The dangers of London's streets...

[roryer]

Dear god!

You clearly have never lived in the East of Scotland then.

Sorry, but you might as well be talking about another planet.

No I have never lived in the East of Scotland although I once had a girlfriend who lived in Edinburgh.

What do you mean different planet? Do you mean that if we carry on as we are now we will need to find a new planet to move to?

I don't quite understand your objection to my posts, suggesting that although goverments do have a role to play in developing less car dependant soceity, individuals also have an important part to play in reducing unnecessary car trips, this surely applies to almost any car dependant soceity, which is the majority of the developed world.

Things like driving to the local shops to buy milk or a paper, or to drop the kids off for school is simply unacceptable behaviour. It should be considered on a par or of greater inconsideration to others as smoking at work, or drink driving.

In regards to Eastern Scotland and Scotland in general, yes they have a fair way to go as does most of the UK, but despite building the Aberdeen bypass NESTRANS also does have several good schemes such as the Dyce TMO.

 

[cybertect]

Yes, there are Metric Tonnes & Imperial Tons. Metric are lighter IIRC.

1 Imperial Ton = 1016.04691 Kg
1 Metric Tonne = 1000 Kg

 

[Pingu]

.

Things like driving to the local shops to buy milk or a paper, or to drop the kids off for school is simply unacceptable behaviour. It should be considered on a par or of greater inconsideration to others as smoking at work, or drink driving.

In regards to Eastern Scotland and Scotland in general, yes they have a fair way to go as does most of the UK, but despite building the Aberdeen bypass NESTRANS also does have several good schemes such as the Dyce TMO.

what always amazes em about threads like this is people who think that rural locations have public transport on a par with a city. When you say local shops we are generally not talking about a Tesco or even a tesco metro in most rural places. If you are lucky there is a small spar or kwik save but often the village shop stocks.. bread..milk..egss..and pot noodles ..oh and home made lemon curd.

I dont live there any more but I lived in a small village in snowdonia for a while. it was a good tourist place with far more shops than you would normally find in a rural village of its size (Pentre Du just outside of betws-y-coed). If you wanted anything more thna very basic fare it was a 10 mile trip to Llanrwst. you could get the bus (two a day) but without a car a varied diet meant different pasties or diff flavours of pot noodles.

Ok I am paining it a bit bleaker than it was (you could get cheese etc) but to try to apply thinking that may well be rational in a town or city to a rural location just doesnt work.

It would be like me kicking off because there are no safe places to ride a horse in central london. I mean why not you can do it round here so why isnt it possible in oxford street?

blanket statements are bollocks

 

[GoneCoastal]

Nice ideas but unfortunately for me, (and I live in a major town)

If you must drive and there is no alternative then drive. Just try not to drive when you don't need to, wheen yourself off the car addiction slowly, you will probably find your lifestyle improves when you reduce your hyper-mobililty.

If you are hyper mobile you probably don't have the time to meet or get to know your neighbours very well.

Given that I go to work at 7am and get back at 8.30 to 9pm I don't really see much of my neighbours

So try out a few local shops within cycling distance (under 6km) in your area that might need the trade more than the superstore with huge car park on a major junction. Change from one big weekly shop, to shopping at the local greengrocers every day for fresh food. Of course most community shops are closing now, because people prefer facless shopping with no interaction with other people, and seeing their money going out of the community to feed rich cats living in Jersey or Monaco.

My local shop opens after I go to work and closes before I get home plus it's a SPAR and expensive compared to a supermarket

As for costs, giving up your car will save you money! Actually a car costs you much more than public transport and your perceptions of the PT service are probably much worse than the reality.

The problem of course are the fixed costs of running a car, the AA estimates the average cost of running a medium sized car are 55p per mile when fixed costs of depreciation, insurance etc and parking, repairs and petrol are all taken into account.

You'd find that the buses are probably quite competitive when compared to the full costs of running a car, and as you get used to a car free lifestyle you will get to know the timetables and plan your trips to multi-task, the extra hour waiting for a return bus after a shopping trip you spend at a library, or having a coffee, art gallery or whatever your interest lies.

