London’s Lost Ringways
worksinprogress.co
worksinprogress.co
so, yay.
obligatory jay foreman video on the topic: https://youtu.be/yUEHWhO_HdY
You build highways and they screech about cutting up neighborhoods.
You don't and they screech about the resulting sprawl as development becomes more diffuse.
My pet favorite solution is more park & ride transition points on the outskirts and light rail in the dense areas but the cognitive dissonance it takes to argue that raised highways and highway pits cut through neighborhoods but not let out a peep when it's subway and tram lines doing the same should disqualify one from voting.
As much as I hate the NIMBYs for insisting on violating other people's property rights you at least have to give them +1 for consistency.
Looking back with hindsight we'd probably be better off if we had just built all the urban highways and rail lines (and other transit infrastructure projects) that have been seriously considered over the years.
Here’s a thought experiment for you. You are on foot, perhaps with a kid in a stroller, perhaps with a dog on a leash, perhaps an armful of groceries. It is a gorgeous day for a walk. You have multiple destinations on the other side of several transit arteries:
* a subway that passes under city streets with sidewalks, if you’re lucky maybe it goes under a park that’s between you and your destination
* a light rail line with trains passing every few minutes, clearly visible, with lots of time in between to cross the tracks, if you’re lucky maybe the area around the line has some pretty plants and trees
* an elevated highway with cars zooming along the feeder roads in its shadow, if you’re lucky there’s a crosswalk with pedestrian lights
* a ground-level highway, 8-14 lanes of constant high speed traffic in both directions, if you are very lucky there is a pedestrian overpass no more than 2-3 blocks out of your way and you’ll only be inhaling exhaust for a little while
Which one of these would you rather cross? Which one of these feels like an integrated part of the neighborhood, which ones feel like a raw open wound in the city when you try to cross them on foot?
Highways create urban sprawl, they don't prevent it.
> the cognitive dissonance it takes to argue that raised highways and highway pits cut through neighborhoods but not let out a peep when it's subway and tram lines doing the same should disqualify one from voting.
But a subway/tram line is completely different from a highway. Trains can move an order of magnitude more people/stuff, don't result in local air pollution, don't create a lot of noise, don't result in road accidents that kill people and destroy property. And that's even before you realise that a subway is underground so you don't need to tear apart neighborhoods to build them and you basically wouldn't know it's there.
A city with enough roads for 100% car usage is approaching not being a city anymore, just an unending suburban hellscape, but a city with barely any roads and more rail than it really needs can still be a beautiful city.
To add to that, underground railways exist in many cities, but underground road networks effectively don't. The throughput by volume dug out the ground is viable for a rail service, its totally non-viable to bury an equivalent throughput 20 lane highway underground.
Huh? Don't highways enable sprawl? The brand new neighborhood built way out "in the country" (not for long...) next to the brand new highway in Yates' Revolutionary Road comes to mind.
The green belt policy around London where you were prevented from developing was quite good at preventing sprawl for decades.
One example of many: in the city I was born (Ostrava), there is a tram line planned since the 1990s (on the chance that anyone knows Ostrava here: Poruba VIII. obvod). That is not a very beautiful neighbourhood, rather a standard Communist high-rise zone with a lot of loud car and bus traffic through the main arteries. But the NIMBYs are absolutely relentless in attacking the tram project and anything even slightly connected (e.g. relocation of gas lines) in courts.
(There _is_ a subway in Glasgow, but due to tunneling difficulties and its age the trains are unusually small. It feels like a 2/3 scale model of the London Underground)
I have a trip to London planned later this year and it's still a toss up between parking at Westfield Stratford or just driving into the city centre and paying the congestion charge.. whereas really it should be an easy choice by now.
encouraging more cars into the center is explicitly an anti-goal, so not sure why you wish these projects had been built?
yes there should be more park and ride on the outskirts, but Stratford isn't really outskirts anymore, and wasting lots of land for parking in Stratford or White City instead of homes also seems a silly waste of their good connectedness.
> I have a trip to London planned later this year and it's still a toss up between parking at Westfield Stratford or just driving into the city centre and paying the congestion charge.. whereas really it should be an easy choice by now.
I guess that indicates the congestion charge could be higher.
