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Post by wirewiper on Apr 7, 2021 16:33:58 GMT
Well, someone, somewhere, needs to do something - and quick. Or we sleepwalk into a car-led recovery in which the deaths caused by air pollution and inactive lifestyles will make Covid look like we were having a collective off-day. I don't care if people get on foot, buses, bikes, scooters, trams or trains, or even get the occasional taxi or uburp - but let's head off a car-led recovery before its is too late. The developers of Weavers Quarter should have held their ground and been backed up by the local council, the London Assembly and the Government. car-lead recovery is another anti-car made up thing by the cyclist nutters. It is a joke, it is not as if people say oh we have had covid, now lets go buy a car and we would be on our merry way to the future. It is utter garbage. Even if cars were made of oxygen and run of mind power; people like yourself and other car hater would still have a way to try to put it down. End of the day, whether you like it or not the car is here to stay. Car-led recovery is not a "made up thing". Since the end of "Stay At Home" car use is back up to 78% of its pre-covid levels, whereas bus use has only recovered to 42% and rail transport languishes at 26% for the Underground and just 21% for National Rail. And those figures are from the Department for Transport. The next big event is 12th April, when people will be allowed to stay away from home. If the trend of increasing car use continues at double the rate of increasing public transport use, we have a serious, car-related problem. A car-related problem that will lead to far more deaths from air pollution and inactive lifestyles. The car may be here to stay. But there is much that can be done to decrease our reliance on it and to make car-free living a realistic alternative. We need to use cars less. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2021 16:34:44 GMT
Your last point backs up what I think though. TfL use stickers and placards. Outside London it’s digital displays, prominent branded timetable displays. And the fact not all of the buses were route branded also supports the inability to guarantee strays not happening ! That's TfL doing it in house on the cheap though - had they of let Best Impressions (other companies are available) do it, you'd of got a better result and it wouldn't merely be 'stickers'. Strays will happen whether you have branded vehicles or not - as I already said, strays happen outside of London on branded examples in any event yet it doesn't stop them from investing in branding and the Barkingside scheme saw strays kept to a minimum despite 75% of each allocation being branded. Other places in UK do brand 75% of an allocation as well - there is no perfect world where you can keep every bus on every route it should be on because incidents and situations and the aim of the game is to minimise this as best as possible, it shouldn't be used as some sort of negative against branding at all. Arriva at Northfleet do very well. Although the frequency of the 480/90 is no longer every 7.5 mins as is quoted on some buses 😀 |
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Post by busman on Apr 7, 2021 16:59:09 GMT
Don't particularly think whether this is a pander to voters or just complete out of touch with reality. For some reason people up at TfL towers seem to be in a really closed mindset that the bike is the first alternative people think of when they want an alternative to a bus. Alright in fairness should the weather and time be right and a docking station is nearby it might be. But really the first thing most people do is look on their phone to see if the tube station is the right one to get them to work in the minimal time, and if not then the Uber or Ola app is what's opened. Even Citymapper gives you predicted private hire costs. The car literally comes to where you are and dumps you exactly where you need to be. Another thing is cycling is extremely weather dependent, all well and good having people cycling the two weeks in August where we get sunshine. But what about the 40 weeks of rain and cold weather. People won't want to ride a bike, they want somewhere warm and comfortable, even if it means paying a bit more as a result. Ever since Uber drivers were classed as employees there seem to be even more of them out on the road. They send out discounts all the time and Ola does the same thing. London is increasingly becoming a city where cars are becoming more prevalent. The Weavers Quarter development here in Barking which was going to replace Gascoigne Estate has had its plans ripped up for the forthcoming half and it was completely redesigned to allow for car parking spaces as there was a huge uproar over the lack of car parking space in a borough where over 60% of households have a car. This sort of thing should have never been allowed to happen. Good, I am glad they redesigned it. All it does it make people park on other roads like what Waltham Forest, Hackney, Islington, Harringay did with their CPZ in areas with no parking