Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 1:38 pm
jmaccyd wrote:TripleS wrote:Mr Cholmondeley-Warner wrote:The wikipedia article linked to points to "shared space". I'm not sure that's the same thing as decluttering. The New Road project in Brighton is claimed to have reduced car journeys by 90% and car road speeds to 10mph. That's not decluttering, that's just moving the traffic somewhere else. Some other road in Brighton is now crammed with nose to tail traffic that used to use this now warm and fuzzy "shared space". Another quote (about a scheme in Seven Dials) says "pedestrians are encouraged to wander across the road". This strikes me as just another word for pedestrianisation. All well and good in city shopping centres, but traffic still has to have somewhere to go. Looks like a way of getting drivers off the road, wrapped up in friendly sounding eco-speak. I'm struggling to find a reason, as a driver, to vote for it. As a pedestrian or a cyclist, it sounds lovely.
I've no time for what sounds like the anti-car policy at Brighton. It seems to me deserving of serious protest by drivers, and I hope they make that protest and give the local authority a bloody nose over it.
What they should be encouraging is a situation whereby the different road user groups understand each other better, and learn to function more harmoniously together, then everybody gets a fair deal.
Favouring certain groups, e.g. pedestrians and cyclists, by being a PITA to drivers is not the way to improve matters.
Best wishes all,
Dave.
Well I couldn't agree more as a cyclist and pedestrian as well as a working motorist (a road user) that more understanding is required. You talk of 'favouring' certain groups, I know from a cycling and pedestrian background, it would be argued that the motor car has been the favoured in town planning for the last forty years and what is happening now is more akin to a 're-balancing' towards other road users. This is not an 'eco-babble' argument but about creating safer and fairer places to live and work
I appreciate what you say, and I wouldn't dispute it totally, but I do see it slightly differently.
Providing the infrastructure required to cater for motor vehicles was always going to be a massive exercise, compared with providing reasonable facilities for pedestrians and cyclists, so I don't think the driving community was especially favoured at the expense of Ps and Cs. What seems to have happened in more recent times (IMHO) is that government and local authorities have become more clearly anti-car in their policies. This is shown by the ever increasing range of measures to clamp down on, fine, and penalise the users of vehicles in general, and car drivers in particular. In addition, improved measures are now being implemented to improve facilities for pedestrians, and in the main I've no quarrel with that.
When it comes to cyclists, I'm not totally opposed to them also having better provision and protection, but here a good deal of what is being done is detrimental to the free movement of vehicles, and in many cases it doesn't even look to be helpful to cyclists. From what I've observed, there is a considerable amount of stuff being done, ostensibly for cyclists, in a very piecemeal and haphazard fashion such that the actual benefits to cyclists really don't amount to much. On top of that, in many areas there are simply not enough cyclists around to justify making much special provision for them. If there were more cyclists around I would be fully in support of reasonable measures to cater decently for them.
It is my feeling that a good deal of what is being done (supposedly) for cyclists’ benefit, is at best little more than token gestures, and at worst an excuse for making life more frustrating for drivers. I do believe it is having the latter effect in some areas, and it’s a waste of our money too, so it’s a bad policy all round.
Best wishes all,
Dave.