“Out of the galaxy delusional”… that’s a flavour of what Bike Biz founder and current Forbes and Guardian contributor Carlton Reid thought of the conversations being had at COP26 about eco-friendly transport. So just why were so many electric car brands allowed to flaunt their wares and “openly tout for business” at the world’s biggest climate summit, when the CEO of Britain’s foremost folding bike brand was reportedly refused a pass to even attend the event?
We already knew there was a fair bit of perceived hypocrisy happening outside COP26, held in Glasgow earlier this month. Who can forget the sight of the US president’s gas-guzzling motorcade arriving, or the story of the cycling advocate who wasn’t allowed to cycle through a barrier on a permitted route near the COP26 site? It turns out things were not much better, if not worse, on the inside, as Carlton Reid explained.
“Cycling advocates were lining the streets saying “car, car car”, and that was incredibly accurate,” he said.
“Once you got past the barriers… and certainly on the transport day… there was a little bit of aviation, a little bit of shipping in the morning, but the rest of the day was just cars.
“The UCI had an event there, but it was all fringe. It was not an agenda item.
“Considering we have a transport cyclist as a prime minister, it just beggars belief that cycling was missed off.
“If this event was in Amsterdam then cycling would have been top of the agenda.
“Heaven help us when it’s in Egypt next year.”
Even more remarkably, Carlton claims that Will Butler-Adams, the CEO of Britain’s biggest folding bike brand Brompton, was actually refused a pass to get into the main event at COP26, making way for numerous car manufacturers to exhibit and discuss money-making schemes for the future.
“Not only were bike executives not invited to be on the same top table as auto car industry executives; bike industry executives were actually physically shunned, which I find completely shocking.
“That focus on electric cars being the saviour of everything is just so delusional. It’s out of the galaxy delusional that electric cars are going to save us.
“If that’s genuinely what they [world leaders] are thinking, they’ve got no idea.”
We also have cycling apparel experts Altura on board for the next four episodes, and to welcome them George caught up with the brand’s head of design and development Amy Spencer. How do you layer up properly for winter riding, and what materials are best for keeping you warm and dry without getting that boil in the bag feeling? Amy tells you everything you need to know.
The road.cc Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music, and if you have an Alexa you can just tell it to play the road.cc Podcast – it’s also embedded further up the page, so you can just press play.
What do you think of the road.cc Podcast so far, and what would you like us to discuss in future episodes? Comment below and/or drop us a line at podcast@road.cc
73 thoughts on “Are world leaders “delusional” when it comes to active travel? COP26 discussed, plus how to layer up for winter riding on episode 12 of the road.cc Podcast”
Who could forget, following
Who could forget, following his speech, Johnson flying by private jet to London to attend a function at the male only Garrick club hosted by climate denier Charles Moore? Tells u all you need to know – it’s all pomp and ceremony, sound and fury . . . . . Johnson is the biggest liar and fraud in the West following the demise of Trump.
I consider the behaviour of
I consider the behaviour of the UK government at COP26 to be corrupt, a sell out to the electric car industry, and I’ve written to my MP stating that; no response.
The UK government has the chair of COP for the next year, Alok Sharma, so perhaps we should all be writing to him to both get an explanation of the barefaced corruption and what he intends to do in the next year to address the situation.
Unfortunately, the bicycle
Unfortunately, the bicycle industry doesn’t create the high number of well paying jobs that the automotive industry does.
That is all that our government and every other government globally will be concerned about. That the environment loses out is of little concern to them.
Owd Big 'Ead wrote:
You’re exactly right. Yet 25,000 new jobs in London alone by 2030: https://road.cc/content/news/report-london-bicycle-economy-could-hit-ps5bn-pa-2030-288095.
I know that the opportunities for dung shovellers have reduced since Karl Benz unleashed his car in 1885, but there are an awful lot of other things that need doing and whilst we will need to be better at the transition than we have been in the past (e.g. ex coal mining villages), we can’t not do it.
Owd Big ‘Ead wrote:
I keep looking at the departure point for other countries that have done a bit better on mass cycling *. There are of course lots of factors, but in The Netherlands (aside from still having lots of cyclists) fatalities affecting the families of influential people and fuel shortages plus the other manifest problems of cars e.g. congestion. Not so sure on the others but Copenhagen also seems to have been inspired by fuel issues and widespread environmental protests. Seville is a bit different and seems to owe this to some political horse-trading.