If you want to go carfree but still have access to a car for regular trips that you can't do any other way you can join a car club. These operate in most major cities but if there is not one operating close to you, you can get one going, get a group of 5 - 12 neighbours and buy a car which you share, each user logs how much they use it and you split all costs according to the amount you drive. (Ask your local council to find out details of car clubs in your area)

Very true about total costs but there is no PT alternative for me to get to & from work - it's 70miles away and not on a mainline commuter route. The weekly season ticket is in excess of £80 and I'd actually have to leave earlier in the morning and get home later if I went to work by PT (which I would like to do) - It would also involve bus to stn & then 2 trains & a 15 minute walk along a 3 lane dual carriageway with no pavemant - then the journey in reverse at the end of the day

My work is IT Project Management and unfortunately, there don't seem to be many jobs in my immediate location that are available so I commute to work. I'd point out that I did live closer to work but due to serious family problems last year I had to give up my flat and move back to my home town

I do use the bus at weekends for going into town however but generally only if the weather's OK as standing at a bus stop wet or walking to the bus stop in the rain is not appealing at all. (Sorry)

This sounds selfish but I think it's quite possibly representative of a lot of people. A very significant number of my colleagues live up to 100 miles from work and have to drive in

I think we have to consider the whole picture with the car vs PT subject and ask why ppl use cars in preference to PT and make allowances for each persons needs (e2a: rather than making blanket assumptions as to why ppl use cars)

 

[geminisnake]

Things like driving to the local shops to buy milk or a paper, or to drop the kids off for school is simply unacceptable behaviour.

My local shop is over 2 miles away which is why I never only go for milk. Pogofish's local shop is probably about a mile but the level of traffic in his area is such that you have to use a vehicle to get anywhere.
My inlaws live about 2 miles away from him(still outskirts of Aberdeen), don't have a car and have actually HAD to get a bus to cross the main road Such is the continous stream of traffic going into Aberdeen sometimes.

As for drop the kids off at school not being accpetable. MY son HAD to get transport to the local school(both primary and secondary) on SAFETY grounds, this was provided by the council.

As for another planet I suspect he means the PT system in London and Edinburgh are vastly superior to those of Aberdeen. Iirc there is a bus an hr where my inlaws live, which goes into the town centre. God forbid you should want to go to another part of the city

 

[Prefade]

Things like driving to the local shops to buy milk or a paper, or to drop the kids off for school is simply unacceptable behaviour. It should be considered on a par or of greater inconsideration to others as smoking at work, or drink driving.

Funnily enough this kind of echoes the regular discussion I have with Mrs Prefade. I've not owned a car for 11 years now, at first due to economic circumstances and now because I've no motivation to do so (living in central London, price of fuel etc.) and because I can at least take the moral high ground when it comes to my contribution to the enironment.

Mrs Prefade's objections to this stance come with our fortnightly shopping trip to the local Asda which I confess I hate too, mainly because it involves a 20 minute bus journey each way which on the return journey is a nightmare with all the different bags. She keeps saying "if we get a car we can just use it for the shopping and then we wouldn't be doing much polluting or paying much for the fuel".

I may use the unacceptable behaviour argument next time to see how it is countered.

 

[cybertect]

As for another planet I suspect he means the PT system in London and Edinburgh are vastly superior to those of Aberdeen. Iirc there is a bus an hr where my inlaws live, which goes into the town centre. God forbid you should want to go to another part of the city

When I lived in mid-Wales there was one bus a day through the village to Hereford about 20 miles away.

It left the village about 9:40 a.m. and got into the bus station at Hereford about 10:35.

At 10:40 a.m., the same vehicle left Hereford to become the only bus service going back through the village to Brecon for the whole day.

So you got all of five minutes to do your shopping in Hereford or were stranded in Brecon overnight.

The only other alternative was to get a bus back into Hay and take a taxi from there, or cycle the 40+ mile round trip.

