UK Strategic Planning

[Chindie]

All that being said it's obvious that the solution to all of this is to give Birmingham a **** underground system.

[sidcow]

2 minutes ago, Chindie said:

All that being said it's obvious that the solution to all of this is to give Birmingham a **** underground system.

Have you seen the HS2 Furore?  Can you imagine if they spent several billions in BIRMINGHAM?   The "controversial project" headlines in every national newspaper would never end.  The political pressure to scrap it would be all encompassing.  It's hard enough to get funding for a new hundred of meters of Metro line.

[bickster]

Just now, Chindie said:

All that being said it's obvious that the solution to all of this is to give Birmingham a **** underground system.

Why does it have to be underground?

[Genie]

54 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

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.

Yes exactly, life gets in the way for everybody for many reasons.

Hey you, save the environment by walking that 2 miles to school in the rain you lazy bastard, have you not heard of a poncho? Me? I’d love to walk with you but I’ll be making a 300 mile round trip to London for work. I could get a job with a much smaller carbon footprint but I don’t want to cancel Netflix or cut down on Costa’s.

Edited April 3, 2023 by Genie

[Xann]

30 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

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

It's like replacing fossil fuels, you use multiple strategies tailored to your locale. The lampposts here aren't capable of charging more than one car each, but they are present, and 10 cars in my street could get charged without cables crossing pavements. Future works and new developments should be designed with charging in mind, with higher capacity cabling and multiple gang connectors.

It's what happened with broadband, humble copper that was already here got the ball rolling then the economics of scale kicked in.

We have fast chargers too btw, and two Zip hire vehicles within a five minute walk.

We should be further down the road of course, but this is a country of witless Tory enabling pricks, and the public purse has been raped.

[sidcow]

10 minutes ago, bickster said:

Why does it have to be underground?

Because of all the congestion 

[Genie]

1 minute ago, Xann said:

It's like replacing fossil fuels, you use multiple strategies tailored to your locale. The lampposts here aren't capable of charging more than one car each, but they are present, and 10 cars in my street could get charged without cables crossing pavements. Future works and new developments should be designed with charging in mind, with higher capacity cabling and multiple gang connectors.

It's what happened with broadband, humble copper that was already here got the ball rolling then the economics of scale kicked in.

We have fast chargers too btw, and two Zip hire vehicles within a five minute walk.

We should be further down the road of course, but this is a country of witless Tory enabling pricks, and the public purse has been raped.

A few years ago I saw a demo of wireless car chargers, it’s just scaled up mobile phone technology. 

I guess in years to come these terrace house roads could be dug up, wireless pads installed connected to the mains and then re-surfaced. No wires. 

[sidcow]

2 minutes ago, Xann said:

It's like replacing fossil fuels, you use multiple strategies tailored to your locale. The lampposts here aren't capable of charging more than one car each, but they are present, and 10 cars in my street could get charged without cables crossing pavements. Future works and new developments should be designed with charging in mind, with higher capacity cabling and multiple gang connectors.

It's what happened with broadband, humble copper that was already here got the ball rolling then the economics of scale kicked in.

We have fast chargers too btw, and two Zip hire vehicles within a five minute walk.

We should be further down the road of course, but this is a country of witless Tory enabling pricks, and the public purse has been raped.

Not sure why everyone gets so worried about this.  In only a few years most electric cars will go 300 miles plus on a charge and charge in 5 minutes.  This will happen before true mass adoption.  People don't get concerned currently because everyone hasn't got a personal petrol pump at the side of their house.

[Chindie]

12 minutes ago, bickster said:

Why does it have to be underground?

There's too much of the city that isn't covered by overground rails plus there's nowhere to stick new ones, and the trams are shite. It's underground or New York style raised tracks which they'll also struggle to put in place.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Yes exactly, life gets on the way for everybody for many reasons.

Hey you, save the environment by walking that 2 miles to school in the rain you lazy bastard, have you not heard of a poncho? Me? I’d love to walk with you but I’ll be making a 300 mile round trip to London for work.

Well this is edging towards the personal, but I’ll persist.

You’d have to be running to get 2 miles in 15 minutes and that isn’t the idea of the 15 minute city, so I think in that instance I’d allow car usage for the first mile in inclement conditions.

I’m not suggesting that next Tuesday we could all switch to a more hippy way of life, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Car use, as these posts are proving is a really critical item for many people. We have very quickly got very used to having our own private car take us anywhere at any time. I’m not suggesting they are banned, I’m suggesting it would be good to design towns where the doctors surgery and newsagents is a 15 minute walk away and people should be encouraged to walk where it is walkable.

I haven’t suggested walking to school where school is miles away. I have suggested schools with hundreds of pupils can’t be fixed with a drop off point. When the train is comparable in price to the car, I’ll be on that train, as we all should. That’s all fair isn’t it?

 

[Xann]

9 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Not sure why everyone gets so worried about this.  In only a few years most electric cars will go 300 miles plus on a charge and charge in 5 minutes.  This will happen before true mass adoption.  People don't get concerned currently because everyone hasn't got a personal petrol pump at the side of their house.

Hopefully true, but we should already be there.

Scientific advances have been somewhat stunted by market protection.

[Genie]

9 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Well this is edging towards the personal, but I’ll persist.