Economically, I agree, but in practice, I think it misses a point. I go to London once every year or three. So I can justify spending a lot more for a single day's convenience than, say, someone who goes a few times a month. As a rare visitor, I contribute less to London's congestion and problems, but on the other, I contribute less to its economy too, so is raising the congestion charge fair?
All that said, this conversation has encouraged me to at least try some other options and broaden my approach, so I might park at Ebbsfleet and get HS1 in (19 minutes). It costs £19.10 each way though and about £25 for the parking, but I'm up £30 in congestion charges and painful traffic..
encouraging more cars into the center is explicitly an anti-goal, so not sure why you wish these projects had been built?
I'm too young to have been around when they worked on the project, but my personal preferences are oriented around different goals than they had. I would be quite happy with a Angelesation of London, but I'm one of those weirdos who likes Milton Keynes as well..
The trouble with public transport advocacy is that it so often relies on the stick rather than the carrot as the main incentive. The better solution is almost always to provide attractive public transport options. If you can do that then people will use them anyway. If you don't do that then people will do what you don't want instead unless you totally prohibit it. And if you prohibit it then maybe they won't come at all.
The catch is that providing good public transport is a challenge even in densely populated areas and for long distance travel. Our biggest cities also tend to be very old and that means layouts that are far from ideal for running an efficient public transport network.
The other catch is that good public transport is never going to be cost-effective in smaller towns and rural areas. So doing it would require a massive commitment from both local and wider government and in the UK we don't have that. Politicians tend to be very good at talking about grand ideas but no-one is willing to say "We need to put your taxes up 5% to subsidise loss-making transport infrastructure so there's a sensible alternative to cars for everyone who doesn't live in one of the biggest cities."
This is why I'm not sure emphasizing public transport is the right long term policy here. Better infrastructure to support small-scale private transport seems a more promising direction to look -- bikes, e-scooters, future electric vehicles designed for one or two passengers and light baggage, etc.
All non-toll roads are loss making, let's not pretend that cars are free. That's even before we get into a discussion about the negative externalities of driving.
The Cambridge GCP (essentially a talking shop with a remit to deliver new infrastructure, but prefers to deliver reports instead) commissioned proposals on a "metro". One of those proposals had loads of small self guided pods. Superficially they seemed like a great idea until you looked at the flow rate required to have them deliver the people required, and suddenly you have the the road congested with pods (or, if you will, cars).
Ultimately, you need a policy that is consistent with geometry: https://thewaroncars.org/transcript-episode-79-the-end-of-ub...
I have no idea what that means. However if we ever want to achieve more than talking in this area then we need to be realistic. And the reality is that lots of people rely on private cars every day in this country, and they collectively have enough money and political influence that you aren't going to change that behaviour at scale with a hostile strategy. You certainly aren't going to do it with arguments based on some kind of righteous indignation and words like "privilege".
We have to get into the virtuous circle where fewer cars begets more active transport and public transport which begets fewer cars.
That would be great. And if there is one thing we have learned about transport planning in the last fifty years it is that the cycle is not going to be started on the "fewer cars" side. You can criticise as much as you like, that is obviously your prerogative, but I prefer to explore policies that have a greater than zero chance of actually working.
All non-toll roads are loss making, let's not pretend that cars are free.
The UK government has consistently received 3-4x as much revenue from direct motoring taxes as government of all levels spends on direct motoring services for many years. This is why they are so worried about the loss of much of that revenue with the rise of electric vehicles. And if you want to include externalities in the costs of cars then you also have to include indirect benefits and again you might not like the answer if environmental concerns are your priority.
It is interesting that you picked Cambridge as your example because it is an excellent example of what I am talking about here. For years the local authorities have been increasingly car-hostile and despite the unusually high prevalence of bikes in the city the council have always been heavily in favour of relying on buses to solve the congestion and pollution problems. They have been trying that for a very long time and it has never worked. But still every few months someone puts up the parking fees again or adds more restrictions on where you can drive or park or proposes this year's variation of congestion charging. Meanwhile cycling provision is still substandard and the city centre is still dying.
Cambridge has had very little impactful effort towards reducing car usage, hoping they can sidestep the difficult reality of having to reduce cars through a stick approach. Until that's done, there's no chance the buses will do much since as you don't quite point out, they're just stuck in the same traffic. They're still hoping to avoid reality by building special roads for buses and a few parking spaces outside the city.
