Another example of drivers just not getting it

[BrynCP]

Bryn, you missed fleas off of your list, a major problem on buses, just ask the guys who have to return the seats after they get vandalised daily, yes daily.

As for the bus stops, maybe they cannot keep up with the many that are being damaged. Now who to blame for that, well the people who do the damage, not the people who fix it.

Now these people who do the damage they are members of the general public, hold on, but so am I.

Must admit the only time I use a bus is the fantastic park and rides available in some cities.

I don't disagree that members of the public break the shelters and seats etc.

Regarding the shelter though, years ago we had a solid shelter, made of steel poles and a steel roof with a solid wall on one side. It was never vandalised, it never blew down in the wind. To my untrained eye it looked very secure and stable. Yet the council in their wisdom took it down and replaced it with a piece of plastic rubbish that could fit half the number of people under it and is prone to damage, natural and vandals.

But when I pay my council tax and pay to board a bus, that is not my problem. I should not have to suffer because of others; perhaps if those caught doing things got some punishment instead of a slap on the wrist they'd stop it or deter others.

 

[glenn forger]

The government will never champion cycling because there's no money in it for them.

All the tax raised from motoring don't cover all the costs, nowhere near. Promoting cycling could save millions for the government.

 

[Accy cyclist]

Slightly surprised that the path wasn't wide enough. In my all too recent experience, the hearse has to be able to get round to graves in the most distant bits of the graveyard. I do see completely able-bodied people driving their cars fairly short distances to graves though.

The paths around the cemetery are wide enough for funeral processions and relatives cars and it's not that big a cemetery so if you park up the furthest grave will be about 20 yards away. I always walk anti clockwise to see the traffic approaching as it's a one way clockwise driving system and i keep to the small central paths when i'm in there,but i'll be keeping my whits about me when on the small paths from now on. Sometimes i even see cars drive to four or five relatives graves instead of the driver parking up and walking to them!

 

[theclaud]

Have you ever noticed that all those people in the cars blaming the other motorists for the jams are part of the problem, I take great fun in pointing that out.

Noticed? It's the subject of the thread!

 

[KneesUp]

Private motoring receives by far the largest subsidy- that's why motoring costs have fallen as public transport costs rise. Average family saloon receives a subsidy of around £1000 a year. Drivers are the most subsidised road user, freight haulage drivers the most among them.

Estimating whether a bus for two adults and two children is cheaper than the car is not straightforward- allow for the cost of the car, maintenance, insurance, MOT, VED, depreciation, fuel, servicing etc etc

It really is straightforward - it's simple arithmetic.o

I suspect it's closer if you're the sort of person who has a car that is only a few years old which you lease for a few hundred quid a month. If you are the sort of person who buys a car that has done most of it's depreciating with actual cash, it's not even close, less so if you add on a value for convenience and reliability. In two years my car has cost me about £400 in servicing and repairs, and has taken a family of three plus a tent to (amongst other places) South Wales, North Wales (3 times), Suffolk, Norfolk, Edinburgh (twice), London, Manchester (about 20 times) Birmingham, Liverpool, Harrogate and Scarborough - as well as family duties in an around Sheffield. Given that a round trip to the railway station costs about a tenner and when we looked for train tickets to Liverpool it was going to be £150, I think it's clear that the car is comfortably cheaper. And more convenient - our recent trip to Edinburgh was an hour quicker than it would have been by train even allowing for a huge chunk of it being on a fast train with few stops, because of all the messing about waiting for buses at either end - and I only had to carry the three suitcases and two backpacks from my parent's to the car and from the car to the hotel, rather than carrying them to bus stops, across railway stations and so on. The car is cheaper, quicker and more convenient. The train can never be more convenient, and it's hard for it to be quicker with buses the way they are, so it has to be cheaper if people are to use them.

On the other hand it was the fact that the last bus from work (at a very late 6:25pm) often didn't turn up meaning a hopeful stand in the cold and then a walk home that got me to wondering why I didn't take up cycling again.

 

[KneesUp]

All the tax raised from motoring don't cover all the costs, nowhere near. Promoting cycling could save millions for the government.

That's an interesting stat - does that include all the tax revenue from oil and the tax revenue from companies that sell and refine it as well as those that make cars and their suppliers, for example? I'm not saying you're wrong btw - I just find it an astonishing statistic, even given that a foot of road seems to cost a trillion pounds.

