With my current expectations it's probably about £100k a year (after tax), although it would depend on how big a house I got and how many people I'd need to employ to do all the cleaning, gardening and cooking.
Really, the absolute state of this.
So you're fine with the idea of me having to work for other people, but not other people having to work for me?
It's less that than the naked greed on show.
My household's current outgoings (3 adults) would covered by (a slightly less-than average single person's wage) £24k. We could manage on half that. Your attitude is pretty much the cause of your problem here, a self-inflicted wound that's not going away any time soon.
It's like nobody on this thread has mentioned the need for technological change to reduce or eliminate the pollution generated by motor vehicles.
I'm glad to know that will also stop them from running over and killing people.
You said pollution was the problem. I offered a solution to that problem that doesn’t require getting rid of cars, so now you’re shifting the goalposts.
It's like nobody on this thread has mentioned the need for technological change to reduce or eliminate the pollution generated by motor vehicles.
I'm glad to know that will also stop them from running over and killing people.
You said pollution was the problem. I offered a solution to that problem that doesn’t require getting rid of cars, so now you’re shifting the goalposts.
A problem. You must live under a rock not to know that cars also kill people by being incompetently and aggressively driven.
The hotel model of care you are looking for Marvin, is what we spend ages trying not to do for people with disabilities because it is in effect a form of institutionalisation - that results in a gradual loss of people’s ability and confidence to look after themselves.
Also, the charities you want to support might not be necessary under a socialist system ....
The problem with relying on philanthropy is that only the photogenic and interesting get a look in.
I'm glad to know that will also stop them from running over and killing people.
You said pollution was the problem. I offered a solution to that problem that doesn’t require getting rid of cars, so now you’re shifting the goalposts.
A problem. You must live under a rock not to know that cars also kill people by being incompetently and aggressively driven.
First you say cars pollute, then you say cars run over people. Make up your mind! [/sarcasm]
Well, I've been saying cars take up space squeezing other users off the road, and putting green space under concrete. There are a collection of problems, not just one.
The hotel model of care you are looking for Marvin, is what we spend ages trying not to do for people with disabilities because it is in effect a form of institutionalisation - that results in a gradual loss of people’s ability and confidence to look after themselves.
Also, the charities you want to support might not be necessary under a socialist system ....
The problem with relying on philanthropy is that only the photogenic and interesting get a look in.
100% this.
Moreover, there is significant and often unhealthy power for the philanthropic to direct funding priorities.
I'm glad to know that will also stop them from running over and killing people.
But that doesn't solve the congestion issue, of course, and the simple fact is exactly as you stated. Densely-occupied urban areas aren't compatible with widespread private car use - some form of mass transit supports significantly denser occupancy.
Not solve, no, but reduce significantly. Driverless cars (potentially) don't need to worry about reaction times so they can travel much closer together. They can communicate directly with other traffic and know exactly how long it will take them to make a turn and do so with a minimum of delay. They could also cope with narrower lanes than are currently needed. All this adds up to more efficient use of road space and therefore reduced congestion.
The hotel model of care you are looking for Marvin, is what we spend ages trying not to do for people with disabilities because it is in effect a form of institutionalisation - that results in a gradual loss of people’s ability and confidence to look after themselves.
Well, all I can say is I was a lot happier when we had someone coming in every week to clean our house than I am now we have to do it ourselves. It was one less thing to worry and stress about, because someone else was going to take care of it.
Also, the charities you want to support might not be necessary under a socialist system ....
I doubt a socialist system would devote enough public funds to steam railways, minor sports clubs and local history for them to no longer need private donations. Even I think there are far more important things to spend public money on.
The problem with relying on philanthropy is that only the photogenic and interesting get a look in.
As opposed to popular or “worthy” (to whichever bureaucrat gets to make the decisions) causes?
I doubt a socialist system would devote enough public funds to steam railways, minor sports clubs and local history for them to no longer need private donations. Even I think there are far more important things to spend public money on.
Local museums, and the associated studies of local history, are something many local councils fund (or, would do so if their budgets hadn't been cut to the bone such that even services like social work are underfunded). Many activities like sports clubs (especially for children) would have been at least partially funded by local or national government a couple of decades ago, as would heritage groups like railway restoration - that funding was cut to be replaced by taxation on idiocy and desperation (aka Lottery).
The problem you're not seeing is the knock-on effect of cars on other modes of transport. For example the slowing down of busses by sheer volume of numbers. The making of roads too hostile for most people to consider cycling on them. The time wasted for pedestrians trying to cross city road systems waiting for a short lived green man. The two way side-streets made one way by lines of parked cars. The pavements encroached on by parked cars.
Then there's the amenity loss. Verges turned to mud by being used as parking spaces. Cars on pavements -again. Children unable to go out unsupervised or go for bike rides like we used to when we were kids for fear of being laminated to the nearest rat-run.
The only solution to these problems is fewer cars. You can see that as being "cars are bad" if you like.
<snip>
I'd also argue that not all benefits are equal. People die from pollution and RTCs. People don't die from taking five minutes longer to get to Marks and Sparks.
I haven't been posting as KarlLB has made many of my points for me
<snip> More than that would enable me to go on more foreign trips (and boy would I love to be able to spend most of the winter on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean rather than in dark, damp, freezing cold Britain) <snip>.
you are, of course, aware that flying is another of those things the planet cannot really afford, another hugely invisibly subsidised polluting system that everyone should be avoiding if they care about the environment. Carbon offsetting is just a wheeze to allow people to continue to indulge themselves with a sop for their consciences.
Many activities like sports clubs (especially for children) would have been at least partially funded by local or national government a couple of decades ago,
I suspect I'd prefer that most of this sort of thing was funded by user fees, which in turn were funded by people having available spending money because of, for example, a UBI, but that's because I'm not a fan of government picking winners and losers.