A cynical opinion that the main way things happen (top down) is via money. Cycling and walking are cheap. The fact that they are and use a fraction of the resources needed for motor vehicles is the attaction. I think that this is also the reason why they have little political / organisational support. Backing bikes – even though they may be overall a better financial choice than cars (also here)- is going to look like voting against money. Or at least telling lots of people they can’t have the big sum of money now.
So I think one of the better hopes is for for more ministers, MPs and councillors to be stuck in traffic regularly, to be told their loved ones have been “in an accident” while cycling / walking, for their children to be asthmatic. For us all to have an interruption in the fuel supplies. It needs to be a long one too as the traffic changes during of the Covid lockdown seem to have been forgotten.
* I’m assuming most others think that would be a good idea – after all it’s low-cost widely useable private individual door-to-door transport which ticks lots of other positive boxes. Apart from a couple of posters of course who for reasons of contrarianism, car-fancying or cyclist elitism express the opposite.
Not specifically. World
Not specifically. World leaders are just delusional.
I think we should see
I think we should see electric cars as a transition technology.
How long did it take the Netherlands to move from a car centric society to its current situation?
Decades I believe.
We are much further down the road of car dependency than they were when they started the transition to active travel.
It will take a long time to wean society off cars and some degree of car dependency is now likely permanent.
This is even more true in the US.
As we begin the transition away from cars we need to rapidly minimise the carbon intensity of car use in the interim. Electrification is one part of that.
My main issue with electric
My main issue with electric cars is that they do nothing to move society away from car dependency and in some respects they reinforce the car culture. It’s particularly bad when new homes are required to have electric car charging points built in, but no requirement for secure cycle storage. Also, electric cars are well suited for short journeys so they reinforce the attitude of “popping down the nearby shops, but I’ve paid loads for that car so I may as well use that even though it’s only a five minute walk”.
I agree.
I agree.
The electrification of cars is merely mitigating the environmental damage caused by car dependency.
Steps to reduce car dependency should occur simultaneously but will inevitably take a long time.
There will be a long period of continued high car use and some car dependency is probably permanent now so our only option is to produce cars that are less environmentally damaging. Electrification is one part of that.
If we consider that a car
If we consider that a car will last 15 years, and that 15% of all new sales are electric cars. Then we see a whopping 1% of petrol cars replaced per year, extending this to 2030 sees 9% of petrol cars replaced in that time.
Relying only on swapping ICE cars for electric cars is never going to get us close to meeting emissions reductions.
especially when 40% of our electrcity still comes from gas. There cannot be continued high car usage for a long period.
I’m afraid car dependency is
I’m afraid car dependency is pretty much baked in for the foreseeable future.
There have been so many houses built whose occupants genuinely need a car to get anywhere.
That’s even more true in the US.
EVs will make up an ever growing percentage of car sales and UK electricity generation will get less and less carbon intensive so the overall effect is likely to be greater than you suggest.
There was a survey done
There was a survey done locally to me recently among both businesses & individuals. Both groups identified as among their top priorities cheaper or even free car parking as being vital to the success of town centres.
And a significant number in the individuals group, strongly agreed with the statement that nothing could be done to get them out of their cars to visit those town centres, it was cheaper parking or they’d just visit the out of town shopping estates in their cars instead, where parking was free.
Rich_cb wrote:
On the flip side of the UK and US, other countries on the continent have managed to boost the percentage of other modes of transport while people still have access to cars and indeed still own lots of them. These places also had car dependency. There may be differences in how far down that road (ha) they were.
The UK aped the US in many ways – including some urban design patterns – but hasn’t had quite the level of suburban sprawl that the US has. What has happened is we did not build – or even reduced accessibility for – other forms of transport at the same time as local amenities were centralising (e.g. small towns losing their shops to bigger stores in a neighbouring town as well as just “out of town shopping centres”). This was at least in part due to political choices – again all governments here.
Much as I dislike it something there is in UK politics and culture that doesn’t love a bike. Or rather which completely swoons at a motor.
I don’t quite share your
I don’t quite share your optimism over autonomous cars but they would help in reducing journeys.
I would like to see some legislation on the size of cars. There is no need for the huge cars we have nor for a default need for 4 seater cars. Having a small 2 seater car would make congestion and parking easier and require less energy to run. Then there would be a neighbourhood hire car of 5 seats for any family trips.
I agree 100%.
I agree 100%.
VED needs to be replaced with a tax based on size, weight and emissions.