 

[glenn forger]

http://www.jake-v.co.uk/content/54.php

The report by transport academics at the Dresden Technical University in Germany calculated that even with drivers' insurance contributions discounted these factors amounted to an annual total of €373bn (£303bn) across the 27 EU member states, or around 3% of the bloc's entire yearly GDP. This breaks down as €750 per man, woman and child.

The report recommends that such so-called externalities be factored into the cost of driving, noting that even the €373bn tally does not include costs from congestion or ill health caused by lack of exercise.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/25/car-pollution-noise-accidents-eu

Private motoring is cheap and getting cheaper and the result is idiots like the chap in the OP who spent three hours driving round then went home. The roads are clogged with pointless and unnecessary journeys because private motoring gets huge subsidies..

 

[KneesUp]

http://www.jake-v.co.uk/content/54.php

The report by transport academics at the Dresden Technical University in Germany calculated that even with drivers' insurance contributions discounted these factors amounted to an annual total of €373bn (£303bn) across the 27 EU member states, or around 3% of the bloc's entire yearly GDP. This breaks down as €750 per man, woman and child.

The report recommends that such so-called externalities be factored into the cost of driving, noting that even the €373bn tally does not include costs from congestion or ill health caused by lack of exercise.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/25/car-pollution-noise-accidents-eu

Private motoring is cheap and getting cheaper and the result is idiots like the chap in the OP who spent three hours driving round then went home. The roads are clogged with pointless and unnecessary journeys because private motoring gets huge subsidies..

That report doesn't seem to include the tax revenues from oil companies and associated industries, nor from motor vehicle manufacturers and associated industries, nor the output of industries that could not operate without an efficient road system - i.e. pretty much any company that isn't totally self-sufficient and has customers that arrive on foot, or that does not sell a physical product.

 

[glenn forger]

Page Eight.

 

[KneesUp]

Page Eight.

I can't see the bit where it points out that the entire economy would collapse if for some reason the road system disappeared.

 

[Joshua Plumtree]

St Andrews Car Park. You enter on Duke Street and wave nicely at the Lady or Gent in the glass booth/office place and they will let you in. They release the magnetic lock from the inside of the office. As I said, last time we went, the lock was broken but it will be fixed soon, they said.

Thanks!

 

[glenn forger]

I can't see the bit where it points out that the entire economy would collapse if for some reason the road system disappeared.

The road system wasn't built for motorised traffic, the notion of roads ceasing to exist doesn't exist outside your sweaty imagination, so claiming such a hysterical contention is like posting beneath a story about speed cameras and writing:

THEYLL BRING BACK THE MAN WITH THE RED FLAG NEXT LOL

Nobody has said roads would disappear, that's a totally unoriginal, boring and paranoid response.its also massively vain and self important, the notion that roads would vanish if drivers were to be fairly taxed, what a crock. "If it weren't for drivers there'd be no roads" is such a dumb thing to say we're all fractionally dumber for having read it.

 

[screenman]

I would imagine a lot of us on here run cars, are we part of the problem, I think we are.

 

[KneesUp]

The road system wasn't built for motorised traffic, the notion of roads ceasing to exist doesn't exist outside your sweaty imagination, so claiming such a hysterical contention is like posting beneath a story about speed cameras and writing:

THEYLL BRING BACK THE MAN WITH THE RED FLAG NEXT LOL

Nobody has said roads would disappear, that's a totally unoriginal, boring and paranoid response.its also massively vain and self important, the notion that roads would vanish if drivers were to be fairly taxed, what a crock. "If it weren't for drivers there'd be no roads" is such a dumb thing to say we're all fractionally dumber for having read it.

Gosh! You're quite animated.

I don't really know how to continue to discuss this with someone so excitable, so unable to grasp a point and so quick to make spurious and misleading analogies.

The point I was making is that regardless of what you imagine the road system was built for (and I'd suggest that the 2,200 miles of motorway were built specifically for motorised traffic for a start) it is integral to the entire economy. (Here's a tip - you can imagine how devastating to business it would be to have no roads without suggesting that it might actually happen, thus demonstrating to yourself that the 'benefits' of roads are rather more significant that the report you link to gives credit for, without anyone's imagination becoming 'sweaty')

 

[glenn forger]

That would be a germane and critically relevant point were anyone proposing making roads disappear. Since nobody has, it isn't. The benefits of moving people and goods is not the exclusive preserve of motor vehicles. You're barking at the moon. Calling for motoring to be taxed has nothing to do with making roads disappear. Roads will not disappear. Nobody's saying roads will disappear, so stop banging on about roads disappearing.