It's like nobody on this thread has mentioned the need for technological change to reduce or eliminate the pollution generated by motor vehicles.
I'm glad to know that will also stop them from running over and killing people.
You said pollution was the problem. I offered a solution to that problem that doesn’t require getting rid of cars, so now you’re shifting the goalposts.
A problem. You must live under a rock not to know that cars also kill people by being incompetently and aggressively driven.
If a proposal genuinely makes things a lot better for some and only a little worse for others why can't the winners compensate the losers so that it's better for everyone ?
Suppose that a town has a football pitch, paid for out of public funds, and used by various football teams in the town to play matches. Suppose the town also has several hockey clubs, who would also like to use the pitch to play their matches.
It seems reasonable on the face of it that this common resource should be available to those who want to play hockey on it, as well as those who want to play football on it. There's no reason why the state should privilege football over hockey.
So the town says "fine. one weekend a month, hockey matches will be played on the pitch. (that roughly matching the relative numbers of football and hockey players)".
The football players are worse off, because they only get the pitch three weeks out of four. You'd like the hockey players to compensate the football players in some way for their loss. I'd say that the status quo ante unjustly favoured the football players, and there's no reason whatsoever for them to be compensated for having to share the space.
This seems like a project that is purely redistributive. That doesn't increase or decrease overall welfare, but is entirely political.
If I improve public transport, so that a bunch of poor people spend less long waiting at bus stops, how would you like them to compensate the middle manager who spends an extra five or ten minutes sitting in his car?
What I would like, as you put it, is firstly for you (as the branch of government that is deciding whether this transport project is a good idea) to consider whether the benefit to one group of the improvement in bus services objectively outweighs the disbenefit to another group of the consequent increase in car journey times. By identifying whether there is a compensation value (e.g. a sum of money that could be diverted to subsidising car parks from subsidising bus services) that would make the proposal better for everyone.
Because there are lousy project ideas out there which waste public money.
Having established that the proposal could benefit everyone, the second question is whether you should implement it that way. Which would fit with your notion of political considerations coming in at the end of the process.
I want you, oh government, to govern honestly and efficiently and in the interests of all the people.
Which doesn't exclude helping the poor (in that "teach a man to fish" way). As a goal in itself, rather than as a bias on all the other decisions of government.
You seem to be ignoring that one of the aims of transport policy in cities needs to be to facilitate modal change - it's not one group of people on buses and another in cars; it's about encouraging people to move from cars to buses because of the damage car use is doing to our cities in pollution, congestion, and direct killing of people in RTCs. It's a single group of people, too many of whom currently use private cars and not enough of whom use buses, and I'm saying that not because I'm a commie bastard but because the private cars are currently polluting and congesting the cities and killing people and that's an objectively obvious problem.
The idea is not to keep being nice to car drivers but to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer. The benefit to them is not easier car use but being able to avoid car use altogether. I appreciate some of them might not want to but at the moment their mode of transport is buggering everyone else up by polluting and congesting the cities and running people over. People's transport choices affect other people and government has a responsibility to control those negative effects.
However, if you refuse to see that current volumes of private cars in cities are a problem you will not be able to see it that way or appreciate pushing for modal change.
... My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
Serious question: WHY?
So that it’s possible, however remotely, for me to become one of them. To escape the endless drudgery of having to work for a living. To be able to do what I want, when I want. Something to aspire to, to aim for, to hope for.
Hope is important. If nobody is allowed to get rich enough to never have to work again then it means there’s no escape, no way out, no hope. Nobody wins, everybody loses.
That's not hope, that's a fantasy. Buy a lottery ticket.
Still waiting for a rational argument for why our society needs a few people to live like vampires sucking wealth from billions of ordinary people like you and me.
This seems like a project that is purely redistributive. That doesn't increase or decrease overall welfare, but is entirely political.
I don't agree at all. I think it's obvious that the utility acquired by hockey players who are now able to play hockey (at all) exceeds that lost by football players who have to take one week a month off.
You're right that I'm "just" talking about reallocating use of a finite resource. Such as, for example, space within a densely-used urban area. How much of it am I going to allocate to mass transit, and how much to personal vehicles?
The idea is ... to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer.
Yes. Yes it is. That's what I've been saying this whole damn thread. Don't make cars worse, just make buses/trains/trams better so that more people will freely choose them over their cars. You get the same result (fewer cars on the roads), but without anybody being forced to use services that are worse than what they had before.
The idea is ... to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer.
Yes. Yes it is. That's what I've been saying this whole damn thread. Don't make cars worse, just make buses/trains/trams better so that more people will freely choose them over their cars. You get the same result (fewer cars on the roads), but without anybody being forced to use services that are worse than what they had before.
The thing is that will inevitably make travelling by car worse because space will have to be taken from them for bike and bus lanes and roads will have to be re-engineered to favour public and active transport - an obvious example is pedestrian crossings which favour pedestrians rather than making them wait for ages, and traffic lights which detect oncoming buses and change in their favour as they approach.
We just have to accept that this will be the case and do it anyway.
You're right that I'm "just" talking about reallocating use of a finite resource. Such as, for example, space within a densely-used urban area. How much of it am I going to allocate to mass transit, and how much to personal vehicles?
Urban space isn't quite as limited as you're assuming - underground railways don't take up space above ground (aside from station entrances, of course) for example. Elevated roads and railways are also a thing, though less popular in general because they affect the appearance of the urban area in question.
Basically, in urban areas you can create more space by going up and down as well as left and right.
The idea is ... to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer.
Yes. Yes it is. That's what I've been saying this whole damn thread. Don't make cars worse, just make buses/trains/trams better so that more people will freely choose them over their cars. You get the same result (fewer cars on the roads), but without anybody being forced to use services that are worse than what they had before.
No (and if that's what @KarlLB meant, I disagree strongly). It's already worse for everyone, but substantially worse for those least able to choose any alternatives. We need to make it better by making it more difficult for cars, while at the same time making it easier for other forms of transport.
