Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => On The Road => Topic started by: Wowbagger on 04 November, 2022, 12:56:07 pm
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Southend Echo (https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/23100924.westcliff-st-bernards-school-forced-shut-resident-parking-row/?fbclid=IwAR2GZkixHvza_9F--k9qfNJDSynl0jA8EbHLZzg1I5P_jrYqOFjXMW44ang)
Residents' permit parking scheme is due to come into effect on Monday. The school in question, a secondary with over 900 pupils on roll, and a full staff of about 120, has no car park of its own. A new one in my experience.
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In the letter to parents, she said: "A member of staff shared with me on Tuesday that posters had been put up by the council in the local area to say that parking restrictions would be coming into force from Monday.
So no one in the school was aware parking restrictions were being brought in until less than a week before the start date? Really? No letter from the council? None of them ever look at a local paper? None of the teachers had heard anything from parents?
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In the letter to parents, she said: "A member of staff shared with me on Tuesday that posters had been put up by the council in the local area to say that parking restrictions would be coming into force from Monday.
So no one in the school was aware parking restrictions were being brought in until less than a week before the start date? Really? No letter from the council? None of them ever look at a local paper? None of the teachers had heard anything from parents?
Seems ridiculous, but also entirely possible. I expect the residents will have been informed by the council, but unless you happen to be a kerb nerd, how much attention are you going to pay to parking arrangements elsewhere[1]?
Closing the school seems a bit dramatic. The comments talk about nearby car parks, but I don't know the area so can't comment on how practical they are. I know teachers often have to cart crates of materials around, something which has only become expected because they're assumed to have cars.
[1] Case in point: I failed to pay sufficient attention to the parking restrictions here during the Commonwealth games, because cyclist. I belatedly realised that I'd booked a hire car for one of the weekends, and had to work out how to obtain a permit - information that you'd expect would be on either the council or the Games' websites, but only appeared to exist on the letter that I'd recycled some weeks previously.
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I imagine lots of workplaces have no parking.
Getting a TRO takes loads of notification, trust me, it took about 18 months to get double-yellows parked on the dangerous corner outside. That involved letters and notices. Hard to believe the school heard nothing.
She doesn't seem the most competent of head teachers.
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I found that on FB. A Southend Councillor (who I believe is portfolio holder for schools/child related stuff) commented that the school was consulted and kept informed. She also mentioned, without further explanation, “New head teacher”.
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I know teachers often have to cart crates of materials around, something which has only become expected because they're assumed to have cars.
As if to demonstrate this, the following has just popped up on the "Bangalore Bikers Club" googlegroup:
Kavita
unread,
3 Nov 2022, 08:35:35 (yesterday)
to Community Cycles, bangalor...@googlegroups.com, geb...@velorobicycles.com
I have a cycle and it needs to be repaired .
Tyres ( new ones ) , brakes , wheel alignment, cycle bell and lights .
I teach English and sciences in a school and cannot afford to fix the cycle
Location - Kilpauk, chennai ( india )
Available on what s up and email.
Kavitha viziakumar
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When RPZs were introduced in Bristol, there was a similar story about one of the primary schools. "How will my staff get to work?" cried the head. I can't remember what solution was eventually reached – maybe they were issued with "essential parker" permits, or more likely they just appropriated the playground, but the school is still open several years later.
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The infant school in Basingstoke where my wife worked until recently had some teachers travelling from as far as Eastleigh - 30 miles way. High housing costs makes it difficult for junior teachers to get on the housing ladder, and/or they are living with someone who works elsewhere. Yes, there is a train service, but by the time you've added the (crap) buses either side it makes for a pretty impractical journey, and although I'd be up for cycling it, I doubt that's practical for most.
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The college I worked at had no parking, which was an issue for many staff. While I have cycled ~40min each way to schools, with panniers full of books to mark, I don't think that most teachers will do this.
If you build a business you should consider how your staff will get there and how you will not just shit on the locals; however schools are there to serve the need of the locals.
It could well be that the old head saw this pile of trouble and just figured the new head would have to deal with it...
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According to Wikipedia, the school was founded in 1910. Most of the housing nearby is Victorian. Not surprised it doesn’t have a car park.
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Seems a typical age for a school building and lots of them are in RPZs. They cope because they have to. Maybe some areas issue special permits, other schools turn the playground into a car park, others reach an agreement with some other premises which has parking. So solutions exist even if all are a bit crap in one way or another. Partly because no RPZ to my knowledge addresses the fundamental issue of there being too many cars for the available kerb space even if it's just the residents parking there.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that maybe the residents wanted the RPZ precisely because of the 120 staff cars cluttering up their streets in term time.
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“New head teacher”.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that maybe the residents wanted the RPZ precisely because of the 120 staff cars cluttering up their streets in term time.
I reckon these are our answers...
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We live on a road that backs onto the local high school with a student roll of 2000+ and the associated teaching staff. The recently repurposed part of one of their playing fields as an extension to their car park, but I’m not sure 6th formers are allowed to park on site.
Obviously it’s chaos at 8:30 and 3:30 but the worst issue is having to educate the new drivers every year that parking right up to my gate, while legal, is inconsiderate and they shouldn’t do so. I do so politely and none of them has kicked off yet.
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If you build a business you should consider how your staff will get there and how you will not just shit on the locals; however schools are there to serve the need of the locals.
Unfortunately, schools are viewed as businesses now. And unfortunately schools are not 'local' anymore. There's a good chance that many local residents have no support for it as its not their kids school, instead their driven to a different school somewhere else. That's the crazy system we've all allowed and encouraged.
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What he says. The problem isn't parking, it's shipping in pupils across town and teachers from Farawayland.
