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Posted: Thu 08 Feb, 2007 14.21
by nidave
I dont believe that for an instant - If (as in my case) I will be charged a higher amount for using the car duing peak times how will I be better off?
People who are using the road a busy times will be penalised and for it to be effective they will have to be out of pocket or else why bother with the expense of setting it up!
Posted: Thu 08 Feb, 2007 14.39
by Mich
nidave wrote:I dont believe that for an instant - If (as in my case) I will be charged a higher amount for using the car duing peak times how will I be better off?
People who are using the road a busy times will be penalised and for it to be effective they will have to be out of pocket or else why bother with the expense of setting it up!
I am fairly confident that it would be revenue neutral - acceptability at launch is the biggest obstacle, and neutrality would help massively.
You may well be better off because when you use uncongested roads you will be paying a lower taxes per mile - at the moment is it far too early to speculate whether you will be better or worse off.
Equally the amount you pay into total isn't really the key figure for the scheme being successful, it is the cost of each trip as you take it.
Posted: Sun 11 Feb, 2007 21.37
by cwathen
(and those that do not need to make a journey at a specific time on a highly priced route will reschedule),
I think you're somewhat up in the clouds with this one - don't you think people allready avoid the rush hours if they can? I wouldn't dream of travelling between 8AM and 9PM or 5PM and 6PM unless it's because I need to be to/from somewhere at a specific time. Think about what you're saying - do you think that people genuinely leave at 8AM and take an hour to get where they're going when they could leave an hour later and take 15 minutes unless it's because they have no choice?
Posted: Sun 11 Feb, 2007 22.09
by Nick Harvey
Four or five people have sent me that e-mail, so far, suggesting I go off and sign the petition.
I do so few miles, nowadays, and for the ones that I do do, I can choose what time I do them and what level of country track I use to do them.
I've, therefore, decided NOT to sign, because I'm one of the very few who would find it much cheaper if it went through.
I'll be interested in what the GPS snooper ends up deciding to do with me, because a route I use regularly (between Devizes and Calne in Wiltshire) I normally drive by a track (over the top of Roundway Hill) which isn't even on any Satellite Navigation maps and just keeps on producing the "Turn Round and Go Back" messages.
It'll be fun if they try to charge me for going that way, but I'll still keep using it to avoid all the traffic.
Posted: Sun 11 Feb, 2007 22.27
by marksi
I live beside a railway line which, until 1950 (AD, not 7.50pm), would have got me into Belfast city centre in a very acceptable 32 minutes. Then it was closed. Today the bus service which replaced it takes one hour and three minutes to do the same journey.
Under normal, non-rush hour conditions I can drive it in about 30/35mins, but it takes over an hour if I leave between 07-0900 and return 16-1800. It's getting worse too - in the last 4 or 5 years the rush hour period has got longer, now starting before 0700. The park and ride facility at my nearest train station has less than 50 spaces for a town of 70000 people. I asked why there were no park and ride details on the Translink website and was told there was no room. There you go - an exclusive for you - the internet is full.
Belfast City Airport is bordered on one side, 100m from the terminal building, by a railway line. At Belfast International the railway line is about two miles away. Neither of the airports have a station that serves them. You have to get a bus. Belfast "Central" railway station is over a mile from the city centre. You couldn't make it up.
It's all very well to charge people more to use the roads during busy periods, but what alternative is being provided to avoid paying that charge? I admit that it is creaking and mildly unreliable but at least in London there is a public transport infrastructure. Hardly any other part of the country has such a thing, yet Londoners do nothing but complain about what they've got. They should try living elsewhere.
There is one thing that would help: remove the choice from parents of where their children go to school. They should be forced to go to the NEAREST school which is most likely to be within walking distance. When schools are on holiday the traffic flow is MUCH better.
Posted: Sun 11 Feb, 2007 22.48
by Mich
cwathen wrote:(and those that do not need to make a journey at a specific time on a highly priced route will reschedule),
I think you're somewhat up in the clouds with this one - don't you think people allready avoid the rush hours if they can? I wouldn't dream of travelling between 8AM and 9PM or 5PM and 6PM unless it's because I need to be to/from somewhere at a specific time. Think about what you're saying - do you think that people genuinely leave at 8AM and take an hour to get where they're going when they could leave an hour later and take 15 minutes unless it's because they have no choice?
The price system is remarkably good at making people rethink their actions. As marksi points out, much of the traffic in many areas is school run traffic - if you can deter many of these, you'll have quite an impact on congestion.
Posted: Sun 11 Feb, 2007 23.48
by Pete
I'd be interested to see how it affects those who do high mileage but on necessary country roads, such as myself.
I've found it interesting driving in Dundee, to find just how needlessly complex and badly designed city road systems are.
Posted: Mon 12 Feb, 2007 02.50
by cwathen
I've found it interesting driving in Dundee, to find just how needlessly complex and badly designed city road systems are.
Indeed. Plymouth has 'The Parkway' - a dual carriageway section of the A38 running straight through the centre of the city. It's quite efficient - as long as you're running straight through and aren't going to stop in Plymouth; every route into the city centre involves coming off at a junction into a residential area a few miles away and then following a route along local roads which eventually join up with one of three highly conjested main city centre roads, one of which is interspersed with roundabouts, another with traffic lights, and one which was built as a dual carriageway but today is reduced to single carriageway with a bus lane creating a huge bottleneck - there is no direct, unhindered way into it at all.
The two biggest 'improvements' in recent years have made it even worse. When the city centre was rebuilt after the war with New George Street and Armada Way as pedestrianised precincts, the architects sensibly allowed for Royal Parade (the final road mentioned above) to be a dual carriageway to cope with the traffic which could no longer drive straight through. It also sensibly had a pedestrian subway underneath it to avoid the need for traffic lights in the middle. As I said above, they've reduce it to a single lane with a bus lane along it's entire length, and just to compound it even further they filled in the subway forcing a surface crossing with traffic lights to be installed, and also closed off a turnoff halfway down forcing all the traffic on the road to travel it's entire length.
Only a short while later, they ripped out Drake Circus Roundabout, a huge significant interchange on a very congested road and replaced it with a T junction with traffic lights. Aswell as the conjestion caused by the traffic having to stop all the time, certain routes which used to be possible on the roundabout now aren't on the T junction, forcing all traffic wanting to take them down to Charles Cross roundabout (the one with the burned out church) - which was allready heavily overloaded. Drake Circus roundabout also used to contain a complex pedestrian subway system with routes going off to all directions, allowing pedestrians to move around quickly without stopping the traffic. As with Royal Parade, these have been filled in and replaced with more surface crossings causing even more delays both to drivers and pedestrians.
Exeter I've also found a similar nightmare, with apalling signeage leading you to mysterious nondescript things like the 'Inner Bypass' with no indication of where you'll end up and the tiny village of Ide getting it's own dedicated turnoff at a junction whilst at the same junction both north and south routes onto the main A38 trunk road share one overloaded lane under the banner of 'all other routes'.
Yet from speaking to some of my friends, the comparitively larger cities of Coventry and Manchester are supposedly a doddle to drive around in with an excellent road layout. Is it only smaller cities that have such bad road systems?