We are living the worst possible of worlds. Wanting to perpetuate that is not a virtue.
As I said earlier, past a certain point making life more difficult for cars is self-defeating or at least becomes harder to do as you go along, as the main thing that makes life easier for cars is taking other cars off the road.
As I said earlier, past a certain point making life more difficult for cars is self-defeating or at least becomes harder to do as you go along, as the main thing that makes life easier for cars is taking other cars off the road.
Yeah, but we're so far from that point at the moment.
One place I'd start is with car advertising. Put a ban on adverts that show cars being driven around cities, not to mention the term "city car".
The idea is ... to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer.
Yes. Yes it is. That's what I've been saying this whole damn thread. Don't make cars worse, just make buses/trains/trams better so that more people will freely choose them over their cars. You get the same result (fewer cars on the roads), but without anybody being forced to use services that are worse than what they had before.
The thing is that will inevitably make travelling by car worse because space will have to be taken from them for bike and bus lanes and roads will have to be re-engineered to favour public and active transport
Those are relatively minor changes to the overall driving experience though, certainly when compared to other suggestions that seek to make car use considerably more unpleasant in order to reduce it that way.
an obvious example is pedestrian crossings which favour pedestrians rather than making them wait for ages
Or even more radical solutions, such as grade separation so that pedestrians don't have to cross roads on the level at all. Obviously you couldn't do it at every possible crossing place, but in areas with considerable pedestrian traffic (such as city centres) the busier arterial and through routes could be diverted into tunnels so that the traffic on surface roads is (a) slower (because it's generally the through routes that have higher speed limits) and (b) reduced in volume.
Urban space isn't quite as limited as you're assuming - underground railways don't take up space above ground (aside from station entrances, of course) for example. Elevated roads and railways are also a thing, though less popular in general because they affect the appearance of the urban area in question.
Basically, in urban areas you can create more space by going up and down as well as left and right.
Underground railways are also quite stunningly expensive to build. And, as you point out, elevating road or rail above the streetscape serves to block out the daylight, and the view, and convert the areas under the road/rail to something frankly quite unpleasant.
If you were to design from scratch, you could build part of a city with a service level on the ground, for vehicles, and elevate the pedestrian / cyclist level above it. Service level has access to loading docks for buildings, pedestrian level has the main entrance, pretty streetscape etc.
But it's hard to retrofit something like that in to existing buildings.
If you were to design from scratch, you could build part of a city with a service level on the ground, for vehicles, and elevate the pedestrian / cyclist level above it. Service level has access to loading docks for buildings, pedestrian level has the main entrance, pretty streetscape etc.
The Barbican in London is built that way. I don't think it's considered completely successful.
Quite a lot of Tokyo manages multi-level very well, but it's something much easier to build in than retro-fit. Many buildings in Tokyo have main pedestrian access below street level - direct link to the Metro. There are also a lot of elevated pedestrian walkways - again with building access from those levels. Through vehicle traffic is often elevated or tunnelled, as are most commuter trains and Shinkansen. There are even some buildings with elevated roads running through them. Implementing such systems in existing cityscapes will be a project lasting decades, and it will take a big picture city plan that will be continued over that time (with probable change of local and national political leadership).
This seems like a project that is purely redistributive. That doesn't increase or decrease overall welfare, but is entirely political.
This seems to presuppose that redistribution doesn't increase overall welfare. If someone has 30 billion dollars and the government takes 15 of those and give them to the poor and the workers, then the billionaire does not feel their welfare go down AT ALL, whereas the poor and working people do. Having that wealth parked is what lowers overall welfare from what it could be.
The idea is ... to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer.
Yes. Yes it is. That's what I've been saying this whole damn thread. Don't make cars worse, just make buses/trains/trams better so that more people will freely choose them over their cars. You get the same result (fewer cars on the roads), but without anybody being forced to use services that are worse than what they had before.
The thing is that will inevitably make travelling by car worse because space will have to be taken from them for bike and bus lanes and roads will have to be re-engineered to favour public and active transport - an obvious example is pedestrian crossings which favour pedestrians rather than making them wait for ages, and traffic lights which detect oncoming buses and change in their favour as they approach.
We just have to accept that this will be the case and do it anyway.
It will not inevitably make travelling by car worse. Because fewer people will be travelling by car.
EDIT: This is exactly the same principle that explains why creating more space for cars doesn't necessarily create a better driving experience, just in reverse.
The idea is ... to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer.
Yes. Yes it is. That's what I've been saying this whole damn thread. Don't make cars worse, just make buses/trains/trams better so that more people will freely choose them over their cars. You get the same result (fewer cars on the roads), but without anybody being forced to use services that are worse than what they had before.
The thing is that will inevitably make travelling by car worse because space will have to be taken from them for bike and bus lanes and roads will have to be re-engineered to favour public and active transport - an obvious example is pedestrian crossings which favour pedestrians rather than making them wait for ages, and traffic lights which detect oncoming buses and change in their favour as they approach.
We just have to accept that this will be the case and do it anyway.
It will not inevitably make travelling by car worse. Because fewer people will be travelling by car.
In the short term before modal shift settles down, it will. It has to be faced as a great deal of opposition will come from the motoring lobby who scream like stuck pigs if you do so much as actually dare to enforce existing parking restrictions, so an honest "yes, if people insist on using cars despite the changes, it will be worse for you. So consider the alternatives we're facilitating" doesn't seem inappropriate.
The idea is ... to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer.
Yes. Yes it is. That's what I've been saying this whole damn thread. Don't make cars worse, just make buses/trains/trams better so that more people will freely choose them over their cars. You get the same result (fewer cars on the roads), but without anybody being forced to use services that are worse than what they had before.
