To think we could close some roads for one hour a week?

Cars do take precedence though. Loads more of them. Drivers pay more tax. The economy would suffer. We would be sitting in traffic jams away from the closed roads. Poor people suffer from this as they live on the roads left open. It’s not fair and wrong.

If you don’t drive, move where you need to be to access what you want. Or just drive! We have a £8 million cycleway near where DM lived. Has hardly anyone uses it. Lycra clad types find it too slow and too safe. Hardly ever see families on it. The minority seem to shout the loudest but then don’t use what’s provided. I see exactly the same where I live. Cycle paths not used. So no, you don’t get closed roads as well to suit your timings.

Because for young children, this involves the parent getting off their backside and taking children there actually parenting rather than just shoving them out front door!

I was a small child in the 70s, when all the cars went to work with all the dads and our cul-de-sac was a brilliant place to play out, with ride our bikes around the cul-de-sac, and do the rounds of all the houses for morning tea🤣. All the Mum's wise up and had a system for making sure we didn't end up with 12 biscuits and 12 cups of Ribena!!

Great times but life has moved on and closing roads so children can play seems utterly mad, people need to be able to get to their homes and out and about.

Plus, I think it's dangerous to teach children, especially young ones that sometimes it's okay to ride on the road and sometimes it's not. It's far safer these days to maintain that roads are for cars!! & for crossing safely, not playing on.

Just to say School Streetd is not without its problems, for example all the parent parking issues just get moved elsewhere (I.e just outside the school street zone).

I work in the road safety sector fir a London council. There has been an increase of School Streets where roads close to (most) vehicles outside schools at school pick up/drop off times. Seems to be working well and Tfl are continuing to fund and expand this.

We have also had Play Streets where a road has closed for a day to allow children to play in the street. I personally don't agree with this....it gives mixed messages. Children should never feel a road is a safe place to play.

I'm sure those living on the diversion routes would welcome your idea...all that extra traffic clogging up their streets.

I think it's a great idea. I'd be all for it.

I only drive out of necessity. I don't enjoy it and would be much happier if I never had to get behind the wheel again.

But I need my car to get to work and earn money - as does DH.

The issue in this country is not that people want to use cars over everything else, though, it is that infrastructure for anything else is so abysmal that driving is often the only option. Driving is expensive. I'd prefer not to have a car; I didn't when I lived in a major city in the UK with halfway decent public transport (and by "decent" I mean normal service every 15min, but could be once every 2 hours if there was a snowflake or two on the ground).

Public transport in the large Commuter town I live in now is practically non-existent. Once an hour in some places, not at all late evenings during the week or not at all mornings and evenings on Sundays. And of course, none are coordinated. It takes me 10 minutes to drive to work. It would take me 2 hours to walk - the same time that it would take me to go by bus. My bicycle lasted 4 rides to work before it had a flat tyre from all the rubbish and glass on the ground and the poorly maintained roads, and each time I went out to use it for work, it was dangerous, to say the least, due to either absent cycle paths or the fact that roads are not built wide enough to allow for safe cycling alongside communter traffic. So now I drive where walking is not feasible. And I'm by far not the only one.

Three miles is within both walking and cycling distance. Today we cycled to a place just over five miles away with our nine and three year old, they played in the park etc then we cycled home.

Sick of watching the Council spend money here on cycle paths, and little to nobody on any of them, ever, other than the coastal routes.

Ok idea, but I prefer the idea that we teach kids to cycle safely on roads, how else are they going to learn? Unfortunately I'm not confident enough in the driving near me that I've been willing to do that yet.

Unfortunately there are too many people who believe that the car should take precedence over anything else, and how dare you in any way restrict their ability to use one. See all the threads about cyclists, banning only older drivers as they are within speed limits, the one a couple of years ago about tractors.

Best example is the response to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. That was used by the current Mayor of Tower Hamlets (the one previously banned for corrupt electoral practices).

You would need to have very large barriers and very strict enforcement, I'd prefer a day not just one hour if it was to be done.

So what do people do who need to drive during that time? To get to work for example?

AI just guesses the next word. It's an LLM. It often makes things up.

This isn't entirely wrong for the query you've put in; to be fair, but it has nothing to do with closing roads... it just means you can't be playing music loudly; or doing loud DIY, etc. Roads are open and usable as normal.

It would probably cost more than you'd think - signage, risk assessments, enforcement... Then diversions for traffic, and maintaining access for emergency vehicles. If a fire engine needs to speed down, how do they clear it from slow children etc fast enough?

I'd petition for cycle lanes locally; and to be honest, probably consider moving house if we were 3 miles from our nearest park!

That is not what "Ruhezeit" means, though - the extract you are showing refers to times when people need to be quiet - no loud music, no outdoor parties expect for venues, no DIY, pressure washing or anything else that is noisy. Nothing to do with closing roads.

If the country wants more people to cycle - rather than closing roads off and making things inconvenient for drivers - we need to invest more in cycle paths, not the poor excuses for one that randomly disappear after a few yards, that suddenly change lanes (honestly, is it just my town or everywhere that the footpath and cycle path just randomly switch over?), are overgrown because councils don't cut hedges, are poorly maintained or, in most cases, simply absent.

Yes you are mad. Roads are there for everyone to use. If they close them so people can cycle, then they need to do an hour where there are no cycles!

I can’t believe you don’t have cycle lanes everywhere has them. There must be fields or parks you can use, pavements for the kids

Google…

Growing up, our street did unofficial street closures so we could all play: neighbours all agreed and a few would park their cars on either end of the crescent to block it off. One weekend a month. It was great!

Yanbu.

I think there’s a few countries that have ‘quiet time’ too on a Sunday I think.

I think it’s a nice idea. Say 10-12 every Sunday morning, no lawn mowing, no driving.

it would be a really interesting social experiment

Don’t be ridiculous.

I suggest you use those little lanes specifically designed for the purposes you’re after - cycle paths.