A random thread for things too unimportant for their own thread...
- Thread starter Warwick
- Start date
D
Deleted member 4366
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Here's one for the political correctness police. I missed it when it was on the TV, but found it when looking for something else:
Ah yes, public transport.
Superficially most would count me well served with public transport. To go from London's fringe into the centre I need to use a bus from a stop a few yards from my home. That takes me to a bus-tram interchange and the tram whisks me to the entrance of our local main line station in around ten minutes. From there fast trains running every five minutes or so at peak times take just 16 minutes into the centre. Then it's a tube train taking a few minutes and three stops to my destination.
All wonderful right?
The reality is somewhat different, not helped by the bus stop and tram interchange both being in windswept often freezing spots to wait in. And this is a common journey in pictures:
Bus
Tram
Train
Tube
And when the tube station is too full to get in:
Indeed, why not take public transport.
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It's carrying people to destinations as if they are animals.
To complete the picture some passengers even get slaughtered.
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This is a university that is well served by buses arriving every few seconds. There are cyclepaths from all directions and lots of bike parking, not to mention showers and a bike purchase assistance scheme. Yet, people still prefer to sit in their tin boxes.
Yes there's many areas like that in the UK, we are very much a car based culture and much more aligned with the USA than Europe in this respect and many others.
As you've shown there's no travel time advantage for them, so presumably it's the privacy and comfort of their own tin box, rather than a shared one, that wins them over. For some safety is an aspect, since many in the UK believe cycling in traffic is dangerous.
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how many miles is it?a thought that often occur to me in London is that it is so not Amsterdam. it has the same ingredients(cycle paths, public transport, to be honest, sh@t weather, it's 8C in Amsterdam), but somehow it doesn't come together. in Amsterdam its half an hour by knackered bike form a suburb six miles out (say de aker) to the centreAh yes, public transport.
Superficially most would count me well served with public transport. To go from London's fringe into the centre I need to use a bus from a stop a few yards from my home. That takes me to a bus-tram interchange and the tram whisks me to the entrance of our local main line station in around ten minutes. From there fast trains running every five minutes or so at peak times take just 16 minutes into the centre. Then it's a tube train taking a few minutes and three stops to my destination.
All wonderful right?
The reality is somewhat different, not helped by the bus stop and tram interchange both being in windswept often freezing spots to wait in. And this is a common journey in pictures:
Bus
Tram
Train
Tube
And when the tube station is too full to get in:
Indeed, why not take public transport.
.
It's 14 miles, but there's two very nasty hills in the route and of course London's very heavy traffic which in the outer areas is very fast too. No cycle paths on much of it and where there are it's usually just painted lines which motor traffic ignores, sometimes having to.
A few brave souls cycle it, but most cycle commuting starts beyond the steep hills, leaving under ten miles to cover with just two long gradual hills.
Overall though from the south here isn't in any way cycle friendly.
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yes 14 miles is a bit borderline (more so with hills), but I often wonder when traveling from periphery to centre of London why London does not use land adjoining train lines to create cycle paths, surely it must be almost level gradient (same for footpaths next to thames). the wonder of some European cities like Amsterdam that has few hills is that even longer distances (say 14 miles) can pass in an effortless state of semi consciousness (on a relatively safe cycle path), it can even be relaxing.
Unfortunately the worst hill is between my large newer population area and the rail lines at Croydon. We do have trams and they climb amazing gradients, though even they had to have a lot of grading to make them possible.
Also many stretches of London's train tracks don't have any spare land alongside that could accommodate bikes safely, developments have often huddled close to the edges of tracks.
It would take a huge number of bulldozers, many made homeless and numerous firms shut down to make London cycle friendly. It's just too old a city.
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