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I have to agree. The article seems like a popularity peice for the politicians involved therein. Also the graph comparing motoring costs to public transport co

I have to agree. The article seems like a popularity peice for the politicians involved therein. Also the graph comparing motoring costs to public transport costs is questionable. Personally, we downsized from two car houshold to a single car. Car doing the school, grocery and weekend duty, Tfl for commuting. The car costs about £30 (fuel) per week hauling up to five people at a time. Tfl costs £51 per week per person. If you mix Tfl + Train then it costs £77 per week per person. (Using the Train also has a noticable effect on my mental health, currently fortunate enough to have access to Tfl without relying on Train, hope that continues) It's the amount of people that need to move from A to B which is the problem and not how they move from A to B. If all the people switched to electric cars, it's still ALL the VERY SAME NUMBER of people. Local emissions may go down, but then the energy to charge all those electric vehicles will affect "something somewhere else". If all the people stopped using cars, switched to bicycles, then it's still ALL THE VERY SAME NUMBER of people getting from A to B maybe at the same rate as they were before the switch. This will help with noise and emissions, but... the traffic will be the same. In London, being on a bicycle is life threatening. Not saying that motorists and bus drivers are out there to "get 'em", rather there is very little space on the roads. Several times the typical scene is that of a biker being followed by up to ten cars until the cars get an opportunity to overtake. Which happens after several minutes due to lack of space.

