New Road 'car and pedestrian sharing' - does it work?

[Deano's Right Foot]

Err Deano, that's a drinks dispenser, not a jet pack.

Oops!

 

[The Large One]

I would say that if he was dishing out Red Bull, it would give you wings, and you could get around town that way.

But I'm not going to let you off such a hilarious schoolboy error. It was a pearler.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

One thing that one of our NSC town planners could clear up for me is why is there no pedestrian signal with the traffic light where you cross from Air Street onto the bottom of Dyke Road? It creates confusion for the endless stream of pedestrians crossing because you don't know when the taxis from the rank are going to pull off (because you can't see the colour of the traffic light) and it must equally be a mare for the taxi drivers picking random pedestrians off of the grilles on the front of their Skodas.

A thought that occurred to me this evening as I walked that precise route.

And I'm someone who was involved in developing some of the traffic management schemes in and around Western Road / Dyke Road in the early 1990s - and can usually be relied upon to come up with the "what you people need to understand is ..." type of justification for most of the oddities of central Brighton.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I saw a stat a couple of years ago (and have been trying to trace the source to see if stands up) that the UK has one of the lowest levels of car ownership in western Europe but makes the most journeys by car. That's a mindset that has to change before we can start reducing congestion.

"What you people need to understand is" ... it was UK public policy from about 1960 until the mid 1980s to encourage the growth of traffic by cutting public transport services as car ownership grew.

This was perceived to be good for the UK car manufacturing industry.

This statistic is a legacy of the mindset that was established then. Compare and contrast Germany.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I'm sorry but if you really think that you're either incredibly stupid or being wilfully ignorant. EVERY traffic management scheme, even under the Tories, has been designed to curb car use. Name ONE area where bus lanes, cycle lanes, reduced parking, etc etc have been overturned to make it more car-friendly.

The resulting hot-potch of anti-car measures, (whilst lacking the balls to ban them completely) has resulted in more bus journeys, but increased congestion and air pollution.

EVERY scheme eh? Scrapping the park and ride with NO alternative was designed to curb car use was it? Allowing the bus company to ramp up their prices every bloody year is designed to curb car use is it? I could go on.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Name ONE area where bus lanes, cycle lanes, reduced parking, etc etc have been overturned to make it more car-friendly.

As I mentioned, there was a proposal to pedestrianise George Street in Hove but the 'local' chain stores bleated about business being hit so the council came up with some crap half-way house. Put simply, the plan/proposal to pedestrianise the road was overturned to make it more car-friendly.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Bus journeys in Brighton have also increased, so where has the extra traffic come from? And also do you really think increased car ownership is the sole cause of the jams in 21st century Brighton? Look at pictures of Brighton seafront in the 1960s, absolutely CHOKED with cars. (I'm sure someone will now find a picture showing the opposite but it did used to happen - I was in them). The solution then was to build more city-centre car parks, it would take a bold person to suggest that now.

You're talking rubbish here. You also contradict yourself in an early reply.

Car use has proliferated in the past couple of decades and this is a major contribution.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

So what's your solution?

Simple. Congestion charge.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Compare and contrast Germany.

I often do.

 

[Hunting 784561]

We are often given a false choice here in the uk - EITHER you can have a decent road system OR a decent public transport system - take your pick - BUT you cant have both.

Germany and France are great examples of countries with fanstastic motorway and road networks AND superb public transport systems alongside.

I love the fact that when I go to Germany, I can pick exactly HOW I can get from Cologne to Frankfurt - from memory there are at least two motorways ( left and right banks of the Rhine) AND an ICE high speed train line.

I dont think the existence of a low tax regime in the UK is the only answer to these basic choices in the UK, it seems to be low expectations from the travelling public as well.

 

[Lindfield by the Pond]

Cars driving on the pavement, although preventing death on the roads, have been proven to significantly increase death on the pavements.

It is a real problem for town planners as the exact opposite has been proven to have the same effect on the pedestrians on the roads.

 

[Gwylan]

"What you people need to understand is" ... it was UK public policy from about 1960 until the mid 1980s to encourage the growth of traffic by cutting public transport services as car ownership grew.

This was perceived to be good for the UK car manufacturing industry.

Well, that worked bloody well didn't it?

I think Brovion should be given the job of Brighton's transport tsar - his ideas look spot on to me.

 

[Brovion]

EVERY scheme eh? Scrapping the park and ride with NO alternative was designed to curb car use was it? Allowing the bus company to ramp up their prices every bloody year is designed to curb car use is it? I could go on.

No you couldn't go on, you're scaping the barrel here. Scrapping the Park 'n' Ride did nothing to increase the congestion on the A259 (and the roads round it) or the Lewes Road. And while it was in existence it did bugger all to curb congestion on the A23 seeing as you had to drive halfway into Brighton and then find a poorly-signposted, inadequate car park tucked away in a semi-inaccessible residential area. It was a classic case of (yet) another sop to a modern transport plan to allow the council to say "look, look we've got a park 'n' ride scheme, aren't we innovative?"