For sure cycling provision is substandard. You have no arguments from me there!
I've been a cyclist for a lot longer than I've been a driver and I've lived in or around Cambridge for a long time and been personally affected by everything we've been talking about from all perspectives.
I am not "privileged" or unable to understand your position. I just don't agree with your conclusions for the reasons I've described in the comments above.
Cambridge has had very little impactful effort towards reducing car usage, hoping they can sidestep the difficult reality of having to reduce cars through a stick approach. Until that's done, there's no chance the buses will do much since as you don't quite point out, they're just stuck in the same traffic. They're still hoping to avoid reality by building special roads for buses and a few parking spaces outside the city.
It is unclear that a congestion charge would be effective in causing sustained modal shift in Cambridge, not least because it is unclear whether any council that voted for one would survive the following election. Prominent local councillors have been advocating more aggressive anti-car measures for years but so far despite the supportive rhetoric no council has passed them. Ask yourself why.
It is clear that buses can't be the main solution to traffic problems in Cambridge. The council has spent a lot of money over the years on research that explained to them exactly why, which has mysteriously been largely ignored, perhaps because it didn't give the "right" answer. But if you know anything about the mathematics of traffic modelling you can quickly convince yourself. Just try to find any viable location near the city centre for a central bus hub that could accommodate a significant multiple of the current bus traffic levels without causing gridlock in the surrounding streets.
Ironically the Park and Ride schemes that you casually dismissed have been one of the few clear successes in Cambridge transport in recent years, taking thousands of cars off the roads in the city centre.
For sure cycling provision is substandard. You have no arguments from me there!
I'm glad that we can agree on this. If the local authorities had spent a fraction of the money they've spent on pro-bus measures on pro-cycling measures instead, we might have been in a much better situation in this area today.
Smarter Cambridge transport has addressed many of the issues you raise in far more detail than I can in an off-topic comments thread: https://www.smartertransport.uk
Notably this: https://www.smartertransport.uk/why-park-rides-are-a-waste-o... and this: https://www.smartertransport.uk/could-lollipop-bus-routing-b...
Edited to add links and remove assertion I can't support.
It is normal for the large proportion of the population who don't live in densely populated urban centres served by adequate public transport, because for most people there simply isn't any viable alternative.
And before anyone invokes the privilege argument again, consider that being able to afford a home in those densely populated areas with good public transport is also a privilege. In fact compared to owning a car it's a privilege that involves a couple of extra zeroes in a place like Cambridge or London.
Smarter Cambridge transport
is a defunct private advocacy group whose members have included prominent members of the local cycling campaign well known in the community for their borderline extreme views on transportation policy. That said, we should address the substance of the arguments and not who was making them.
Take the piece about P&R. It's mostly consistent what I've already said above.
It isn't cost-effective to run a comprehensive public transport system outside of densely populated urban areas and high traffic long distance routes. Public transport works because of economies of scale but there just aren't that many people in a place as small as Cambridge who want to make similar journeys at off-peak times. This is the fundamental qualitative difference between a few of our biggest cities and everywhere else in the country.
Even so those P&R sites have capacity for thousands of cars every day that aren't then driving into the city centre. It takes a peculiar kind of mental gymnastics not to see that as a win.
I can't find any other source for anything they're talking about with the costs, including the "Cambridge South East Transport Park & Ride proposal", which doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the official description of that programme[1]. And note that the Cambourne route proposals they mention have been highly controversial for many reasons and haven't actually happened yet.
The other piece suggesting alternative bus routes is a more reasonable proposal than most of the local bus advocacy and deserves credit for that. Unfortunately the traffic model mentioned isn't public but we do know from past public comments by those in the know that the model is inadequate and in particular it grossly underestimates some effects that cause dramatic increases in journey times for large numbers of road users. Without seeing real figures for how you put that many buses around the ring road without causing the usual mathematical problems with queueing in heavy traffic and making the whole system fall apart it's hard to know whether it's a useful proposal or not. Likewise it doesn't say how pedestrians and cycles would take advantage of the now-free road space inside the ring road if there's an effective barrier caused by a steady stream of buses on the ring road itself nor what would happen to all the cycle traffic that currently uses the ring road itself since it would obviously be far too dangerous to continue doing so with that many buses around.
[1] https://www.greatercambridge.org.uk/public-transport-schemes...