(Oh, and I was unemployed for a large part of the time and didn't own a car so this was hardly a trivial problem)

 

[cybertect]

Though one advantage of living in such a rural area was that you could sign on by post

 

[pogofish]

I once had a girlfriend who lived in Edinburgh.

I don't quite understand your objection to my posts,

In regards to Eastern Scotland and Scotland in general, yes they have a fair way to go as does most of the UK, but despite building the Aberdeen bypass NESTRANS also does have several good schemes such as the Dyce TMO.

Edinburgh is in a somewhat different position.

I don't object to anything you say but your claims about the economics of car/vs bus use just don't wash here - Thanks to the First/Stagecoach axis dominating things, we have fare rates that make car use seem positively cheap by comparison & services that are run for the benifit of the bus co's or a very few sponsoring employers (mine are one of them) & not for the benifit of the public.

You also don't appreciate the well-entrenched position of the supermarkets (10 year head start on most of the country, Pingu describes the remaining local shops/garages well enough) that has already made local shopping a thing of the past for most - eg to do that, I would unquestionably need a car & would need to roam over a 30-mile radius for "local" shops, whilst there are a good half a dozen supermarkets within a few mins cycle.

NESTRANS are another body who exist on a different planet I'm afraid. Especially the Dyce TMO - which is pretty typical of their usual tokenistic approach to things, rather than any attempt to face-up to the city's real problems. I also notice they stopped speaking to the general public some time back. If you think that lot of self-interest-ridden, usual suspects are providing any sort of viable alternative, you are clearly missing the real issue by a country mile.

 

[geminisnake]

Though one advantage of living in such a rural area was that you could sign on by post

Not anymore afaik

 

[pogofish]

Pogofish's local shop is probably about a mile but the level of traffic in his area is such that you have to use a vehicle to get anywhere.

My inlaws live about 2 miles away from him(still outskirts of Aberdeen), don't have a car and have actually HAD to get a bus to cross the main road Such is the continous stream of traffic going into Aberdeen sometimes.

As for another planet I suspect he means the PT system in London and Edinburgh are vastly superior to those of Aberdeen. Iirc there is a bus an hr where my inlaws live, which goes into the town centre. God forbid you should want to go to another part of the city

No more. Its gone, so all my local shops are now the likes of ASDA, Sainsbury or LIDL. Mind you what really killed the shop was the complete & utter financial incompetence of its last owner, he really couldn't cope with anything more than petty cash. Nearest locals now involve a longer journey into town or a 16-20 mile each-way drive to other towns.

My mother has exactly the same problem & is awaiting the bypass with hope. Rather than being a new scheme as the protestors claimed, this is a road that was first planned 50 years ago & has been continually set-back by the opposition of those who have done very well out of the city's problems & indeed contributed to them. Opposing this scheme puts you right in bed with the oil bigwigs.

 

[roryer]

Rural settings

Interestingly the problems you are highlighting of lack of local ammenities, services and shops are actually caused by car culture and in a vicious circle increase the dependance on cars.

Local shops and services are forced to close down as competition from large superstores encourages people drive to shops further away.

We must halt this trend as it is increasing pollution, congestion and destroying communities and actually decreasing choice.

Not all the blame lies with the individual, in fact who would choose to be car free when there are so many obvious dissadvantages?

Well unless you care about soceity, the environment, your health and that of your children and about the health of our planet then no-one would even try.

Fortuantely some people do care and have become car free by choice, many of them living in rural areas.

There are usually ways of doing it, whether by e-remote working solutions or by joining a car club or finding a car share partner and there are also individual advantages, your health, your finances, and your interaction with people improves, your kids learn to be independent and usually do better at school.

Of course if you are too busy working harder and harder in order to bequeath to your children a planet-sized disaster area, then you probably have to continue with your hyper-mobile lifestyle and blame the governement for providing the extra roads and out of town shopping centres, closing down local post offices etc to cater for your foolish choice.

They only know what the people want if told, or if they can see you changing, protesting, or lobbying.

You can support the car free heroes though just by trying to reduce your car use where possible, find out about PT routes, and ask your council to do more. I'll send the contact details for your local authority transport department if anyone wants them.