Also building schools in stupid places on the edge of towns so the spaces in the middle of towns can be turned into more important stuff, like the eighth supermarket, or luxury overpriced fuck hutches that probably wouldn't fit a rabbit.
That and the fact that few people can walk for more than then minutes without worrying they might, in fact, die.
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I think schools will always need some amount of parking because some of the workers are peripatetic e.g. teachers of disabled kids who come in and out or indeed disabled staff e.g. blue badge holders. Some families will need a safe secure parking space for a disabled kid (my friend has this issue).
Sounds like this is a major comms clusterfuck between council and school.
School should also not have been relying just on street parking for that many people - as that is just asking for residents to hate it and a residents only scheme to happen.
The whole distance travelling to schools is also a shitshow and where I grew up they've closed about half of the primary schools so there's larger distances between them so it is getting onto too-far for most kids/families to walk and you wouldn't let a child cycle on those roads cos they're lethal and almost vertical.
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If this school was built on the edge of town, the intervening 112 years of development mean it almost certainly isn't now.
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If you build a business you should consider how your staff will get there and how you will not just shit on the locals; however schools are there to serve the need of the locals.
Unfortunately, schools are viewed as businesses now. And unfortunately schools are not 'local' anymore. There's a good chance that many local residents have no support for it as its not their kids school, instead their driven to a different school somewhere else. That's the crazy system we've all allowed and encouraged.
Surely you cannot be arguing against 'Choice'?
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If you build a business you should consider how your staff will get there and how you will not just shit on the locals; however schools are there to serve the need of the locals.
Unfortunately, schools are viewed as businesses now. And unfortunately schools are not 'local' anymore. There's a good chance that many local residents have no support for it as its not their kids school, instead their driven to a different school somewhere else. That's the crazy system we've all allowed and encouraged.
Surely you cannot be arguing against 'Choice'?
We've lived here for about 35 years, next door but one to a primary school.
It was rebuilt about 7 years ago and taken over by an Academy Trust.
The old local authority school was fully engaged with the residents and community - we rarely had parking issues with parents or staff.
The Academy never contact the residents and have zero interest in the community. There are constant issues with parking - mainly staff and with taxis picking children up.
Children from around here seem to be transported across the city and county rather than walking (or cycling) to the local school as they used to.
Choice? For who?
Certainly not those who are affected by the business practices of the Academy. And I'm very doubtful about the value of choice in primary education where friendship groups among both children and parents are forged in the playground, at the school gates and on the journey (walk) home.
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Choice!
For the voters, the people that didn't think they wanted Choice, they just wanted reasonable services, locally. But if you give them Choice, they have control over their lives. They can decide what kind of Tank to buy and where to drive it! And what flavour of Public Transport is no good for them!
Same applies to the Health Service. Choice and Choose and Book.
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Choose Renton.
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It's also a Catholic school so draws its pupils and teachers from a larger area than a local one.
Sent from my motorola edge 20 using Tapatalk
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I would have thought the issue is teachers not pupils. Most secondary schools, as they need subject specialists, have a quite large catchment for staff.
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There's a point of overlap, which is student teachers (see also: nurses, social workers, etc) on placements. They get stuck with placements in areas only accessible by driving, which they often can't afford.
The whole system stinks, tbh.
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I don't see a solution to that^. When I did teacher training [Local Geography]I was living in Kings Heath and had a placement in Cradley Heath[/Local Geography]; I tried the cycle ride once during half term but it was clearly not going to happen. Placements are in whatever schools will offer placements and have teachers who will work with the students.
But it's not just students who can't afford to live near their school, take any affluent area which has a school, unlikely that teachers will be able to afford to live local, unless they are all the wives (it's rarely the husbands who choose a low income second earner) of higher earners.
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Yep, some schemes are better than others, but it is hard to explain to $Student (in my case they'll be disabled) that they can't just have a placement at Schools A-D in their immediate area cos those schools are probably not in $OurUniversity's placement scheme. And our place works hard to make no placement further than 45 mins away and do try to identify students who genuinely cannot drive for a legit reason but I believe it's a constant juggle and students do complain a lot so they've had to adopt a "tough shit" attitude for most of them.
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I did my PGCE at UoB, which I believe is your place (?). I can see that there is also the factor that $NearestSchool is possibly != $BestLearningOpportunity for the student.
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Oxford is introducing a Workplace Parking Levy. Any business with more than 11 employees will have to pay £11 per month per space to the council. The prospect of this on top of the LTNs has caused a couple of the more distant commuting teachers to leave the school at which my wife works.
It sounds like the school will be ripping up the car parking spaces it has in front of the buildings to save the money. No idea what the hospitals are going to do...
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I like putting more pressure on employers to reduce their employees' car commuting but
1. sounds like a window tax if it is the school's parking spaces that are being taxed (as opposed to their use of space off the property)
2. sounds like a great way to kill off struggling businesses
3. depending on the school - e.g. if it is a secondary school and the CS teacher commutes in from afar, it's a great way to remove key staff and remove the subject from the curriculum.
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It seems to have worked pretty well in Nottingham...
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https://www.transportnottingham.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Workplace-Parking-Levy-10-Year-Impact-Report_compressed.pdf
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I'm all for taxing parking spaces at companies. Giving the company incentive to make it easier for their employees to not drive is IMHO a good thing. The argument I hear tho often goes along the lines of:
"But my staff have to drive, cos there's no public transport, or cycle infra here."
And for large companies, with hundreds of employees my simple response i "why are you ok paying for a carpark for your staff, but not ok to pay for a bus for them?" Big employers should be able to subsidise buses that stop outside their business from the local council operated bus company...
Weaning humanity off cars is going to require public transport, and public transport needs funding, and it needs support. It doesn't need to be profitable tho.