problems. This then makes 'sell their space' or people find other illegal methods or cheats of ways of parking. Any other 'world class city' would never do this and it is no wonder we are starting to lag behind many other cities. Most of the housing being built imo is a joke and just over-priced cheap built cladding type flats, no proper houses. This is also creating a family-LESS future. It has also started to bring back mini ghetto's that were eliminated knocking down tower blocks and other housing of this type in the 80's and 90's This anti-car nonsense is going to far. The way some influential people talk as if London was some quaint village with everything within cycling distance is maddening. Cars, vans and lorries are essential forms transportation. Not all journeys can be made by foot, bike or public transport. Dealing with tailpipe emissions and waste caused by premature scrappage is a better option than designing homes and urban infrastructure that will end up as mini ghettos. Next thing you know these same people will be campaigning for caps on the number of children permitted per family. |
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Post by wirewiper on Apr 7, 2021 17:13:34 GMT
Good, I am glad they redesigned it. All it does it make people park on other roads like what Waltham Forest, Hackney, Islington, Harringay did with their CPZ in areas with no parking problems. This then makes 'sell their space' or people find other illegal methods or cheats of ways of parking. Any other 'world class city' would never do this and it is no wonder we are starting to lag behind many other cities. Most of the housing being built imo is a joke and just over-priced cheap built cladding type flats, no proper houses. This is also creating a family-LESS future. It has also started to bring back mini ghetto's that were eliminated knocking down tower blocks and other housing of this type in the 80's and 90's This anti-car nonsense is going to far. The way some influential people talk as if London was some quaint village with everything within cycling distance is maddening. Cars, vans and lorries are essential forms transportation. Not all journeys can be made by foot, bike or public transport. Dealing with tailpipe emissions and waste caused by premature scrappage is a better option than designing homes and urban infrastructure that will end up as mini ghettos. Next thing you know these same people will be campaigning for caps on the number of children permitted per family. "Not all journeys can be made by foot, bike or public transport" - however there are still too many that can be, but are being made by car instead. I don't know why the Gascoigne Estate is being replaced with expensive housing for car-owners. But I do know that it is within walking distance of rail and bus routes and a busy town centre. Without masses of car parking being provided it is possible to design housing estates at a population density that allows services and public transport links to be viable, and also with valuable green spaces and traffic-free walking and cycling routes. How about this for an idea? Someone mentioned that the A13 is always reported to be at a standstill at peak times. So charge people for driving on it. Charge them a lot. Use the money to improve the public transport links. The A13 could carry express bus routes, using their own dedicated bus lanes. |
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Post by southlondonbus on Apr 7, 2021 17:52:48 GMT
car-lead recovery is another anti-car made up thing by the cyclist nutters. It is a joke, it is not as if people say oh we have had covid, now lets go buy a car and we would be on our merry way to the future. It is utter garbage. Even if cars were made of oxygen and run of mind power; people like yourself and other car hater would still have a way to try to put it down. End of the day, whether you like it or not the car is here to stay. Car-led recovery is not a "made up thing". Since the end of "Stay At Home" car use is back up to 78% of its pre-covid levels, whereas bus use has only recovered to 42% and rail transport languishes at 26% for the Underground and just 21% for National Rail. And those figures are from the Department for Transport. The next big event is 12th April, when people will be allowed to stay away from home. If the trend of increasing car use continues at double the rate of increasing public transport use, we have a serious, car-related problem. A car-related problem that will lead to far more deaths from air pollution and inactive lifestyles. The car may be here to stay. But there is much that can be done to decrease our reliance on it and to make car-free living a realistic alternative. We need to use cars less. Non essential retail opening on Monday will definitely up the numbers I'm sure. At present there still isn't that much to go out for. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2021 17:54:18 GMT