The thing is that will inevitably make travelling by car worse because space will have to be taken from them for bike and bus lanes and roads will have to be re-engineered to favour public and active transport - an obvious example is pedestrian crossings which favour pedestrians rather than making them wait for ages, and traffic lights which detect oncoming buses and change in their favour as they approach.
We just have to accept that this will be the case and do it anyway.
It will not inevitably make travelling by car worse. Because fewer people will be travelling by car.
In the short term before modal shift settles down, it will. It has to be faced as a great deal of opposition will come from the motoring lobby who scream like stuck pigs if you do so much as actually dare to enforce existing parking restrictions, so an honest "yes, if people insist on using cars despite the changes, it will be worse for you. So consider the alternatives we're facilitating" doesn't seem inappropriate.
Oh well, if what you're interested in is perception and short-term effects rather than facts about long-term effects, this whole conversation isn't going to get far because you seem to have shifted the goalposts radically. I thought we were trying to discuss how to plan for an improved future, not engage in a spot of populism.
Amongst actual traffic experts, it's well known now that traffic has a tendency to behave like a gas, occupying whatever space is given to it. If you create more space for cars, more people drive cars and the gridlock tends to become just as bad as it was before you expanded the road network.
So yes, building more motorways is often popular (around here, I get to see constant talk about the traffic situation in Sydney). Does it work? Not really.
But it's also true that if you restrict the space for cars, you tend to get fewer cars trying to go through that space - provided of course there are viable alternatives.
It must be nearly 10 years since I saw an episode of a TV program about doing exactly this in Seoul. They got rid of a road. Did some people complain? I don't remember, but probably. But then there were all these other benefits. A new park/pedestrian space, a significant reduction in the temperature of the area (because green spaces are so much better for this than asphalt), probably other effects that I've forgotten.
I think we're way more in agreement than you're reading me.
The problem I'm having is how to get the right thing done in the face of what I know will be massive opposition from the motoring lobby. It is, for example, commonly believed by most shopkeepers that if people can't drive to and park right outside their shop they will go bust. No amount of actual contrary evidence shifts the view. So any parking restrictions, for example, are fought against with the tenacity you'd normally see in a cornered mink.
That's obviously false. And if it were true then any change would make things better for everyone.
Whereas if Karl gets his way and turns every 2-lane road into a car lane plus a bus lane, quite a lot of people will feel worse off (and harken back to the good old days...)
Transport schemes are locationally specific. They tend to make some people better off by a mix of small and large amounts, and some people worse off by a mix of small and large amounts. The point of the utilitarian calculus is to weigh up those gains and losses so as to assess which schemes do the most for overall welfare.
Seems to me that the argument here is actually about what values you use in that calculation.
I'm arguing for making decisions based on what people actually value.
Whereas Karl wants to use coefficients based on what Karl values. And mousethief (and others on the left side of the Ship (the port side ?) want that calculation to include an equality term.
Thanks for the illustration of exactly what we're up against, @Russ
You don't actually want to solve the problem do you? Which endpoint do you favour? Gridlock or building more roads until the country's basically a sheet of tarmac?
My "values" are clean air, people not choking to death, people not being run over and viable alternatives to cars. How are they so terrible?
Ahem. Part of what we're up against is people reading caricatures of what people have said instead of reading what they've actually said.
On both sides to a certain extent, but frankly it seems to be more in the vein of: if you try to provide some nuance about how making changes is not straightforward, it will be treated as if you said something absolute against making changes.
What exactly is wrong, pray tell, with saying that transport schemes are locationally specific?
I would have thought that was bloody obvious. But on the one hand we have a claim that some people want to change every road, and on the other a claim that some people don't want to touch any road anywhere.
That's obviously false. And if it were true then any change would make things better for everyone.
[Citation needed]
We have literally geoengineered the atmosphere to heat up sufficiently to destroy our environment and us, because of our use of fossil fuels - something that oil companies have known about for 50+ years and decided that their profits were more important.
We're living with the consequences of this wholesale gas lighting, and any change whatsoever that takes petrol and diesel vehicles off the road is automatically making things better for everyone.
I'm arguing for making decisions based on what people actually value.
However, neither do we have the planetarty resources to replace every ICE with a battery. Our cities are a mess, too often an urban core surrounded by a ring road, surrounded by satellite commuter suburbs, none of which have any sensible, joined up planning for why they're there or what their purpose is, let alone how to travel from one place to another.
One of the best solutions to cut journey times is simply to move what you're travelling to closer. The regular trips like work, shopping, school and leisure.
Arguing for the status quo, which is based on a false marketised metric, is stupid. People value their cars because we've spent nearly a century making cars essential. We can change that.
OK, let's take @Russ position through as I understand it.
He opened the thread essentially associating public transport with socialism.
AIUI, Russ takes the view that the government should basically do what the public want them to do. That seems uncontroversial. Therefore, Russ seems to be saying, if people want to drive, the government should facilitate that, rather than trying to drive modal shift. To understand the reason I say this, let's take the example of turning a two lane road into a bus/bike lane and all traffic lane. Not something I want to do to every road as suggested, but certainly something we can do.
Russ sees this is disadvantaging car drivers, because they'll be restricted to a single lane, and has talked about how we compensate them.
I on the other hand say no, they are incentivised by the provision of the bus/cycle lane to use the bus or cycle instead of driving.
I conclude, therefore, that Russ is not in favour of trying to drive modal shift as government policy, and that instead government should support whatever modes people currently choose to use.
Do I have that correct?