J
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I like putting more pressure on employers to reduce their employees' car commuting but
1. sounds like a window tax if it is the school's parking spaces that are being taxed (as opposed to their use of space off the property)
2. sounds like a great way to kill off struggling businesses
3. depending on the school - e.g. if it is a secondary school and the CS teacher commutes in from afar, it's a great way to remove key staff and remove the subject from the curriculum.
This illustrates the parking-reduction conundrum. Half the people in favour of reducing the amount of space dedicated to car parking say priority should be given to reducing car parking on roads, because <good reasons to do with traffic flow, public access, safety, multiple uses of streets, etc>. And half the people in favour of reducing the amount of space dedicated to car parking say priority should be given to reducing car parking off roads, because <good reasons to do with amenity, drainage, access to non-tarmac areas esp for children, etc>.
And neither approach will be successful unless we also implement other measures to reduce car use and ownership, which we're not facing up to.
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I'd argue it's neither good for the school nor the teachers for such long commutes to be necessary, and well, why shouldn't any business pay for parking?
Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.
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So, if you build a car park you should pay the council £11 per month per space?
I still reckon if a school owns its property and chooses to use some of it for staff parking it’s not really a council taxable issue.
Though I would like the council to tax the parking of all cars for all residents, might cut down on the number of houses with 3+ cars.
For schools, we’ve already talked about some schools being in areas that are not affordable for teachers and teacher specialism; you can add to that schools that are in less pleasant neighbourhoods where teachers may choose not to live if given the option and some teachers don’t want to live where they work (much like the police force).
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Induced traffic demand from a new parking space just about anywhere in Oxford has, I would guess, a direct cost to the council of at least that much, and a very much higher total social cost.
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Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.
So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?
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Off street parking of commercial vehicles is a requirement in many places, just not in the UK.
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In other places, leastways the one's I've lived in, commercial vehicles need to be licensed as such and on-street parking paid for. Increasingly, a lot of what I see isn't even self-employed, it's big companies, like Virgin. So, we're paying for them to store their vehicles.
As for schools, I don't think any good solution is subsidise schools in posh places by making teachers commute for an hour at their own cost.
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Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.
So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?
I thought most USians drove quasi-commercial vehicles anyway, like the F150.
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I can see the logic for it as applied to firms like Virgin, but I'm wondering where, in practical terms, Bob McBuilder and Peter Plumberson park their vans in areas to which such rules apply?
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As for schools, I don't think any good solution is subsidise schools in posh places by making teachers commute for an hour at their own cost.
Surely all state schools are "subsidised" anyway? Not that that makes long commutes a good thing.
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Yes, if you have a car park on private land, no matter how long it has been there, you will have to pay the levy on the spaces.
In the specific case of a school, if you require your staff to be able to transport many kg of books, busses become much less appealing. Many bus routes pass the school, but you may not want to struggle with the books onto busses crowded with kids you teach every day, and they are frequently delayed (eg my daughter regularly waits half an hour for a bus after school). There is a significant issue with routes in that they tend to go to/from the city centre, but very few go from one area to another, but that's a whole 'nother discussion. Some of the local schools have great cycle infrastructure, some (like my wife/daughter's) is much more hit and miss (and the last mile from our direction has almost none).
In principle, I think it's a good idea, and I've not seen the other details that go along with it. I fear it will make recruitment for the schools and hospitals harder, and it will have almost no impact on traffic as much of that is driven by students, parents, and patients, and this won't affect them at all.
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The only time I've ever driven a 7.5ton truck I got back to London (from Glasgow) too late to return it to the hire place. So I parked it on the road, somewhere around Turnham Green. Apparently this was the wrong thing to do cos in the morning it was not there. The police had removed it to their pound in Fulham and I had to cough up some pounds to get it back.
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Oxford has a green belt planning problem. With a prestigious university and industry it has far more jobs than living accommodation, but instead of building on its outskirts - the building lives in surrounding overgrown villages and towns out to Thame, Abingdon, Kidlington etc, which is a hopeless model for providing public transport.
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Massively off-topic.
There are plans afoot to build something like 10,000 new houses on the green belt in the coming years. They will invariably be absurdly priced though. Part of the planning problem is that the green belt doesn't sit inside Oxford City Council boundaries, so the various rural local authorities get to argue about it (and make joined up transport planning someone elses problem).
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I'm all for taxing parking spaces at companies. Giving the company incentive to make it easier for their employees to not drive is IMHO a good thing. The argument I hear tho often goes along the lines of:
"But my staff have to drive, cos there's no public transport, or cycle infra here."
And for large companies, with hundreds of employees my simple response i "why are you ok paying for a carpark for your staff, but not ok to pay for a bus for them?" Big employers should be able to subsidise buses that stop outside their business from the local council operated bus company...
Weaning humanity off cars is going to require public transport, and public transport needs funding, and it needs support. It doesn't need to be profitable tho.
J
(My bold) What's one of those, then? There ain't none in Suffolk, as far as I can tell. There are (rapidly vanishing) council subsidies for the private bus companies, but there are no council-owned bus companies.
All of this needs a coordinated approach across a wide area - whether that's the devolved nations, county councils or whatever, and it needs to recognise the very different needs and solutions that apply in rural areas from those that apply in towns and cities. If a council is going to make it difficult for a company/school/hospital to retain on-site parking, it must develop alternatives that work for those who need to get to those places. It's not good enough to say 'sorry, climate' and make it impossible for those organisations to function. That's dictatorship, and will get the appropriate response from the communities affected.
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Yes. Meanwhile, Stagecoach have removed their return tickets, so you have to buy a travelpass or two singles. I guess they can claim that they haven't raised their prices, but the reality for people who use the bus is different. (Also means that the 2 bus companies that share routes won't accept each other's tickets).