This anti-car nonsense is going to far. The way some influential people talk as if London was some quaint village with everything within cycling distance is maddening. Cars, vans and lorries are essential forms transportation. Not all journeys can be made by foot, bike or public transport. Dealing with tailpipe emissions and waste caused by premature scrappage is a better option than designing homes and urban infrastructure that will end up as mini ghettos. Next thing you know these same people will be campaigning for caps on the number of children permitted per family. "Not all journeys can be made by foot, bike or public transport" - however there are still too many that can be, but are being made by car instead. I don't know why the Gascoigne Estate is being replaced with expensive housing for car-owners. But I do know that it is within walking distance of rail and bus routes and a busy town centre. Without masses of car parking being provided it is possible to design housing estates at a population density that allows services and public transport links to be viable, and also with valuable green spaces and traffic-free walking and cycling routes. How about this for an idea? Someone mentioned that the A13 is always reported to be at a standstill at peak times. So charge people for driving on it. Charge them a lot. Use the money to improve the public transport links. The A13 could carry express bus routes, using their own dedicated bus lanes. So if you charged for usage on the A13 then that traffic would just get redistributed onto smaller roads which are less equipped for large scale amounts of traffic. It would be a domino effect, you can keep charging roads but that traffic will just go somewhere and people will always find a around using toll roads. Personally I think it’s better to contain that traffic in one place rather than have it fan out and cause mass jams all over. Not to mention that a lot of the industry in the Barking Riverside area is heavily reliant on the A13, adding a toll would be detrimental to their functioning. Just using a specific example there is a container depot right on the river with drop offs every 10-15 minutes at peak times, the only container depot within the M25, so who would burden the cost of the extra charge? They wouldn’t so that would in turn mean less containers being delivered into London affecting businesses across London. Drivers would have to go all the way to Tilbury or Southampton to collect empties to transport them back to London thereby increasing pollution across the South all for the sake of a little toll. |
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Post by Eastlondoner62 on Apr 7, 2021 18:34:05 GMT
This anti-car nonsense is going to far. The way some influential people talk as if London was some quaint village with everything within cycling distance is maddening. Cars, vans and lorries are essential forms transportation. Not all journeys can be made by foot, bike or public transport. Dealing with tailpipe emissions and waste caused by premature scrappage is a better option than designing homes and urban infrastructure that will end up as mini ghettos. Next thing you know these same people will be campaigning for caps on the number of children permitted per family. "Not all journeys can be made by foot, bike or public transport" - however there are still too many that can be, but are being made by car instead. I don't know why the Gascoigne Estate is being replaced with expensive housing for car-owners. But I do know that it is within walking distance of rail and bus routes and a busy town centre. Without masses of car parking being provided it is possible to design housing estates at a population density that allows services and public transport links to be viable, and also with valuable green spaces and traffic-free walking and cycling routes. How about this for an idea? Someone mentioned that the A13 is always reported to be at a standstill at peak times. So charge people for driving on it. Charge them a lot. Use the money to improve the public transport links. The A13 could carry express bus routes, using their own dedicated bus lanes. A lot of the issues addressing the issue with tolling the A13 was already addressed. The redesigned section of Weavers Quarter, being named 'The Coverdales' to differentiate it from the less car friendly Weavers Quarter isn't specifically just for rich people. It'll apparently be affordable housing but just not social housing so the right to buy rights etc won't exist. The issue is that there's this assumption that only rich people own cars when it is simply not the case. If you total your costs up correctly, a £2500 season ticket equates to more than a car is if you get over the initial purchase cost of a car. On the condition you're not under 25, chances are your insurance will be less than 1K, even for me it's less than 1K and I'm under 25 and even including tax and fuel costs I won't get anywhere near the price of a season ticket. So can you blame people for having a car? Also the case is the car is just far more convenient, why would I slog around 5-6 bags of shopping in my hands back on a bus when I can just put it in a car boot and drive home easily? I can make use of the 24 hour periods supermarkets are open where it's less crowded with my car too without needing to worry about the lower frequencies of the bus or walking the lonely streets. Not to mention once Zero Emission cars become a thing, while congestion could be an aggravating issue it is unlikely to be a huge environmental one. |
