UK Strategic Planning

[Genie]

20 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

C’mon, de icing the car rather than a 10 minute walk in a proper coat?

I know what you mean, it’s not pleasant when its a bit squally and there’s some rain in your face, but that’s not really reason enough to fire up the power station to charge the tesla, is it? Or more likely right now, run the diesel car engine until its warm enough to drive 600 metres.

It’s mindset, people will stretch themselves to that Mercedes they can’t really quite afford, but won’t buy a decent coat. If the weather was genuinely awful in some way, truly high winds or genuinely snowing, the school would be shut anyway. I live on the brow of a hill overlooking the coast, there weren’t very many school days when it was genuinely too atrocious to stick a decent pair of shoes on and get out there. I think it is laziness and comfort. Followed by tutting about pollution and asthma, and rising flood waters. 

I think there’s a world between not wanting to get soaked and spending the day wet and the weather being so bad the school has to close. Or it being so windy the girls hair is all over the place. Shoes are wet. Floor is slippery. Having to wake up and do everything a bit earlier especially when it’s pitch black and cold outside.
I agree it’s a mindset shift, but I don’t see it happening en-masse to make a meaningful difference. The world will just move to more smaller, electric cars sooner than being uncomfortable, cold and waking up earlier.

 

 

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

I think there’s a world between not wanting to get soaked and spending the day wet and the weather being so bad the school has to close. Or it being so windy the girls hair is all over the place. Shoes are wet. Floor is slippery. Having to wake up and do everything a bit earlier especially when it’s pitch black and cold outside.
I agree it’s a mindset shift, but I don’t see it happening en-masse to make a meaningful difference. The world will just move to more smaller, electric cars sooner than being uncomfortable, cold and waking up earlier.

 

 

Unless we close some of the roads, which will be a pretty forceful nudge in the direction of walking rather than polluting.

We can’t have a situation where we are recording drought through much of the year, consistently dry winters, but also justify a need to drive the car in case we get wet. But it does need to be part of a greater thing, too big a thing to carry out as a giant shift. So there have to be opportunities to make an incremental shift. Like the aspiration to walk around the local community.

We calculate GDP based on buying more stuff, we buy more stuff by working longer hours, we work longer hours by being time poor and needing the school run to take 17 minutes not 37 minutes. We’re robbing ourselves of walking the kids to school because we need to be in the office by 8:00am but stayed up watching that film so we didn’t get up until 6:28 because we’ve calculated that on our best day with everything working 6:28 is the absolute latest we can get up and get to work by 8:00am.

It’s madness, we’re killing ourselves to save 17 minutes we then spunk on watching a late night re run of a film. We’re moaning we can’t use the car to travel to the end of the street, but also moaning the traffic is awful. Everyone’s favoured solution is for everyone else to do something different. This literally ins’t sustainable.

I might be turning in to a hippy.

[Genie]

There’s also other real world factors at play. People use the car for the relatively short journey to school because they immediately go to work after, or visit a friend, or to the shops, or because they have a disability hindering their movement, or because nanna drops them off who lives a bit further away, or they go to a non-local school cos they moved house but kept same school. There’s hundreds of reasons why it could happen which are not all laziness.

I think rather than try and herd cats into doing something that’s really problematic we should be working on solutions for the real world of today and tomorrow.

I live on a fairly new estate, We were some of the first to move in and been here 5 years but it’s a big development which is nearing completion. On the site is a big clearing for a primary school which is good forward planning. Its kick off has been delayed several times as other local school had capacity, it looks like it’s finally going to start soon.

The issue I can see with it is one of ideology. The front of the site goes onto a non-resident road with a convenient loop, a great place for the parents to drive in, drop off, leave. This will be access for staff only. However, the pupil entrance is on the other side, just off a road lined with houses.