glennpratt 7y ago
> If all the people stopped using cars, switched to bicycles, then it's still ALL THE VERY SAME NUMBER of people getting from A to B maybe at the same rate as they were before the switch. This will help with noise and emissions, but... the traffic will be the same. As someone who bike commutes 10 miles in the US, this couldn't possibly be the case for me. There is almost never a car impeded by my presence. I spend part of my ride in a bike lane and most of the rest on a bike route through neighborhoods that aren't heavily used for car commuting. Even when there are cars, they quickly have a chance to pass (and inversely in heavy traffic I filter right through them).
- archi42 7y ago
  It's nice that that's possible for you, but I'm afraid it is not universally possible for everyone and everycity. E.g. bike access to our university (plus institutes etc.) when coming from the city is via narrow but heavy traffic road (to university, a bunch of suburbs, two autobahns), or an adjacent pedestrian path (with a lot of studends and badly trimmed overgrowth), or through the hills with forests and no direct path. The solution here would add & maintain bike lanes (or a stand-alone bike road), but for the above example that would mean deforesting and cutting into 2 or 3 km of hillside. And for the duration of that effort, suspending the primary road between the city and {university, one suburb, one autobahn access} which also happens to be the secondary connection to {two additional suburbs, another autobahn access}.
- stillworks 7y ago
  Space is not at a premium the U.S. There is plenty opportuinity there to start working towards a very efficient transit infrastructure which will allow for Bikes, Cars, Buses and what not. I have travelled/driven between the west coast and middle of Arizona (and somewhat into Utah) and road infrastructure generally was much much better than what we have here in the U.K. As a relative/subjective view, consider that on most major roads in London, it will be difficult to place two London buses side-by-side. (try walking between Bank and let's say Baker Street) In CA, Silicon Valley proper or south of San Jose or going even further into Southern California, most residential streets are large enough to allow parking even big RVs (almost as big as London Buses) adjacent and still leaving space for cars to move about. From what I remember of San Francisco, the main roads were very wide (streets not so much), it was not difficult to manoeuvre a Chevy Suburban, whereas in London you can rent a studio roughly the size of that vehicle.
louhike 7y ago
> If all the people stopped using cars, switched to bicycles, then it's still ALL THE VERY SAME NUMBER of people getting from A to B maybe at the same rate as they were before the switch. This will help with noise and emissions, but... the traffic will be the same. Won't the traffic be better with smaller transport (like bike)?
- Theodores 7y ago
  Modern day capitalism and the increasing specialisation of jobs combined with problems in the housing market means that people do extraordinary commutes. If the bus or the bicycle is your transport option then you are not going to be setting off at 6.30 in the morning to drive 100 miles to sit at a desk for 8 hours. In the 1970's nobody drove 100 miles on a daily basis to get to work although there was a small army of travelling salesmen in 'rep' cars that did put in the miles. Nowadays those reps are probably flying so nothing has improved on that front. It is hard to untangle this mess, people have careers, kids at schools and considerable investment in automobiles. Also, when companies merge there can be highly dysfunctional travel arrangements going on as a result. If it is bicycles all the way then that could mean electric bicycles, which means an effective maximum travel distance of 15 miles or an hour of travel time each way. A government could unpick and sort the mess out, for instance, in the public sector you might find you have people from city A commuting to work in city B and vice-versa to do similar jobs, e.g. in the NHS or education. A government could look at this and use their weight to pay for people to do a job swap, so pay grades are the same but people are working locally. For instance, we have a secondary school French teacher in city A working in city B, and another in city B working in city A. There could be a straightforward incentive to un-do this travel mismatch, where everyone wins. Under normal circumstances opportunities for the French teacher in city A to get a job in city A might not come along. Same for the counterpart in city B. This would have knock on effects in the private sector as the main earner in the household might be able to also go for a more local job at a lower pay rate with benefits in getting two hours of their life back every day. The bicycle definitely can be part of this future, if the government could get a sizeable quantity of public sector workers to have local jobs part of the package could include electric bicycles.
mikekchar 7y ago
> In London, being on a bicycle is life threatening. Not really disagreeing per se, but I think it's worth taking a look at the numbers. I got them from Wikipedia [1]. The lastest numbers they have are from 2017: 721 thousand journeys per day and 10 deaths per year. That's 0.0000038% chance of death per journey (although presumably about 40x that for serious injury, or 0.00015% per journey). While I appreciate that it's scary to ride in traffic, very unlikely to ever be killed on a bicycle in London. Not good as it should be, but over the last 10-20 years you can see that improvements have been made and I hope we'll see more to come in the future. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_London#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_London#Statistics
- stillworks 7y ago
  Objectively speaking, I hear you. The numbers are in your favor. And full disclosure, I have not yet tried cycling in London. But from a car drivers perspective, to me it seems that if by any chance, I made a contact with a cyclist even at breaking speed, I would injur the poor soul very badly. And when I play that back but me being the cyclist... I can't get myself to get on a bike.
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    I admit that I have done it in some non-busy places around about 2013. It is scary at first, but to be honest it's better than when I was riding in Canada. Drivers are pretty patient in the UK. I rode a fair amount in the countryside when I was there and I was really surprised at how careful drivers are when overtaking (and how patient they seemed to be). City driving is fairly low speed, though, which gives a cyclist an advantage because they have better acceleration. That allows them to get out of trouble most of the time. Having said that, I don't want to take away from your point that a lot of people will always feel too uncomfortable to ride in city traffic and I don't blame them. It's just that I often hear people complain about the safety of cycling in London and it's actually a pretty safe city to ride in (though it can definitely get better). The previous mayor was notorious for spending money on improving cycling in London and I think the stats bear that out. I left the UK in 2015, so I don't know what the current mayor is doing.

glennpratt 7y ago

> If all the people stopped using cars, switched to bicycles, then it's still ALL THE VERY SAME NUMBER of people getting from A to B maybe at the same rate as they were before the switch. This will help with noise and emissions, but... the traffic will be the same. As someone who bike commutes 10 miles in the US, this couldn't possibly be the case for me. There is almost never a car impeded by my presence. I spend part of my ride in a bike lane and most of the rest on a bike route through neighborhoods that aren't heavily used for car commuting. Even when there are cars, they quickly have a chance to pass (and inversely in heavy traffic I filter right through them).