Self-driving buses I'm all in favour of.
I...don't understand what your comment is about? London has excellent public transport that runs all the way into the non-London bits around it. it's mostly made of carrots.
there are also a small number of sticks.
how much better does London need to make (and I assume pay for?) public transport for the Home Counties before you think it's OK for London to not demolish thousands of homes, in London, to build more roads for people who don't live in London?
I don't think I've even suggested anything like that here.
That said, the thing about public transport is that it's all-for-one. If it's going to be a viable alternative to owning private cars then it has to be reasonable for all journeys someone needs to make not just a few convenient examples. There is no "local" or "national" with public transport for most people. The question is whether they can get from A to B in some reasonable way for any A and B they care about.
In any case, that's a fault of poor public transport in the shires, not London.
Please see my other comments in this discussion. There is no "public transport in X". There is only "public transport". It will never be cost-effective to provide mass transit outside of densely populated areas and major long distance routes so if you want to enjoy the benefits and shift people away from cars in large numbers then you have to accept that we all need to subsidise plausible alternatives for everyone, probably through some serious taxation and government spending.
And others who would drive from central Wiltshire to London and back. Every day.
Work from home should have highlighted the insanity of those kinds of work patterns. Trains are greener than cars, but no commuting at all is greener still.
Unfortunately it's looking more like we'll be heading back to pre-Covid normal, with very limited mixed-mode working offered as a bonus to those who qualify for it.
Is it? Everyone I know with an office job has greatly expanded home working options. Most of them were previously 100% in the office, and now have the kind of 1 or 2 days in the office a week hybrid options that used to be exclusively for tech companies. And quite a few individuals I know have been able to go completely remote only having to go into the office a few times a year and have been able to move cities entirely.
I have a car in London but almost never drive into central London (just in my area and out of London) - getting in and around Central London is much better with public transport.
That's mostly because the carrot does not work. You can't really do much better than a private car. Once you are ok with driving, and very many people are, it is the most comfortable and individualized means of transport. So realistically, on one hand of course public transport must be good, but on the other hand it does not matter as much. People will still use cars whenever possible. You have to make it difficult, expensive and uncomfortable.
On the point of small private mobility I fully agree with you. This seems to be the future, if only our politicians would understand that.
what does this mean? owning a private care in central-ish London is awful - traffic is slow, there's limited parking both at home and at your destination, they're mostly emitting loads of pollution. in most cases, public transport is cheaper and faster (or at least not much slower).
where in London do you live that you think personal low occupancy cars are the "best" option?
I once read an analysis linked on HN, claiming that cars are only a personal net benefit if you're rich enough to pay for someone to drive you around, or live in a city that's not yet developed in a car-accommodating way and has low car ownership rates, and that the last personal transportation development that was actually a strong net benefit was the bicycle.
This is because car-centric city design pushes everything much farther apart (big front lawns so your house isn't too close to the nasty street; huge setbacks next to highways [look how damn wide those are next time you're on one!], the highways themselves, enormous interchanges, "green spaces" that aren't intended for people to be in but just to provide a buffer between people and roads, gigantic parking lots, et c), plus cars are expensive, so by the time you factor in the extra travel distance due to cars being widespread and the amount of time you spend working just to pay for your car (and gas, and maintenance, and a place to keep it) most people are losing time, when the whole point was to travel faster.
I thought that had to be overstating it. So I ran the numbers for myself. With conservative estimates for how much closer my house would be to the city if you took out all the car-created distance, with my own spending on cars being rather low, with my commute to the city center not being that long (20-25 minutes each way), and with my income being nearly double the household median income in my city (so I need fewer hours working to pay for my car)—well, I'll be damned, I would save a little time in a hypothetical city that wasn't designed around cars, but instead around bicycles and walking. Which means cars are a slam-dunk loss for most people, if my numbers came out that way—they only seem like they're saving you time if your city has already been messed up by car-centric design.
Cars are convenient because we have made the tax system cater to them. It makes for terrible cities for everyone not in a car at the moment.
I think you're missing one really key factor, and that is time. If the traffic is sufficiently bad, even an easy cheap comfortable car journey stops looking attractive, because it is slow.