Now if @chrisp65 and I were in the planning meeting I’m sure we’d have disagreed about this. Mr P would be presenting that a large percentage of the students would be only a short walking distance away and so the pupil entrance would be fine, cars won’t be an issue. I’d be presenting evidence from every school in the country showing the chaos around schools at 8:30 and 15:00 regardless of relatively short distances.

It’s going to be interesting watching all those houses hit the market when their driveways are blocked every day of the school term, plus parents evenings, plus school discos.

It’s going to be horrible, and it is avoidable.

My point being we need to design our infrastructure for what we know will happen, not what we want to happen.

[Stevo985]

2 hours ago, Davkaus said:

From what I can tell, the controversy stems from plans in some cities to "ban" travel between 15 minute zones by car, by which they actually mean shutting down some rat runs and directing traffic to ring roads.

Yeah that's Oxford. I think someone brought it up in another thread thinking it was exactly that, basically a lockdown where you couldn't leave your zone except for small periods during the day. Which obviously wasn't the case. At all

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

The 15 minute cities thing has blown up because Oxford Council has decided to implement traffic management systems that essentially close off certain roads at certain times for anything but buses. Unless you have a permit, going down those roads in your car would see you get a fine, and even the permit would limit the amount of times you can use the road. Oxford is famously anti-car anyway but this was seen as a step too far.

It then got picked up by the conspiracy loons that it was actually part of a huge conspiracy by *pick your supranational organisation of choice* to control and ultimately kill off vast swathes of the population as part of some sinister plot, which has all been laid out in various documents that they have released, with climate change etc being given as the Trojan horse to get it in place.

The QAnon Anonymous podcast had someone attend the protest and interview lots of the people there. They're mental, mostly.

And my understanding is you can still travel by car to other "zones", you just have to go out to the ring road and back in.  t

[Genie]

I guess it all depends on the exact scenario but designing things to be deliberately inefficient seems like a recipe for disaster.

 

[Chindie]

11 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

And my understanding is you can still travel by car to other "zones", you just have to go out to the ring road and back in.  t

Yes. The idea is basically to disincentivise using a car for intracity and other short journeys. 

Birmingham has done similar and I've no doubt will do more. A significant part of 'the Big City Plan' that they revealed a decade ago was about discouraging car use in the city through various means that make using a car annoying - numerous ways of inducing traffic jams including reducing lanes and implementing more traffic control measures, charges to use areas of the city, etc etc. Unfortunately in Birmingham a car is pretty vital, the city is built around the car and public transport is rubbish.

I'm not against using these kind of measures to tackle climate change, but the issue is they can't really be implemented ahead of other changes. 15 minute cities are a good idea, but they're a good strategic idea rather than one that can be implemented retroactively without changes ahead of time to make them work. I live in a pretty well serviced area, but there's not a range of shops in 15 minutes to provide all needs, there's not public transport links to all amenities, and some of the more vital public transport links are shit. If you implemented a 15 minute city programme here, it would just **** people off. Resolve the problems first, though, and it's a good viable idea.

[chrisp65]

26 minutes ago, Genie said:

My point being we need to design our infrastructure for what we know will happen, not what we want to happen.

 

1. If we only design infrastructure for what we already know rather than what we aspire to, then we’d still be setting aside large areas for manure to be piled up from all the horses and carts in cities. Change does happen even though it can be inconceivable just before the change happens.

2. No new road or widened road or additional smart motorway lane ever reduced the number of cars on the road.

3. Car charging points are going to be a major issue soon and trailing leads up and down every terraced street and down the sides of ever block of flats or house in multiple occupancy is simply not going to be an option and building tens of millions of street charging points in the next 6 years is beyond our current organisational abilities.

4.0 There are close to 40 million cars, motorbikes and light vans on our roads. To plan for what we think we know, well the population is increasing, so the number of vehicles will increase, so keeping on with the same solutions will keep delivering these same excellent results we have today.

5.0 There is an obesity crisis. If only there was some way to increase people’s physical movement.

 

So we have to look at doing things differently. Even to the extreme of walking sometimes.

