Wednesday 23rd May 2001

Green Transport

More bus lanes in new proposal

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[nmilton]

<snip> Comprehensive Safe Routes to School policies for every school and college in the UK - which in turn would cut morning rush-hour traffic by 10%. <snip> Most of these journies are probably unecessary anyway - make the little buggers walk to school with their mum / dad instead of clogging up the roads !! Actually there are a lot of truly unnecessary car journies - how many of us jump in the car to pop to the newsagent at the weekend when it's only a five minute walk ?? The biggest problem with improving mass transport systems is that they tend to have a finite capacity - encourage us to use public transport by all means, but make sure there's sufficient capacity that we're not crammed in like cattle. It also needs to be a genuinely viable alternative to taking the car, i.e. clean, quick, convenient, cheap, reliable, etc. I still think the main reason the Millenium Dome was such a spectacular failure was because people couldn't drive there - they were forced to use public transport which a) added to the cost and b) probably doubled some peoples journey times.

[bertie]

Given the emissions comming out of the back of the buses I sit behind most nights I don't see how they can possibly be considered a clean alternative. Twenty modern petrol cars give out a lot less polution than one clanky diesel bus. Once again the masses consume the bull they're fed without question.