Externalisation of problems

[G3CWI]

The schools are back and a new large school has opened near us with consequent traffic chaos. Reading the comments on FB I am amazed at how people look out of their car windows at the traffic jam and manage to entirely externalise the problem. They are in a jam but somehow not part of it themselves

Surely this has some relevance to cycling as motorists don’t see bikes as less cars. It’s a strange old world.

Some of the comments have been hilarious “a drive that normally takes me 5 minutes took me 20 minutes”. My thoughts - why drive? And “even though that school is closest to me I wouldn’t consider sending my children there because of the traffic jams”. My thoughts - it’s a Secondary School - can they not get there themselves? Of course I may be being unfair as I have no idea of the personal circumstances of the commenters.

 

[mjr]

Please post there, not here. I suspect most here agree with you. We need to stop talking to ourselves so much and get others thinking too.

 

[G3CWI]

Please post there, not here. I suspect most here agree with you. We need to stop talking to ourselves so much and get others thinking too.

I have done so already.

 

[Drago]

Qe are doomed. A recent piece on the local news about congestion and pollution around schools, and they intereviewed one woman who said she had to drive because it was almost a 20 minute walk. A walk of less than a mile, and that was too much. Insane.

In Manchester the average car journey is now less than 1 lilometer!

We don't need electric cars. To ne fair, we don't need much more in the way of public transport. What we need is people to not be so bone idle lazy but, as aforementioned, we are preaching to the choir here.

 

[fossyant]

I have done so already.

Oh god, good luck. I once posted a remark suggesting people walk or park away from the school. The Primary is down a 1930's cul-de sac. There are no driveways for the resident's so they park on one side of the road. Parent's insist on driving down this cul-de-sac and then start moaning about it. My suggestion to those that needed their cars, was to park a few minutes walk away, solving the problem. Oh no, yummie mummies went nuts. "I don't have time" - suggesting setting off slightly earlier - they went nuclear !

The School had previously had to send a letter out after a parent was violent to a taxi driver that was dropping off a child with special needs (from outside the local area). Said parent had driven less then 800 yards from their house to the school, then couldn't turn round as the taxi driver had happened to park in the way. The Police then attended for a few weeks at start of school- said nut case parent thought it was funny.

Good luck !

 

[Chris S]

My nearest bus stop is outside my local primary school. I leave home for it at about the same time as a mother down the road is loading up her car with her children. She has to go the long way around as we live in a cul-de-sac. She then has to crawl through traffic on the main road and we both reach the school at about the same time. The whole journey is less than a five minute walk!

 

[mjr]

OK, so how could we move this forwards with fewer fools going "nuclear"?

 

[T.M.H.N.E.T]

I cycled to the gym this morning using around 500m of road, 1k of overgrown and badly kept shared use path (one of only two such paths in the town) that runs along a dual carriageway, had to yield at the end to rejoin the main road, within ft of the offslip from the dual carriageway, got held up at lights, nearly t-boned by a driver blindly turning across me and beeped at for daring to stop at a zebra crossing.

Car centric design is why we can't have nice things, and lack of "people" centric design inc safe pathways that everyone can use, only drives(pardon the pun) car use. We know this, but people are never part of their own problem.

Driving it wouldn't have been that much quicker incidentally.

 

[sheddy]

Send this to the school head.
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-blog/projects/2019/uk-wide/sustrans-school-streets/

 

[Hacienda71]

The schools are back and a new large school has opened near us with consequent traffic chaos. Reading the comments on FB I am amazed at how people look out of their car windows at the traffic jam and manage to entirely externalise the problem. They are in a jam but somehow not part of it themselves

Surely this has some relevance to cycling as motorists don’t see bikes as less cars. It’s a strange old world.

Some of the comments have been hilarious “a drive that normally takes me 5 minutes took me 20 minutes”. My thoughts - why drive? And “even though that school is closest to me I wouldn’t consider sending my children there because of the traffic jams”. My thoughts - it’s a Secondary School - can they not get there themselves? Of course I may be being unfair as I have no idea of the personal circumstances of the commenters.

Would that be the school that was built in greenbelt away from public transport due to a massive sum paid to the council with illegally manipulated air quality data figures?

 

[G3CWI]

Would that be the school that was built in greenbelt away from public transport due to a massive sum paid to the council with illegally manipulated air quality data figures?

I could not possibly comment.

 

[G3CWI]

Send this to the school head.
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-blog/projects/2019/uk-wide/sustrans-school-streets/

I suspect that the school in question is more likely to prioritise a helipad than anything to do with active travel.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Lockdown demonstrates how many of these car journeys are not essential.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

The bbc item on electric cars was disappointing . How about we don’t need more cars even if electric ?