Coronavirus outbreak

[mjr]

Just get off the high horse for a minute many trusts already do promote cycling many staff all ready do cycle to work.

It seems like they cycle to local NHS sites despite the trusts, not because of them. I've not heard from workers at the local hospital who I often ride with about the trust doing much. There's a staff newsletter which includes cycling items but I believe that's a medic doing it voluntarily rather than someone doing it as part of their job. There's something about cycling info being on a staff intranet but of course, I don't know what's there and I hope you don't want me to do a FoIA request to find out just now.

As you know, I quite happily "take it out on" other bits of government and industry when it's their fault, but NHS trusts don't even do the bits they could do, on things like building works or travel instructions. Car parking and routes are always included, buses usually, cycling rarely - it's on only 1 of 4 local general hospital "how to find us" instructions and I've never seen it on building plans yet.

At the nearest hospital, despite it appearing as a destination on local cycle route signs, all cycleways stop at their boundary and anyone cycling in - staff or patient - has to give way to motorists and mix with them to the cycle parking. Which isn't signposted, of course. And the covered cycle parking was demolished a few years ago and the space given over to even more cars and I think officially there's now only those awful plastic "streetpod" Sheffield-stand-plus-wheelbender hybrids which damage many bikes with mudguards or even long-cage derailleurs, so now some bikes get locked to the posts under the downhill overhang of one of the buildings and the rest to fences around the site. All they really need to do now is make it so you can only enter or exit from the 60mph A-road bypass and only the truly stubborn deviants will persist in cycling there.

Now that's an exceptionally bad hospital, but even the best near me, Cambridge, is a flaming mess with bad signs and insufficient parking. Is there any hospital site in this country where cycling is a first-class (even equal-first) travel option?

Then what about the many staff that work on more than one site some are many miles away from the main one. Mrs 73 in the past work at another site 70 mile miles (oneway) not exactly a quick bike ride is it?

See my earlier comments about being generous with permits for the "can't"s. Working 70 miles away or doing many types of home visit should clearly qualify for a parking permit. But can you say why you feel that some people doing that sort of work means that even an on-site worker living a mile or less along the road should get free car parking? Because that's what blanket free parking means.

Actually, it's worse than that, because uncontrolled free parking means most hospital site car parks will be massively over-demanded (there simply isn't 10m² of car park per simultaneous worker on most sites, even ignoring the need for roadways between them) and anyone doing home visits is likely to end up parking in nearby streets and walking those same rubbish possibly-unsafe routes in!

Many would love to go to work by other way but they can't as the options are not practical. It's not black and white so take it out on the powers that be not the staff. Who really right now deserve a break not a lecture on the need to cycle.
The real issue behind this story which clearly has past you by is even now after all this having saved the governments neck yet again.
They still are happy to kick them in the teeth yet again. Or is this really about I can't have it so why should they ?

Whether I have it depends how you look at it. I have free car parking at my home office, which is my usual location these days. I haven't always even had that, when I lived in town. I don't have free car parking at some work sites and do at others. Transport is something that gets factored into the work prices. So would you say that I am being kicked in the teeth sometimes?

When did not being able to store a 10m² vehicle for free become "kicked in the teeth" anyway? Given how little cycle parking there seems to be at NHS sites, have all the workers without space to store securely a 2m² bicycle been kicked in the teeth and then their nose smashed in for all these years?

(edited to reinsert a missing m)

 

[mjr]

Speaking of taking aim at those who deserve it, I missed this among some local planning fun, but the Covid-19 emergency cycling funding allocations were announced - and it seems like Norfolk has farked it up again, Lincs have farked it up worse and Cambridgeshire might be about to reclaim part of the old A10 between Ely and Littleport for cycling (and from there, Ten Mile Bank is an easy hour's cycling to National 11 into Norfolk).

My summary report is at https://www.klwnbug.co.uk/2020/07/09/covid-19-cycling-funding-cambs-good-norfolk-poor-lincs-worse/ and details about other councils are on a Google sheet by "Johnny Turner" at
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSracK7jUMoSWhvumDCbB3kTaIBSWUk16NJ6hHkae-V2Vf5qDH-Mg1zgJQ3Vans7kQgiv444Mv6Oj9Z/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true


taken from https://www.facebook.com/groups/355411211909886?view=permalink&id=715435832574087&refid=46

 

[qigong chimp]

I work for a local authority. At HQ 600 - 700 parking spaces are provided free. DfT's 2008 Guide to Travel Planning gave a national average per-space cost to the provider of car parking of circa £400. A parking cash out is one solution, or positive incentive: give everyone £400 a year. People persisting in driving forfeit their £400 - parking remains at zero net cost to them so no grounds for whingeing. (yes I know, having no grounds for whingeing has never stopped drivers whingeing, but hey..) People travelling responsibly retain their £400 (or part thereof in the case of people car sharing) for recreational drugs and sex toys.

Pre-covid, the rate of single occupancy among vehicles arriving into this car park was 98.5%. I know this because I spent some hours sat at the gate counting. I have seen it with mine own eyes.

Crunching numbers for average national commute distance (10 miles by the way, not 70 and a not unreasonable cycling distance for the averagely able bodied on reassuringly safe infrastructure), average mpg, average Co2 yield per gallon of petrol burnt, business days a year, suggests this car park incentivises 3,250,000 car miles with a Co2 yield of circa 1,198 metric tonnes every year.