archi42 7y ago
It's nice that that's possible for you, but I'm afraid it is not universally possible for everyone and everycity. E.g. bike access to our university (plus institutes etc.) when coming from the city is via narrow but heavy traffic road (to university, a bunch of suburbs, two autobahns), or an adjacent pedestrian path (with a lot of studends and badly trimmed overgrowth), or through the hills with forests and no direct path. The solution here would add & maintain bike lanes (or a stand-alone bike road), but for the above example that would mean deforesting and cutting into 2 or 3 km of hillside. And for the duration of that effort, suspending the primary road between the city and {university, one suburb, one autobahn access} which also happens to be the secondary connection to {two additional suburbs, another autobahn access}.
stillworks 7y ago
Space is not at a premium the U.S. There is plenty opportuinity there to start working towards a very efficient transit infrastructure which will allow for Bikes, Cars, Buses and what not. I have travelled/driven between the west coast and middle of Arizona (and somewhat into Utah) and road infrastructure generally was much much better than what we have here in the U.K. As a relative/subjective view, consider that on most major roads in London, it will be difficult to place two London buses side-by-side. (try walking between Bank and let's say Baker Street) In CA, Silicon Valley proper or south of San Jose or going even further into Southern California, most residential streets are large enough to allow parking even big RVs (almost as big as London Buses) adjacent and still leaving space for cars to move about. From what I remember of San Francisco, the main roads were very wide (streets not so much), it was not difficult to manoeuvre a Chevy Suburban, whereas in London you can rent a studio roughly the size of that vehicle.

louhike 7y ago

Theodores 7y ago
Modern day capitalism and the increasing specialisation of jobs combined with problems in the housing market means that people do extraordinary commutes. If the bus or the bicycle is your transport option then you are not going to be setting off at 6.30 in the morning to drive 100 miles to sit at a desk for 8 hours. In the 1970's nobody drove 100 miles on a daily basis to get to work although there was a small army of travelling salesmen in 'rep' cars that did put in the miles. Nowadays those reps are probably flying so nothing has improved on that front. It is hard to untangle this mess, people have careers, kids at schools and considerable investment in automobiles. Also, when companies merge there can be highly dysfunctional travel arrangements going on as a result. If it is bicycles all the way then that could mean electric bicycles, which means an effective maximum travel distance of 15 miles or an hour of travel time each way. A government could unpick and sort the mess out, for instance, in the public sector you might find you have people from city A commuting to work in city B and vice-versa to do similar jobs, e.g. in the NHS or education. A government could look at this and use their weight to pay for people to do a job swap, so pay grades are the same but people are working locally. For instance, we have a secondary school French teacher in city A working in city B, and another in city B working in city A. There could be a straightforward incentive to un-do this travel mismatch, where everyone wins. Under normal circumstances opportunities for the French teacher in city A to get a job in city A might not come along. Same for the counterpart in city B. This would have knock on effects in the private sector as the main earner in the household might be able to also go for a more local job at a lower pay rate with benefits in getting two hours of their life back every day. The bicycle definitely can be part of this future, if the government could get a sizeable quantity of public sector workers to have local jobs part of the package could include electric bicycles.

mikekchar 7y ago

> In London, being on a bicycle is life threatening. Not really disagreeing per se, but I think it's worth taking a look at the numbers. I got them from Wikipedia [1]. The lastest numbers they have are from 2017: 721 thousand journeys per day and 10 deaths per year. That's 0.0000038% chance of death per journey (although presumably about 40x that for serious injury, or 0.00015% per journey). While I appreciate that it's scary to ride in traffic, very unlikely to ever be killed on a bicycle in London. Not good as it should be, but over the last 10-20 years you can see that improvements have been made and I hope we'll see more to come in the future. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_London#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_London#Statistics

stillworks 7y ago
Objectively speaking, I hear you. The numbers are in your favor. And full disclosure, I have not yet tried cycling in London. But from a car drivers perspective, to me it seems that if by any chance, I made a contact with a cyclist even at breaking speed, I would injur the poor soul very badly. And when I play that back but me being the cyclist... I can't get myself to get on a bike.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  I admit that I have done it in some non-busy places around about 2013. It is scary at first, but to be honest it's better than when I was riding in Canada. Drivers are pretty patient in the UK. I rode a fair amount in the countryside when I was there and I was really surprised at how careful drivers are when overtaking (and how patient they seemed to be). City driving is fairly low speed, though, which gives a cyclist an advantage because they have better acceleration. That allows them to get out of trouble most of the time. Having said that, I don't want to take away from your point that a lot of people will always feel too uncomfortable to ride in city traffic and I don't blame them. It's just that I often hear people complain about the safety of cycling in London and it's actually a pretty safe city to ride in (though it can definitely get better). The previous mayor was notorious for spending money on improving cycling in London and I think the stats bear that out. I left the UK in 2015, so I don't know what the current mayor is doing.