To despair at our obession with cars

[SelkieQualia]

They are awful. Noisy. Polluting. 4 million people die every year from the effects of air pollution. Housing developments are built around them, which means that the most vulnerable people in our society - young people, the elderly - are made even more dependant on those who drive.
Why do we tolerate such terrible public transport and cycling infrastructure?

Love fall, you don't need to be 'young', to cycle

Annesbrokenstate, bikes are an excellent way to transport goods, with 'balancing bags' on them

User149, I lock my bike to lamp posts most of the time, has yet to be stolen, I wouldn't let lack of secure bike storage put me off cycling

Howlisthisright, get a family rail card, I travel by train with my kids all the time, has never cost that much!

Annesbrokenstate, I meant to write 'without' balancing bags on them, baskets, crates, cargo bikes, all excellent for shopping

@Satsumaeater

Cycling obviously isn't the answer. Our demographics are not the same as the countries where cycling is more popular

How are our demographics not the same as eg Denmark or the Netherlands? They are very similar. All we need is some decent investment.

Well actually the demographics are different from Netherlands you've got people up thread saying they don't allow out of town developments which means everything is in the town centers. That makes organising public transport so easy.

My own town has 3 separate retail parks with supermarkets in each of them. You can hardly buy an egg in the town center but there you go.

Yeah that was me. It is a choice to allow those out of town retail parks.

If councils genuinely want to fix this what they must do is focus all their planning on making their area more livable for people without a car. So that means not allowing any new out of town retail parks. No housing estates with poor facilities and 0 cycle routes. At the minimum.

This will come in very handy when petrol becomes prohibitively expensive.

@CuteOrangeElephant

Yeah that was me. It is a choice to allow those out of town retail parks.

If councils genuinely want to fix this what they must do is focus all their planning on making their area more livable for people without a car. So that means not allowing any new out of town retail parks. No housing estates with poor facilities and 0 cycle routes. At the minimum.

This will come in very handy when petrol becomes prohibitively expensive.

Given the perilous retail situation, I don't think there'll be many more out of town retail parks being built any time soon. The horse has bolted on that one.

Re housing estates, the councils are between a rock and a hard place. There's a desperate shortage of houses, so the council will be strongly criticised if they don't give PP for new estates, as that's what the people want. You can't make a developer build and staff a school or GP surgery. As in a case local to us, the developer put aside land on the estate for a primary school, GP surgery and a couple of shops, but no one was interested in running them, so that earmarked land remains unused and not built upon.

If the weather was better we'd cycle more as a nation I reckon. That's not an easy fix! I'm a cyclist, I have access to five figures worth of bikes with the right one to suit most terrains and conditions. I do commute to work by bike, but not full time and a lot more in the summer than the winter but the infrastructure is what puts me off. I'm quite happy on the road but not at rush hour as it just causes more rage than it needs be, regardless of what the highway code says etc. We have a whole network of cycle paths segregated from the road but they cross every bloody side road at junctions where shrubbery has been used to make visibility impossible and go up and down to/from almost blind underpasses, so you have to slow down all the time and continually come to almost a stop, often every 2-300 yards. It's like the person who designed them does not ride a bike, or only pootles around on them with tiny children doing maybe a mile or so on a Saturday afternoon. If someone with no other barriers to cycling to work (equipment, fitness, secure storage and showers at work) doesn't like using the infrastructure then who is going to take up cycling and think it's great? If that 3m with of tarmac was added to the road as an on road cycle lane i'd shave 10 minutes off my commute not having to constantly give way, but it would need to be the 3m wide that it is, not 3ft of paint.

My commute is 7 miles give or take
By Car: 10-15 minutes mainly via major A road dual carriageway
By Bike on the road: 23-25 minutes - town roads but the most annoyed motorist
By Bike on the cycle path: 33-35 minutes and the most sweat and frustration depending on how often you have to stop. As the middle option is risky when I get fed up of the cycle infrastructure which is often, I get back in the car.

Also if you need a car for certain things anyway, towing for example, or regularly transporting things not appreciated on public transport (a pair of full sized bikes just being one example), it's a sunk cost. Comparing taking the train to the cost of ownership of a car isn't really relevant. If you already own the car, public transport needs to compete with the cost and convenience of fuel, parking and time. I have to own and insure the car anyway, so i can only base the comparison on things specific to that journey.

Nothing wrong with new housing estates. But the ones that can't be navigated around without a car absolutely must be banned. And at the very least a cycle path from the new housing estate to the town centre so that residents don't have to have a car would be a good start.

There is absolutely no excuse for greenfield estates to still be designed that way.