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Post by SILENCED on Apr 7, 2021 19:10:55 GMT
The local council did try to back them up, but the issue is if the people you are building houses for want the car park then what will you do? You're not going to build what you think is better but know what it's not what people want or you can just listen to the people. Otherwise you will just get a load of houses you might end up struggling to sell or rent out. East London apart from Tower Hamlets and Newham have very high routes of car usage, it's in the majority in Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge and Havering and it really reflects the poor transport options in the area, even Newham borders very close to the 50% mark. The houses in Barking Riverside are selling very well, and unsurprisingly the majority come with places for people to park their private vehicles. Just looking at Barking once again as it's where the development is located. Your options bus wise all focus on you getting to Barking Station, where you either have the extremely overcrowded District Line or the extremely overcrowded c2c, not to mention the station looks like a post apocalyptic zombie zone. The District Line is so slow it's ridiculous to a point you can drive to a lot of places faster while the c2c have trains skipping empty half the time while dangerous crowds start to build up on the platform. It's such a ridiculous state of affairs, people only put themselves through it because they have to and not because they are opting to. Look on BBC London news every morning and the A13 heading into Central London is always on there as being a standstill traffic jam with the sheer amount of people driving in towards Central London, it's the only road consistently mentioned again and again. The bus links in Barking aren't the best either, links heading West are poor. You have the 5 and 238 of which are both complete disaster zones for crowding. The 5 being in the top 15 most used routes in London while the 238 has one of the highest pax/mile in London. The 366 doesn't even need an introduction for its crowding. The 62, 287, 368 and EL3 all link to other suburbs so while people use them quite well, they're usually used as part of other journeys unless the end destination is Barking Town Centre. Then you have the EL2 which is just a crowd buster for the 5 while the 169 and EL1 are pretty much crowded solid any peak and are a fight to use. The EL1 at Ilford, even during the pandemic is a ridiculous sight, the removal of open boarding means we are now back to the days of where one bus can only leave the stop once the one behind turns up. Why would anyone voluntarily use bus routes which are in a state like this? But TfL aren't even interested in improving the network around here, ever since the EL2 was rerouted nothing meaningful was ever done, the renumbering of the 387 was more so a waste of resources than a meaningful change. Then let me not start about Dagenham, they don't even have the option of the c2c there as a District alternative, the only c2c station is Dagenham Dock at every 30 minutes while the District once again takes stupidly long to get into Central London, not to mention the frequency halves east of Barking. The buses there are very poor, living in Dagenham East you have the 103 taking you to Rainham of all places and direction and Romford the other as the town centre link. It runs every 12ish minutes when someone in a car won't need to wait on a lonely road for a bus to turn up. Even Dagenham Heathway where bus provision is relatively decent, the poor night bus links among other factors mean that pretty much every single house you walk past has a car parked outside it. When this is the state of the bus network and train network in just one borough in East London, can you blame people for wanting a car? You need to make public transport attractive for them instead of gentrifying the place up and hoping that they either move out so that they're not your problem or where you bully them out of owning a car and making life unnecessarily difficult for them just to further a political agenda. It's not as if people here own brand new BMWs or Mercedes, they just own a car because it's what they need to get around. The problem is that many bus services within the borough you mention are just mainly feeders to the train station or shopping centre, that is it. They do not offer that much genuine links without changing. Far too many outer routes were chopped up over the years and people just cannot be bothered to change 2-3 buses+ The routes that are long many just go all the way around the world before it takes you to where you want; simply because they want you to get the train. We would see further amounts of this when Crossrail starts. Last outpost routes that do not do this. i.e. 25, 86, 5, 66, 123 are busy for a reason as they simply don't go all the way around the world. Trains are the mist efficient and effective method of mass transit. Surely using less efficient methods feed the primary method of transport is the most efficient policy, no? |