That would encourage smaller cars and therefore reduce road wear and tear and congestion whilst increasing parking capacity.
Neighbourhood hire cars are a great system. The Enterprise car club has a years membership for £10 at the moment if anyone fancies it.
VED needs to be replaced by a
VED needs to be replaced by a tax on fuel used which should also include an element for third party insurance. If the cost of a short journey was not heavily subsidised by people who use their cars little but still have to pay VED and insurance for NOT using their cars may be some journeys would be avoided. If the fuel tax also included an element to subside public transport that would be even better. In my situation the car parking charge and fuel cost for a trip to town is cheaper than the equivalent bus journey. That’s just stupid. Doesn’t affect me much as I cycle most journeys.
Bungle_52 wrote:
I agree with this, but if people are driving circa 10,000 miles a year, using 1000 litres each. moving £200 VED onto fuel will increase the cost of journeys by less than 15% it will still be cheaper than public transport.
There is also a huge admin advantage to this, the cost of collecting revenue on fuel sold does not change as the rate goes up, while there is significant cost in administering and enforcing VED payments.
Additionally it removes the ridiculous incentive to drive old cars which are VED exempt. If they really are classic cars that rarely see theroad the amount they will be charged is negligable, while it someone is using the car all the time, it will be taxed accordingly
And what should we do about
And what should we do about electric cars?
Ideally tax the electricity
Ideally tax the electricity used to charge the battery. Obviously difficult so the best I can come up with is tax the battery to reflect the environmental damage caused by it’s production and it’s disposal and increase tax on tyres and brakes to reflect the fact that these produce as much pollution as the fuel used. Electric cars have increased tyre and brake wear due to their weight.
I don’t think an electricity
I don’t think an electricity tax is feasible.
If you’re taxing tyres and brakes you’re using those as a proxy for vehicle weight and mileage so you may as well just tax those directly.
Mileage is officially recorded annually and vehicle weight is readily available for the vast majority of cars (and easily measured if not available) so a tax based on a combination of those two pieces of information would be a doddle to implement.
Rich_cb wrote:
Sounds like a workable plan. It’s apparent that when (not if) “emit elsewhere” vehicles become common this will lead to revamping of the tax system.
As always I wonder what fraction of all the actual costs of driving this would cover? There doesn’t seem to be any appetite politically to recover the true costs from drivers. Not from any party (not even sure about the Greens). One very recent example was giving motorists another subsidy in the budget. Yes, the announcement was that fuel duty was frozen because pump prices have increased, [RAC have longer data] I know…
I suppose you’d have to sit
I suppose you’d have to sit down and tot up the costs and benefits of car use.
If congestion is a cost then the fact it’s usually quicker to travel 100 miles by car than by any other mode of transport would be an economic benefit.
For that reason I’m not a fan of the externalities argument as I believe it ultimately reinforces car ownership.
You only have to see the cost-benefit analysis for most major road builds to see the same arguments used to justify billions in new car infrastructure.
Rich_cb wrote:
tl/dr – best source for costs across different transport modes I can find ATM (sadly no bikes and this is just “cost” not “cost/benefit”):
The European Commission commissioned Handbook on External Costs of Transport. A large document but see p.151 for the summary, with charts. The “externalities” for the car are notably several times that of any other motorised mode (They separate passenger transport from freight, data for cars, bus, rail, MC [motorcycle], aircraft, marine [less than cars!] etc)
A much more limited one (2016) from Copenhagen suggesting that bicycle travel is effectively 6 times less “costly” overall than car travel.
We habitually discount “external costs” as humans and that tendency continues in bigger groupings and in political discourse.
I’d bet most of the “external” costs described above (summary list at Wikipedia – it’s a lot more than just “congestion” or “pollution”) don’t appear in our new road-building “cost-benefit analyses”. (To be fair the people tasked with those are civil engineers and local government officers who almost certainly don’t have “is more motoring a good thing?” in their remit). So these will be little different from how most people consider motoring anyway (“I pays me road tax…”). Make an estimate of short / medium term benefits, see how much it’ll cost to build, job done.
Again I think we ignore those costs. To put it crudely individual motorists aren’t losing sleep over some of their number running into people or us all suffering because of particulate pollution. The numbers I’ve seen (when I find actual sources other than above I’ll post ’em) tend to show that motorised transport is overall the most costly form of transport and private cars the worst of that. Of course we may decide we’re happy just to spend on cars rather than other transport which is overall cheaper. Or (in the case of bicycles) may even bring net benefits for the money spent on it.
