Really shaken by drive across town

[Cooper77]

I had to drive across town today. This was at 2 o'clock, and it has taken me until now to recover. The traffic was awful – no roadworks, no accidents, just sheer volume. At every junction there were 20 or 30 cars bumper to bumper in front of me. And at the traffic lights people were getting stranded in the middle of the road, blocking people from the other direction, which led to bibbing and shouting. A round journey that should have taken me 40 minutes took me over two hours. It was just horrendous.

When I got home, my partner just grunted and said "hm, I meant to tell you – they're gonna build 800 new houses on the road near Sainsbury's". Brilliant, made me feel so much better🙄. I have sat in queues of traffic three miles long on that road. Assuming those 800 new houses each own a car, that's another 800 cars on top of the ones that already jam it up.

I genuinely fear for my kids. What kind of future do they have? Everyone goes on about affordable housing, but what about quality of life? What's the point of owning a rabbit hutch new build if you can barely breathe? There are just too many people squeezed onto this little island, it's as simple as that. And don't tell me the birth rate is dropping. People always say that. But they forget that it isn't dropping everywhere. In Africa, the birth rate is so high the African population is going to double. In 1900, there were a billion humans; today there are eight billion. It's f-ing insane. Also, people are living longer. And pretty soon there will be regenerative medicine, senolytic drugs, etc, extending average lifespans to 100 and beyond. In other words, people won't be dying and making room.

When we moved here, it was quiet and rural. Since then, the local woods have been hacked into to build a giant estate, and a second massive estate has been built at the other end of the village. Gangs of kids with little drug bags slung round their necks now pass our house to deal drugs with kids from the other estate. And then we have politicians gleefully telling us they plan to build, build, build. WHERE? No matter how many disgusting rabbit hutches they jam on top of one another it's never enough.

Sorry, needed to rant.

Rant away - I’m with you. Population increase plus appalling public transport in many areas = busy roads.

Then you get people musing about whether to have that 3rd or 4th or more child 🙄. Just don’t! Have two max or none <runs away before all the large family mothers come at me>

You are mixing up a lot of things

We need to reduce reliance on the car

That might be by embracing the concept of the 15 minute city, much more walking , cycling ( works elsewhere in Europe ) , free busses

The too many people thing is really more about our ability to feed a population especially in the face of climate change- which obviously isn't as bad if we cut cat use sooner

And the housing thing - well we could get rid of the need to build so much if we embrace much more WFH so we don't need so many houses around the work hot spots

And w need to use the stock we have better - we have as much housing stock per head of population as many other countries ( U S and Germany) but we have much higher homelessness - too many second homes and empty homes and holiday lets

And there you were adding to the traffic in your car.

It's because other families want a home and a car too.

Reliance on individual private cars is a major problem