Cars and congestion

‘Exclusion zones’ around

‘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.

“Society has lost the plot”
“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?

Aw heck, didn’t you get the

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…