Khan's ULEZ scam >road charging

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Adam W. said:
Of course it is, people should pay heavily for their emissions.

What's the alternative, pollute for free ?
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How is that going to help the planet and your offspring? Emissions have to be reduced, not paid for.

Hydrogen power, fusion power and, in the meantime, battery power.
 
petermillard said:
Other way round Jacob; you know everybody who travels in London who says it’s less congested! For the record as someone who’s lived in London for ~45 years the traffic’s worse than ever.

I was happy to have a congestion charge for central London, then it became an LEZ covering a wider area, and then my perfectly legal, fully MOTd and emissions-compliant *for everywhere else in the country* van that covered 800 miles a year became a bigger issue than a similar vintage (but - shocker - ULEZ-exempt) black cab who’s engine ran for 10 hours a day.

So I did the ‘right’ thing, stopped using the van (sorry about that local garage and MOT centre, petrol stations, local authorities for parking etc…) stopped doing all that kind of work (sorry about that clients, tax man, VAT Zaman) started a ‘digital’ business, got myself a bus pass, started cycling. And you know what? The traffic’s worse than ever, mostly because of insane cycling schemes and vindictive parking regimes.

Everyone loses; it’s madness.

P
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Cycle things everywhere but barely anyone in them and often wider than the road!
Plus so much stupidity and made roads dangerous for all.
 
Congestion - too many vehicles for the "road space", secondarily impacted by strategies to:
  • improve air quality - LTNs, charges for non-compliant vehicles
  • encourage more cycling and walking - cycle lanes, wider pavements
  • reduce accidents implementing speed limits, changing road layout, speed humps
  • encourage public transport use - bus lanes, fare subsidies
All these contribute to making car use more difficult and expensive. But I suspect they are a well intentioned but incidental impact on overall congestion. None of them materially contribute (for instance) to motorway and main trunk road congestion.

There may also be some poor decisions in the system - eg: road layout changes which don't work, traffic light phasing, one-way systems etc. All these can be fixed once identified and agreed.

Fundamentally congestion will only reduce by either (a) building more roads, and/or (b) reducing vehicle use.

Building more roads is mostly a non-starter. In urban areas existing buildings (domestic and commercial) would need demolition. Building more capacity increases vehicle use - it is a short term fix only. The solution lies in reducing vehicle use. A more coherent strategy is needed:
  • more local infrastructure - schools, healthcare, shopping to reduce the need for travel
  • much more investment in cycle ways, footpaths, lighting, secure bike storage etc
  • encourage work from home to reduce commuting need
  • road charging - variable by time and location to protect rural communities
There is no solution that will deliver congestion free motoring without significant sacrifice. The only real question is how to reduce demand (carrot, stick, strategy) and who pays/suffers.

A traditional economic approach to reducing demand is to increase the price. This penalises the poor and make little difference to the wealthy. Recognition through ULEZ and similar that environmental impacts are as important as financial is very sound.

That not all will like the change, to be blunt, is both inevitable and tough!
 
Homeless Squirrel said:
So where would these particles be absorbed from? You're going to say cars! But there is Gas appliances.Wood burners and the Underground and trains
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Agreed, any form of air pollution will be contributing, the biggest source of carbon particulates at street level are busses and lorries. We need to clean our act up and I'm a great believer in starting with the possible
 
Agent_zed said:
neither of those are wider than the adjacent road though. Whether they are pointless or badly placed was not my question.
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It wasn't an answer to your question it was a comment in the issue.
n.b."neither"? There are hundreds on that site - it was an 18 year long campaign and I expect it improved things for cyclists, including wider lanes. But no I've never seen one wider than the motor lane but I expect there could be a reason for it in some circumstances.
Worth having a closer look and good for a laugh!; Cycle Facility of the Month
 
Mel769 said:
Victorian cabling still in use across alot of the city which couldn't handle the demand if everyone had a EV anyway
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Is this correct? The victorian era ended in 1914 which would make the cabling 109 years old! I had wiring from 1955 in my house which was basically falling to pieces as the outer casing was crumbling.

If the cabling is truely 109years old the argument is not that it can't handle the demand it is surely that it should have been replaced a long time ago for it's own safety. If you have 109 year old wiring in your house you need to have it changed!
 
Dave Moore said:
1 tonne of steel produces more than 1 tonne of CO2 which we actually need for plant life and before somebody says we don’t need CO2 then consider how much steel is in a wind turbine, how much concrete or other resource And concrete certainly isn’t green
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First point is that unless you are using energy from a renewable source you are adding CO2 to the atmosphere that was previously locked up for millions of years. Sure we need CO2 for plants but unless you want to live in a swamp like the dinosaurs releasing it all into the atmosphere is not the best plan.

Second, the entire point of windturbines and solar is that although it takes an initial amount of energy to make, once it's made it returns vast amounts of energy from the wind or sun that make the initial energy investment negligable over it's lifespan. It is nowhere near the same as producing a coal fired powerstation that continually needs coal in addition to the energy used in construction .
 
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