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Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.
So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?
I thought most USians drove quasi-commercial vehicles anyway, like the F150.
Commercial. That's a recreational run-around.
In many states (I can't vouch for all of them), any commercial vehicle typically needs to be registered as such (and you'll have commercial plates). Restrictions generally apply to operation and parking thereof.
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It seems to have worked pretty well in Nottingham...
It (WPL) has been a spectacular success in Nottingham.
Here in nearby Leicester the city Council have killed off the idea in the last few weeks because of the recession. Car park charges are increasing by quite a bit instead.
I was never convinced by Leicester's proposals because of the limited number of businesses within the city boundary.
There is a huge disparity between how the City and the County view car use which further adds to the tension.
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Yes. Meanwhile, Stagecoach have removed their return tickets, so you have to buy a travelpass or two singles. I guess they can claim that they haven't raised their prices, but the reality for people who use the bus is different. (Also means that the 2 bus companies that share routes won't accept each other's tickets).
Good. Public transport fixated upon the return ticket is sexist.
Wtf am I on about you ask? For years our transport system has been focussed on commuters who go from home to work, and back to home again. This is inherently done by men. Women are far far more likely to trip chain. Wtf is trip chaining? Home to school to drop the kids off, then to the chemist to pick up a prescription, over to grandma to deliver some food. then onto the office, a day at work, then off to school to collect the kids, to take them to hockey, then take them home. A focusing on return tickets makes this really expensive for those who trip chain. Trip chaining is mostly done by women.
This is why the Dutch OV chipkaart system is so good. 90c to check in, then 10c per km, as long as you check out of one vehicle and back into the next with in 35 mins you don't pay the 90c, so a first journey may be €1.20, then 0.15, then 0.29, etc... My record is keeping that going for well over 4 hours as I run errands around town.
The ticket system is much of the UK is an anachronistic pile of utter shite and needs a massive overhaul.
(My bold) What's one of those, then? There ain't none in Suffolk, as far as I can tell. There are (rapidly vanishing) council subsidies for the private bus companies, but there are no council-owned bus companies.
All of this needs a coordinated approach across a wide area - whether that's the devolved nations, county councils or whatever, and it needs to recognise the very different needs and solutions that apply in rural areas from those that apply in towns and cities. If a council is going to make it difficult for a company/school/hospital to retain on-site parking, it must develop alternatives that work for those who need to get to those places. It's not good enough to say 'sorry, climate' and make it impossible for those organisations to function. That's dictatorship, and will get the appropriate response from the communities affected.
Well there's your problem.
Stop trying to run public transport for profit and focus on public transport that is there to transport the public.
Roads don't need to make a profit. Neither should buses/trams/rail/ferries/cable cars.
J
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Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.
So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?
I thought most USians drove quasi-commercial vehicles anyway, like the F150.
Commercial. That's a recreational run-around.
In many states (I can't vouch for all of them), any commercial vehicle typically needs to be registered as such (and you'll have commercial plates). Restrictions generally apply to operation and parking thereof.
How would you define commercial, if you were applying this in the UK? I know a guy who's a painter-decorator, instead of a van he uses a car – a Seat, I think – signwritten with his trading name and so on. So it's commercial but it's a car and, like many builder's vans, serves as his personal car for now-work purposes too.
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Yes. Meanwhile, Stagecoach have removed their return tickets, so you have to buy a travelpass or two singles. I guess they can claim that they haven't raised their prices, but the reality for people who use the bus is different. (Also means that the 2 bus companies that share routes won't accept each other's tickets).
Good. Public transport fixated upon the return ticket is sexist.
Wtf am I on about you ask?
I doubt if any of us are asking that, because we've all read your posts about trip chaining* before. Just as you must be familiar with the phrase, "If I wanted to go there, I wouldn't start from here". Starting from here, the current UK situation, how do you propose to reach this trip chaining transportational Eden?
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Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.
So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?
I thought most USians drove quasi-commercial vehicles anyway, like the F150.
Commercial. That's a recreational run-around.
In many states (I can't vouch for all of them), any commercial vehicle typically needs to be registered as such (and you'll have commercial plates). Restrictions generally apply to operation and parking thereof.
How would you define commercial, if you were applying this in the UK? I know a guy who's a painter-decorator, instead of a van he uses a car – a Seat, I think – signwritten with his trading name and so on. So it's commercial but it's a car and, like many builder's vans, serves as his personal car for now-work purposes too.
In the US, it's tied to tax, so you have to use it some percentage of the time for work/commercial activities, then of course, you can claim tax back on your 1040s etc (so it makes sense to properly register commercial vehicles). It's the US though, so laws vary by state, city, and other municipality. Certainly the apartment complex I lived in CT had a no commercial vehicle policy for the parking lots.
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As for schools, I don't think any good solution is subsidise schools in posh places by making teachers commute for an hour at their own cost.
I think you are confusing the US where councils set taxes that pay for schools (more taxes better schools) and the UK where teachers are paid a flat rate wherever they live (except that_London and fringes). If I teach in Leicester or Bradford I am paid the same.
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Yes. Meanwhile, Stagecoach have removed their return tickets, so you have to buy a travelpass or two singles. I guess they can claim that they haven't raised their prices, but the reality for people who use the bus is different. (Also means that the 2 bus companies that share routes won't accept each other's tickets).
Good. Public transport fixated upon the return ticket is sexist.
Wtf am I on about you ask? For years our transport system has been focussed on commuters who go from home to work, and back to home again. This is inherently done by men. Women are far far more likely to trip chain. Wtf is trip chaining? Home to school to drop the kids off, then to the chemist to pick up a prescription, over to grandma to deliver some food. then onto the office, a day at work, then off to school to collect the kids, to take them to hockey, then take them home. A focusing on return tickets makes this really expensive for those who trip chain. Trip chaining is mostly done by women.