For all those living in rural areas you should be writing to you local authorities to demand they provide a more flexible Taxi-bus system.

There are many different systems but the simplest is one that you ring to book at least one hour or sometimes a day in advance by email, they only run when someone books them and often can also change their routes slightly, and therefore never run empty.

It means buses in rural areas have much higher ridership and therefore can run more regularily, once an hour instead of twice a day, and later into the evenings.

There are many solutions out there but you need to push the government to spend their transport budgets on a new taxi-bus and not on another bypass.

 

[roryer]

No more. Its gone, so all my local shops are now the likes of ASDA, Sainsbury or LIDL. Mind you what really killed the shop was the complete & utter financial incompetence of its last owner, he really couldn't cope with anything more than petty cash. Nearest locals now involve a longer journey into town or a 16-20 mile each-way drive to other towns.

My mother has exactly the same problem & is awaiting the bypass with hope. Rather than being a new scheme as the protestors claimed, this is a road that was first planned 50 years ago & has been continually set-back by the opposition of those who have done very well out of the city's problems & indeed contributed to them. Opposing this scheme puts you right in bed with the oil bigwigs.

Bypasses increase traffic, the problem they are built to aleviate is congestion which after 3-5 years returns to the same point as latent demand increases.

If your mother wants more traffic, fewer PT services, fewer local shops, worse congestion, social exclusion, pollution and road saftey then a bypass is the answer.

If she wants better more flexible PT then opposing it is the only solution.

The transport budget is about £345 per head, spending on new major capital projects makes up the majority of this. It does not solve our dependance on cars. It is a WASTE!!!!!

 

[geminisnake]

FAO roryer

open this link for the ultimate reason for neither me or pogo will ever support local PT. This vile, homphobic hag and her brother(inlaw??) own both companies

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2006/08/18/newsstory8662680t0.asp

That photo is enough to give bairns nightmares!!

 

[Cobbles]

I'm really lucky - I'm only a 5 minute walk away from a whole range of local shops where I can happily get my hand made sardinian pasta, Strawberries in December and year-round Mange-tout, not to mention a whole range of utterly delicious bottled waters trucked, shipped and no doubt flown from all over.

Instead of beating up motorists (who already pay tax in direct proportion to the exact amount of fuel used), why not tax these utter fripperies instead.

Christ knows how much fuel uasge and congestion would be saved by not having to deliver Evian, Perrier and the like to tens of thousands of retail outlets.

 

[pogofish]

Bypasses increase traffic, the problem they are built to aleviate is congestion which after 3-5 years returns to the same point as latent demand increases.

If your mother wants more traffic, fewer PT services, fewer local shops, worse congestion, social exclusion, pollution and road saftey then a bypass is the answer.

If she wants better more flexible PT then opposing it is the only solution.

The transport budget is about £345 per head, spending on new major capital projects makes up the majority of this. It does not solve our dependance on cars. It is a WASTE!!!!!

Did you miss the bit where I mentioned this road was planned over 50 years ago? This is not some new bypass covered by that recent thinking, instead merely the infrastructure just catching up with where it needs to be. The new route also does much more to address the issue of local/regional traffic flow than any current & proposed PT plans, which still tend to assume that everyone wants to only go to the city centre for work or leisure activities.

Where she is stands to gain a great reduction in traffic, even with the current half-arsed implementation of the original route. She has also been in the area since the days when the sight of a car brought-out the curtain switchers.

No, the same people opposing the bypass are also determinedly opposing the introduction of better/new PT & alternative links in the same area, to-wit, the reinstatement of the Deeside rail line, locally operated buses & a cycletrack. Opposing it is simply playing into the hands of a cynical manipulation by the oil-rich residents of a very small area who would be more than happy to see a return to the days of the "pithead" community where pay & conditions for us little people were kept down by policies like - only recruiting from specific areas or individual bus routes. For some of us, those days are only a generation away & I for one saw enough members of my family take lower rates, forced to leave or be held back in their jobs because they didn't live within a traditional recruitment area. Also, for many parts of the country, chucking your job could well mean a long time on the dole before another might come along.

