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

[ppg]

'How our towns and cities could be permanently changed by coronavirus'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/08/towns-cities-could-permanently-changed-coronavirus/

& the often forgotten bit
'The bicycle may now be as inextricably linked to Amsterdam as the black cab to is to London, but back in the 1960s the Dutch, too, were ruled by the car. It wasn’t until twin economic and public health shocks in the form of the 1973 oil crisis and several horrifying traffic accidents that the Netherlands began a rethink, and Europe’s cycling capital was born'

'Covid-19 may have a similar impact on the UK’s towns and cities'
Well we can all hope.

[bludger]

To be frank - that is putting a gloss on it from that newspaper. To say it "prompted a rethink" is telegraph revisionism. In fact it was a minority of energetic campaigners who fought from the bottom-up to kick out drivers from their neighbourhoods. At this time there was a big anarchist movement which opposed cops and cars in equal measure and would do things like throw weed to people in public. They ran on a ticket of forcing anyone who killed someone while driving to build a monument to them in public. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provo_(movement)

There was no "benevolent government rethink" it was a core of angry people who agitated against the government and used direct action to get their way, literally barricading roads and having on-street die ins.

You'll never get the Torygraph to mention such behaviour of course.

[rafletcher]

And it’s rose tinted.  Breakfast TV in the Netherlands will inform you of how many hundreds of km of traffic jams On the motorways there are. Outside of a few cities the car is still king In the Netherlands.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Driving is getting less courteous in the past week, in my local area anyway. Three separate occasions of drivers accelerating hard towards me (and drifting to my side of the road) on narrow suburban streets with cars parked both sides (single car width between). Today’s one drove under my outstretched arm with a doppler-shifted ‘wanker’ out the window. Next time I am hitting their wing mirror regardless of what it does to my hand.

[Ginger Cat]

If ou want to permanently reduce road use by motorised vehicles, you will need a huge rethink.

The lockdown (or something very similar to it) will be need to be permanent.

The only way to reduce car use is to reduce travel.

There's not enough capacity to put current car travel onto the railways. Before lockdown, the railway had higher passenger km's ever, even with fewer lines far more people are travelling by train than 100 years ago. As for freight, well I do a lot of work in the rail freight sector and before lockdown getting NEW paths for new freight trains flows could be extremely difficult as the railways are full. (We don't need HS2 so much as a new W10 gauge freight line IMHO, however I digress).

All out of town shopping would have to go. Home deliveries would be difficult without vans (I have both a big van and a cargo bike and I can assure you a big van holds a LOT more stuff), although in densely populated cities the last mile by electric cargo-bike derived vehicle might work OK. Bus riding would probably increase- you'd really need to bring back trolley buses or trams in cities/big towns although it wouldn't take anything like the current levels of car traffic.

Where I live, commuting to nearest town about 10 to 15% is by train. Even doubling that is only 30% and even if you got another 20% by bus that's still another 50% to find- and cycling is unlikely to work where people live 20 to 30 miles away from work (not unusual).

So, life would need to change- a lot.

No more weekend breaks in the country or second homes/caravans- unless you are rich. House prices in cities would need to fall a lot so people can live close to work. Of course we also have a lot more people now than in (say) the 1950's which doesn't help. One family holiday a year if you are well off enough- and it may only be a train to the seaside.

Jobs would need to be close to home and in quite a few families that would be the end of the mother (usually) working as the family would need to live close to work. Of course, no choice of schools- you must attend the nearest school.

This is how things used to be not so long ago- in the 1970's, in all the time I was a child at home we only ever had one family holiday to a chalet in the lake district subsidised by dad's work- we couldn't afford anything else and we were far from "poor." During the times we had a car it was an old banger nursed to life by dad but usually he cycled to work and mam walked to part-time work in a local shop. Saturday we'd get the bus to mam's parents- they had a nice council house with a big garden complete with veg patch and shed and granda supplemented grub by catching rabbits at work as a night watchman.

Mam made our clothes and food was NOT to be wasted. If the bread got dry towards the end of the week you just ate it dry.

What I am getting at is that our current (high) standard of life is all supported on having a lot of road transport- cars, vans and HGVs.

Only people who live in London (or it's environs/key catchments) have decent public transport BTW.

Personally, I'd much rather swap my work away (where I sleep/live in my van overnight) for something local, in fact I used to work locally until I was made redundant, set up a business and found customers- just not nearby. But as I work from home at least 50% of time and travel to a place then stay there in the depot car-park for a week, travel is minimised. I wonder how many people would work away like that though, when I was a bairn it was not unusual for us Geordies to do that seeking work in the south but it's not exactly a favoured way of earning a living these days. Although of late there is a trend of skilled contractors staying away in a caravan/van as hotels get costly as they cater to the weekend city break and student market......

I wonder how many people you could persuade to vote for such whole-sale change? Returning to a 1970's level wouldn't bother me, but it would bother a LOT of people for whom weekend breaks, shopping out of town being a leisure pursuit and eating out at drive-thru places are a BIG part of how they have been living until lockdown.

But in real life, that's what it would take to ban the car.

GC

[giropaul]

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.