This is why the Dutch OV chipkaart system is so good. 90c to check in, then 10c per km, as long as you check out of one vehicle and back into the next with in 35 mins you don't pay the 90c, so a first journey may be €1.20, then 0.15, then 0.29, etc... My record is keeping that going for well over 4 hours as I run errands around town.
The ticket system is much of the UK is an anachronistic pile of utter shite and needs a massive overhaul.
Back when I was a nipper, the Perth city transport system worked on a time-and-zone-based ticketing system.
You bought a ticket in, say, zone 2. That entitled you to use any mode of city transport (bus, train, river ferry) for the next 2.5 hours in zones 1 and 2. Any number of trips.
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Yes. Meanwhile, Stagecoach have removed their return tickets, so you have to buy a travelpass or two singles. I guess they can claim that they haven't raised their prices, but the reality for people who use the bus is different. (Also means that the 2 bus companies that share routes won't accept each other's tickets).
Last time I checked the Stagecoach “Smartzone” (I think you’re in Oxford?) was cheaper than 2 singles and allows you to use the other bus companies in Oxford.
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As for schools, I don't think any good solution is subsidise schools in posh places by making teachers commute for an hour at their own cost.
I think you are confusing the US where councils set taxes that pay for schools (more taxes better schools) and the UK where teachers are paid a flat rate wherever they live (except that_London and fringes). If I teach in Leicester or Bradford I am paid the same.
Basically they're saying hey there, marginally paid school teacher, please be paying to travel a hour twice-a-day at your own expense to educate these nice middle class people in an area you can't afford to live in, thanks.
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Another thing, the practice of taking work vehicles home and parking them on residential streets. That should be an absolute no-no. Even in the places I lived in the US, it wasn't legal to park a commercial vehicle on the street.
So what should you do if you're a self-employed builder or similar?
I thought most USians drove quasi-commercial vehicles anyway, like the F150.
Commercial. That's a recreational run-around.
In many states (I can't vouch for all of them), any commercial vehicle typically needs to be registered as such (and you'll have commercial plates). Restrictions generally apply to operation and parking thereof.
But I am led to understand that you can drive a bus-sized motorhome on a car license (sic) Over There which makes little sense to this Unit.
On this side of the pond someone living near Fort Larrington used to have a full-on Peterbilt 389 6x4 semi truck as his hobby vehicle, but his front garden was large enough to accommodate the thing.
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As for schools, I don't think any good solution is subsidise schools in posh places by making teachers commute for an hour at their own cost.
I think you are confusing the US where councils set taxes that pay for schools (more taxes better schools) and the UK where teachers are paid a flat rate wherever they live (except that_London and fringes). If I teach in Leicester or Bradford I am paid the same.
Basically they're saying hey there, marginally paid school teacher, please be paying to travel a hour twice-a-day at your own expense to educate these nice middle class people in an area you can't afford to live in, thanks.
True, but for varying levels of “they”. In this case “they” is not the school as 5e school don’t decide how much they will/can pay teachers; “they” is the government and the voters who voted “them” in.
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Was the school just shut on whichever Monday it was or has it actually been shut continuously from that Monday?
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As for schools, I don't think any good solution is subsidise schools in posh places by making teachers commute for an hour at their own cost.
I think you are confusing the US where councils set taxes that pay for schools (more taxes better schools) and the UK where teachers are paid a flat rate wherever they live (except that_London and fringes). If I teach in Leicester or Bradford I am paid the same.
Basically they're saying hey there, marginally paid school teacher, please be paying to travel a hour twice-a-day at your own expense to educate these nice middle class people in an area you can't afford to live in, thanks.
True, but for varying levels of “they”. In this case “they” is not the school as 5e school don’t decide how much they will/can pay teachers; “they” is the government and the voters who voted “them” in.
Still, it'd the poorest solution to the problem is to ask teachers to drive for an hour (for which they have to own a car and pay for fuel and the time burden). Of course, this happens to employees all over the country, who are basically subsidizing their employers.
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And for large companies, with hundreds of employees my simple response i "why are you ok paying for a carpark for your staff, but not ok to pay for a bus for them?" Big employers should be able to subsidise buses...
It's already been done at least once and it worked very, very well. Back when it was a (relatively small) family owned Co. Weetabix used to have a small fleet of company buses* which would be run at each shift end/start and would pick up / drop off employees close to their homes. Of course that all stopped when it was sold to corporate asset strippers....
*Rather jolly coaches painted yellow with Weetabix in big letters on the side. Think something like a giant 12 biscuit packet of Weetabix on wheels.
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Amazon "fulfillment centers" run a similar scheme.
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Ditto The Regal Bank of Caledonia at its 3k person office on the outskirts of Edinburgh, via a tie up with Lothian Buses the bus company 90% owned by the local council. Not that popular though as folk expect to park free of charge around 2 metres from their workplace, but WPL might change that equation soon.
In general - if its a big enough issue any employer (whether a school or otherwise) might have to consider providing a degree of assistance in helping employees reach their workplace (eg free or paid for bus from the nearest railway station / other public transport location / convenient free parking).
But it needs compromise all round and in my experience when it comes to driving to work compromise is in short supply from both employers and workers.
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A large part of the problem is that managers are often well-paid enough to keep driving regardless.
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But that doesn't help if there is nowhere to park, as where all nearby – for whatever values of nearby – parking is residents or short-term only.
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I doubt if any of us are asking that, because we've all read your posts about trip chaining* before. Just as you must be familiar with the phrase, "If I wanted to go there, I wouldn't start from here". Starting from here, the current UK situation, how do you propose to reach this trip chaining transportational Eden?