@CuteOrangeElephant

Nothing wrong with new housing estates. But the ones that can't be navigated around without a car absolutely must be banned. And at the very least a cycle path from the new housing estate to the town centre so that residents don't have to have a car would be a good start.

There is absolutely no excuse for greenfield estates to still be designed that way.

And I'd also insist on bus stops and bus routes being re-routed to cover any new housing estates and out of town retail parks/industrial estates etc.

We had a new retail park with a huge Asda that took nearly 20 years to get included on a couple of bus routes. That's ridiculous. Even now, the bus routes covering it aren't particularly good, i.e. it's between two towns, but there are only direct buses from one town centre, not the other, so you have to go from town B to town A to change to the bus that takes you to the Asda!

Should be a condition of planning permission that the local bus companies have agreed to routes in/around the new estate before PP is granted.

@CuteOrangeElephant

Yeah that was me. It is a choice to allow those out of town retail parks.

If councils genuinely want to fix this what they must do is focus all their planning on making their area more livable for people without a car. So that means not allowing any new out of town retail parks. No housing estates with poor facilities and 0 cycle routes. At the minimum.

This will come in very handy when petrol becomes prohibitively expensive.

But councils don't have that power.

Around here as soon as they turn anything down, the developer appeals to the planning inspectorate and it is granted.

The system is a joke, unfit for purpose.

@CuteOrangeElephant

Nothing wrong with new housing estates. But the ones that can't be navigated around without a car absolutely must be banned. And at the very least a cycle path from the new housing estate to the town centre so that residents don't have to have a car would be a good start.

There is absolutely no excuse for greenfield estates to still be designed that way.

I have made these kinds of comments in actual submissions to our local planners.

The developers have an army of consultants - there's an entire industry built upon developers getting out of these kinds of requirements.

The system needs overhaul from central government - which it won't get because there are too many vested interests.

Councils policies are full of fine words about sustainable transport - all of which are circumvented by developers.

Developers don't do everything though do they? How many times have I seen major junctions and roads being overhauled with 0 thought being given to cyclists and pedestrians.

Yes, there was a planning application for a large housing estate in our village. Part of the application was showing access points onto the canal towpath for "accessible" routes into the village for the shops, school and GP surgery, and onto the nearest town. Several people wrote in objections based on the fact that the canal towpath was completely inaccessible for wheelchairs/prams etc as the "exit" points in the village were either steps or tiny gaps in walls, so whilst wheelchair and pram uses may be able to access the canal towpath from the estate, they wouldn't be able to leave it in the village. Objections completely ignored and PP granted. To add salt to the wounds, the access points from the estate to the canal weren't even accessible - they were both up a flight of several steps with no ramp!

That's so stupid and so easily fixed as well.

I used to live somewhere with a brilliant canal path but the Canal and River trust and the council didn't do enough to maintain it. It's barely accessible with a pram now and also not wide enough for both cyclists (on mountain bikes because ordinary bikes won't cut it) and pedestrians. It would have been a brilliant resource for traveling between villages for a relatively small investment.

@CuteOrangeElephant

Developers don't do everything though do they? How many times have I seen major junctions and roads being overhauled with 0 thought being given to cyclists and pedestrians.

This is true - but our Council would claim lack of funds. The only junction overhauls in this area were developer funded. They tend to have things like a 2 metre cycle lane that just peters out.

It's incredibly shortsighted by the council. Cycle infrastructure is a lot less costly to maintain.

And I'd also insist on bus stops and bus routes being re-routed to cover any new housing estates and out of town retail parks/industrial estates etc

That adds to the frustration of using buses having them diverted via different places. I used a bus at one point that took a diversion into a hospital drove round the carpark then back to the main road that added about 10 mins journey time.

@Dinoteeth

And I'd also insist on bus stops and bus routes being re-routed to cover any new housing estates and out of town retail parks/industrial estates etc

That adds to the frustration of using buses having them diverted via different places. I used a bus at one point that took a diversion into a hospital drove round the carpark then back to the main road that added about 10 mins journey time.

Indeed, it is a problem that needs to be solved, i.e. perhaps different routes, some more direct than others, etc.

The thing is, though, people can't say that others should use public transport, when a whopping huge housing estate has been built without any bus stops nor bus route.

Perhaps the answer is modern technology, i.e. apps etc so that if there was no one waiting at the bus stop in your hospital car park and no one on the bus had asked to stop there, then the bus could have just by-passed it instead of driving around it. (It must have been one hell of a sized car park though if it took 10 minutes to drive round it!).

