So you commute off road from the one side of Manchester that does not have a tram system screwing up the road network. You don’t go anywhere near the routes from Altrincham, Eccles, Ashton, Oldham or Bury.. well good for you but hardly relevant to the adverse impact that compromised, late and over budget system has on the areas where it supposedly serves.
how much would petrol need to increase to change driving habits
- Thread starter trevor brooker
- Start date
There is a tram system, I go through the Didsbury Parrswood interchange on the way.
My biggest gripes with the tram system are that it doesn't run a bike lane alongside it (huge opportunity missed IMHO) and bans dogs and bikes even off peak.
People just have to get over the idea that there is enough space on the roads and parking spaces in a big city to come in at rush hour in your own car without expecting gridlock. It's not 1955 or even 1975 any more. Cars aren't the future.
If you buy a house somewhere without good public transport links, and then get a job in the City Centre that isn't flexible in terms of when you can go in and leave, and aren't prepared to drive to the closest station or interchange but insist on driving in all the way into the City Centre and parking up, what on earth do you expect?
Cars aren't going to get priority any more, thank God. If tramlines, pedestrian areas, bus lanes and cycle routes add to a car driver's commute time, then so be it...
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Have you ever thought people may have to get jobs in the city because there are no jobs in their area and if there are no transport links what are they meant to do?
Folk might be restricted in employment choices, but it doesn't mean that they have clog roads up with each traveling in their own individual box on wheels, they can campaign for transport links, bus services, cycle paths, or whatever, unless someone starts it how are things to improve?
It can improve, it just needs some people to shout about it, in Europe it had been done, it just needs all of us to be involved in change
Agreed. I'm a car owner who uses the car in the fringe of South London and beyond into the outer counties. But when I had need to travel into Central London a few times a while ago, I used public transport, five stages in all. Bus, tram, mainline train, underground, walk. Most of those trips took just over an hour since each service is very frequent and it would have taken as long by car.
It's by using public transport that the service improves. Not using it ensures its decline.
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Same with our recent outer South London tram system. We tried to get cycle lanes included but economy won in the end and a golden opportunity was missed.
Indeed. As a car driver I'm entirely content to be held up by lights as our trams very frequently cross roads or run along them.
They are a public service, each carrying up to 150 people. In my car I'm only serving myself. Of course the trams should have absolute priority, and for the same reason I give priority to buses on the roads.
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Bus services have been cut in East Cheshire meaning there is no bus service at all into Manchester, trains are overcrowded and over priced and there are no cycle paths. The ideal solution would be to ban all cars from cities and towns and have free car parks on the outskirts and very cheap public transport to ferry people into the centres.
Out of interest - I am doubting anyone - but has anyone a good site for official stats for the increase in bus/train usage due to the congestion charge?
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Deleted member 25121
Guest
Coincidently, from page 6 of The Times today, 28/5/19:
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Funding gap forces national cycling targets off track.
A national target to double the number of cycling journeys by 2025 is likely to be missed because of lack of money for dedicated bike lanes.
The Department of Transport said that it expected to fall dramatically short of its goal as the current policy was only projected to fill about a third of the gap towards the target. This has fuelled demands for a funding increase across the UK, particularly in rural areas.
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Cycling UK said that the substantial increase in cycling in London and Manchester was being offset by declines in more rural areas.
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"
Funding gap forces national cycling targets off track.
A national target to double the number of cycling journeys by 2025 is likely to be missed because of lack of money for dedicated bike lanes.
The Department of Transport said that it expected to fall dramatically short of its goal as the current policy was only projected to fill about a third of the gap towards the target. This has fuelled demands for a funding increase across the UK, particularly in rural areas.
........
Cycling UK said that the substantial increase in cycling in London and Manchester was being offset by declines in more rural areas.
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"it expected to fall dramatically short of its goal as the current policy was only projected to fill about a third of the gap" ... absurd this complete discrepancy between 'goal' and 'policy'. Sadly, the Department of Transport has been the Department of Roads every since Marple's day, and shows no sigh on changing.
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Deleted member 25121
Guest
The Times article notes that:
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Critics point out that three quarters of the £1.2 billion budgeted for cycling and walking in the five years up to April 2021 is not ring-fenced, meaning that cash-strapped local authorities can spend it elsewhere
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Last night a DfT spokesperson defended its record, claiming that over the course of the current parliament - the five years to May 2022 - about £2 billion overall was being spent on "active travel", which doubled the spend per head since the previous review.
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When I look at how things just seem to happen in some countries, eg Germany, Holland.., and read this nonsense I appreciate why we're in the mess we're in.
Here's a sample from this site:
"On the day the congestion charge was introduced in London, 300 extra buses were added to the Central London bus network to give people an alternative to driving and avert the anticipated mayhem. One year later, Livingstone reported that 29,000 more passengers had entered the charging zone by bus during the morning rush hour, compared to a year before. Between 2002 and 2014, the number of private cars coming into the zone fell by 39 per cent."
However most data is across the whole network so not answering your question and I can't find fleet data from before 2006.
The congestion charge was introduced in 2003.
The bus fleet in 2006 was 7964 buses.
The bus fleet peaked in 2017 at 9590
but that's slightly reduced by 153 buses today. There's currently a slight fall in bus usage and I suspect Uber has something to do with that.
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It takes many decades for those living outside a city but working in it to filter through the system, introducing an overnight charge isn't going to address the problem, it is income generation, usually from those least able to afford it, and the ones who can pay it without batting an eyelid don't care so certainly won't be driven onto an inefficient, inhospitable, over priced public transport system. So blaming people for buying a house in the suburbs and getting a job in the city is yet more 'I'm alright jack' claptrap.
Utter nonsense, London has proved a congestion charge works for everyone. And those who drove into London were not the least able to afford it. Those least able to afford such a charge were already travelling on public transport.
Why not be honest and declare you are a car driver who only cares that you can drive uninterrupted and as cheaply as possible.
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I agree with your statement, you are spot on when you state it is "Utter nonsense, London has proved a congestion charge works for everyone". No such thing has been proven, they continue to promulgate such rubbish to get as much from that specific cash cow as they can and they rely upon people like you to accept it as fact and pass it on.
Notwithstanding the London "model", even if it were as effective as you are prepared to believe, that doesn't in any way shape or form give credence to the idea that it would work elsewhere. But hey, god forbid anyone outside 'the metropolis' should question the way its done down there. You will be telling me the Met are the best police service in the country next.
That is the main point, it is meant to make money to subsidise public transport, besides reducing pollution. Deterring congestion is secondary, I wouldn't be exempt from the charge in my electric car if it were primary.
It works for everyone because it makes public transport cheaper and better, reduces the pollution of the air we all breathe and reduces the traffic volume.
In my view they are the worst of those I've known.
In the above you show that you know nothing about the situation here but make wild and hopelessly wrong assumptions,
A properly applied congestion charge will work everywhere. The secret as was done in London is to first greatly reduce public transport fares and improve the service, then apply the charge. That way you know those who still drive in can afford it, since if they couldn't they'd have switched to the cheaper-than-using-the car public transport.
Then the income pays off the borrowing that improved the public transport at the outset, then mounts up to continue improving that and provide cycling facilities.
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This still only applies to London and not the real world where there is no money to subsidize bus services as they do in London, hence companies like Arriva and Stagecoach can charge lesser fares, as I said before the rest of us have had public transport cuts, but hey! when has London ever considered the north.
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