UK example: I've had the "pleasure" of driving right across central London; my start point was within sight of London City Airport, my destination was Heathrow Airport. The shortest route is more or less a staight-line journey of about 25 miles. You would be crazy to attempt to use that route that during working hours. It is often faster to head straight out of London, and drive a long looping route, a total of ~60 miles in length. It will save you at least 20 minutes driving time.
European example: a couple of months ago I was in the Austrian border town of Kufstein and needed to get to Innsbruck. I hopped on a Railjet train, which made the journey in 35 minutes with very few stops (only one, IIRC). By car it would have taken at best 60 minutes, assuming no major traffic issues. Motorway speeds are limited to 100km/h in that part of Austria in an attempt to reduce air pollution.[0]
[0] https://www.tirol.gv.at/en/environment/vehicle-prohibitions-...
If you catch one of the fast trains though then of course it is a different story.
There are all kinds of things that might be better than a private car. The point I'm trying to make here is that most of them require radically more commitment (= money + political capital, usually) than those in power and those who vote for them are willing to give at present. Bashing car drivers is the "something must be done and this is something so we're doing it" approach. It gets you popular points with your base. Unfortunately as we've seen for many years now it doesn't actually work without providing decent alternatives as well.
People will still use cars whenever possible. You have to make it difficult, expensive and uncomfortable.
Obviously I don't accept that premise. There are also inherently inconvenient things about a lot of car journeys and about owning and maintaining the car itself so to an extent it provides the deterrent effect you've been talking about automatically without any artificial "stick". Public transport doesn't have many of those downsides. Some alternative methods of private transport don't either. But you need local transport to be frequent, reliable, cheap and comfortable, and you need long distance transport to be all of those things plus easily reachable by local transport.
I was just reminded of this last week. I was going into the city about an hour away for a class but after thinking about it, I'd still have needed to drive to the train station and park, the train schedule was suboptimal, and I'd have had to carry some things associated with the class around with me all day. I do sometimes take the train in but although it's sometimes convenient, it's not a panacea (and doesn't work at all for going in for an evening event). It's also not cheap.
Even in the US, where car ownership is practically mandatory and broad taxes or fees on driving are significantly lower, owning a car is associated with higher incomes because the base cost is still several thousand a year in insurance, gas, etc. so if you tax it you are already hitting wealthier people.
I don't see what's progressive about letting private cars clog the roads up and slowing down London's vast and comprehensive bus network.
The wealthy are always able to buy the nicest things, and addressing income inequality is a very valid goal. But what realistic alternative is there to the price mechanism that still allows for a level of individual choice, and permits vehicle journeys that are economically necessary (e.g. tradespeople) while discouraging car journeys that could me made by other means.
As for the minimum wage earner, they are the least likely to be able to afford to keep a car. The current roads free-for-all means their bus journeys are far slower due to the traffic, and more expensive due to the larger number of buses required to maintain frequency on congested roads.
A possible solution to reduce inequality from road charging while still maintaining the benefits of the price mechanism would be to return the proceeds (after maintenance costs) to the residents of the city in the form of transport credits. These credits would be able to be spent on road access, public transport, or cycling as the individual preferred.
> The wealthy are always able to buy the nicest things,
the problem is that there is no product differentiation when it comes to road usage. You're either on it and paying the same fee, or you're not.
It's not like food, clothes, housing where you might be paying a lot for these things, or you might be paying less. We price specific items of food without regard to income, but there's a wide variety of items of food to choose from, at different price levels.
Not so with a lot of transportation.
In the context of a large city, there certainly is differentiation in transport. You can grab a large amount of the scarce road space for yourself with a car (even more if you park on-street) or taxi, or you can take a smaller share of it by getting on a bus, bike or tram.
Use routes that other people use and get it cheaper, have the private low use roads cost more. As poor people are more likely to live in denser areas it would be cheaper for them.
If you buy more/better clothes you end up paying more. You also end up paying more to upkeep said clothes.
If you consume more water, you end up paying more for it; Progressive water pricing is very common around the world.
A progressive road usage pricing scheme would not be out of the ordinary.
I do agree that we could do with more Park and Rides though. In the past, I've parked at the O2 because there's always space in the day, then took the Jubilee line in.
https://theolympians.co/2017/07/25/nihonbashi-uncovered-the-...
You're much better off using public transport within London, or just walking (I've seen people take tube rides one or two stops that are quicker to just walk in the center).