 

[pogofish]

Interestingly the problems you are highlighting of lack of local ammenities, services and shops are actually caused by car culture and in a vicious circle increase the dependance on cars.

Local shops and services are forced to close down as competition from large superstores encourages people drive to shops further away.

No, what made the difference was when folk discovered that they could do their shopping in one quick easy burst & not be charged through the nose for it. I grew-up in the days when my mother did all her shopping from small shops & it took-up a huge part of her spare time & almost all of her small amount of money. Supermarkets simply tended to show-up just how many small shopkeepers had their customers over a barrel & knew it. The ones who survived (& still survive) were the ones whose quality/price & respect for their clients remained good. Most didn't IME.

As for the rest. Stop quoting manifesto & go look at the real world. Not all of us live a nice urban-defined lifestyle or indeed want our interactions to be dictated by some remote "transport planner" who jumps to another's dubious agenda.

 

[pogofish]

FAO roryer

open this link for the ultimate reason for neither me or pogo will ever support local PT. This vile, homphobic hag and her brother(inlaw??) own both companies

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2006/08/18/newsstory8662680t0.asp

That photo is enough to give bairns nightmares!!

Indeed, also her support of fox-hunting & fundamentalist christian evangelicals masquerading as medical charities in the thirld world. Never mind her utterly cuntish behaviour to locals on her other estate & even my own issues from the days she & her brother actually worked their own buses.

Thats just stagecoach, I have other stories about First - not the least is that one of its directors is currently spending his chunk of public funding on creating a massive renasance playground on his estate near me. Needless to say, you can't get a bus there but even if you could, the security on that land is greater than the Queen's at Balmoral.

This is the reality of "Public Transport" to us, not what you are trying to suggest.

 

[Cobbles]

Indeed, also her support of fox-hunting & fundamentalist christian evangelicals masquerading as medical charities in the thirld world. Never mind her utterly cuntish behaviour to locals on her other estate & even my own issues from the days she & her brother actually worked their own buses.

Thats just stagecoach, I have other stories about First - not the least is that one of its directors is currently spending his chunk of public funding on creating a massive renasance playground on his estate near me. Needless to say, you can't get a bus there but even if you could, the security on that land is greater than the Queen's at Balmoral.

This is the reality of "Public Transport" to us, not what you are trying to suggest.

Well someone had to do it - look at the Local Authorities, they can't manage to organise Social Services or even fixing holes in the roads so thank private enterprise is involved in providing transport. What would be the alternative - a massively bloated back office standing behind every bus/train at even more cost to the taxpayer.

 

[Dissident Junk]

Funnily enough this kind of echoes the regular discussion I have with Mrs Prefade. I've not owned a car for 11 years now, at first due to economic circumstances and now because I've no motivation to do so (living in central London, price of fuel etc.) and because I can at least take the moral high ground when it comes to my contribution to the enironment.

Mrs Prefade's objections to this stance come with our fortnightly shopping trip to the local Asda which I confess I hate too, mainly because it involves a 20 minute bus journey each way which on the return journey is a nightmare with all the different bags. She keeps saying "if we get a car we can just use it for the shopping and then we wouldn't be doing much polluting or paying much for the fuel".

I may use the unacceptable behaviour argument next time to see how it is countered.

Have you thought about online shopping? I don't know if Asda do it, but Sainsburys and Tesco do. I actually found it cheaper and easier to shop online and have it delivered (no more bags on the bus, plus they deliver other people's shopping at the same time, so does away with the one car/one trip thing/no delivery fee tues/wed/thurs). And somehow shopping online helped me keep to a food budget more easily. It used to take me ten minutes to place my order.

It might be a consideration if you seriously thinking of buying a car for the job.

 

[Cobbles]

Have you thought about online shopping? I don't know if Asda do it, but Sainsburys and Tesco do. I actually found it cheaper and easier to shop online and have it delivered (no more bags on the bus, plus they deliver other people's shopping at the same time, so does away with the one car/one trip thing/no delivery fee tues/wed/thurs). And somehow shopping online helped me keep to a food budget more easily. It used to take me ten minutes to place my order.