First off, I'm genuinely pleased that people have actually read what I post. Thank you!
How would I do this?
a) bring all public transport in the UK into public ownership.
b) Nation wide public transport contactless card. Like oyster, but for the whole country.
c) Unified ticketing policy across the UK. With pricing clearly defined to be based on a simple check in + distance model. Something like 50p to check in then 10p per km that tapers off to eventually 1p per km (exact numbers tbd), capped at £100 per day.
d) make sure that every village is served by buses at a frequency of at least once every 15 mins from 5am until 2am 365.25 days a year.
e) abolish all return tickets and all advance tickets.
That's the starting point at least.
J
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I have very limited knowledge of other comparable (pop. 180,000) cities, but Southend has no park & ride scheme. Chelmsford and Norwich, but a fair bit smaller than Southend, have very good schemes. Cambridge does too, also a lot smaller than Southend. There are very few areas of open land two or three miles outside the city centre, but if they closed the airport there would be plenty. Of course, unlike the other cities I've mentioned, you can really only approach Southend from one direction - the west. The other cities have P & R strategically placed all around them.
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I doubt if any of us are asking that, because we've all read your posts about trip chaining* before. Just as you must be familiar with the phrase, "If I wanted to go there, I wouldn't start from here". Starting from here, the current UK situation, how do you propose to reach this trip chaining transportational Eden?
First off, I'm genuinely pleased that people have actually read what I post. Thank you!
How would I do this?
a) bring all public transport in the UK into public ownership.
b) Nation wide public transport contactless card. Like oyster, but for the whole country.
c) Unified ticketing policy across the UK. With pricing clearly defined to be based on a simple check in + distance model. Something like 50p to check in then 10p per km that tapers off to eventually 1p per km (exact numbers tbd), capped at £100 per day.
d) make sure that every village is served by buses at a frequency of at least once every 15 mins from 5am until 2am 365.25 days a year.
e) abolish all return tickets and all advance tickets.
That's the starting point at least.
J
Before I address your roadmap, I see I never got around to elaborating my * after trip chaining. So here it is:
trip chaining*
....
*Trip chaining is an unbroken cycle of hallucinogenic experiences.
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How would I do this?
a) bring all public transport in the UK into public ownership.
b) Nation wide public transport contactless card. Like oyster, but for the whole country.
c) Unified ticketing policy across the UK. With pricing clearly defined to be based on a simple check in + distance model. Something like 50p to check in then 10p per km that tapers off to eventually 1p per km (exact numbers tbd), capped at £100 per day.
d) make sure that every village is served by buses at a frequency of at least once every 15 mins from 5am until 2am 365.25 days a year.
e) abolish all return tickets and all advance tickets.
That's the starting point at least.
J
a) It's not going to happen. It's in no party's manifesto, and I doubt anyone wants to take on the staffing and facility provision necessary. Legislation and regulation with subsidy can, on the other hand, achieve much of the control necessary.
b) Absolutely
c) Kind of goes with B, but within reason I think something along these lines can be achieved.
d) ROFL. Get up and ROFL some more. Have you any idea how many villages there are in UK? How small most of them are? And how far some are from the places passengers might want to go? Service levels have to reflect population and demand. Most villages would be very happy with an hourly service from 8 am to 9pm - maybe later, if they are near enough to a town to expect evening visits to bars/cinemas/restaurants. For many villages round me, that could be satisfied by a Ford Galaxy rather than a bus - which, in any case, wouldn't fit down many of our roads. It's a nice idea, but it's not realistic.
e) If B is instigated, this kind of ticketing is redundant for local services - but is probably still relevant for long-distance services.
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a) bring all public transport in the UK into public ownership.
b) Nation wide public transport contactless card. Like oyster, but for the whole country.
c) Unified ticketing policy across the UK. With pricing clearly defined to be based on a simple check in + distance model. Something like 50p to check in then 10p per km that tapers off to eventually 1p per km (exact numbers tbd), capped at £100 per day.
d) make sure that every village is served by buses at a frequency of at least once every 15 mins from 5am until 2am 365.25 days a year.
e) abolish all return tickets and all advance tickets.
That's the starting point at least.
J
a) Seems a good idea and would have a lot of support. Has been almost sort of done for rail now, at least until another model of privatisation is found. But it's not a panacea; both public and private ownership can be good and bad.
b) Neat idea, but why not just use bank cards? Like they do in London, with a fare-counting scheme. Most people already have a bank card and those who refuse one are likely to refuse another type of smart card too.
c) Some unification of ticket types is sensible, particularly on rail but also on coaches and local transport. But I'm not sure it makes sense to have the same fare policy across transport modes and for locations from central London to the Scottish Highlands.
d) Highly specific demands risk highly specific implementation. You could end up with buses every 15 minutes which only go to the next village and back. Maybe research travel patterns and cater to them.
e) Advance tickets can be a bit of a pain but an open return is in many ways the conceptual opposite of an advance.
But most of this is still where you want to go, not how you're going to get there.
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A large part of the problem is that managers are often well-paid enough to keep driving regardless.
I'll have you know that about 35 years ago I had a well paid job with a fully expensed company car and a parking space in central London, and I mostly used to cycle in and park the bike in the car space.
On reflection this might not prove that much.
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There has been talk of a national rail smart card. But it hasn't got anywhere because it wouldn't know where you'd gone, unless perhaps it was fitted with some sort of GPS tracker, in which case it would be bulky and need charging. Many, probably most, train stations don't have barriers so there's no record of where you board or disembark.
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a google search suggests that this particular Southend school has three railway stations within a 15 minute walk.
But teachers simply have to drive. Aye right.