I don't even own a car in London anymore, I just hire them when I need to get away somewhere that needs one.
not sure about this. i always find parking in the center of London.
> solved with several large car parks next to fast mass transit
I don't disagree with this concept, but your suggestions are still surprisingly far in to London. Why do they need to be inside the M25 at all?
I like roads. I like motorways. I've always enjoyed being in LA. Just a personal preference. I am under no illusions that it would have actually worked in London, but I have a Ballardian sense of "what if" to major infrastructure projects. I never expect anyone to agree with me.
your suggestions are still surprisingly far in to London. Why do they need to be inside the M25 at all?
They don't. Ebbsfleet, being on HS1, is a reasonable example of a park and ride option outside the M25, although it's amazingly expensive to park there for what used to all be fields when I was a kid..
The problem is lack of infrastructure. We can't just slap 4 or 5 Ebbsfleets outside the M25 because there are few reasonable ways to offer a 20-30 minute journey into central London from them at this point. But this is my point. If they'd conceded we'd need this sort of thing when they ditched the ringways project 40+ years ago, we could have had something in place well before now. Where can you park and ride from, say, the top third of the M25? Stevenage is probably your only reasonable bet.. especially as even Cockfosters is a cramped 40 minute tube ride to St. Pancras.
(Indeed, that is the problem in my local area since the nearest town is an hour on the bus, versus a 25 minute drive, so services keep getting cut.. so less people ride.. etc. etc.)
Think car ideology pollutes peoples minds sometimes that they can't see how utterly stupid it is to build cities around cars [1]
[1]: usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/03/Picture-112.png
this is because our solutions to car-friendly cities usually mean tearing down neighbourhoods, more pollution etc. there are solutions that please both sides of the table, but they usually involve huge costs. and in the current climate of litigating everything combined with political polarisation and the very nature of democracy, they're usually a non-starter.
I'd love to hear about some of these. As someone who sits firmly on one side of the table (live in central London, don't own a car etc.) my default position is to reject anything which encourages the use of private motor vehicles in the city, so I definitely think I should try to hear the other side!
I kind of agree with both sides, but the people suggesting train rides forget that the train doesn't stop in front of your house, and doesn't leave when you want it to. And taking an extra luggage with you is a pain. Owning a car gives you so much more freedom in your life that few people who can afford it willingly don't own one. For a few years I did try the rental model, but it was so much hassle that I couldn't bear it any longer. I'm usually on the go every other weekend.
I used to live in Greenwich, and while I had a bike for commuting, on the weekends the car was the only way to get OUT of the city within a reasonable amount of time and get back again. It was still a pain, as pretty much any journey started by getting to the M25 first, then driving on it to some extent, making the smallest journey a 30-40 minute minimum. It didn't help that South London is pretty much an impassable barrier by car (takes so much time that it's not worth it). And Greenwich even has the A2 and the (constantly clogged up) Blackwall Tunnel, so it is one of the better areas of London regarding car ownership.
On the other hand, I never understood why anyone would want to drive into the City, that really makes no sense, and I fully support the congestion charge.
I also support the CG, but I am also quite far on the "I'm staying in my car" end of the spectrum, so maybe I can answer the question! I don't relish the idea of driving into the City, but it's a rare enough experience that I mildly enjoy it - the traffic isn't as bad in the CGZ as it used to be, and I hugely prefer the solitude of driving to, well, the alternatives. Could I do such a journey on a weekly/monthly basis? Absolutely not.
Beyond that, once you're in the car and trundling along, switching transport modes isn't particularly appetising, particularly when trains are so costly if not booked in advance and you have zero idea if you'll even get a seat. Yes, I've stood for two hours on a train out of London. No, it's actually not more fun than sitting in two hours of traffic.
But even if not, are you made of sugar or something? Why can't you handle any weather?
(Short of disabled people, but that's not what this discussion is about.)
a criterion for property selection is nearest public transport
even if you aren't made of sugar, you're not going to have much fun being drenched on public transport
You’d walk 100km to take a 1km train journey?
How far is it even possible to live in London from a train station or bus stop?