It might be a consideration if you seriously thinking of buying a car for the job.

Not many local shops have web sites and delivery fleets - surely you're not advocating that someone should throw themselves onto the mercy of big nasty corporations?

 

[pogofish]

Well someone had to do it -

What would be the alternative - a massively bloated back office standing behind every bus/train at even more cost to the taxpayer.

Really? I can remember the pre-privatisation services & whilst they were not fault-free in any way, there was some sort of concept of public service behind them.

We are getting the office block anyway by the look of it. Go google "First Group - World headquarters" or "Aberdeen - Union Square" & see what both companies are trying to railroad through on us now. Via even more public money from the abuse of local development funding for depressed areas, the buying-out of councillors & compulsory purchase of public amenity land plus the sell-off of now highly valuable city centre depot/bus station land for commercial/residential development.

We get the worst of all worlds.

 

[Cobbles]

Really? I can remember the pre-privatisation services & whilst they were not fault-free in any way, there was some sort of concept of public service behind them.

We are getting the office block anyway by the look of it. Go google "First Group - World headquarters" or "Aberdeen - Union Square" & see what both companies are trying to railroad through on us now. Via even more public money from the abuse of local development funding for depressed areas, the buying-out of councillors & compulsory purchase of public amenity land plus the sell-off of now highly valuable city centre depot/bus station land for commercial/residential development.

We get the worst of all worlds.

First bus was sold by Grampian region Transport yonks ago - how come the Local Authority wasn't smart enough to turn buses into a profit centre?

If you have any evidence of toon cooncilors anywhere in the UK taking dosh, then have you reported it or is this just sour grapes 'cause you can't stand financial success?

 

[pogofish]

Nope, you have it quite the wrong way round, First bought-out GRT some years back under a forced sell-off & have cut corners & asset-stripped mercilessly since. As for knowing about First's directors, one is a neighbour & the kids of another were on my books in my last job (I've gone into detail about the sort of kids I used to work with on other threads so this in itself ain't nice). I know far too much about those assholes.

The abuse of development funding cos George Mair of First Bus still owns a disused yard in the funded area, so gets @£2mil for his multinational corp under regs designed to help locally-owned & run buisnesses, payments of £10-20K to the councillors who are trustees of The Lads Club whose playing fields are the intended site & the threat from First to double or withdraw its "donation" towards city sports facilities are all a matter of record & will hopefully be considered appropriately when the whole mess gets the once-over by Hollyrood.

Some more info here:
http://www.nepforums.co.uk/thisisno...Number=21822&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1


As for Union Square & other issues involving participation & overrepresentation in an upcoming pedestrianisation scheme (ie, bus/taxi monopoly, from their plans) don't even start me.

 

[nino_savatte]

First are scum: they run the buses in Greater Manchester (along with Stagecoach) and run the former WAGN rail service out of Kings Cross, as well as the services out of London Liverpool Street. Is there a city or town in Britain where they don't run the buses?

 

[pogofish]

or is this just sour grapes 'cause you can't stand financial success?

Financial success from hard work & providing a good quality product/service is one thing that I've got no problem with. However, where First & Stagecoach are concerned, that success comes more from exploitation, mercilessly putting down any competition, asset stripping & misuse of public subsidy. I certainly object to that.

 

[Dj TAB]

I've had my handlebars knocked out of my hands twice recently by twats too close to the pavement with huge wing-mirrors...

 

[roryer]

Did you miss the bit where I mentioned this road was planned over 50 years ago? This is not some new bypass covered by that recent thinking, instead merely the infrastructure just catching up with where it needs to be. The new route also does much more to address the issue of local/regional traffic flow than any current & proposed PT plans, which still tend to assume that everyone wants to only go to the city centre for work or leisure activities.

Where she is stands to gain a great reduction in traffic, even with the current half-arsed implementation of the original route. She has also been in the area since the days when the sight of a car brought-out the curtain switchers.