[bludger]

What I am getting at is that our current (high) standard of life is all supported on having a lot of road transport- cars, vans and HGVs.

This is a total falsehood and has no basis in fact.

The idea that unless we have motorists rampaging around the country, as they do now, we can only go on holiday once annually and will have stale bread for tea is wrong to the point of farce. Mass motoring has put me and those younger than me on course to extinction and catastrophe and this is the nonsense you come up with to tell me tough tits, I should just put up with it because *checks notes* you "have" to drive to your bike races.

Ban cars.

[giropaul]

I’m guessing that you ( Bludger) is aware that London sucks resources out of the rest of the country? There is a huge subsidy on your transport infrastructure. I’ve never needed a car when I worked in London. Added to that, you have a velodrome close at hand, an outdoor track, and several closed circuits. There are publicly funded parks for you to train around, all within easy reach.
And, of course, you get paid significantly more on average than any of the rest of the UK as well.

[bludger]

You are exactly wrong. London funds this country. It's the golden goose. About 1/7-8 the population, that generates about 1/3 its GDP.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/20/london-uk-economy-decentralisation

https://www.businessinsider.com/london-and-the-south-east-effectively-provide-subsidies-to-rest-of-britain-2017-5

Ban cars.

[Hot Flatus]

Tell that to people in the Highlands. I think I can imagine their response.

Your reality is not everyone's reality.

[bludger]

I don't give a shit. My life is on the line. So is any children's I end up caring for. "But I have to drive to my bike races!!!!!" Is some weak shit that I have no time for.

The people swerving reality are the head-in-sand car obsessives who haven't got go grips with the reality that their car addiction has to go. I can sympathise that it is easy to go into denial as a coping mechanism but when you've decided that actually, you just don't care about what happens to me and those who come after me, that's a homicidal decision.

[rafletcher]

I don't give a shit.

This I can agree with you on. 

[bludger]

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.

[DuncanM]

You were asked for a plan on how to ban cars. So far, all you've done is abuse the people who have pointed out that it's hard. You seem to be mixing road casualties (which clearly need reducing, but wouldn't be ended by banning cars) and climate change emissions. If your concern is CO2, transport creates only 28% of the CO2 in this country - if we ban cars (and trains, and planes and lorries and busses) we still don't meet our obligations. Source https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/862887/2018_Final_greenhouse_gas_emissions_statistical_release.pdf

Banning cars hard. It's impossible if people live in villages with 1 bus a day. I'm planning on minimising the use of my car when we eventually return to the office. Driving takes half an hour. Cycling takes 50 minutes. To get there by public transport i would need to take 2 busses, which would take an hour and a half, even if the connection took no time at all. And Oxford is a city with good public transport.
FWIW, I have an electric car and solar panels, so when I drive, I do so using energy I generate. Clearly that doesn't reduce my risk of KSI, but that's down to my driving.

[bludger]

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.

[DuncanM]

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.

My mess? You know nothing about any mess I may or may not create. And I'm not going to kill you or any kids you may or may not have.
However, you are proposing to remove the livelihood from thousands of people, and the only way that millions can carry out their jobs, I think it is on you to provide an alternative.

[bludger]

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.

[DuncanM]

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.

Which externalities?

[bludger]

https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jaerec/doi10.1086-684162.html

Boy are there a few.

It will always blow my mind how nasty and selfish the people in this country are. Literally just shrugging their shoulders at their children and grand children on course for an early grave. How can they just not care as they do.

[Hot Flatus]

Younger people are just as profligate.

Except maybe the ones in London (your mates) who can afford to be smug and opinionated because car use is irrelevant to them.

Life outside of big cities is predicated on car use. To say 'ban cars' without any sort of replacement is as childish as saying 'ban armies' to bring about world peace.

[bludger]

Maybe you need to change how you live then. Instead of just shrugging your shoulders at your own descendants staring down the barrel of a gun because you find change too inconvenient.

It's on the inflicter of harm to clean up their mess. So make an effort. Pay your tab.

[Hot Flatus]

I know things probably seem simple if all you have to do in life is pedal from one address to another doing a Deliveroo.

Sadly that isnt going to make the world go round.

[bludger]

Wow. Now who's the "smug and privileged" one.

That must be the Thatcherite conceit. That nasty stain of classism straight down from Ayn Rand. "Fuck everyone else, I've got mine."

[DuncanM]

My car runs on electricity. My house generates electricity. There is no externality from my car (though as I already said I'm aiming to reduce my use).
Heating the house, eating food, using the web/TV/lights, having 1 child (R = 0.5), those things all generate CO2. I assume you are vegan? And you never fly anywhere?

My point is not to be holier than thou. My point is just that if you actually want to change the world, you have to make it easy for people to make those changes. As you can see from the lockdown, most people will try to do what's right if you communicate clearly with them and they are able to absorb the seriousness of the situation. But you can't just apply draconian measures that will massively impact their lives (forever) without providing a reasonable alternative. If you can't do that, then you can't ban cars. Because as we've seen, if you offer people the choice between a certainty of starving starting today, or a possibility of dying in a week, they will take the latter option.

[bludger]

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.