But either way - wow a whole 600m! What a hardship just to have clean air and a future for your children!
they are hypothetical numbers, the point being walking in bad weather is a strong argument for not using public transport
I don't care what other people do as much as you seem to, save the planet and all that, woo. if you want clean air move to a village on the coast. if you want to be kind to your children, raise them there
I literally can't think of a city I've been to that has been easier to get into? There's endless options of overground, underground, river, bus. What more do you want?
Admittedly I didn't define "easier"! London is near the top in terms of number of options, regularity, 24 hour availability, etc. For me, "easier" refers to time and comfort as someone who tends to be coming from random points 50+ miles away with young children, luggage, and a car at my disposal.
And if you were to dumped at a random point 50 miles away with a car at your disposal, the centres of many UK cities are, even relative to their size, more comfortably reached than London's. Leeds, Cardiff, Newcastle, and Glasgow, for example (Leeds is notably good for access). If the car isn't allowed to go into the town centre, I think York or Oxford do a good job too.
I know that many, especially young, childless, people think they don't need a car. I know several such people that happily pay (and can afford to) quite a steep price for leaving their city, either by train, plane, or rental car. But they're not typical, I'd say.
In my case, our family car is moved only very little, say 10000km/a. There are some use cases where a rental car or train tickets just don't cut it - we would pay double the price and still have longer travel and additional complications (mental load is a real thing for parents).
Obviously, I am not driving through the city if I can avoid it. But every now and then I want to leave it/return to it. I consider ownership the best option here and I gladly pay for the parking space.
So in conclusion, I think that every city should make it trivial to rent a parking space in some garage. People that don't own cars might benefit from such additional storage space as well. I also don't think it should be more expensive than renting a very simple apartment. But instead, cities try to cram more and more people with less and less space into the same buildings.
And I would not be surprised if these road projects were designed with a much smaller and less densely populated city in mind.
We should absolutely celebrate lower car ownership in cities and work towards making it a viable option for more people.
Have you actually done full lifetime cost analysis of the owned car vs. a rental car under this scenario?
The outcome can depend on a number of things, notably how much you pay for your own car initially. It's also obviously somewhat subjective how you price the inconvenience of picking up/dropping off the rental car.
When I did this in Philadelphia in the mid-90s as neighborhood car shares started to become a thing (briefly, sadly), my conclusion was that since we already owned (outright) a small, useful vehicle at that point, it made more sense to continue doing so, but that if we were about to buy a more expensive replacement vehicle, the car share made more financial sense. This was with a child, btw.
Unfortunately, the alternatives are nearly always more expensive (rental) or don't cover all the use cases (train) or both (car sharing, sometimes trains).
The thing is, once you decided on ownership, the cost of doing more with your car is relatively low compared to the alternative (like using the car for grocery shopping instead of buying a cargo bike for the task).
I get trains, but what are some of these car-requiring scenarios where a rental won't cut it?
So in the end, it's certainly doable but more expensive than owning and creates more stress/hassle.
And there might also be situations where the next rental company is far away and you'd spend a lot of time going there. Depending on how often you need a car, having your own in front of your house might be the better choice.
Same for long holidays where the rent for a car can easily be a big chunk of your holiday budget even if you only need it for a few days during your trip.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...
And induced demand applies to all kinds of things, not just automobile infrastructure. So it should help you be more thoughtful about what infrastructure you want to actually build, but crucially it does NOT mean that the infrastructure is worthless.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
High usage of resources for low expenditure of man-hours directly correlates to higher quality of living.
You couldn't afford an air conditioner if transportation was expensive, power was expensive and every step along the way was running on paper records.
But transportation, power and administrative overhead (and a whole laundry list of other things) are cheap enough (in terms of labor) that you can afford to get and use an air conditioner and you are better off for it.
We want fast and efficient transportation, power generation, record keeping and information management (and other things) because those things add a labor cost to just about everything in our word.
It helps to think of money and time as being convertible to and from each other.
singapore and dubai off the top of my head.
Ok and?
If their median/average/<whatever> quality of life is greater that way then so what?
Every ideologue latches onto buzzwords like "human scale" but forgets that the whole point of that buzzword is that the thing is represents theoretically goes hand in hand with quality of life.
Look at the local climate and land situation for Dubai. It's not exactly a surprise that they prefer to just spread everything out and travel in cars. Just a 1/4mi walk from subway station to destination would be pretty uncomfortable for large parts of the year. At least in St. Petersburg you can put on a big jacket during the uncomfortable part of the year.