[Genie]

10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

1. If we only design infrastructure for what we already know rather than what we aspire to, then we’d still be setting aside large areas for manure to be piled up from all the horses and carts in cities. Change does happen even though it can be inconceivable just before the change happens.

2. No new road or widened road or additional smart motorway lane ever reduced the number of cars on the road.

3. Car charging points are going to be a major issue soon and trailing leads up and down every terraced street and down the sides of ever block of flats or house in multiple occupancy is simply not going to be an option and building tens of millions of street charging points in the next 6 years is beyond our current organisational abilities.

4.0 There are close to 40 million cars, motorbikes and light vans on our roads. To plan for what we think we know, well the population is increasing, so the number of vehicles will increase, so keeping on with the same solutions will keep delivering these same excellent results we have today.

5.0 There is an obesity crisis. If only there was some way to increase people’s physical movement.

 

So we have to look at doing things differently. Even to the extreme of walking sometimes.

I suggested we need to plan for the future and you seem to interpreted it as me saying we should live in the past.

On the example of schools they should be designed with the option of safe areas to park / drop off via car because that’s the reality.

People won’t walk because there’s no convenient place to park, they’ll just park in an inconvenient place instead.

[Wainy316]

On 15/03/2023 at 16:51, bickster said:

Pete Waterman would be in if it was powered by steam  

Didn't realise he was literal water man

[chrisp65]

6 minutes ago, Genie said:

I suggested we need to plan for the future and you seem to interpreted it as me saying we should live in the past.

On the example of schools they should be designed with the option of safe areas to park / drop off via car because that’s the reality.

People won’t walk because there’s no convenient place to park, they’ll just park in an inconvenient place instead.

Your plan for the future was it will be like the past. Embrace the current reality of cars and kids mixing and just do more of the same. I think that sort of future just has more and more lanes of cars heading for drive thru’s and dropping kids off at schools and we drive off to the office.

The U.S. has already tried this future, it simply cannot work on a small island of 70 million people. Not if we are concerned about water run off hard landscapes and urban heat build up and asthma and a lack of accessible green space.

I’m absolutely not suggesting it will be easy. But it should be obvious we can’t just do more of the same but with more roads and more parking. Who’s happy with this lifestyle at the moment? Very few people. So why would the future be more of the same but more roads?

We absolutely have to improve public transport, we have to make amenities accessible. The super school academy on the edge of town doesn’t appear to be working for anyone, so change the model. The big Tesco on the edge of town, are people chuffed with the idea of going there?

We’re not on this planet very long, we should try and make it a less shit experience. Even if that unfortunately means a bit less time vooming around in cars.

It won’t happen overnight, but we have to start somewhere. 

[bobzy]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

My point being we need to design our infrastructure for what we know will happen, not what we want to happen.

Not sure on this.  We need massive shifts in societal attitudes, which is incredibly hard but also completely necessary.

We live in a time of absolute convenience and can't accept things that are "a bit more work".

[Genie]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Your plan for the future was it will be like the past. Embrace the current reality of cars and kids mixing and just do more of the same. I think that sort of future just has more and more lanes of cars heading for drive thru’s and dropping kids off at schools and we drive off to the office.

The U.S. has already tried this future, it simply cannot work on a small island of 70 million people. Not if we are concerned about water run off hard landscapes and urban heat build up and asthma and a lack of accessible green space.

I’m absolutely not suggesting it will be easy. But it should be obvious we can’t just do more of the same but with more roads and more parking. Who’s happy with this lifestyle at the moment? Very few people. So why would the future be more of the same but more roads?

We absolutely have to improve public transport, we have to make amenities accessible. The super school academy on the edge of town doesn’t appear to be working for anyone, so change the model. The big Tesco on the edge of town, are people chuffed with the idea of going there?

We’re not on this planet very long, we should try and make it a less shit experience. Even if that unfortunately means a bit less time vooming around in cars.