The problem, as I see it, is that we have a problem. The problem includes but is not limited to:
1. Pollution
2. Congestion
3. Death and Injury from RTAs
4. Disincentive to use bike, foot or bus, partially by infrastructure design and partly by the above three factors.
Russ seems to think that I (and others who think similarly) are driven by a left-wing ideology, and that there isn't an objective problem. I say on the other hand that the above are objective problems and need to be fixed, because left unchecked - catering for a perceived desire to drive everywhere - the endpoint is either entirely gridlocked road networks or building so many roads that the country disappears under tarmac. The problem with this, even if you ignore the issues 1-4 listed above, is something both @orfeo and @Doc Tor have alluded to - if you design for cars, more people will choose to use them, and you will merely end up with more roads, just as crowded as the fewer roads were before you built the more roads. I offer the M25, built in part to relieve the congestion on the North Circular, and now regularly just as clogged as it was, by way of example. I also offer any city centre at 8.30 in the morning as any number of examples you want.
So a simple - how did @Doc Tor put it - "false marketised metric" doesn't actually work.
Pollution kills thousands every year.
Congestion will undoubtedly add to that. With the best will in the world, emergency vehicles are in the same traffic, using the roads.
Direct death and injury from RTAs.
Lack of exercise - walking, cycling, running - kills more than the above 3 put together.
AIUI, Russ takes the view that the government should basically do what the public want them to do. That seems uncontroversial.
Only seemingly uncontroversial. Taken to it's logical conclusion, politicians don't have any principles except to be in power and will adopt whatever position is necessary to get the votes to be in power. That's populism, and leads to such disasters as Donald Trump as President and Brexit.
I believe politicians, and by extension government, should instead be putting forward what they consider to be the best for their constituents and nations, and indeed for the whole world. And, then convincing the people (or, at least enough of the people to be elected) that these policies are right and that therefore people should vote for them.
In November 2019 a some residents of a local village formed a Climate Action community group. Expecting a general election to be called, as a launch event they organised a hustings with representatives of the main political parties put forward their environment related policies. As I'd put myself forward as a candidate for the Greens (in the end the Branch voted for someone else, who was an excellent candidate) I sat there representing the Greens - it was interesting that only the LibDems sent a potential candidate along (he did get the nod from his party), the other parties were represented by people who would not be standing in the election. At one point during the evening I said something along the lines of our society having a collection of aspirations (eg: owning a detached house with garden and spare rooms, every adult in the household having their own car, owning a second home in the country, going on an overseas holiday every year ...) but that if we were going to be serious about sustainable living then as a society we will need to reassess and change our aspirations to something less environmentally costly. Someone in the audience responded "you're not going to get many votes saying that!". Should politicians stop saying what they believe to be true even if that's not popular and makes people uncomfortable, or should we all be standing on what we believe to be true and put our effort into convincing others of that rather than polling to find out what they can say that will get them votes? I strongly believe in speaking the truth, which is why I was not apologetic for saying what I did, and told the audience that I would be continuing to call for that change in social attitudes that would lead to sustainable aspirations - even if I had to do that from outwith Parliament (and, to be honest, we had zero chance of being elected anyway).
My "values" are clean air, people not choking to death, people not being run over and viable alternatives to cars. How are they so terrible?
My question is simply, if the first three (though the first two are really the same thing) could be eliminated without the fourth, would the fourth still be a value you would seek to pursue?
What I'm getting at is, does your antipathy towards cars step purely from the problems - pollution, gridlock, etc - that come with them, or is there also an ideological opposition to individuals having exclusive access to private forms of transportation rather than having to use forms that are publically provided for the use of all? And if it's the former, are you open to solutions that fix the problems without eliminating individual private transportation options?
I believe politicians, and by extension government, should instead be putting forward what they consider to be the best for their constituents and nations, and indeed for the whole world. And, then convincing the people (or, at least enough of the people to be elected) that these policies are right and that therefore people should vote for them.
I don't see what's wrong with politicians/government asking the people what they want and then giving it to them.
I guess it depends on whether you think democracy means the people should get to choose between a limited set of "acceptable" political positions, or the people should get to choose exactly how they shall be governed without any restrictions on what that "should" look like.
The quotations are because if those things aren't decided by the people themselves via democratic means, then who does decide them? And whence comes their authority to do so?
Taken to it's logical conclusion, politicians don't have any principles except to be in power and will adopt whatever position is necessary to get the votes to be in power. That's populism, and leads to such disasters as Donald Trump as President and Brexit.
I'm not convinced that the people would have wanted Brexit if some politicians and a lot of people in the media hadn't told them they wanted Brexit.
The difference isn't between politicians doing the unprincipled thing the public want and the principled thing that the public don't want; but between advocating policies with no honest discussion of the drawbacks and benefits and advocating policies that one thinks would be adopted after a full discussion of the drawbacks and benefits.
My question is simply, if the first three (though the first two are really the same thing) could be eliminated without the fourth, would the fourth still be a value you would seek to pursue?
I think that if you eliminate all downsides to a technology and leave all upsides in place then ipso facto there is no rational objection to that technology.
There still is an issue of overuse and excessive take up of limited resources if all in developed countries insist on having more than their fair share of the resources available on the planet. Individual cars for everyone is one such overuse - as is flying.
We cannot sit in our comfortable houses* with our spare bedrooms and gardens, dictating to the developing world that they need to be satisfied with less with any fairness. And rather than trying to maintain our present lifestyles, we do need to start reducing our wants to what is available if everyone is to get a fair share.
With what justification can we continue to insist that we consume at our current rates?
* actually, in my case a first floor flat without garden, no car, only a bicycle, feet or public transport to get around and a mainly vegetarian diet, plus a proponent of secondhand and reuse rather than fast fashion, so I do put my money where my mouth is, but I still have computer and internet, much that others don't
Pretty much everything that people do requires a certain number of people from which to select. If it's a common activity, you'll find lots of people close to you who want to do it. If it's a less common activity, or you do it at an elite level, you'll need to go further afield.
To my mind, that says that a useful metric for considering living patterns and so on is the number of people that live within 5, 10, or 15 minutes travel from you. If we all have personal teleporters, there's no need to live near the people you worship with, drink with, or play zero gravity lacrosse with. If we all walk everywhere, then you either need to live in a tower block (or similar densely-packed urban arrangement), or not like people much.