A possibly interesting comparison could be drawn with smoking and the tobacco industry. Lots of organisations benefit financially but that doesn’t mean it’s not an overall cost to the population. The government also liked the tax take from tobacco and for a long time didn’t count all the lost earnings / health / social care costs. Smoking was for a long time seen pretty positively.
If we want to be more long-term rational decision makers we really do need to know the full cost of something and any alternatives. Otherwise we don’t know if we’re getting a good deal. We need to look beyond the obvious – to include the need to build and maintain roads, ensuring we can import enough oil or provide electricity, crashes, damage to infrastructure, the environment, particulates, suppression of independent mobility of children, growing inactivity by population …). A difficult task but if you can put a figure on all the benefits from cars – some of which are at least as nebulous – you should check the other side too.
It doesn’t take driving style
It doesn’t take driving style into account which has a huge impact on tyre and brake wear and fuel economy. Taxing those shouldn’t be too difficult.
That is true but it would
That is true but it would also substantially increase the cost of new tyres and brakes.
It’s not hard to see how that could have significant negative consequences.
A combined weight/mileage tariff would work just as well at discouraging use as a tyre/brake tariff without discouraging vital maintenance.
Not sure why you need an
Not sure why you need an extra tax. If you drive inefficiently, you will pay more duty and vat on fuel. If your brakes and tyres need to be replaced more often, you will still pay vat.
Rich_cb wrote:
It’s not difficult to implement an electricity tax, but it would be unpopular. I think it’s going to be inevitable to prevent crypto-currencies from eating the world (they’re using approx 1% of the world’s electricity currently).
We already have VAT on
We already have VAT on electricity so it could be increased easily but I was talking more about a specific tax for the electricity used by electric cars.
Apparently the open fridges in supermarkets use 1% of the UK’s electricity, if we can’t do something about that lowest of low hanging fruit then I don’t hold out much hope for anything more complex.
I’d welcome an increase in
I’d welcome an increase in electricity tax if it was applied fairly, but VAT means that businesses can avoid most of it, I believe. Have a separate electricity tax that applies to everyone and don’t limit it to electric cars – that should provide an incentive for people to move a decentralised model of electricity generation (e.g. solar, wind). I don’t care if people are using electricity for travel, cooking, lighting, heating etc. as we really need to reduce global consumption.
I’d never thought about the supermarket fridges, but now it seems obvious.
I don’t think an electricity
I don’t think an electricity tax is a good idea.
As a general rule we should be moving as much of our energy consumption (Gas, Petrol etc) to electrical alternatives as possible.
We are rapidly decarbonising our electricity supply so this will be the quickest way to net zero.
A carbon tax however would work better but you’d still have to ensure it didn’t end up with people freezing to death as heating became exorbitantly expensive.
Good points, but I think it
Good points, but I think it would provide an all-round incentive to improve the efficiency of energy use (e.g. house insulation, solar panels). Electricity is mainly a means of transferring energy rather than being an energy source in itself, so a carbon tax could work alongside an electricity tax to avoid a return to burning dinosaurs.
I’m thinking that an electricity tax is preferable to banning crypto-mining as a means of controlling crypto-currencies. It’d push crypto-mining to use local solar energy instead.
I’m just not sure that a tax
I’m just not sure that a tax that specifically discouraged the lowest carbon form of heating (for example) is a good idea.
Perhaps specific legislation around crypto mining might be a better idea?
Or tax higher carbon types
Or tax higher carbon types even more
And all the people pushed
And all the people pushed into fuel poverty by these new taxes?
Rich_cb wrote:
I didn’t expect you to be so concerned about poverty.
If all the Q7, X4 and other SUV drivers are so impoverished by additional taxes then they can swap to a Tesla.
Meanwhile the people who are genuinely impoverished won’t (and probably already can’t) afford to buy and run a car. Nothing new there.
Would help if you read the
Would help if you read the thread before replying.
We’re discussing a tax on domestic electricity.
Rich_cb wrote:
I doubt the tax will push those on the brink into poverty quicker than the government can by merely removing benefits. That’s an easier one to sell too – we’re not taking your money away (you who have some), we’re merely returning to not giving as much (to those who have almost none).