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I can kind of understand that. It's in the nature of the job that you never stop, and teachers very often have to take huge piles of marking home. Walking almost a mile to a station with a couple of classes' exercise books is not going to be easy. And they might not live near a station at the other end. Bear in mind that ALL this country's public transport system is crap.
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A large part of the problem is that managers are often well-paid enough to keep driving regardless.
I'll have you know that about 35 years ago I had a well paid job with a fully expensed company car and a parking space in central London, and I mostly used to cycle in and park the bike in the car space.
On reflection this might not prove that much.
No one has ever offered me this. Oh wait. Tidy Haired Thought Leadership.
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A bus every fifteen minutes to every village is probably eminently feasible.
As there doesn’t seem to be a requirement for the bus to go anywhere other than the villages, it can just go round and round. And round.
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Resources are finite, both of humans and things. Let's have public transport based on where people want to go, when they want to go, not everywhere all the time.
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There has been talk of a national rail smart card. But it hasn't got anywhere because it wouldn't know where you'd gone, unless perhaps it was fitted with some sort of GPS tracker, in which case it would be bulky and need charging. Many, probably most, train stations don't have barriers so there's no record of where you board or disembark.
No. You check in at one station. And check out at another. It's that simple.
Lots of Dutch stations don't have barriers, they just have a pedestal with a NFC reader in it. You wave your card over the reader to check in/out. And it has a pre defined map in the system of the shortest distance between each station pair. And charges you accordingly.
Only big stations have actual barriers.
J
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One teacher at my daughters' former primary school admitted to driving less than 200 yards from home to work sometimes, just to carry the volume of books.
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There has been talk of a national rail smart card. But it hasn't got anywhere because it wouldn't know where you'd gone, unless perhaps it was fitted with some sort of GPS tracker, in which case it would be bulky and need charging. Many, probably most, train stations don't have barriers so there's no record of where you board or disembark.
No. You check in at one station. And check out at another. It's that simple.
Lots of Dutch stations don't have barriers, they just have a pedestal with a NFC reader in it. You wave your card over the reader to check in/out. And it has a pre defined map in the system of the shortest distance between each station pair. And charges you accordingly.
Only big stations have actual barriers.
J
An NFC reader counts as a barrier. Somewhere to check in and out. Noticeably lacking from UK stations, other than large ones which also have actual physical gates. Many UK stations are just a couple of platforms and benches. You know this, your mind has not been wiped clean mid-Channel. So, if you installed some sort of touchpad type thingy, multiples of, on every station, and none of them got vandalised on the unstaffed stations, yes, it could work. But at the moment, it doesn't.
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An NFC reader counts as a barrier. Somewhere to check in and out. Noticeably lacking from UK stations, other than large ones which also have actual physical gates. Many UK stations are just a couple of platforms and benches. You know this, your mind has not been wiped clean mid-Channel. So, if you installed some sort of touchpad type thingy, multiples of, on every station, and none of them got vandalised on the unstaffed stations, yes, it could work. But at the moment, it doesn't.
Well duh. You would have to roll this system out country wide for it to work. You can't magic it into existence.
It would create jobs installing then maintaining the readers, which is an added bonus.
Every station, every bus, every tram, would need the readers.
It's not hard to do.
J
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Wondering if you could base it on traffic counts. If it has more than XX vehicles per hour driving to it, it needs a public transport service.
Don't forget that at low enough usage, a bus service will be less environmentally friendly than cars. A minibus every 15 minutes to every village regardless of circumstances may result in trips which have no passengers or only replace a single car. Environmentally, that's a negative. But that probably applies to a small fraction of the UK population (<10% ?), albeit a larger land area.
There's also potentially an issue with the "every village" decision. We have an excellent bus service where I live from the guided busway. But the stop is at one end of the village. It results in a fast bus service which blasts through the single stop and onward. That is one of the reasons it gets used - it makes it faster to reach your destination. But there have been complaints recently that the traditional bus service which winds through every corner of the village has been reduced and apparently now dropped entirely. The bulk of the population can walk that last mile, and I'd happily do so every time in exchange for a more frequent service. But there are people who need a pickup from within 1/4 mile of their home. This has traditionally been served by those slow bus services. How do you efficiently meet that? Because if you plan to do so with every service in your national plan then it's fucked - the service will be slow and crap to the population who want to efficiently get to work or school. Do you draw the line somewhere, then pass the buck to some kind of care service?
The complaints surprised me on that point, but perhaps shouldn't have. My point is more that there is no ideal system. We don't live in a world with unlimited resources, and there will need to be decisions made at the lower-intensity points of a network.
I agree with much of your plan though, qg!
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An NFC reader counts as a barrier. Somewhere to check in and out. Noticeably lacking from UK stations, other than large ones which also have actual physical gates. Many UK stations are just a couple of platforms and benches. You know this, your mind has not been wiped clean mid-Channel. So, if you installed some sort of touchpad type thingy, multiples of, on every station, and none of them got vandalised on the unstaffed stations, yes, it could work. But at the moment, it doesn't.
Well duh. You would have to roll this system out country wide for it to work. You can't magic it into existence.
It would create jobs installing then maintaining the readers, which is an added bonus.
Every station, every bus, every tram, would need the readers.
It's not hard to do.
J
It's hard to do if you have to ask who's going to pay for it, does it meet a cost:benefit ratio, etc. What you (we) need to majique into existence is something like a money-last attitude – and that is hard to do.
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It's hard to do if you have to ask who's going to pay for it, does it meet a cost:benefit ratio, etc. What you (we) need to majique into existence is something like a money-last attitude – and that is hard to do.
Government pays. It's public owned after all.
Bank of England edits two cells on a spreadsheet. The money is there.
Inflation is then controlled by taxing the rich to remove money from the economy.
