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Comment by bananapub | Hacker News Reader

> I disagree, and wish it had happened, but regardless, the biggest problem is they failed to invest in a plan B. For example, the options for folks outside of London wanting to get in are dire and could have been solved with several large car parks next to fast mass transit

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.

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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..

Not quite sure what you mean by "Angelesation", but if it is a reference to Los Angeles, that was never going to happen. The reasons the projects described in TFA didn't happen was reflective of a city that has been in that location for centuries. Nobody was ever going to convert London into anything remotely like LA.

London’s economy is doing better than the rest of the UK even with the charge that it’s worth taking the hit rather than paying for all the health and pollution externalities of one additional marginal car, which is more than just the fuel burned.

You might be able to do better than £19.10 each way, depending on what time you're travelling. An unlimited all-day travelcard from Ebbsfleet to London[0], including tube/bus/train in zones 1-6 is only £24.40 off-peak (no arrival before 10am Mon-Fri). It's £45.00 peak, though.

[0]: https://www.brfares.com/!expert?orig=EBD&dest=1072

I guess that indicates the congestion charge could be higher.

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.

Talking about carrots for motorists is just privilege bias. We are where we are because of many policy decisions, many of which came with a particular world view, including the idea that motorists should have more infrastructure investment to support them. If you come at it from the perspective of active transport, removing cars _is_ the goal. Further to that, fewer cars means public transport becomes much better. We have to get into the virtuous circle where fewer cars begets more active transport and public transport which begets fewer cars.

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...

Talking about carrots for motorists is just privilege bias.

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.

Privilege bias is a bias that means you find it difficult to understand the position of those that are not in the privileged class. In this case, you think that as a driver the world should not be made more difficult for you, but you don't realise that making it more difficult for you makes it better for everyone that is not a driver.

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!

Privilege bias is a bias that means you find it difficult to understand the position of those that are not in the privileged class.

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.

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.

I can't respond to your deepest comment, but the privilege is you can drive, which is distinctly not universal. In any case, having biases is totally normal.

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.

I can't respond to your deepest comment, but the privilege is you can drive, which is distinctly not universal.

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...

Pods were trialled between the West Cambridge site and the P&R and were proposed to offer 24 hour service, but the main Cambridge Autonomous Metro proposal was for units that could seat over 100 people. But the new mayor likes buses.

It was the Dromos proposal I was referring to. That's nowhere near a trial: https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/on-demand-driverless...

Self-driving buses I'm all in favour of.

Yeah, the pod trial was with Aurrigo: https://www.connectingcambridgeshire.co.uk/smart-places/smar...

> The trouble with public transport advocacy is that it so often relies on the stick rather than the carrot as the main incentive

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.

London has good public transport internally. For people coming in from outside the picture is far more variable.

London already provides public transport even beyond it's own boundaries. It seems pretty unfair to insist that we, as London tax payers, spend even more money on providing services to people outside of London.

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.

I can travel to central London from my home 100 miles to the West in 70 minutes by public transport.

In any case, that's a fault of poor public transport in the shires, not London.

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.

I used to know people who would commute by train to London from Bath and Bristol. Every day.

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.

> 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.

Public transport into/in London is pretty good. Crowded but not unbearable, especially if you can avoid rush hours.

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.

> The trouble with public transport advocacy is that it so often relies on the stick rather than the carrot as the main incentive.

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.

> You can't really do much better than a private car.

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 don't live in London anymore, but I think you agree with me - people in central London don't own/use cars because it is inconvenient.

> You can't really do much better than a private car.

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.

If and only if you build the system around those cars. If there is no free parking and a parking lot is taxed like it is productive land, then parking is expensive.

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.

> 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.

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-...

One stop at Wörgl if i am not mistaken. Trains in Austria are pretty nice indeed, but of course only if you have a train available. If you first need to drive to the train station then more often than not the commuter trains aren't worth it time wise.

If you catch one of the fast trains though then of course it is a different story.

You can't really do much better than a private car.

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.

People will gladly share a metal tube if it's substantially faster or substantially cheaper than not.

Assuming the metal tube runs on a moderately convenient schedule between convenient locations and that they'll not transporting things that they can't conveniently take on the metal tube.

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.

The thing with raising congestion charges, higher taxes on airfares etc is that you then limit these options to the financially well off, which doesn't seem very progressive.

And people who can afford it just feel a sense of entitlement because they have purchased something. And it is a resource we all own and have already paid for. We should have a basic right to access that resource. The problem is when people take more than their fair share. In the centre of London that could be driving 1 mile a day. We should give a free tier and then ramp up prices exponentially after that. The more you use the resource the more it costs per mile.

Car ownership itself is an indication of wealth.

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.

It certainly seems progressive to me. Charging private vehicles to access the roads reduces demand, which allows other modes such as buses, trams and bikes to move more people more quickly.

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.

I guess the point is that it's not related to the person's income. For someone on minimum wage, the £15 congestion charge prevents them using the car. For a high-earned, it's just a fee to pay as you continue to drive in London.

But food at the supermarket, clothes, even water from the tap are all priced without regard to individual income. Why would road usage be any different?

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.

I don't really agree with the original premise, but I would point out that:

> 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.

The local water company does not provide deluxe or budget versions, water is water. The same applies to gas and electricity. All are major household expenses.

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.

Why not go entirely surveillance system. And record all use of roads. Mandatory 24/7 tracking with penalty payments on any public road. Then track which roads and sections of roads person travelled during each day using which method. And divide the bill between all of them.

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.

> But food at the supermarket, clothes, even water from the tap are all priced without regard to individual income. Why would road usage be any different?

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.

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