In a sense you have a point though (although I don’t think it’s a big concern for the government, national or local). Having lived in council accommodation that on its own will limit your choices. For example a lot of the estate in this city only has electric, not gas. You will be limited as to the energy efficiency of your property. (The council here is struggling to keep housing stock weathertight and get lifts fixed within a month). You may be able to change suppliers but you may not be able get a good deal from any – that may require some spare cash. If not the “key card” systems that are the default (essentially “money in the meter”) are some of the more expensive ways of getting your energy.
Rich_cb wrote:
If we’re serious about reducing energy usage, then there has to be incentives and likely grants provided to improve housing insulation and energy efficient means of heating. There’s already people suffering with poverty and food/housing/energy costs so a solution needs to be found whether or not taxes are changed.
Seems needlessly complex.
Seems needlessly complex.
As electricity moves to being truly low carbon it makes no sense to tax it punitively.
We should be encouraging more electricity use as a substitute for other energy sources.
I do think it is a bit daft
I do think it is a bit daft that my hybrid weighing 1.5T has no ved due to its age, so I can’t object to a fee based on your model.
I don’t drive very much now and try and do it all by bike (and trailer), so I would love to be able to have some sort of neighbourhood car scheme that would enable me to sell the car (or rather not replace it in a few years).
I think they are called taxis
I think they are called taxis, or buses if you don’t mind sharing.
Rich_cb wrote:
I agree, though it’s not the only option – it’s just the one that will be most palatable to existing car users.
Producing cars that are genuinely less damaging to the environment requires a complete rethink of the type, size and performance of the vehicle as well as the amount it is used.
But focussing almost entirely on electric cars, as has been the case so far, is NOT going to solve the other very significant issues such as congestion, road safety, parking, charging etc.
Real change can only happen when a government is bold enough to grasp the nettle and forcibly reduce car dependency as well as fossil fuel use in general. There are a range of possible solutions out there (though there’s no magic bullet) but there is a complete unwillingness to enact real change.
Rich_cb wrote:
Except that we are baking in the long period of high car use by refusing to invest in the alternatives and building more roads, thus ensuring more car use while not providing for the alternatives.
We have to stop providing almost solely for cars and switch funding from them to the alternatives; until that happens, there will be very little change. If we switch funding now, we might succeed in ten years time, but if we continue to build roads not cycle paths, the planet will fry before there’s much change. The evidence from all the polls in the last few years is clear; people want more and better cycle facilities, not more roads, so this isn’t the unpopular decision that the tiny minority of caraholics would have us believe.
It is possible, it can happen, all it takes is the political will, but as the corruption at COP26 shows, this government talks the talk, but it doesn’t ride the bike.
Except electric cars really
Except electric cars really do not mitigate much at all. You’re still using over 1.5 tonnes of machine to transport in most cases a single human being with a mass of less than 80kg. If the vehicle weighs 20x what you do then 95% of the energy consumed is just to move itself. We really should be talking about mass efficiency. There’s an energy requirement to move that total mass, vehicle and person, that could be massively reduced by using a different kind of vehicle.
I agree but it’s better than
I agree but it’s better than nothing and can be implemented with, relatively, little upheaval.
I see them as a stop gap measure whilst active travel and driverless vehicles gain traction.
Especially in more car dependent countries.
Rich_cb wrote:
Thing about “cost” and “upheaval” is that our governments are actually fine with huge costs and serious upheaval. It’s just which directions they choose to spend money and make changes on that I’m questioning. Our government is still very much subsidising motor vehicles (both old style and new in many ways).
Emit elsewhere vehicles (that’s the thing about externalities, see? Out of sight…) will replace petrol and diesel ones in the UK. Driverless technology may or may be significant. I’m certainly unclear it will do much for “efficiency”. For that the technology would also require a culture change to go with it. Don’t forget taxis (and buses) exist now. History says the general trend for humanity is to use more resources / energy per person over time.
I agree that this is an opportunity – to diversify our transport modes and maybe get some more of the wide range of benefits from active travel. If you’re concerned about fuel poverty this could certainly be a part of an solution.
I’m just less optimistic / more concerned than you that without some serious “direction” (money – carrots and sticks basically) from government this opportunity will pass. Then we’ll just have electric vehicles rather than internal combustion engined ones.
Unfortunately we almost certainly need some “top down” direction in the UK because we’re probably past the point where “bottom up” movements can gain traction. That’s due to the decades of previous “top down” subsidies and policies to encourage driving.