You’d have to be running to get 2 miles in 15 minutes and that isn’t the idea of the 15 minute city, so I think in that instance I’d allow car usage for the first mile in inclement conditions.

I’m not suggesting that next Tuesday we could all switch to a more hippy way of life, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Car use, as these posts are proving is a really critical item for many people. We have very quickly got very used to having our own private car take us anywhere at any time. I’m not suggesting they are banned, I’m suggesting it would be good to design towns where the doctors surgery and newsagents is a 15 minute walk away and people should be encouraged to walk where it is walkable.

I haven’t suggested walking to school where school is miles away. I have suggested schools with hundreds of pupils can’t be fixed with a drop off point. When the train is comparable in price to the car, I’ll be on that train, as we all should. That’s all fair isn’t it?

 

My point was not a proper personal attack (apologies if it came across that way), it was just to try and make the point that one person might look down on someone for driving to school or using the supermarket instead of corner shop but another might suggest it’s hypocritical of someone doing 30,000+ miles a year cos the pay is good.

You think other people should change their lifestyle for the good of the planet whilst racking up 3-4x the average amount of miles per year for the salary. 

I’m choosing extreme examples here, do whatever job you like, I don’t mind  

 

[bickster]

17 minutes ago, Chindie said:

There's too much of the city that isn't covered by overground rails plus there's nowhere to stick new ones, and the trams are shite. It's underground or New York style raised tracks which they'll also struggle to put in place.

There is a lot of improvement they could do to cover more of the West Mids with the existing rail network. Just one example... The Walsall -> New Street line that goes through Witton

No station between Tame Bridge Parkway and Hamstead? WHy, its madness, there has been a need for a station on the Newton ROad since I was a small kid, there used to be one but they closed it at the end of WW2 (and less than a decade later they were building massive estates right by it)

On the same line, there's a section called the Soho Loop as an alternative to the usual route into New ST, it used to have stations for Handsworth Wood and Soho Road

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

My point was not a proper personal attack (apologies if it came across that way), it was just to try and make the point that one person might look down on someone for driving to school or using the supermarket instead of corner shop but another might suggest it’s hypocritical of someone doing 30,000+ miles a year cos the pay is good.

You think other people should change their lifestyle for the good of the planet whilst racking up 3-4x the average amount of miles per year for the salary. 

I’m choosing extreme examples here, do whatever job you like, I don’t mind  

 

Some jobs end up being a little bit specialist for one reason or another, we won’t stop people needing to travel long distances.

But when that person gets home, it should be possible for the 15 minute city concept to kick in. We will always need to deliver Cornish pasties to Kent or whatever, this isn’t a concept that means people have to stay confined to their village. I think that’s what the conspiracy bods are worried about. You should simply be able to do normal community stuff so locally that its easier to walk. that’s just good town planning, isn’t it? I genuinely can’t see how that can be viewed as such a bad idea? Do people actually want to go on a car journey to the local school or to buy a pint of milk?

This devotion to the right to drive 900 metres is a very new thing. The majority of families probably didn’t even have access to a car 50 years ago, yet now, the thought of being encouraged not to drive appears to cause some genuine anxiety. 

 

[Chindie]

27 minutes ago, bickster said:

There is a lot of improvement they could do to cover more of the West Mids with the existing rail network. Just one example... The Walsall -> New Street line that goes through Witton

No station between Tame Bridge Parkway and Hamstead? WHy, its madness, there has been a need for a station on the Newton ROad since I was a small kid, there used to be one but they closed it at the end of WW2 (and less than a decade later they were building massive estates right by it)

On the same line, there's a section called the Soho Loop as an alternative to the usual route into New ST, it used to have stations for Handsworth Wood and Soho Road

The North of the city is **** for transport. Kingstanding has nothing but buses, and they're shit. A single road getting flooded in heavy rain basically cut Perry Barr up off from the city centre a couple of years back. It's terrible.

Underground. Now.

[limpid]

5 hours ago, sidcow said:

Have you seen the HS2 Furore?  Can you imagine if they spent several billions in BIRMINGHAM?   The "controversial project" headlines in every national newspaper would never end.  The political pressure to scrap it would be all encompassing.  It's hard enough to get funding for a new hundred of meters of Metro line.

Central London will need all the money for the yellow submarine line in 30 years.

[Genie]

2 minutes ago, limpid said:

Central London will need all the money for the yellow submarine line in 30 years.

and it will get it.

[limpid]

14 minutes ago, Genie said:

and it will get it.

Well obviously. No-one in the rest of the UK will want those cockney refugees living near them.

[HKP90]

Crossrail cost 18.8 Billion for a single, albeit admittedly long line. Given Brexit, and the generally poor financial state of the country, something that will only get worse, no way could that sort of money be brought to bear. It also took 14 years to build that line. It would be 2050 at least before anything opened in Brum. 

I agree Birmingham desperately needs something like the tube, but it will never happen. 

An elevated system like in Chicago would be more likely, but even that would be astronomically expensive. 

We don't know, however, what technologically advanced alternatives might arise that would be cheaper. 

[VILLAMARV]

23 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

areas have enough amenities within a 15 minute walk or bike ride

Perhaps we could call them High Streets?