I started hating this term, because it appears to reflect a very particular lifestyle which in turn fits a very particular demographic and just assumes this is better than alternatives.
One thing that I never see mentioned is how this affects availability of real estate. In my corner of the world people are generally leaving large cities, because at least half of the working population isn't eligible for a mortgage for an apartment within city limits.
You can only go so far on foot or on a bicycle in a day. With a car you at least have a bargaining chip against the local real estate market.
It's mostly a big tragedy. Neighborhoods sliced through, where highways created largely impermeable boundaries for pedestrians. And the swaths of destruction where eminent domain was invoked and then dense, culturally rich, bustling, thriving blocks and blocks were bulldozed and paved.
He used the toll revenue to fund his own highway building projects, independent of state/local budgets.
He fired everyone on his staff that advocated for rail network. He starved rail lines (that, at the time, were being used very heavily) in favor of road networks.
He also rather hated black people and puerto ricans.
I can only imagine you've heard things about Robert Moses written by the great fans of the man, who USUALLY were high-modernists who loved his big bridges and roads.
his biography, "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of NYC" is the comprehensive evaluation of his life and legacy. He shaped the modern world 10x more than anyone else who has ever lived, and vastly for the worse.
Today houses built in the 30s in what were suburban towns, still 45-60 minutes out from central on the Tube, are going for $1.5M a piece.
The stand-first vanishes when you scroll but the bottom of it is cut off so you have to scroll to be able to read it.
Then when you scroll a pop-up appears asking me to sign up to emails.
Absolutely not.
I gave up even trying to read the article.
Errr...the North and South Circular?
The North Circular is a decent enough road if you don't live by it.
I happen to live just by the South Circular, and it's not really a ring road. You wouldn't use it to circumnavigate London, it's just a joined up set of separate roads (of various sizes) that happen to form a vague semi-circle.
To avoid the ferry you either need to come West a bit and use the Blackwall Tunnel or go way East and use the outer ring road (M25) crossings at Dartford.
https://www.roads.org.uk/articles/glasgow
https://www.scottishroadsarchive.org/m8
There's a really good book on the subject matter by John Cullen who was one of the original engineers who worked on the project:
At one point, there was even a proposal to build massive highways underground instead, but Paris' friable limestone (just as in London) and long history of undocumented quarries make any tunneling effort fraught.
I’m curious about this - are you referring to leaseholds? Because that seems to mainly exist for flats. If you have a freehold (like almost every house has) you definitely own the land.
Not a huge amount of London, and not most of greater London, but definitely applicable to the Royal boroughs.
There's a decent review of the book (from 2019) here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/28/who-owns-engla...
In the US if an owner of property can't be identified, then it's given to the state to deal with and in France it goes to the local authority.
In most of the UK, the land is given to the Crown Estate (not the monarchs personal property but to fund the country). The exception is Cornwall and Lancashire, where it's given to the relevant duchies (i.e. the prince of wales and the monarch), who by convention sell it and donate the proceeds to charity.
not sure about this. every time i go to Paris i'm stuck in traffic. at least in London i've got at least 5 routes i could take. and this is exactly because there are no boulevards.
Not to mention the fact that cyclists can’t use the tunnel…
Currently, if the Blackwall tunnel closes, traffic basically grinds to a halt across a huge part of SE London. I was taking my dying bunny to the vet the other month and a trip that normally takes under ten minutes took forty due to the Blackwall tunnel being closed, even though I'm all the way back in Hither Green.
Nevertheless, I would have preferred they built one of the many proposed pedestrian/cycling bridges...
"There's a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime."
And it is also a reason why governments and their pet projects, despite their claimed authority, are not actually serving those they purport to serve. Huge projects at public expense - eg the creation of the road networks we do have - don't necessarily serve people, but do serve corporations (eg automakers).
Dismantling freeways, returning neighbourhoods. The harder it is to get anywhere by car, the more people will demand good public transport.
I remember as an American overseas in 1975 that it was one of the most baffling aspects of driving in London. I don't know if they still do it but the rental car companies would offer to drive you from Central London to the beginning of the freeway. Assuming they took either a bus or the tube back.
I took a trip to Bournemouth to see a ham radio buddy and ended up being white knuckled the entire way. After our visit I ended up turning the car in and taking the train back into London!