Certainly things have changed – slightly. In the past we just had hopeful exhortations about active travel. Now we have hopeful exhortations and a tiny percentage of the total travel budget. No reduction in the “private motor vehicle” funding though.
There are a few councils / boroughs essentially taking independent action. Ones mentioned here recently: Manchester, Birmingham has some plans, Glasgow, some London boroughs. My own council is comparitively “cycle friendly” but seem complacent. Their city plans for 2030 says development should “connect to the network” but there are no plans to actually have one so essentially the same glacial rate of change.
Driverless cars offer myriad
Driverless cars offer myriad potential benefits over buses and taxis. I don’t really think they’re comparable.
Energy use per capita in the UK has been falling for the last 15-20 years depending on which measure you choose.
We can’t change the car dependent culture overnight. IMO it won’t change significantly until the majority of people don’t own a car.
That’s why you see many major cities producing active travel plans in certain areas, those areas are approaching or have passed 50% of residents who don’t own a car.
Rich_cb wrote:
I know you’re very optimistic about driverless cars.
You’re right that in raw terms energy usage has declined for the UK since the late nineties for the UK. Although still steadily upward for the world, despite some countries – particularly in africa – taking a serious downwards turn. That’s certainly not due to them suddenly becoming super efficient… The UK detail is interesting though – “industrial” use fell al lot. Which probably reflects a change in industries as much as anything else. For residential use and “transport” this is more like a slowing. (You can clearly see the effect of Covid most recently).
As always what’s being measured is key. I suspect (per manufacting data) this simply reflects the fact that our energy intensive goods are now made elsewhere. So if we have much less “heavy” industry (note the small change in the chemical industry) then it won’t be using lots of power any more… Another “externality”?
I think you’re right about the cultural change too. That’s what interests me about the “chicken and egg” puzzle. Ignoring the Netherlands (where they still had a relatively high modal share for cycling when they started doing more for it) I wonder what if anything we can learn from Scandinavia (not just Copenhagen), Berne, maybe even Paris. Places where they do seem to have largely lost cycling but have restored a little.
I’m not quite sure why they’re changing. Some places are clearly not. F’rexample – Scottish census (2011):
62.4% of employed people travelled to work by car.
69% of households had at least one car or van available. (An increase from 66% in 2001.)
31.4% of households in Edinburgh have no access to a car or van. (link – apologies – doesn’t seem to be a direct link). Dundee – 41.8% (less well off than Edinburgh). Well below national average. No great rush for active travel here…
Rather than mandating in-home
Rather than mandating in-home charging points, we’d do better to mandate roadside parking bans for new developments, coupled with peripheral ‘charge parks’. If you have to walk a few minutes to and from the car to make your journey, it would reduce the convenience so that people might start deciding that for local trips it’s easier just to walk / cycle / etc., which might start weaning them off the default ‘jump in the car’ mode of thinking.
And you could charge a fee for a spot to increase the cost of maintaining use of a car.
Rich_cb wrote:
Transition to what?
So we’re going to replace cars with cars. Maybe they have more lights / are quieter / are “smarter” – but still cars with current tech in the next 5 – 10 years I’d say.
Then what? “You had cars before and over the last 20 years you switched to cars. So now we’d like you not to have cars”?
I do agree that we seem to be stuck ATM. Electric cars is sort of harm minimization – or at least changing a few of the problem domains (now we need lots of rare earth metals / have to fix what we do when they’re old etc.) It’s frustrating because there are examples from the continent (and not just the Dutch) of how we might start to make changes towards a reduced car future. But it may just not be possible to move UK society much from where we are. (Yes – our leaders definitely did push us further and faster down the path of cars before so it seems they can have some effect).
Personally I think driverless
Personally I think driverless cars will render the whole discussion moot.
Prior to the invention of the car horse manure was one of the most pressing problems for urban planners. Many felt it almost insurmountable.
I think we’ll look back on all the problems associated with private car ownership in the same way.
Rich_cb wrote:
Well, if you’re comparing private car ownership with piles of horse manure, then I’d have to agree.
Rich_cb wrote:
I hope so, but if we aren’t doing anything until they sort out the issues with driverless cars, it will be far too late.
Ho do driverless cars reduce congestion if everyone currently driving switches to a driverless car? The reduce the need for parking and the amount of resources going into car manufacture but they don’t reduce journeys, in fact they likely increase journeys as the driverless car goes from a to b to c to d instaead of car 1 going a to b and car 2 going c to d.