I don't know the full details of the bypass plan, at most I have scanned a few articles about it, so I cannot tell you anything about traffic flows etc.

Yes a bypass will reduce traffic on teh current routes in the short term, if this is the fix you want you must push for the road space freed up to be traffic free.

What I do know however that if this road had been built 30 years ago you would now have more traffic extra sprawl worse congestion, and pollution. The Highways agency followed the predict and provide methodogy for the past 50 years, building roads to accomodate demand which building more roads increased, a vicious circle.

In every case, and there are absolutly no exceptions, building extra road capacity increases demand.

As I have said I am no expert on your local transport problems, so the points I make are of course generalisations.

We have to choose what type of city / Country we want, do you want Aberdeen to be more like Copenhagen or Zurich or more like Los Angeles?

In one model policies must aim to reduce travel demand and to do this we must reduce supply, fewer parking spaces, increased provision of bike lanes and pavements at replacing auto lanes, better PT and investment in marketing the benefits so people know whats available and feel proud to use it.

Dubious? Well cities in Germnay, Denmark, Switzerland and Holland had similar car usage to cities in the UK in the late 60's, now they have higher car ownership but much lower car usage, and much higher bicycle and walking and PT usage.

Travel Demand Management can and does work, while building bypasses works in the opposite direction. It just depends if you want to live in a city which is car dependant or not.

 

[Cobbles]

"In every case, and there are absolutly no exceptions, building extra road capacity increases demand."

Drivel - "ooooh look a new bypass, I must rush off and buy a car" - as if....

"We have to choose what type of city / Country we want, do you want Aberdeen to be more like Copenhagen or Zurich or more like Los Angeles?"

LA - the other 2 are dull as ditchwater.

"It just depends if you want to live in a city which is car dependant or not."

As 90% of the UK's cities have no space for any form of infrastructure other than roads, there's no other option.

 

[roryer]

"In every case, and there are absolutly no exceptions, building extra road capacity increases demand."

Drivel - "ooooh look a new bypass, I must rush off and buy a car" - as if....

"We have to choose what type of city / Country we want, do you want Aberdeen to be more like Copenhagen or Zurich or more like Los Angeles?"

LA - the other 2 are dull as ditchwater.

"It just depends if you want to live in a city which is car dependant or not."

As 90% of the UK's cities have no space for any form of infrastructure other than roads, there's no other option.

The assertion that increase in road capacity increases demand are based on imperical research, I can't be bothered to go and look up the examples but if you want to please read the Dft Smarter Choices report. http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_susttravel/documents/page/dft_susttravel_038456.pdf
Better still buy a copy of Lynn Slomans Car Sick, a very readable analysis of government road policy which has caused car dependance available on Amazon.

Why does a new bypass increase demand?
1. There is a certain latent demand for road capacity, people who would travel by car choose other means or do not travel if it is not essential bcause they know there is congestion, when a new bypass is built these trips are then able to be made more easily.
2. Shorter journey times enabled by the initial honeymoon period after a bypass encourage people to travel further to work, move to cheaper or bigger houses further away or accept work further away.
3. A bypass opens up land for development, companies relocate to be close to the bypass, retail parks, warehouses etc, usually moving out of town centres where public transport links are good, but car acess is limited and expensive.
4. A combination of reduced choice for alternatives in longer term caused by the bypass, local shops closing etc, means that yes car ownership does increase.

The net results of these changes is a further move towards car dependancy.

Copenhagen and Zurich dull? What about Amsterdamn?
I stayed in LA for a couple of weeks for work, and although I accept that there are some facinating creative people there I couldn't handle the fact that I had to drive or be driven hours each day from shopping mall to restaurant to work to home, with so few places to walk. Phoenix Arizona is an even better example of a dull car dependant city.

Finally you seem to keep mixing cause and symptoms. There is no space because car dependant systems are so space intensive, each car on the roads takes up the space of an average house with garden, driving, parking etc. This is the main problem, we have no living space in cities, no safe areas for kids to play or cycle lanes beacuse we need all the space for cars. Massivly inefficient!