But you could use public shared transit to reach others in your interest group, burning up fewer resources, rather than your personal teleporter, walking to reach that shared transit, as pretty much happens in London.
The other place that has multi-level transit and road, and actually river / dock access, is Canary Wharf. There are ground level car routes into that area, but it's quicker to come in by tube (underground, Jubilee line), high level DLR, the new CrossRail has also high sections, and low access to river boats. It's less of a concrete jungle than the Barbican and feels less surrounded by thundering traffic.
Comments
It's less that than the naked greed on show.
My household's current outgoings (3 adults) would covered by (a slightly less-than average single person's wage) £24k. We could manage on half that. Your attitude is pretty much the cause of your problem here, a self-inflicted wound that's not going away any time soon.
You said pollution was the problem. I offered a solution to that problem that doesn’t require getting rid of cars, so now you’re shifting the goalposts.
A problem. You must live under a rock not to know that cars also kill people by being incompetently and aggressively driven.
Also, the charities you want to support might not be necessary under a socialist system ....
The problem with relying on philanthropy is that only the photogenic and interesting get a look in.
First you say cars pollute, then you say cars run over people. Make up your mind! [/sarcasm]
100% this.
Moreover, there is significant and often unhealthy power for the philanthropic to direct funding priorities.
AFZ
Not solve, no, but reduce significantly. Driverless cars (potentially) don't need to worry about reaction times so they can travel much closer together. They can communicate directly with other traffic and know exactly how long it will take them to make a turn and do so with a minimum of delay. They could also cope with narrower lanes than are currently needed. All this adds up to more efficient use of road space and therefore reduced congestion.
Well, all I can say is I was a lot happier when we had someone coming in every week to clean our house than I am now we have to do it ourselves. It was one less thing to worry and stress about, because someone else was going to take care of it.
I doubt a socialist system would devote enough public funds to steam railways, minor sports clubs and local history for them to no longer need private donations. Even I think there are far more important things to spend public money on.
As opposed to popular or “worthy” (to whichever bureaucrat gets to make the decisions) causes?
It’s not particularly unhealthy for me if my favoured causes get funded.
I haven't been posting as KarlLB has made many of my points for me
Secondly, from your earlier post, where you said: you are, of course, aware that flying is another of those things the planet cannot really afford, another hugely invisibly subsidised polluting system that everyone should be avoiding if they care about the environment. Carbon offsetting is just a wheeze to allow people to continue to indulge themselves with a sop for their consciences.
It's not even that. It's just an additional cost. 1% of the UK population take nearly 20% of all overseas (from the UK) flights.
I suspect I'd prefer that most of this sort of thing was funded by user fees, which in turn were funded by people having available spending money because of, for example, a UBI, but that's because I'm not a fan of government picking winners and losers.
Cars don't kill people. Drivers kill people.
This seems like a project that is purely redistributive. That doesn't increase or decrease overall welfare, but is entirely political.
What I would like, as you put it, is firstly for you (as the branch of government that is deciding whether this transport project is a good idea) to consider whether the benefit to one group of the improvement in bus services objectively outweighs the disbenefit to another group of the consequent increase in car journey times. By identifying whether there is a compensation value (e.g. a sum of money that could be diverted to subsidising car parks from subsidising bus services) that would make the proposal better for everyone.
Because there are lousy project ideas out there which waste public money.
Having established that the proposal could benefit everyone, the second question is whether you should implement it that way. Which would fit with your notion of political considerations coming in at the end of the process.
I want you, oh government, to govern honestly and efficiently and in the interests of all the people.
Which doesn't exclude helping the poor (in that "teach a man to fish" way). As a goal in itself, rather than as a bias on all the other decisions of government.
The idea is not to keep being nice to car drivers but to encourage them to move to buses by making the buses nicer. The benefit to them is not easier car use but being able to avoid car use altogether. I appreciate some of them might not want to but at the moment their mode of transport is buggering everyone else up by polluting and congesting the cities and running people over. People's transport choices affect other people and government has a responsibility to control those negative effects.
However, if you refuse to see that current volumes of private cars in cities are a problem you will not be able to see it that way or appreciate pushing for modal change.
That's not hope, that's a fantasy. Buy a lottery ticket.
Still waiting for a rational argument for why our society needs a few people to live like vampires sucking wealth from billions of ordinary people like you and me.
I don't agree at all. I think it's obvious that the utility acquired by hockey players who are now able to play hockey (at all) exceeds that lost by football players who have to take one week a month off.
You're right that I'm "just" talking about reallocating use of a finite resource. Such as, for example, space within a densely-used urban area. How much of it am I going to allocate to mass transit, and how much to personal vehicles?
Yes. Yes it is. That's what I've been saying this whole damn thread. Don't make cars worse, just make buses/trains/trams better so that more people will freely choose them over their cars. You get the same result (fewer cars on the roads), but without anybody being forced to use services that are worse than what they had before.
The thing is that will inevitably make travelling by car worse because space will have to be taken from them for bike and bus lanes and roads will have to be re-engineered to favour public and active transport - an obvious example is pedestrian crossings which favour pedestrians rather than making them wait for ages, and traffic lights which detect oncoming buses and change in their favour as they approach.
We just have to accept that this will be the case and do it anyway.
Urban space isn't quite as limited as you're assuming - underground railways don't take up space above ground (aside from station entrances, of course) for example. Elevated roads and railways are also a thing, though less popular in general because they affect the appearance of the urban area in question.
Basically, in urban areas you can create more space by going up and down as well as left and right.
No (and if that's what @KarlLB meant, I disagree strongly). It's already worse for everyone, but substantially worse for those least able to choose any alternatives. We need to make it better by making it more difficult for cars, while at the same time making it easier for other forms of transport.