It won’t happen overnight, but we have to start somewhere. 

Like most sensible discussions you seem to have multiplied things up to completely unrealistic levels to try to make a point.

You don’t need to put a 3 lane motorway outside a new small school to make it more convenient for people who will inevitably pick up or drop off via a car. By being in denial about it makes the experience more miserable for people using the school and people living nearby.

By integrating a convenient drop off for vehicle users is not also conceding that you need 4 more McDonalds restaurants with double the capacity of drive throughs.

You’ve mentioned a few times you do tens of thousands of miles each year, why don’t you just quit the job and do something you can walk to?

 

[Genie]

4 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Not sure on this.  We need massive shifts in societal attitudes, which is incredibly hard but also completely necessary.

We live in a time of absolute convenience and can't accept things that are "a bit more work".

I complete agree.

 

[Xann]

[chrisp65]

14 minutes ago, Genie said:

Like most sensible discussions you seem to have multiplied things up to completely unrealistic levels to try to make a point.

You don’t need to put a 3 lane motorway outside a new small school to make it more convenient for people who will inevitably pick up or drop off via a car. By being in denial about it makes the experience more miserable for people using the school and people living nearby.

By integrating a convenient drop off for vehicle users is not also conceding that you need 4 more McDonalds restaurants with double the capacity of drive throughs.

You’ve mentioned a few times you do tens of thousands of miles each year, why don’t you just quit the job and do something you can walk to?

 

There is no such thing as integrating a convenient drop off where 200 kids all need to be in school at the same time.

You’ll have to take my word for it, I’m currently redesigning a car park and entrance to a school where the original design thought exactly that and it can’t be done. Not safely, not without taking up acres and acres of land. There is no car park layout that gets 100 cars close to the entrance door at 9:00am and doesn’t have streams of unaccompanied kids walking through the car park that has busy people looking for a drop off spot.

Why don’t I walk? The day there is a chance I can earn similar money working from home or closer to home or on a public transport route with comparable costs, I’ll be first in the queue. I’m actively working on it. In the meantime, driving to London: £60 Train to London: £300 Drive to Cardigan: £40 Train to Cardigan: doesn’t exist.

We need to start building a different system, this current one is broken and adding another lay-by or a bigger car park isn’t going to fix it. 

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, Xann said:

That’s perfect, a lamppost outside every house and we’re good to go.

Imagine how bright it will be outside houses in multiple occupancy!

Will we all just pay a bit more to subsidise the electric car users or will every lamppost be a smart lampposts that can charge individuals?

Its perfectly possible to work out the charging at home issue, just not in 6 years time for 40 million vehicles when nobody has the right to park on the highway directly outside their house and many houses have more cars than house frontage.

I’m not trying to be the doomsday hippy honest! We just appear to be in denial.

 

[bickster]

17 minutes ago, Xann said:

nightmare at Xmas in Liverpool that

Spoiler

 

[Davkaus]

Make it enough of a pain and maybe some of these tubby little **** will start walking to school   

 

[sidcow]

A lot of the problem is that they want one thing without investing in it.

If they want people to get out of cars they should develop a mass transit system that comprehensively covers the whole city.  But they won't invest the money.  So they end up making it more difficult for people to drive cars, but people will drive them anyway because they don't really have a viable alternative.    It's easy in London not to own a car because it's so easy to get about with the underground.  

Andy Street has published a wishlist map of new metro and rail lines.   It would be amazing and totally revolutionise living in this city if it ever came to pass.  But it won't, it's total pie in the sky.

All over south Birmingham there are wide central reservations which used to have trams run on them.  You could relatively cheaply reinstate that network, but they won't.  Not in my lifetime anyway because it takes decades to build any kind of infrastructire in this country.

So yeah, push on with 15 minute cities and people will get angry and will resist it because we've just not got the infrastructure to support it.

Edited April 3, 2023 by sidcow