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Post by twobellstogo on Apr 7, 2021 19:45:35 GMT
After route 148 is now confirmed to NOT being withdrawn and the supposed withdrawal of this route which has created immense discussion on the forum. I'm even more skeptical about the routes currently being rumoured to be rerouted or diverted. As some I have heard do not make logical sense at all. No doubt there will be probably a consultation of some kind based on Central London routes in the future but I think it won't be as drastic as some people think. Hang on. Where have I missed this 148 confirmation? |
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Post by ronnie on Apr 7, 2021 19:45:46 GMT
"Not all journeys can be made by foot, bike or public transport" - however there are still too many that can be, but are being made by car instead. I don't know why the Gascoigne Estate is being replaced with expensive housing for car-owners. But I do know that it is within walking distance of rail and bus routes and a busy town centre. Without masses of car parking being provided it is possible to design housing estates at a population density that allows services and public transport links to be viable, and also with valuable green spaces and traffic-free walking and cycling routes. How about this for an idea? Someone mentioned that the A13 is always reported to be at a standstill at peak times. So charge people for driving on it. Charge them a lot. Use the money to improve the public transport links. The A13 could carry express bus routes, using their own dedicated bus lanes. A lot of the issues addressing the issue with tolling the A13 was already addressed. The redesigned section of Weavers Quarter, being named 'The Coverdales' to differentiate it from the less car friendly Weavers Quarter isn't specifically just for rich people. It'll apparently be affordable housing but just not social housing so the right to buy rights etc won't exist. The issue is that there's this assumption that only rich people own cars when it is simply not the case. If you total your costs up correctly, a £2500 season ticket equates to more than a car is if you get over the initial purchase cost of a car. On the condition you're not under 25, chances are your insurance will be less than 1K, even for me it's less than 1K and I'm under 25 and even including tax and fuel costs I won't get anywhere near the price of a season ticket. So can you blame people for having a car? Also the case is the car is just far more convenient, why would I slog around 5-6 bags of shopping in my hands back on a bus when I can just put it in a car boot and drive home easily? I can make use of the 24 hour periods supermarkets are open where it's less crowded with my car too without needing to worry about the lower frequencies of the bus or walking the lonely streets. Not to mention once Zero Emission cars become a thing, while congestion could be an aggravating issue it is unlikely to be a huge environmental one. I think we need to stop demonising the car to be honest. It’s not a rich person’s Tesla / high end merc / Aston Martin being talked about here. Why do people own cars? It’s not for the prestige of owning a highly depreciable asset nor for the daily trudge to office in most cases It’s for things like (a) carrying heavy shopping home instead of trying to get a bus / train / combination of these; (b) if you have a family (esp with small ones) would you try and bundle them into a bus then a train then a cab for a day trip from say East Ham to the beach / zoo (esp when half the stations in the central areas are not step free) (c) general weekend usage. The car stays in the garage on weekdays mostly As someone in the forum pointed out a few pages back, the car-free housing are making things worse by displacing parked cars to other places. People will keep cars for the mid-term future at least and all these car-free developments do is almost discriminate against people with families / kids |
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Post by southlondonbus on Apr 7, 2021 19:55:39 GMT
After route 148 is now confirmed to NOT being withdrawn and the supposed withdrawal of this route which has created immense discussion on the forum. I'm even more skeptical about the routes currently being rumoured to be rerouted or diverted. As some I have heard do not make logical sense at all. No doubt there will be probably a consultation of some kind based on Central London routes in the future but I think it won't be as drastic as some people think. Hang on. Where have I missed this 148 confirmation? On the RATP thread. It says it was considered to be cut to Victoria and I'm assuming the 45 extended to be replace. Cant say i see the point of it. |
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Post by Eastlondoner62 on Apr 7, 2021 20:04:05 GMT