We are living the worst possible of worlds. Wanting to perpetuate that is not a virtue.
Yeah, but we're so far from that point at the moment.
One place I'd start is with car advertising. Put a ban on adverts that show cars being driven around cities, not to mention the term "city car".
Those are relatively minor changes to the overall driving experience though, certainly when compared to other suggestions that seek to make car use considerably more unpleasant in order to reduce it that way.
Or even more radical solutions, such as grade separation so that pedestrians don't have to cross roads on the level at all. Obviously you couldn't do it at every possible crossing place, but in areas with considerable pedestrian traffic (such as city centres) the busier arterial and through routes could be diverted into tunnels so that the traffic on surface roads is (a) slower (because it's generally the through routes that have higher speed limits) and (b) reduced in volume.
This already happens in many cities, of course.
Underground railways are also quite stunningly expensive to build. And, as you point out, elevating road or rail above the streetscape serves to block out the daylight, and the view, and convert the areas under the road/rail to something frankly quite unpleasant.
If you were to design from scratch, you could build part of a city with a service level on the ground, for vehicles, and elevate the pedestrian / cyclist level above it. Service level has access to loading docks for buildings, pedestrian level has the main entrance, pretty streetscape etc.
But it's hard to retrofit something like that in to existing buildings.
This seems to presuppose that redistribution doesn't increase overall welfare. If someone has 30 billion dollars and the government takes 15 of those and give them to the poor and the workers, then the billionaire does not feel their welfare go down AT ALL, whereas the poor and working people do. Having that wealth parked is what lowers overall welfare from what it could be.
It will not inevitably make travelling by car worse. Because fewer people will be travelling by car.
EDIT: This is exactly the same principle that explains why creating more space for cars doesn't necessarily create a better driving experience, just in reverse.
In the short term before modal shift settles down, it will. It has to be faced as a great deal of opposition will come from the motoring lobby who scream like stuck pigs if you do so much as actually dare to enforce existing parking restrictions, so an honest "yes, if people insist on using cars despite the changes, it will be worse for you. So consider the alternatives we're facilitating" doesn't seem inappropriate.
Oh well, if what you're interested in is perception and short-term effects rather than facts about long-term effects, this whole conversation isn't going to get far because you seem to have shifted the goalposts radically. I thought we were trying to discuss how to plan for an improved future, not engage in a spot of populism.
Amongst actual traffic experts, it's well known now that traffic has a tendency to behave like a gas, occupying whatever space is given to it. If you create more space for cars, more people drive cars and the gridlock tends to become just as bad as it was before you expanded the road network.
So yes, building more motorways is often popular (around here, I get to see constant talk about the traffic situation in Sydney). Does it work? Not really.
But it's also true that if you restrict the space for cars, you tend to get fewer cars trying to go through that space - provided of course there are viable alternatives.
It must be nearly 10 years since I saw an episode of a TV program about doing exactly this in Seoul. They got rid of a road. Did some people complain? I don't remember, but probably. But then there were all these other benefits. A new park/pedestrian space, a significant reduction in the temperature of the area (because green spaces are so much better for this than asphalt), probably other effects that I've forgotten.
The problem I'm having is how to get the right thing done in the face of what I know will be massive opposition from the motoring lobby. It is, for example, commonly believed by most shopkeepers that if people can't drive to and park right outside their shop they will go bust. No amount of actual contrary evidence shifts the view. So any parking restrictions, for example, are fought against with the tenacity you'd normally see in a cornered mink.
That's where I think the real battle is.
That's obviously false. And if it were true then any change would make things better for everyone.
Whereas if Karl gets his way and turns every 2-lane road into a car lane plus a bus lane, quite a lot of people will feel worse off (and harken back to the good old days...)
Transport schemes are locationally specific. They tend to make some people better off by a mix of small and large amounts, and some people worse off by a mix of small and large amounts. The point of the utilitarian calculus is to weigh up those gains and losses so as to assess which schemes do the most for overall welfare.
Seems to me that the argument here is actually about what values you use in that calculation.
I'm arguing for making decisions based on what people actually value.
Whereas Karl wants to use coefficients based on what Karl values. And mousethief (and others on the left side of the Ship (the port side ?) want that calculation to include an equality term.
You don't actually want to solve the problem do you? Which endpoint do you favour? Gridlock or building more roads until the country's basically a sheet of tarmac?
My "values" are clean air, people not choking to death, people not being run over and viable alternatives to cars. How are they so terrible?
On both sides to a certain extent, but frankly it seems to be more in the vein of: if you try to provide some nuance about how making changes is not straightforward, it will be treated as if you said something absolute against making changes.
What exactly is wrong, pray tell, with saying that transport schemes are locationally specific?
I would have thought that was bloody obvious. But on the one hand we have a claim that some people want to change every road, and on the other a claim that some people don't want to touch any road anywhere.
We have literally geoengineered the atmosphere to heat up sufficiently to destroy our environment and us, because of our use of fossil fuels - something that oil companies have known about for 50+ years and decided that their profits were more important.
We're living with the consequences of this wholesale gas lighting, and any change whatsoever that takes petrol and diesel vehicles off the road is automatically making things better for everyone.
However, neither do we have the planetarty resources to replace every ICE with a battery. Our cities are a mess, too often an urban core surrounded by a ring road, surrounded by satellite commuter suburbs, none of which have any sensible, joined up planning for why they're there or what their purpose is, let alone how to travel from one place to another.
One of the best solutions to cut journey times is simply to move what you're travelling to closer. The regular trips like work, shopping, school and leisure.
Arguing for the status quo, which is based on a false marketised metric, is stupid. People value their cars because we've spent nearly a century making cars essential. We can change that.
He opened the thread essentially associating public transport with socialism.
