Lockdown - has it made driving slower and drivers more courteous?

[Cudzoziemiec]

What a world.

People of my age are foregoing their whole lives just to keep the vulnerable older generations safe.

We ask them to change their lifestyles to keep us from dying and suddenly that's too much to ask.

It isn't on me to come up with a plan to stop society from killing me and any children I end up caring for. That's your job. Clean up your own mess.

If you find a factory dumping waste into a river it isn't on the people living downstream to plan the factory's remediation plan. You're the ones inflicting the harm. Stop it.

You don't get to just consign my generation and those after me to an early grave just because you can't be bothered changing how you live.

You're proposing to carry on and kill me and anyone younger than me by your externalities.

Stopping that is your job. Not mine. Clean your mess up. No wonder this country is in such a shambolic condition.  Buck passing and can kicking is the order of the day.

Banning cars isn't "Draconian". What's "Draconian" is telling everyone younger than you that you're not going to bother making changes to your own life to keep them from an early grave. What's "Draconian" is forcing everyone in the country to pay £27bn in taxes to create a system that is going to kill their own children. This is insane.

Motoring really is a death cult and this thread has exemplified that completely.

How old actually are you, Bludger?

[Davef]

I can see dramatically reducing car usage in cities could be practical. Outside of cities where things are beyond practical cycling distances and impractical public transport in large vehicles, less so. Whether privately owned or supplied on demand, some sort of small vehicles for passenger transport will always be needed.


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[Wanlock Dod]

Closing cities to through traffic, either literally or by way of inconvenience by time or cost, to favour walking, cycling, and public transport for a 2 or 3 km radius of the centres and providing a decent standard of segregated infrastructure for trunk roads. Providing that would cover lots of journeys and provide a degree of linking up of rural areas.

[giropaul]

Closing cities to through traffic, either literally or by way of inconvenience by time or cost, to favour walking, cycling, and public transport for a 2 or 3 km radius of the centres and providing a decent standard of segregated infrastructure for trunk roads. Providing that would cover lots of journeys and provide a degree of linking up of rural areas.

That’s what Ghent has done I think. Birmingham has similar plans.

[Ben T]

Closing cities to through traffic, either literally or by way of inconvenience by time or cost, to favour walking, cycling, and public transport for a 2 or 3 km radius of the centres and providing a decent standard of segregated infrastructure for trunk roads. Providing that would cover lots of journeys and provide a degree of linking up of rural areas.

That’s what Ghent has done I think. Birmingham has similar plans.

Well I can testify that Ghent has succeeded in making itself inconvenient to drive round, having attempted it. Well policed, as well - I did once attempt to make a turn down a road I obviously wasn't supposed to go down for some reason, and was promptly pulled up alongside by a police motorbike - he didn't want to give me a fine or stop me or anything, was just insistent that I turn round again immediately.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I went out for a bike ride yesterday. First time since lockdown began.

Roads were quiet (except really near where I live, because people were driving there to go for a walk).

Main road was like a Sunday morning. Cars out, but not many.

So many people walking and cycling. On roads that would normally be empty I was passing someone on a bike every 2-3 minutes.

Car speeds seemed normal. Even the young lad in a BMW who was driving laps kept his speed down.

Regarding 'old people sacrificing young'; get to f*&$ off. I'm subsidising 6 young people to the tune of about £600 per month, because they can't earn enough in this stuffed up world.

[ian]

Why do I need a car - because there is no public transport near here. It’s easy to take a London view when you are saturated with options.
Why do I need a big car - because I’m a cyclist. I need to take bike + kit to races, abroad, to Audaxes etc. Without a car there would, for me, be little point in owning bikes. Others will no doubt vary in their view, but maybe they have a cunning plan for getting bike+ kit+2 or more sets of wheels for 10am on a Sunday to deepest Lincolnshire.( not at the moment obviously).
Not all cyclists have the same interests or reasons to ride.

To be fair though, these are choices you have made. In part they are choices we all made. Businesses didn't move out to business parks and retail estates and wait around for a few years while everyone got around to buying a car. Mass car ownership made this possible. We, of course, paid for it all and continue to pay for it. The time and money in those journeys, the costs of those cars, the infrastructure, the tax breaks for businesses, the evergreen subsidies and bailouts to carmakers, the healthcare costs of all that collateral damage, and endless other costs that this unsustainable style of living accrues. We pay them all, one way or another.