That's 136.7 kilos Co2 every hour of every day of the year. A figure well inwith estimates for the Co2 yield of a Jumbo jet at cruising speed. For a visual sense of my LA employers transport planning smarts picture a Jumbo Jet circling the battlements of HQ day and night forever, ceaselessly, never landing.

My LA employer declared a state of Climate Emergency last year. Phew, that's alright then.

 

[gbb]

The country is full of morons. People think they are imune.

I posted maybe 2 weeks ago about the almost inevitable spread of the virus because of peoples stupidity (in that case the agency labour we get) at work) utter reckless stupidity and in some cases, a disbelief it's really something to be concerned about. If you take our agency staff of around 100 a day, left to their own devices they fail to socially distance at breaks and occasionally argue with staff that try to make them adhere.
Today, after another small batch of people at work have tested positive and gone off isolating, the company introduced mandatory face masks. I walked down the line 1 hour later and 50 % of them weren't wearing them properly, noses outside the mask and in some cases mouths exposed too. I approached their manager, he told them to wear them properly...1 hour later (roughly) they're back where they started, noses and mouths exposed.
Mind numbing stupidity. And it's not a minority at work, most of them just dont seem to care.
The law of averages says eventually we will get enough cases and someone is going to die.

 

[mjr]

I approached their manager, he told them to wear them properly...1 hour later (roughly) they're back where they started, noses and mouths exposed.

So now the manager needs to do it again and probably start repeat offenders on whatever disciplinary pathway they have.

Mind numbing stupidity. And it's not a minority at work, most of them just dont seem to care.

Including the managers, it seems.

The law of averages says eventually we will get enough cases and someone is going to die.

I hope you're wrong, but...

 

[MntnMan62]

I posted maybe 2 weeks ago about the almost inevitable spread of the virus because of peoples stupidity (in that case the agency labour we get) at work) utter reckless stupidity and in some cases, a disbelief it's really something to be concerned about. If you take our agency staff of around 100 a day, left to their own devices they fail to socially distance at breaks and occasionally argue with staff that try to make them adhere.
Today, after another small batch of people at work have tested positive and gone off isolating, the company introduced mandatory face masks. I walked down the line 1 hour later and 50 % of them weren't wearing them properly, noses outside the mask and in some cases mouths exposed too. I approached their manager, he told them to wear them properly...1 hour later (roughly) they're back where they started, noses and mouths exposed.
Mind numbing stupidity. And it's not a minority at work, most of them just dont seem to care.
The law of averages says eventually we will get enough cases and someone is going to die.

Sadly everything you say is true. This is exactly what I see here in the US. Denial there is any issue to begin with. After all, drumpf gives them license to think it's all just a hoax. Or that it will just magically disappear one day. It's truly unfortunate but the level of stupidity I see over here extends not to just the coronavirus but to many other issues, many of them created by the Idiot Number 1 in the white house. I've debated with friends about "why". They always ask the same question. "Why do you think they continue to support the guy?" There is only one answer at this point. Sheer stupidity.

 

[qigong chimp]

Then what about the many staff that work on more than one site some are many miles away from the main one. Mrs 73 in the past work at another site 70 mile miles (oneway) not exactly a quick bike ride is it?

That's not sustainable, that's what's about it. Employers will have to carbon offset such ludicrous commuting practices, recruit more locally or offer re-location grants to staff they want who live so far away and can't use public transport.

 

[Salty seadog]

"Eat out to help out"

Happy to oblige!

Try that from two meters.

 

[Slick]

"Eat out to help out"

Happy to oblige!

I've been helping out for years now.

 

[lane]

Government advice avoid public transport where posible. In my view they should clearly assist in this and not reintroducing the charges until this is all over would be a very good thing. Apart from anything else someone catches it on the bus, gets infected, infects other NHS workers or cause them to self isolate, staff shortages and closures.

 

[mjr]

Government advice avoid public transport where posible. In my view they should clearly assist in this and not reintroducing the charges until this is all over would be a very good thing. Apart from anything else someone catches it on the bus, gets infected, infects other NHS workers or cause them to self isolate, staff shortages and closures.

Actually, they say "consider all other forms of transport, such as cycling and walking, before using public transport" and flooding sites with cars that don't need to be there isn't going to help walking or cycling, so surely it would assist that to reintroduce the charges ASAP?

It's almost like there are contradictory pressures here, isn't it?

 

[marinyork]

Actually, they say "consider all other forms of transport, such as cycling and walking, before using public transport" and flooding sites with cars that don't need to be there isn't going to help walking or cycling, so surely it would assist that to reintroduce the charges ASAP?

It's almost like there are contradictory pressures here, isn't it?

It doesn't help that the advice on transport has been rewritten over a few iterations. What is there is now is good but the original messages stick in peoples' minds.

Here the council have closed roads and made gigantic cycle lanes. My only problem is they have done this to some of the wrong roads! Do it to other roads as well or swap some.

 

[marinyork]

Latest ONS figures for last week are very positive.

 

[mjr]

Latest ONS figures for last week are very positive.

606 for the week? Lowest for 13 weeks and still too farking high. We are still dying so much more than most other European countries:

 

[tom73]

The test and trace oneS are not getting much better though.
Not seeing any compliance numbers re self isolation and the untraced numbers are still not low enough.