AIUI, Russ takes the view that the government should basically do what the public want them to do. That seems uncontroversial. Therefore, Russ seems to be saying, if people want to drive, the government should facilitate that, rather than trying to drive modal shift. To understand the reason I say this, let's take the example of turning a two lane road into a bus/bike lane and all traffic lane. Not something I want to do to every road as suggested, but certainly something we can do.
Russ sees this is disadvantaging car drivers, because they'll be restricted to a single lane, and has talked about how we compensate them.
I on the other hand say no, they are incentivised by the provision of the bus/cycle lane to use the bus or cycle instead of driving.
I conclude, therefore, that Russ is not in favour of trying to drive modal shift as government policy, and that instead government should support whatever modes people currently choose to use.
Do I have that correct?
The problem, as I see it, is that we have a problem. The problem includes but is not limited to:
1. Pollution
2. Congestion
3. Death and Injury from RTAs
4. Disincentive to use bike, foot or bus, partially by infrastructure design and partly by the above three factors.
Russ seems to think that I (and others who think similarly) are driven by a left-wing ideology, and that there isn't an objective problem. I say on the other hand that the above are objective problems and need to be fixed, because left unchecked - catering for a perceived desire to drive everywhere - the endpoint is either entirely gridlocked road networks or building so many roads that the country disappears under tarmac. The problem with this, even if you ignore the issues 1-4 listed above, is something both @orfeo and @Doc Tor have alluded to - if you design for cars, more people will choose to use them, and you will merely end up with more roads, just as crowded as the fewer roads were before you built the more roads. I offer the M25, built in part to relieve the congestion on the North Circular, and now regularly just as clogged as it was, by way of example. I also offer any city centre at 8.30 in the morning as any number of examples you want.
So a simple - how did @Doc Tor put it - "false marketised metric" doesn't actually work.
Pollution kills thousands every year.
Congestion will undoubtedly add to that. With the best will in the world, emergency vehicles are in the same traffic, using the roads.
Direct death and injury from RTAs.
Lack of exercise - walking, cycling, running - kills more than the above 3 put together.
I believe politicians, and by extension government, should instead be putting forward what they consider to be the best for their constituents and nations, and indeed for the whole world. And, then convincing the people (or, at least enough of the people to be elected) that these policies are right and that therefore people should vote for them.
In November 2019 a some residents of a local village formed a Climate Action community group. Expecting a general election to be called, as a launch event they organised a hustings with representatives of the main political parties put forward their environment related policies. As I'd put myself forward as a candidate for the Greens (in the end the Branch voted for someone else, who was an excellent candidate) I sat there representing the Greens - it was interesting that only the LibDems sent a potential candidate along (he did get the nod from his party), the other parties were represented by people who would not be standing in the election. At one point during the evening I said something along the lines of our society having a collection of aspirations (eg: owning a detached house with garden and spare rooms, every adult in the household having their own car, owning a second home in the country, going on an overseas holiday every year ...) but that if we were going to be serious about sustainable living then as a society we will need to reassess and change our aspirations to something less environmentally costly. Someone in the audience responded "you're not going to get many votes saying that!". Should politicians stop saying what they believe to be true even if that's not popular and makes people uncomfortable, or should we all be standing on what we believe to be true and put our effort into convincing others of that rather than polling to find out what they can say that will get them votes? I strongly believe in speaking the truth, which is why I was not apologetic for saying what I did, and told the audience that I would be continuing to call for that change in social attitudes that would lead to sustainable aspirations - even if I had to do that from outwith Parliament (and, to be honest, we had zero chance of being elected anyway).
My question is simply, if the first three (though the first two are really the same thing) could be eliminated without the fourth, would the fourth still be a value you would seek to pursue?
What I'm getting at is, does your antipathy towards cars step purely from the problems - pollution, gridlock, etc - that come with them, or is there also an ideological opposition to individuals having exclusive access to private forms of transportation rather than having to use forms that are publically provided for the use of all? And if it's the former, are you open to solutions that fix the problems without eliminating individual private transportation options?
No-one has argued for the complete elimination of anything. Not even cars.
It's a straw man and a distraction from dealing with the real problems.
I don't see what's wrong with politicians/government asking the people what they want and then giving it to them.
I guess it depends on whether you think democracy means the people should get to choose between a limited set of "acceptable" political positions, or the people should get to choose exactly how they shall be governed without any restrictions on what that "should" look like.
The quotations are because if those things aren't decided by the people themselves via democratic means, then who does decide them? And whence comes their authority to do so?
The difference isn't between politicians doing the unprincipled thing the public want and the principled thing that the public don't want; but between advocating policies with no honest discussion of the drawbacks and benefits and advocating policies that one thinks would be adopted after a full discussion of the drawbacks and benefits.
We cannot sit in our comfortable houses* with our spare bedrooms and gardens, dictating to the developing world that they need to be satisfied with less with any fairness. And rather than trying to maintain our present lifestyles, we do need to start reducing our wants to what is available if everyone is to get a fair share.
With what justification can we continue to insist that we consume at our current rates?
* actually, in my case a first floor flat without garden, no car, only a bicycle, feet or public transport to get around and a mainly vegetarian diet, plus a proponent of secondhand and reuse rather than fast fashion, so I do put my money where my mouth is, but I still have computer and internet, much that others don't
To my mind, that says that a useful metric for considering living patterns and so on is the number of people that live within 5, 10, or 15 minutes travel from you. If we all have personal teleporters, there's no need to live near the people you worship with, drink with, or play zero gravity lacrosse with. If we all walk everywhere, then you either need to live in a tower block (or similar densely-packed urban arrangement), or not like people much.
The other place that has multi-level transit and road, and actually river / dock access, is Canary Wharf. There are ground level car routes into that area, but it's quicker to come in by tube (underground, Jubilee line), high level DLR, the new CrossRail has also high sections, and low access to river boats. It's less of a concrete jungle than the Barbican and feels less surrounded by thundering traffic.