Then there is the issue of where they go during off peak times, do they trundle off to some massive yard, or just spend the day circuling the city awaiting customers?
Additionally self driving cars will be so much cheaper than taxis that they will increase the number of people willing and able to pay for singe occupancy tansport.
And all this with them being so far away from making them able to function in anything but the most simple environments.
They reduce congestion by
They reduce congestion by increasing car occupancy.
Average car occupancy is about 1.1 I believe. Get that to 2 and you’ve virtually halved the cars on the road.
If the cars are designed as several private pods there will be little incentive to pay more for exclusive use. Taxation could also be used to make this option much more expensive.
When not in use they can go to the same places cars go now, the only difference is there will be far fewer of them so a greater percentage can be parked in multistories etc freeing up road space even further.
They’re really not that far away from readiness. A completely driverless taxi service is in operation in Phoenix, Arizona and in trial stages in San Francisco. Munich is slated for a launch next year. By 2030 I expect them to be a common sight in most major cities.
Rich_cb wrote:
The private pod thing is a good idea. Some people I know, who have had a bad experience of COVID, have refused to use public transport since and just drive for all journeys above about a mile. This would help them.
Nothing we can do on climate change will be a silver bullet and so we have to use a range of mitigants. Personally, I’d suggest making urban bus and train travel free, with major investment in electrification or hydrogen for the buses. I’d also like to see a big expansion of e-bike usage and legalised e-scooters, which could be more practical than folding bikes for a lot of people.
Many people who are unable or unwilling to use their feet (walk or cycle) for local transport could reduce car usage with such measures.
The rate of car ownership in
The rate of car ownership in the Netherlands is on par with other nations, and they have the most dense road network in Europe.They are still quite car centric, but not car dependent. What I see that separated them is the policy of making roads safety-centric not on personal convenience. They weren’t seeking to substitute cars but make it possible to walk or cycle safely in an environment dominated by cars; but in doing so they make alternatives to cars an attractive and convenient option.
Having compact cities and towns with mixed use developments also played a role in that success. Countries like the USA and Australia which adopted Euclidean zoning and low density housing resulting in massive urban sprawl will have a much harder time trying to adapt and will be far more difficult to get citizens to give up car dependency.
Cycling isn’t the answer
Cycling isn’t the answer either, what we need is a fundamental return to how society was pre-car. Less travel, make more of your local area. Travel is still far too cheap because it doesn’t price in the full costs at point of use. Current levels of personal transport use are unsustainable. Best way to change it is to ban storage of personal vehicles on-road, or make it prohibitively expensive to do so. Make driving the preserve of those who can afford it.
kil0ran wrote:
At least with Covid, people are now more likely to be able to work remotely and not need to commute as much.
What’s also needed is to stop designing homes/shops/villages around car use and instead bake in useful footpaths/cyclepaths so that residents can visit shops easily without wanting to drive.
Although we don’t all live
Although we don’t all live near to the shops. A town trip for me is 4-5 miles there which is easy for a regular cyclist and would be easy for anyone who has an ebike. And dare I say, for those dreaded escooters. Trips of up to 2 miles are quite high and up to 5 is about 60-65% of journeys, so it is those that cycling can target.
kil0ran wrote:
I agree with most of this including “less travel” but surely – unless we’re going all the way back to the horse (or squirrel?) in that it’s better stated as something like:
“Trying to replace how we use cars now with bikes (cf “electric motorbikes”) isn’t the answer. Cycling is however ideal for efficient (possibly load-carrying) shorter distance travel – which is the kind we will need to be doing”?
kil0ran wrote:
Why is cycling for journeys within towns not the answer? I don’t think anyone is suggesting replacing cars with bikes entirely, but by following the dutch model you can rapidly reduce short journeys by making them difficult. Of course whenever this is tried some shouty drivers throw their toys out of the pram and start breaking things.
wycombewheeler wrote:
As a well-known badger of the faith, if I may, I’d like to invoke St Augustine to shed some light.
” Lord make me chaste…… just not yet”
We still all want to kick the can down the road, for our children to save the day. after all we’ve got Christmas coming up, next years holiday to plan etc etc. We just haven’t got time to think about Saving the Planet™…..
The youngest cub only last week ended up with a consequence at school. Her crime? tearing her teacher off a strip, who’d stated grandly that it was her generation’s task to sort out the mess.