However I totally agree with you on the bus charges which are OUTRAGEOUS. It is criminal that the council go out of their way to help line the pockets of a PRIVATE company by allowing them to maintain a monoploy and charge what they want. The other weekend the four of us went to the seafront and back on Saturday and Sunday - that cost me nearly £30 in fares!

As I mentioned, there was a proposal to pedestrianise George Street in Hove but the 'local' chain stores bleated about business being hit so the council came up with some crap half-way house. Put simply, the plan/proposal to pedestrianise the road was overturned to make it more car-friendly.

Wasn't if it was fully pedestrianised and then turned back into a 'proper' road though was it?

You're talking rubbish here. You also contradict yourself in an early reply.

Car use has proliferated in the past couple of decades and this is a major contribution.

No. It. Isn't. A small example: Two years ago in my own neck of the woods (Fiveways) they built out the kerbs and narrowed the entrances to to roads like Dover Road or Hythe Road. This means that large vehicles (removal vans etc) coming up Ditchling Road and needing to turn left have to swing out into the middle of the road to get the turning circle. This means they have to wait for a gap in the 'down' traffic in order to do that. Whilst they're waiting they block the rest of the 'up' traffic causing congestion. This has nothing to do with the number of vehicles using Ditchling Road and everything to do with ill-thought out 'improvements'. Add this to the fact that the 'improvements' have led to a large reduction in the available residential parking and you get more traffic (and more emissions) as local people circle the area in low gear trying to find somewhere to legally park. I know from my wife that we're not the only area to have suffered, so the increase in car ownwership in the last forty years (in this small example alone) is utterly irrelevant.

The bottom line the council have just tinkered, there has been no 'holistic' approach. There have been loads of little schemes (or not so little schemes in the case of the bus lane on the A259) which have been done in isolation without thinking of the overall picture; the only reasoning behind this vast raft of anti-car measures is merely "Let's make driving hard and maybe people will stop doing it." It simply isn't good enough - and it isn't working.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

No you couldn't go on, you're scaping the barrel here. Scrapping the Park 'n' Ride did nothing to increase the congestion on the A259 (and the roads round it) or the Lewes Road. And while it was in existence it did bugger all to curb congestion on the A23 seeing as you had to drive halfway into Brighton and then find a poorly-signposted, inadequate car park tucked away in a semi-inaccessible residential area. It was a classic case of (yet) another sop to a modern transport plan to allow the council to say "look, look we've got a park 'n' ride scheme, aren't we innovative?"

However I totally agree with you on the bus charges which are OUTRAGEOUS. It is criminal that the council go out of their way to help line the pockets of a PRIVATE company by allowing them to maintain a monoploy and charge what they want. The other weekend the four of us went to the seafront and back on Saturday and Sunday - that cost me nearly £30 in fares!

Wasn't if it was fully pedestrianised and then turned back into a 'proper' road though was it?


No. It. Isn't. A small example: Two years ago in my own neck of the woods (Fiveways) they built out the kerbs and narrowed the entrances to to roads like Dover Road or Hythe Road. This means that large vehicles (removal vans etc) coming up Ditchling Road and needing to turn left have to swing out into the middle of the road to get the turning circle. This means they have to wait for a gap in the 'down' traffic in order to do that. Whilst they're waiting they block the rest of the 'up' traffic causing congestion. This has nothing to do with the number of vehicles using Ditchling Road and everything to do with ill-thought out 'improvements'. Add this to the fact that the 'improvements' have led to a large reduction in the available residential parking and you get more traffic (and more emissions) as local people circle the area in low gear trying to find somewhere to legally park. I know from my wife that we're not the only area to have suffered, so the increase in car ownwership in the last forty years (in this small example alone) is utterly irrelevant.

The bottom line the council have just tinkered, there has been no 'holistic' approach. There have been loads of little schemes (or not so little schemes in the case of the bus lane on the A259) which have been done in isolation without thinking of the overall picture; the only reasoning behind this vast raft of anti-car measures is merely "Let's make driving hard and maybe people will stop doing it." It simply isn't good enough - and it isn't working.

We'll have to agree to disagree but if I was in charge you'd see trams, cheap buses and a congestion charge.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

We'll have to agree to disagree but if I was in charge you'd see trams, cheap buses and a congestion charge.

Oh, and I'd also re-introduce bikes on trains.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

No you couldn't go on, you're scaping the barrel here. Scrapping the Park 'n' Ride did nothing to increase the congestion on the A259 (and the roads round it) or the Lewes Road. And while it was in existence it did bugger all to curb congestion on the A23 seeing as you had to drive halfway into Brighton and then find a poorly-signposted, inadequate car park tucked away in a semi-inaccessible residential area. It was a classic case of (yet) another sop to a modern transport plan to allow the council to say "look, look we've got a park 'n' ride scheme, aren't we innovative?"

However I totally agree with you on the bus charges which are OUTRAGEOUS. It is criminal that the council go out of their way to help line the pockets of a PRIVATE company by allowing them to maintain a monoploy and charge what they want. The other weekend the four of us went to the seafront and back on Saturday and Sunday - that cost me nearly £30 in fares!