A lot of the issues addressing the issue with tolling the A13 was already addressed. The redesigned section of Weavers Quarter, being named 'The Coverdales' to differentiate it from the less car friendly Weavers Quarter isn't specifically just for rich people. It'll apparently be affordable housing but just not social housing so the right to buy rights etc won't exist. The issue is that there's this assumption that only rich people own cars when it is simply not the case. If you total your costs up correctly, a £2500 season ticket equates to more than a car is if you get over the initial purchase cost of a car. On the condition you're not under 25, chances are your insurance will be less than 1K, even for me it's less than 1K and I'm under 25 and even including tax and fuel costs I won't get anywhere near the price of a season ticket. So can you blame people for having a car? Also the case is the car is just far more convenient, why would I slog around 5-6 bags of shopping in my hands back on a bus when I can just put it in a car boot and drive home easily? I can make use of the 24 hour periods supermarkets are open where it's less crowded with my car too without needing to worry about the lower frequencies of the bus or walking the lonely streets. Not to mention once Zero Emission cars become a thing, while congestion could be an aggravating issue it is unlikely to be a huge environmental one. I think we need to stop demonising the car to be honest. It’s not a rich person’s Tesla / high end merc / Aston Martin being talked about here. Why do people own cars? It’s not for the prestige of owning a highly depreciable asset nor for the daily trudge to office in most cases It’s for things like (a) carrying heavy shopping home instead of trying to get a bus / train / combination of these; (b) if you have a family (esp with small ones) would you try and bundle them into a bus then a train then a cab for a day trip from say East Ham to the beach / zoo (esp when half the stations in the central areas are not step free) (c) general weekend usage. The car stays in the garage on weekdays mostly As someone in the forum pointed out a few pages back, the car-free housing are making things worse by displacing parked cars to other places. People will keep cars for the mid-term future at least and all these car-free developments do is almost discriminate against people with families / kids Agree here, even little rules like how buggies need to clear a bus for a wheelchair user could just be the reasons people own cars. Why would you get on a bus with a buggy when you can just put your child in a car where you can go where you want and stop where you want. Car use is certainly not good for the environment, but you can't just wage war on it and think people will decide one day "it's not worth it anymore I'll sell up my car and just use the bus everywhere". |
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Post by southlondonbus on Apr 7, 2021 20:11:08 GMT
With realisticly so few tube stations being step free its not easy taking a buggy on it. Apart from the JL extention the chances of your journey starting at and ending at a step free station is probably still quite rare.
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Post by ianhardy on Apr 7, 2021 20:18:50 GMT
Your last point backs up what I think though. TfL use stickers and placards. Outside London it’s digital displays, prominent branded timetable displays. And the fact not all of the buses were route branded also supports the inability to guarantee strays not happening ! That's TfL doing it in house on the cheap though - had they of let Best Impressions (other companies are available) do it, you'd of got a better result and it wouldn't merely be 'stickers'. Strays will happen whether you have branded vehicles or not - as I already said, strays happen outside of London on branded examples in any event yet it doesn't stop them from investing in branding and the Barkingside scheme saw strays kept to a minimum despite 75% of each allocation being branded. Other places in UK do brand 75% of an allocation as well - there is no perfect world where you can keep every bus on every route it should be on because incidents and situations and the aim of the game is to minimise this as best as possible, it shouldn't be used as some sort of negative against branding at all. But I thought that TfL specified the buses that were to be used on each route and once the contract was signed only those buses should be used on that route. Therefore why can 75% of the bus type specified for that route be branded for that route? If commercial operators in the rest of the UK can manage branding with limited wrong branded buses, why can't the TfL contractors where everything is specified by TfL or am I missing something? |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2021 20:24:26 GMT
Assuming the 148 frequency is cut from 8bph to 6bph, I'd assume the PVR will go from 24 to 9 if cutback to Victoria. Should free up as many as 18 LTs given there's a fiar amount of slack in the RATP LT fleet 9? |
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