Banning cars overnight is obviously a terrible idea, but we have to think how we build sustainable communiites and, yes, that means as individuals we have to make some of the decisions. If people want a healthy high street, they have to use it. They have to think about the places they live, the things that they do, and think whether or not they want to rely on a car. Walking down some average suburban streets yesterday, nearly every single front garden is given over to car parking, two cars crammed in an another capping the ensemble on the pavement outside. I don't think many people even notice they now live in a grim car park. Every aspect of our life is now carved by the motor car.

This didn't happen overnight and it doesn't have to be, of course.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Those individual choices are kind of trapped within the mass of individual choices and choices made at planning and governmental levels and by corporations before them. To unwind the individual we also have to unwind the higher-levels.

[DuncanM]

Banning cars overnight is obviously a terrible idea, but we have to think how we build sustainable communiites and, yes, that means as individuals we have to make some of the decisions. If people want a healthy high street, they have to use it. They have to think about the places they live, the things that they do, and think whether or not they want to rely on a car. Walking down some average suburban streets yesterday, nearly every single front garden is given over to car parking, two cars crammed in an another capping the ensemble on the pavement outside. I don't think many people even notice they now live in a grim car park. Every aspect of our life is now carved by the motor car.

This didn't happen overnight and it doesn't have to be, of course.

Absolutely agree.  We need to transition from a car dependent society to one where it is easy to live without cars. This will require a huge amount of political will, especially with structuring incentives for businesses to help this to happen (and assistance for communities that are badly affected by this transition). It's clear that there is some awareness in gov't that the current situation is unsustainable (hence the 2035 ban on combustion engines), but it's probably a vote loser, and so someone (politicians are unlikely to do this) needs to make the weather and change public opinion. We have been moving in the opposite direction for 40 years, so it's going to take something pretty radical to make this happen though. Cudzo put it better than me.

I think we end up conflating 2 separate issues though - there's the problem of emissions, and there's the problem of societal blight (whether it's damage to the public realm, destruction of community, road building, danger to other road users, the list goes on). There may be technological solutions that minimise/mitigate the emissions problem. The only solution to the second problem is many fewer cars.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

In the 1980s when motorways were still being built it became well known that anywhere on their routes would see a big rise in local house prices. Obviously because the new road invited longer commuter journeys.

ISTR it was called The Great Car economy and undoubtedly serves to keep Tories in power to this day.

[Hot Flatus]

If there is a technological solution to pollution and accidents, do we still need to get rid of cars?

[R_nger]

If there is a technological solution to pollution and accidents, do we still need to get rid of cars?

As Ian alluded to, do we want to live in a car park?

[Hot Flatus]

There are also technological solutions to reduce car ownership....carpooling.

[bludger]

How old actually are you, Bludger?

28.

I've grown up seeing unending coverage of climate change and what needs to happen, probably for about 20 years. None of this has amounted to anything except tokenistic concessions about how we collect the bins. People older than me know it's going to kill those younger than them. But it's easier to kick the can down the road. So they do.

Accredited surveys of young people and children are finding mass anxiety and fear of climate change https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/51451737 but as this thread exemplifies, those older just don't give a fuck.

[R_nger]

There are also technological solutions to reduce car ownership....carpooling.

So, we do need to get rid of some cars?

[ian]

If there is a technological solution to pollution and accidents, do we still need to get rid of cars?

As Ian alluded to, do we want to live in a car park?

I do wonder if people do realise this – I find walking around those parts of town unremittingly grim. Every garden is concrete or tarmac, every pavement blocked by more cars, every bit of grass verge torn up. I'm sure even with that, parking is still an issue. These are, of course, the parts of town where car ownership is a far bigger economic burden. If you can afford a house with a proper driveway, then car ownership is likely a smaller portion of your income.

That said, we walked through a new, posher bit of town, and all the new(ish) houses had those tiny vestigial garages that, of course, meant the cars were clustered outside.

It's like our towns have had a peculiar form of metallic cancer that rapidly metastasizes to every newly built estate, anywhere roads go, it spreads.

We own a car, but we've opted to make decisions that mean we're not reliant on that car (and we have one of those houses with a driveway and garage, so it's a marginal cost) and thus use it little.

[bludger]

The whole "development" process is rigged to make this happen. NIMBIES will always lobby against the provision of housing near them, since it deflates the value of their own properties which they intend on selling later in life. In so doing, new housing is pushed to the margins of towns which locks in car dependency for those in the new homes. This is exemplified by the usual "green belt protection" lobby groups who bang the drum against building on brownfield land. https://www.cbre.co.uk/research-and-reports/our-cities/green-belts-and-nimbyism



It's the classic rent seeking economic problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking The whole property market is a big wealth transfer process, from younger people paying extortionate private rents to the landowning royalty.

