how few people actually car share, yeah I know it goes back to the invasion of personal space issue but when I see queues of cars heading to and from work and just one person in each, you can’t help wondering what adverse effect this is having on both resources and the environment.
As I pointed out, you couldn’t make me use a bus even if the tickets were given away and I don’t use the free rail tickets I do get.
Longrider: “For some – and I suspect from his writing, Neil is one of them, the bicycle is an effective means of personal transport”
You got me bang to rights there. How I wish for proper separate cycle lanes near every road. I mean a bit of foresight in the past, it would have cost peanuts wouldn’t it?
You hit the nail on the head;
“Mrs Longrider and I have bikes but we don’t use them for serious transport. We value our lives too much to ride on the city streets. The cycle path will get us into town, but once there, playing tag with the traffic is enough to put us off.”
Basically if it wasn’t for all the cars etc. cycling would be (indeed used to be) much more attractive. Brighton has more cycle lanes than many places but it is still woeful, I plan my routes carefully and take care but some roads are just impossible, basically there is no room for cycles on some roads, it’s no wonder people give up on it.
“before we get too carried away, cycles are useful if you are relatively fit and don’t need to carry too much. Cycling to work if there is a means of freshening up once you get there is fine, otherwise you have to spend the day congealing in your own sweat”
It’s surprising how much you can carry. I used to cycle 16 mile round trip to work every day when I lived in Preston, Lancs, and when you get quite fit, you don’t necessarily get sweaty (especially on cold mornings at 5am). The big problem is the rain. The only reason I could tolerate the journey was that most of it was a low gradient cycle path (on a disused tram line) that ran through a park and beautiful countryside. With no cars the journey was an absolute delight. It took me less than 30 mins there and about 20 mins coming back (Faster than the car journey)! I know not everyone could do this, but a huge number could and imagine the benefits to the nation’s health and the reduction in pollution and congestion on the roads. I know, I’m a dreamer.
I think you are also far too hard on buses. If you live in London or indeed Brighton, it is much faster and easier to get around by bus than car. The bendy buses are a hazard to cycles (but no worse than lorries), but they were introduced for a very good reason, they carry many more passengers. On busy London routes, it would be almost impossible to get off without bendy buses. It used to cause major delays. They are not perfect and double deckers are best for most routes.
The problem for PT is we have been building for the car in so many parts of the country and putting housing, retail and cinema out of town, it is a nightmare for those reliant on PT. For instance my parents can’t be bothered to go to the cinema anymore because it involves 2 buses and a 20 min walk. This is not PT’s fault, it is because the cinema used o be in town but is now in some remote retail park ,inaccessible to PT.