town is gridlocked between 330 and 630 every weekday

[badtraffic]

The answer is to build more homes.

I could cry.

Even London though is impossible. I have just driven back from a hospital (London suburb) into London where I live. So slow! Couldn't park at hospital at all. Finally found a side street having dropped elderly mother at hospital, (heart in mouth that she would still be there when I got back to her).

Those mentioning school holidays - it isn't just parents driving kids to school and it isn't just private schools (!) it is that families tend to take their two weeks holiday during the school summer break so Mum and Dad are not driving to work in August.

And I am not criticising single people or couples who live in their own house with extra bedrooms. It is fine. Just meant the changes in how we live does have an impact on housing stock.

Better contraception and government forced to inform folk exactly what it is like to have offspring and the cost to reduce number of children needing less schools is the answer. The human being is the only creature that has sex other than to procreate. Maybe that's where evolution has gone wrong!

Do people think a rush hour tax would help? That would weed out some of the unnecessary journeys maybe. Say £20 per journey?

Do people think a rush hour tax would help? That would weed out some of the unnecessary journeys maybe. Say £20 per journey?

Would also encourage people to spread their journeys

I hate it when drivers excuses of not using public transport are “the weather is bad” or “it takes too long”.

This irritates me as I am not allowed to drive due to epilepsy and have to use public transport to work and basically anywhere I need to go and I manage so I don’t understand why more people can’t use public transport

karriecreamer the whole point of the electric bike is you can cycle on the flat and it assists you up the steep hills so that if you don’t live in a flat area then you can still get up the hills

So not sure of your thinking?

Agreed, Srush. The other thing about only using public transport and your legs is that you base your choices on that. My three boys do very little that isn't local. We are lucky to have great public transport (SE London) though.

Do people think a rush hour tax would help?

No, it will just price the low paid out of work.

Better contraception and government forced to inform folk exactly what it is like to have offspring

It would be much better making a more equal (between the sexes) society and to teach people how to behave around each other. If we could make couples more likely not to break up (because there was a more equal spilt of housework, people knew that abusing each other was unacceptable and how to get along), then we wouldn't need to build more homes.

All you people saying here you can't possibly use public transport and HAVE to drive because there isn't enough buses/the buses don't go where you want/it's too expensive - what have you done to change that? Made a phone call? Talked to all the local candidates about transport come election time? Written an email to the local paper? Anything at all, even something really small?

Change doesn't happen unless you make it happen.

& if you are chronically ill an electric bike gives you freedom a car doesn't

Do you live in Leeds by any chance?x

It has been said up thread a couple of times but there are a lot of us without a usable public service option. My 4 mile journey to work (for example) takes two buses from different companies and upwards of an hour as they don't connect efficiently. Plus I have to buy two all day tickets (one for each company). As for other things like going to the shops, getting to appointments, seeing a friend of an evening, it's just not going to happen on the bus.

I live in a pretty little town, the old houses in the middle are almost all holiday/second homes. We desperately need new builds to retain a community and resources like shops, library and so on. There is one road going through and the traffic is nasty if you are in a car or on a pavement but young people round here need houses and we need the young people.

ArcheryAnnie - yes, all of that. Plus Transition Town projects and more. The services have all reduced and our council was recently elected on a promise to improve roads and within 3 weeks had withdrawn funding for 4 community bus schemes.

I get that it's frustrating, time consuming, and sometimes feels pointless, woollyminded, but very few pressure groups and campaigns get instant results.

If you look at the Netherlands, people seem to think it was always a cyclists' paradise, but it wasn't. It took effort and time for a sea change to happen, and look at it now.

But we are building homes.

Everywhere you look there are blocks of flats appearing overnight.

It's not sustainable. We need supposing infrastructure and we need green spaces.

We are losing trees and gardens and it's everything that doesn't move is fucking built on. We are suffering with air pollution because of the traffic and that comes with the increase of people and the building vehicles.
Some days you just cannot breathe.

Trains and tubes are more crowded than ever.

It's not working.

That’s strange I travel to work on too buses different companies too but cheaper than owning a car and can’t do anything about it. Public transport isn’t too bad people have just got too used to using a car n don’t wanna “slum” it by using the bus. All this it takes over an hour etc are just trying to justify it when deep down you just don’t wanna get ur hair wet, run for the bus or sit next to a stranger. Cars used to be luxuries

ArcheryAnnie - I'm not daft! I've been at this for over 20 years! These are not new ideas but in a fragmented arrangement like we have now my point is exactly yours, it's complex and very difficult.

Srush - I would not presume to claim that I would be slumming to use the public transport that's quite a rude thing to suggest. Or it's anything to do with my hair, in fact if you saw the state of my hair you wouldn't presume such a thing!

My nephew had a job around 13 miles from his home. Over 2 hours each way by public transport, including walking to the station, getting 2 trains then a bus, then walking at the other end. Cost him a small fortune as well.

Driving would have taken 20 minutes, or around 35 in the rush hour because the traffic was bad, with free parking on the big business park (if he had had a car of course).

Adding an extra 3 hours a day on top of a 10-12 hour shift seems to be a reasonable justification for driving!

Allergictoironing Yes that seems justified but most people use cars to cut 10-20 mins of their journey and this is not. The amount of people who take children to school in cars who live within walking distance and aren’t on way to work etc annoys me too.

woollyminded Wasn’t talking about you personally in that paragraph I was talking about people in general. Funny you thought I was though 😂

Cars were only luxuries when people used to work local. I drive 25miles for work and DP is 20mile the other direction. Also a lot of people can't live where they work due to lack of housing pushing up house prices in some areas.

If I got public transport to work, my 1 hour commute would be 2 hours and I'd arrive for work half an hour before I needed to. Not sure how my children would get to the childcare either.

Gridlocked here too takes me hours to get anywhere and now they want to build ikea and 600 houses here were the road can't handle everyday rush hour traffic nevermind all this extra traffic for ikea!