@lampygirl

If the weather was better we'd cycle more as a nation I reckon. That's not an easy fix! I'm a cyclist, I have access to five figures worth of bikes with the right one to suit most terrains and conditions. I do commute to work by bike, but not full time and a lot more in the summer than the winter but the infrastructure is what puts me off. I'm quite happy on the road but not at rush hour as it just causes more rage than it needs be, regardless of what the highway code says etc. We have a whole network of cycle paths segregated from the road but they cross every bloody side road at junctions where shrubbery has been used to make visibility impossible and go up and down to/from almost blind underpasses, so you have to slow down all the time and continually come to almost a stop, often every 2-300 yards. It's like the person who designed them does not ride a bike, or only pootles around on them with tiny children doing maybe a mile or so on a Saturday afternoon. If someone with no other barriers to cycling to work (equipment, fitness, secure storage and showers at work) doesn't like using the infrastructure then who is going to take up cycling and think it's great? If that 3m with of tarmac was added to the road as an on road cycle lane i'd shave 10 minutes off my commute not having to constantly give way, but it would need to be the 3m wide that it is, not 3ft of paint.

My commute is 7 miles give or take
By Car: 10-15 minutes mainly via major A road dual carriageway
By Bike on the road: 23-25 minutes - town roads but the most annoyed motorist
By Bike on the cycle path: 33-35 minutes and the most sweat and frustration depending on how often you have to stop. As the middle option is risky when I get fed up of the cycle infrastructure which is often, I get back in the car.

Also if you need a car for certain things anyway, towing for example, or regularly transporting things not appreciated on public transport (a pair of full sized bikes just being one example), it's a sunk cost. Comparing taking the train to the cost of ownership of a car isn't really relevant. If you already own the car, public transport needs to compete with the cost and convenience of fuel, parking and time. I have to own and insure the car anyway, so i can only base the comparison on things specific to that journey.

If more people used a bike like you do, there would be way less traffic. Bike use does not have to be perfect to make a difference!

I get what you mean about the 3ft of paint. It's usually badly maintained, and covered in gravel and other debris, just waiting to tip you off in front of a car!

@CuteOrangeElephant

It's incredibly shortsighted by the council. Cycle infrastructure is a lot less costly to maintain.

Sadly our Council spent all their (our) money on writing endless policies about promoting cycling and dealing with climate change so they don't have any money left to actually do any of it. For one of many recent new housing estates around here the developers actually cited a disused railway line as a pedestrian route to town. I tried to argue that it as it was unlit and muddy it actually went against all the endless council policies for inclusivity and equality of access etc. It didn't make a shred of difference - council approved the massively car-centric development with no requirement for any realistic pedestrian/cycle/wheelchair/pushchair routes. They aren't interested in actually doing anything - just writing policies.

So true!

Disused railways can be great - nice width, minimal gradient, away from cars - but they have to be developed properly, with good surface etc. You also need to be able to safely ride from your house to them! They can be lovely for a cheap day out, but not if you have to buy an expensive bike rack for your car in order to get the bike to the cycle path.

@SelkieQualia

So true!

Disused railways can be great - nice width, minimal gradient, away from cars - but they have to be developed properly, with good surface etc. You also need to be able to safely ride from your house to them! They can be lovely for a cheap day out, but not if you have to buy an expensive bike rack for your car in order to get the bike to the cycle path.

Yes, they're good when they are properly surfaced, lit, etc. Trouble is, like most things to do with the council, they're never maintained. So after a few years they become overgrown, the surfaced starts breaking up, lighting starts to fail, etc and they fall into complete disrepair. Then once they're basically unusable, council has to spend millions again to do a full refurb and the cycle continues. I've never understood why councils just don't maintain things properly in the first place - a few workers once or twice a year could do running repairs/maintenance, weed/tree cutting etc which would stop them going into complete disrepair in the first place. Like weeds, easy to get rid of when they are small, but if they're ignored for years, they grow and start breaking up the tarmac etc.

Our local council made a big song and dance about surfacing and clearing a 5 mile disused track bed about 20 years ago. It was really good and we cycled it many times when our DS was little. A couple of years ago, we tried cycling it again, and it was basically completely impassable - barely a foot or two wide in some places as the trees/shrubs/nettles etc on each side had just been left to grow - the "tarmac" surface was just one pothole after another. It was back to how it was 20 years ago before the council "renovated" it.

I love getting the train but it's so expensive now that it's just not a viable option. If it was a bit cheaper I would happily use it to commute, when going out etc. As is even with rocketing fuel prices and calculating costs of running a car aside from that its cheaper to drive.