town is gridlocked between 330 and 630 every weekday

[badtraffic]

The answer is to build more homes.

I could cry.

Jaqueshammer, I'm sorry but I completely disagree, you can choose your nearest school by putting it top of your list. I had a large choice of schools and chose my local primary - walking distance

Did you actually read what I said? I put my 3 local schools in order on the form with the closest (less than half a mile) first. We got NONE of them.

Fewer people should drive short distances but people seem to think it's their right to drive and refuse to think of alternatives.

Which is indeed part of the problem. The neighbour opposite us is a right nightmare. She's in and out several times per day, driving to local shops, dropping dog off with doggy-sitting friend, taxi-ing her kids around etc. She can't go far because she's there and back within 5 minutes usually. She's just completely disorganised - one trip for every little thing, never even thinks to do two things at once! Sometimes, she's gone down to the local shop 3 or 4 times within an hour - go out/come back with a loaf, then goes out/comes back with some milk, and so it goes on! Stupid thing is that the local convenience store is literally just 2 minutes away through a footpath - she'd actually be quicker to walk it, but she never does.

Sounds like us but our problem are the local motorways screwing over local traffic and the fact that the local councils are prats that keep wanting to 'improve them'.

karriekreamer that kind of person makes me want petrol prices to quadruple. It's so irresponsible.

Jacques too right! We also had three primary schools that we could have walked to, one a bit of a stretch but doable. We didn’t get any of them. We got a school we had no choice but to drive to.
I live semi rurally and a couple of miles away farm land has been sold off and 800 homes built. As they were originally in the middle of fields they’re nowhere near a bus route and there are no plans from the local bus provider to offer one. There’s also no plans for a new primary school, secondary school or GP surgery even though the closest of all of those services are massively oversubscribed. And now there’s another application for 1500 homes, again on previous farmed land about two miles in the other direction.

ivykaty44 I need my car to take DM to her clinic appointments, to take shopping back home when I've bought it, to move things around for work. Before I got my car I was using taxis for that which create even more traffic since the taxi must drive to my pick-up point.

Owning an ebike or a motor scooter as well would be an additional cost to me, put me at greater risk of injury, and give me virtually no benefit.

ArcheryAnnie problem is the people who drive short distances are the least affected by fuel costs. It's the motorway commuters and especially the trucks and vans that get stung the most.

Haha I knew it was Warrington the town centre island and winwick road are a nightmare!!!

Wokingham?

Jaqueshammer - my apologies - I did indeed not read your post correctly! And that sucks, the system is to blame! I guess I am going from my own experience in my area where so many people have willingly chosen to go to schools far away, requiring a car journey. Drives me mad.

No worries @lethaldrizzle thanks for apologising. And yes, the situation is ridiculous. We're about to go through it again for secondary

It's only going to get much worse though isn't it? Too many people in a small country.

I’m so glad everyone worries about this before they have children and add to the population.
Oh wait, we can just blame the immigrants instead.

We have insufficient school places at every level, not enough sewage drainage, brownouts and parking issues. Yet the council are desperate to get more houses built without thinking how these additional people are going to live here. Roads are few and very full too!

You must live in the same town as me OP. I live right next to where they want to build the new houses. The land has recently been taken out of the green belt and there are no plans for the infrastructure.

Half of the Council are currently suspended! Our MP has agreed that the amount of development proposed in the area is unacceptable as there are plenty of more suitable sites in other parts of the county. There are 580 objections to this development to date.

The town is completely gridlocked as every route has road works - a new bypass to the airport and replacement of electric cables. All at the same time! An ambulance couldn’t get through the other day.

It seems there's a choice here, between saying "isn't it all terrible and going to get worse" and actually campaigning for change - putting pressure to restore proper bus services and expand them, getting the regulations changed so that infrastructure has to be included in every new development, big restrictions if necessary on people driving to gridlocked areas (eg by making parking really expensive) and so on.

Otherwise the only change that's going to happen is that the problem gets worse.

I’m so glad everyone worries about this before they have children and add to the population.
Oh wait, we can just blame the immigrants instead

I have no issue with immigrants at all. But what you have said is nonsense. Children in this country replace the population, not increase it. The birth rate is only 1.8 per female so the population would be decreasing if based on births alone.

Planners and council dont care they aim to make money. Lots of backhanded deals with local council going on for contracts, they dont give a toss about peoples need for homes.

Get public transport argument annoys me too. It takes me 15mins to drive to work. Its not far distance but another county so bus is nearly £45 week and over hour journey with stops. Petrol less than half that. Impossible to get kids to school and into work by 8.30 without car and to bring home folders and marking on public transport. Plus last time I got on a bus a young girl speaking arabic very quietly on her phone was kicked off after someone complained and the whole bus clapped. She literally was speaking as loud if not quieter than others some on phones others to each other but obviously as it was islamic was some sort of terrorist plan such as what shall we have for tea tonight. I got off and told the driver he was a racist cunt and vowed never to use the stinking service again. That was 6 years ago.

The answer IS to build more homes.

Public transport then becomes more viable and efficient and people start to be able to leave their cars behind.

Left London to small town in Home Counties.... nightmare traffic every where all day... and it’s surrounded by fields no where to go, it’s not even fun or interesting 😂😂

Children in this country replace the population, not increase it.

So why does the population of the country keep going up? It’s not all immigrants.

Immigration levels are high and people are living longer too I suppose.

I’ve just looked it up.
1976 and 1977 are the only years where deaths are greater than births in the last century

In 2014, 700,000 babies were born and 500,000 people died.

The answer IS to build more homes.

The answer is to build proper infrastructure so that people actually have an option to not use their cars because the local facilities are closer and public transport is a viable option.

At the moment too many new properties are being made without though about how people are actually going to live there.

Just because an old office block has become 200 flats doesn't mean that anyone living there has a car, has kids, gets ill, needs to go to work or needs to eat right?

The number of single people or couples living in their own house, has soared over the years. It used to be common in the 50s and 60s for working class young people and couples to live in their parents home until they had kids. Just look up the stats. Houses used to have many more people living in them than is average now. So we need more houses and flats to house the same number of people.

Very true Brasty. A generation or two ago you lived with your parents until you got married. We now have many more people living alone but needing extras bedrooms for the children at weekends etc.

Central government tells the councils how many houses have to be built (if insufficient numbers are in Local Plan it gets sent back). Central government leaves the issues of roads and other services to councils. Council budgets are around 40-60% of what they were 5 years ago and the majority of the remaining is in 'protected' budgets and not available for locally decided priorities. Public transport used to be heavily subsidised but isn't any more. I think we are in a sticky mess and it will require a confident, focussed and well supported government to sort it and we ain't got that.