[Davef]

The 3 main contributors to global warming are in about equal measure travel, heating and eating meat. The key is too reduce the impacts dramatically, but that does not mean banning them all completely.

It is also important to consider different scenarios, a family with young children living in the countryside will have different transport requirements to single fit person in a city. To say they shouldn’t use cars is like telling a city dweller they should grow their own vegetables or install a ground source heat pump.


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[Hot Flatus]

There are also technological solutions to reduce car ownership....carpooling.

So, we do need to get rid of some cars?

Do we need to? Yes, if a non-polluting, viable and ubiquitous solution is not found.  Yes, if we no longer want so much public space to be used for car storage. Yes, if we no longer wish our communities to be bisected by busy roads. Yes, if we want to begin to reduce the 500 deaths aweek from diabetes, and innumerable other deaths related to inactivity.

But "banning cars"? No. That is just a slogan for those stuck in an adolescent mindset. Banning cars would produce a crash of it's own.  We need a working alternative.

Unfortunately we are yet to see effective political leadership on this, and the 'market' is amoral.  Brexit and its contingent mindset will probably kick things into touch for the UK until the mood changes.

For our resident forum hothead, and his remarks about the older generation not giving a fuck about the young, most/many of us here have children. We have skin in the game. We are extremely conscious of what the future holds for those we love and care for in a way he is yet to either experience or understand.

[Hot Flatus]

The 3 main contributors to global warming are in about equal measure travel, heating and eating meat. The key is too reduce the impacts dramatically, but that does not mean banning them all completely.

It is also important to consider different scenarios, a family with young children living in the countryside will have different transport requirements to single fit person in a city. To say they shouldn’t use cars is like telling a city dweller they should grow their own vegetables or install a ground source heat pump.

 

And tough shit if they havent got a garden to grow vegetables in. They can just starve. Fuck them.

[ian]

The 3 main contributors to global warming are in about equal measure travel, heating and eating meat. The key is too reduce the impacts dramatically, but that does not mean banning them all completely.

It is also important to consider different scenarios, a family with young children living in the countryside will have different transport requirements to single fit person in a city. To say they shouldn’t use cars is like telling a city dweller they should grow their own vegetables or install a ground source heat pump.

Did people live in the countryside before cars?

Pretty much everyone we know has moved out of London (not just to avoid us, or so they claim) to places in more rural environments for various 'quality of life' issues. They'll all strenuously expound on the fact that they have no public transport etc. and complain about the lack of local facilities, the closure of the local shop and pub. While driving everywhere.

Anyway, I don't think cars are evil, but we should temper our reliance on them and build sustainable communities where journeys by car are the exception rather than the rule. It's insane, for instance, they people are driving their kids to school (and not just the few outliers who have no option, that it's routine).

[bludger]

Only a fraction of people in this country (less than 1/5) live outside of a town or city. This familiar chorus of 'what about the rural!' is no different to taxi drivers bellowing 'what about the disabled!' when a cycleway or modal filter/bus gate is proposed inside a town.

[Davef]

83% in urban areas but urban is quite a wide definition. The ONS definition includes large villages and small towns that might have little or no facilities, certainly not a full complement. I believe 49hectares, or 700m x 700m is the threshhold.

About 25% live in conurbations of over 1m. Start by banning cars in them. Public transport in a rural area would realistically be in car sized vehicles.

Clearly people survived in the countryside before cars, but a lot moved to the cities.

[Kim]

You don't need to ban cars, just make it impractical to use them routinely in urban areas.  Take away the parking, block through traffic, etc.  Then wait...

[Cudzoziemiec]

How old actually are you, Bludger?

28.

Genuinely young! (As opposed to eg "showing signs of middle age" by collecting your pension.)

I've grown up seeing unending coverage of climate change and what needs to happen, probably for about 20 years. None of this has amounted to anything except tokenistic concessions about how we collect the bins. People older than me know it's going to kill those younger than them. But it's easier to kick the can down the road. So they do.

Accredited surveys of young people and children are finding mass anxiety and fear of climate change https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/51451737 but as this thread exemplifies, those older just don't give a fuck.

We know all this and we've known it since before you were even born. A lot of us got really hopeful that things were going to change with the first UN climate conferences around 1990. I was younger then than you are now (and Flatus was still in nappies*)! Anyway, it's no better blaming older individuals for not having created a better world than it is for them to blame people your age for eating air-freighted avocados and quinoa. None of us are islands, however hard we try, as the saying goes.

*He's actually less than a year younger than me.