We’ve fucked it up. And we continue to fuck it up. We’ll keep fucking it up. We earnestly all say we want to “do our bit for the environment”, but I still need my Rangerover. Maybe I’ll sell it (2 years old, so still some value) and buy a Tesla Truck. I’ll consume my way to helping the environment. Yes that’s it….
Due to our decades of inertia, fecklessness, laziness and crass irresponsibility (carrying on as before , voting in Tories or Tory Lites, cos they say we can all get richer and richer, and isolate ourselves from the rest of the world and reality itself) we now, to have any hope, need to change our society and our lives on a similar scale that the Greatest Generation were forced to in the late 30s. Until we realise as a society it starts with us, now, we are winding down the clock so our kids have to deal with the mayhem that is already starting.
It makes me facking larf that the same bunch of goons who pretend to hold that generation up as gods, are the same sugar snowflakes that cant’ abide the thought of cycling or walking a couple of miles in the wet.
Captain Badger wrote:
Well fecklessness sounds like the result of chaseness…
chrisonatrike wrote:
Dammit, I’m being serious for once??
Captain Badger wrote:
WTF, I’d speak to the head, the teacher needs a consequence for that statement. How can anyone still in school now be sorting out achieveing ero carbon by 2030?
This is the attitude of someone who knows what they are doing is destroying the only planet we have, but doesn’t care enough to change their actions.
wycombewheeler wrote:
I shit you not. But the attitude is common
We’ve already seen a rapid
We’ve already seen a rapid rise in the convenience of internet shopping and the devastating effect that is having, coniciding with the current pandemic, on the high street and retailers in general. That fundamental shift will determine what shape town and city centres will take in the future. Councils need to recognise this and lower rents to attract new business. Shops may play a part in the future but there will have to be something else to attract people away from their screens and keyboards
Councils own very few
Councils own very few investment properties, so that would be tricky. Although some can focus on small business units as start ups
Nikonitis wrote:
I think there are various reinforcing loops here e.g. our governments encouraged (they still do!) car use. That facilitated a whole bunch of changes (living further from resources, not using local shops so much, reduction in rail connectivity and other public transport, the dwindling of cycling for short journeys to nothing etc.) which mean that “the high street” was already wobbly as the internet started to undercut their prices in the late nineties into the noughties.
Certainly internet shopping has changed the landscape but I think the effect of transport choices – albeit that’s a longer term trend – is significant. On the positive side people are still quite keep travel somewhere to meet up with others and actually get their hands on goods before buying some of them. Now if only there was a way we could facilitate that on a local scale…? Or a way we could have the convenience of home delivery without all the extra motor vehicles?
Actually, it isn’t world
Actually, it isn’t world leaders who are delusional, but the car buying public, who happily believe that buying an EV will give them a free pass in the environmental game of Russian roulette the present climate proposals have set us on.
However, what Carlton Reid failed to pick up on is that the motoring industry has moved away from it’s previous business model of ‘piling them high, selling them cheap’ which worked well with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles where money can be made to keep the dealer network in place with servicing costs, but is almost negligible in a vehicle with only one moving part in its electric motor.
A new direct sales model is very much coming to the fore where higher prices are charged upfront for the purchase of a vehicle but what would be typically covered by either warranties or additional servicing costs is inclusive from day one. Therefore, the days of cheap cars is very much coming to an end and those who live in larger towns and cities will find that their unfettered access to the ‘open road’ will be curtailed over the next decade and beyond.
Governments around the world are pinning their hopes on autonomous vehicles to provide a cheap, reliable means of transport, but the technology is still a decade, or more likely two away yet, so there is a huge hole in the transport sector looming by 2030, where active travel, certainly in larger urban areas could become the norm.
Don’t hold your breath…..
Just about every industry now
Just about every industry now has a “tech” dimension and they’ve all realised that the banks were right all along – get people onboard then regularly suck small amounts of money from them and you come out ahead compared to emptying as much of their pockets as possible at once.
Greta thunberg already pinned
Greta thunberg already pinned the tail on these donkeys…
World leaders, even those who
World leaders, even those who recognise climate change as an existential threat, have a tricky job convincing their own populations to make changes to their lifestyles. Especially when so many of those changes involve extra cost or simply being restricted from doing things we previously could. Meaningful change has to come from the bottom up as it were. That’s you and me making decisions about how we spend our money and who we vote for.
I have a cousin in Australia. For the last couple of summers Australia has literally been on fire, clearly linked to climate change. She posted video of the woodland at the end of her road blazing. Her latest FacePlant posting?