J
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Alternatively, transport costs mean that only rural workers and the rich live in these villages, most other people live in sustainable collections of population which hare served by excellent conches of public transport.
Devising a transport system that panders to individual choice is exactly why we are in this mess.
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The rich don't pay tax. They have accountants to make sure of that.
What happens is you end up with the economy of the Weimar Republic.
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The rich don't pay tax. They have accountants to make sure of that.
What happens is you end up with the economy of the Weimar Republic.
Yeah. That's something else we need to fix.
J
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This has turned into a POBI thread.
Reform of bus services (far less far-reaching/expensive than the proposal in this thread) was one of the many sensible policy proposals (that polled very well individually) from Labour in 2019. Persuading any political party to try those policies again is not going to be easy.
As we've seen with LTNs, if you implement a good idea with all stick and no carrot, people make a huge amount of fuss and try to get everything thrown out. Getting teachers (or other workers) to drive less would be great - banning cars and not offering an alternative just pisses them off.
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An NFC reader counts as a barrier. Somewhere to check in and out. Noticeably lacking from UK stations, other than large ones which also have actual physical gates. Many UK stations are just a couple of platforms and benches. You know this, your mind has not been wiped clean mid-Channel. So, if you installed some sort of touchpad type thingy, multiples of, on every station, and none of them got vandalised on the unstaffed stations, yes, it could work. But at the moment, it doesn't.
Well duh. You would have to roll this system out country wide for it to work. You can't magic it into existence.
Ah, but you can. Just make everyone install an app! What could possibly go wrong...
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As we've seen with LTNs, if you implement a good idea with all stick and no carrot, people make a huge amount of fuss and try to get everything thrown out. Getting teachers (or other workers) to drive less would be great - banning cars and not offering an alternative just pisses them off.
I reckon we might get some buy-in from teachers if we stopped giving them piles of homework...
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Obviously going well off topic but I don't think teachers have piled off books anymore. My eldest who started secondary school this year does virtually all her home work online
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Same here for secondary - vast majority of homework is online. And I know at least one primary teacher who seems to walk a mile from the bus stop to school. I'm guessing the compromise is that he has to stop longer at school rather than doing marking from home, but haven't spoken to him about it.
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They do homework online, but schoolwork in books. And those books still have to be marked from time to time.
Primary is different, they have a lot less marking as far as I can tell.
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ICBA reading the whole of this thread, but has the school re-opened?
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Secondary has the pointless marking of in class workbooks that needs to be done regularly.
Primary has that on a whole extra level and every little detail has to be recorded.
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...
c) Unified ticketing policy across the UK. With pricing clearly defined to be based on a simple check in + distance model. Something like 50p to check in then 10p per km that tapers off to eventually 1p per km (exact numbers tbd), capped at £100 per day.
...
In Edinburgh, you can pay for the bus by tapping your credit/debit card on the reader. What you pay is capped at the price of a day ticket, which is (about - can't be bothered to check) the price of three single tickets. Works really well (but I have no idea how it works for people travelling with children).
(There's no such thing as a return ticket, you either buy single tickets or a day ticket.)
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S
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c) Unified ticketing policy across the UK. With pricing clearly defined to be based on a simple check in + distance model. Something like 50p to check in then 10p per km that tapers off to eventually 1p per km (exact numbers tbd), capped at £100 per day.
...
In Edinburgh, you can pay for the bus by tapping your credit/debit card on the reader. What you pay is capped at the price of a day ticket, which is (about - can't be bothered to check) the price of three single tickets. Works really well (but I have no idea how it works for people travelling with children).
(There's no such thing as a return ticket, you either buy single tickets or a day ticket.)
A similar system is in operation in Middle Earth. It takes about 50% of the mystery out of bus travel for infrequent users. There's also something called a Swift card, which functions a bit like London's Oyster. Not sure if the walk-on fares are the same, but I think it's a requirement for things like student discounts and season tickets.
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ICBA reading the whole of this thread, but has the school re-opened?
I asked the same question yesterday. No answer yet.
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Nothing marked on the school calendar (https://www.stbernardswestcliff.org.uk/calendar/?calid=6,7,3,4,5,8,9,10,11&pid=17&viewid=12) or elsewhere on the school website, but there was something published on there yesterday (Wednesday 16th). So someone's at work, but they might not be at school!
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Looks like she changed her mind the following day: https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/23101666.st-bernards-school-head-u-turns-school-closure-parking-row/
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The issue with the card system in brim is that if you travel with children you can’t tap for them, so you end up not paying…
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Looks like she changed her mind the following day: https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/23101666.st-bernards-school-head-u-turns-school-closure-parking-row/
So I wonder what the solution they've come up with is?
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In Oxford, there is no automated tap in/out, but you can pay for your ticket with a contactless payment. Except when it doesn't work, which seems to be about 50% of the time for my daughter!
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ICBA reading the whole of this thread, but has the school re-opened?
I asked the same question yesterday. No answer yet.
I think she changed her mind and it didn't close after all. It's a few weeks back now but I think I recall something in the local rag about it.
Ah yes! https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/23101666.st-bernards-school-head-u-turns-school-closure-parking-row/
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Possibly relevant is my post in The Pub thread 'Random Things that don't require etc etc'
Relates to 35 years of living next door but one to a school.
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ICBA reading the whole of this thread, but has the school re-opened?
I asked the same question yesterday. No answer yet.
I think she changed her mind and it didn't close after all. It's a few weeks back now but I think I recall something in the local rag about it.
Ah yes! https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/23101666.st-bernards-school-head-u-turns-school-closure-parking-row/
Does that mean the council are issuing the staff permits or something? Or at least promised to for long enough for the school to stay open and the sky not to fall in?