Cars and congestion

"Britain is on the verge of gridlock"

No it isn't.

Congestion is a problem, acute in places and at particular times but the country is not gridlocked. In many cities, traffic levels have fallen in recent decades.

The solutions to congestion are many: increasing road capacity in some places (sometimes decreasing it elsewhere), improving the alternatives (inc. cycling), better traffic management, demand management through pricing , reducing the need to travel (particularly at peak times), etc. However, there is little political will or investment to do much of this in a serious manner.

Long term? Drones.

Step in, punch in your destination, wait for central services to send you a flight path and adjust the flight paths of all the other drones in the area. Take off, land at the nearest nuclear powered electrical charging point, job done.

Short term, driverless cars will manage traffic better than humans.

But I think the fundamental problem with your question is that you are starting with a solution not tackling the objective. What is the real problem here? Air quality? Slow transit times? Aesthetics?

The best solution to those problems may not be reducing the number of cars. Taking other action might be much more effective.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36402942

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36423250

OPEC & BREXIT

Petrol and Euro car prices up. Make the test harder as well. I hate riding alongside cars, after having bikes and body crumpled by them a few times, and rarely ride on motorways or busy main roads now...

Move the car drivers to bikes and you'll have gridlock.

Get them walking and it will be gridlock.

There's just too many people for the space and resources, mainly in the SE.

The solution is not a vote winner and not very pleasant.

Hopefully it will be by natural means and not affect me or my relatives and friends.

it's all so black. 

Who cares how posh Vine is. Does that devalue his comments on cycling. Good grief. Argument fail.

https://twitter.com/privatecarfree/status/622083733198360576

The image in this tweet is of a brilliant comment posted on Peter Walker's Graun article "The BBC has a problem with cyclists" published in July 2015. The article's existence backs up my assertion above, although most here wouldn't need convincing.

'Exclusion zones' around schools, and a free doughnut for kids commuting more than 1 mile on foot or by bike.

Congestion charges and/or traffic ban in certain areas.

Better public transport (Shrewsbury's buses and trains are stupidly expensive, thanks to privatisation & Arriva moneygrabbing).

Good quality cycling infrastructure.

Unfortunately all the above are vote-losers because most voters drive. Cycling is for kids, not transport. Far too many drivers believe that cyclists "hold up traffic" and shouldn't be in the way. Car companies, newspapers, lobbyists etc make a racket about how the economy would grind to a halt, that cars mean jobs etc etc.

So proposals to slow or remove vehicles provokes comments of "cycling taliban" in East London and blind opposition to any improvement in infrastructure regardless of the benefits. Here in Shrewsbury the £140 million 'relief road' skirting the north of the town is still being pushed by our MP as a magic solution (while savage cuts are made to council services) yet the £12m Integrated Transport Package proposed for the town is a joke. The butchering of town centres, proliferation of traffic lights, rat-running, speeding and increasingly selfish behaviour of drivers are tolerated in the name of progress. And that's before we start on the fact that air pollution is contributing to about 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK. It's truly criminal.

We know about how well it can work in Copenhagen and Amsteradam and elsewhere the tide is slowly turning. The Norweigan government has announced they want to ban petrol and diesel cars by 2025 while Barcelona aims to remove cars from over half the city's streets in an attempt to reduce the 3,500 pollution-related deaths every year.

I drive too, I'm not anti-car, but the current attitude, both among politicians and the public, is truly shocking. I wonder what it will take for things to change.

I agree with @Davel - for (utilitarian) cycling to damatically increase society needs to change its perception of the safety of cycling.

I've just come back from a holiday in Munich and (like other European cities) there is really nice cycling infrastructure. There's cycle lanes on both pavements although you do get two-way traffic on them. As a pedestrian, you get used to checking the cycle lane as you cross it as there's so much traffic. I saw loads of bikes and the vast majority of them were relaxed style (not racing) bikes (maybe like Boris bikes). Almost everyone was cycling in usual clothes - they didn't look like "cyclists" they just looked like ordinary people that happened to be on bikes.

The missus and I hired a couple of bikes and had a brilliant day cycling round Munich and we were just astonished as to how much better it was than cycling round Bristol. The biggest difference was that cars, cyclists and pedestrians all seemed to be friendly towards the other modes of transport.

"Society has lost the plot"

Behave. I've just read a post from you on another thread criticising a 'posh boy' for making a perfectly reasonable point about Sainsbury's covering their vans in bright victim-blaming messages, which you appear to condone.

If you're not a troll, you seem to have problems joining the dots in your own head.

How does very publicly making cycling seem dangerous help with getting people on bikes and relieving congestion?

I wouldn't say its not cool to walk to school I just think its become the norm to drive and doesnt even occur to people to walk or cycle. Ive said before on other forums I think that sport or recreational cycling is widely accepted but utilitarian cycling such as school run/commuting/popping to shops is still seen as slightly counter cultural. From my experience of the school run there are quite a few kids on bikes pr scooters but only a handful of accompanying adults on bikes.

Problem is in the chicken and egg category not enough people cycling to invest in the infrastructure to get people cycling. I will add im not in major city as these seem to be different with infrastructure but that may be because congestion is worse so more incentive to use other forms.

Aw heck, didn't you get the memo? Congestion is entirely down to cyclists and traffic lights, congestion charging and residents parking zones. Nothing to do with the number of private cars on the road, no sirree...