Wasn't if it was fully pedestrianised and then turned back into a 'proper' road though was it?


No. It. Isn't. A small example: Two years ago in my own neck of the woods (Fiveways) they built out the kerbs and narrowed the entrances to to roads like Dover Road or Hythe Road. This means that large vehicles (removal vans etc) coming up Ditchling Road and needing to turn left have to swing out into the middle of the road to get the turning circle. This means they have to wait for a gap in the 'down' traffic in order to do that. Whilst they're waiting they block the rest of the 'up' traffic causing congestion. This has nothing to do with the number of vehicles using Ditchling Road and everything to do with ill-thought out 'improvements'. Add this to the fact that the 'improvements' have led to a large reduction in the available residential parking and you get more traffic (and more emissions) as local people circle the area in low gear trying to find somewhere to legally park. I know from my wife that we're not the only area to have suffered, so the increase in car ownwership in the last forty years (in this small example alone) is utterly irrelevant.

The bottom line the council have just tinkered, there has been no 'holistic' approach. There have been loads of little schemes (or not so little schemes in the case of the bus lane on the A259) which have been done in isolation without thinking of the overall picture; the only reasoning behind this vast raft of anti-car measures is merely "Let's make driving hard and maybe people will stop doing it." It simply isn't good enough - and it isn't working.

One thing though. I really cannot see how you can stand by your arguement that car ownership proliferation has not significantly contributed to the current grid-lock in Brighton.

 

[British Bulldog]

Oh, and I'd also re-introduce bikes on trains.

No room for them on these new trains.

 

[Brovion]

We'll have to agree to disagree but if I was in charge you'd see trams, cheap buses and a congestion charge.

Got no objections to any of that!

Oh, and I'd also re-introduce bikes on trains.

So would I, but as Bulldog says there's no room for them on modern trains. A good example of the lack of 'joined-up' thinking on transport generally (but that's another argument)

One thing though. I really cannot see how you can stand by your arguement that car ownership proliferation has not significantly contributed to the current grid-lock in Brighton.

Well yes, if you go back to 1900 there were no cars and thus one could say that the rise in car ownership has led to the rise in traffic jams, that is obviously true. But as I pointed out Brighton was congested in the 1960s when car ownership wasn't at anything like the level it is now. And not just Brighton, In the early 1960s I lived just outside Croydon and it was impossible to get in and across the town, it was just one mass of smoking metal. (It's much easier today). Ergo the level of car ownership nationally is not the sole factor when considering congestion in urban areas.

In fact I could offer anecdotal evidence that car ownership in Brighton has DECREASED! We used to have two cars and now we've only got one, plus I know of two families (with grown-up kids who've left home) who've moved from the suburbs into central Brighton and have got rid of their cars. Like I say, hardly a scientific survey and I'm not saying it's an overall pattern.

 

[The Large One]

The bottom line the council have just tinkered, there has been no 'holistic' approach. There have been loads of little schemes (or not so little schemes in the case of the bus lane on the A259) which have been done in isolation without thinking of the overall picture; the only reasoning behind this vast raft of anti-car measures is merely "Let's make driving hard and maybe people will stop doing it." It simply isn't good enough - and it isn't working.

For the most part I agree with you.

However, I would say, and again it's anecdotally, that traffic has improved in some parts of the city, and the 'let's make driving hard and maybe people will stop doing it...' attitude has borne some fruit. Bear with me here.

Where previously, for instance, you could drive in any direction along any road in the North Laine, now you can't (it's a measure incidentally that it wouldn't hurt to be introduced into Hanover). As a result, there are areas in the city where there is little or no traffic, and that makes for a more pleasant atmosphere - it's one of the reasons why people like the North Laine so much.

As a result, traffic is confined to certain routes, and not to others.

The point is, as I said earlier, Brighton residents have cottoned on to the bizarre one ways and 'you can't go there, you've got to go there...' routes, and as such use public transport. So in that sense, I think it has worked. It's anecdotal, and it is clumsy, but it has been effective.

In other words, the attitude is if you want to go into the City Centre, don't bother your arse driving, unless you really have to.

Of course, much of this is undone by the excessively high fares on what is otherwise a decent bus service. I'm guessing at this bit here, but I suspect that Brighton, because it is slightly bucking a national trend for bus usage, has become a victim of its own 'success'. I reckon that the bus company - Go Ahead - wants to put fares up on several of its companies, but can't do so because the passenger numbers in other towns and cities isn't there. But in Brighton, it is, so they milk that cow to exhaustion.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

No room for them on these new trains.

No room? I'm no train expert but it surely cannot be too difficult to remove some seats and reconfigure a train carriage? The rest of Europe manages it. In fact they've all signed up to a EU regulation last year which will put more bike space on trains. And what did England do.......they postponed signing up for (I think) 15 years. In some respects this country deserves every f***ing traffic jam it gets.

And before you say 'but we need all the seats we can get on a train' I'll respond with run more f**king trains.