Earl Aelfheah

Check the link I provided above. It gives a very full account of where the push for LTNs came from, (in brief, central government). The consultation did not show that the majority of local residents were against the LTN. Not for the first time, you’ve confused a ‘consultation’ with a ‘referendum’. The outcome of local elections (which many opposed to LTNs excitedly promoted as a referendum on the scheme at the time…until they lost), suggests they are actually quite popular. All the polling on LTNs generally, also shows strong majority support across London.

LTNs were pushed by the Conservative government (as was ULEZ). They were one of several active travel measures which were a condition of the TFL funding settlement post Covid. £69m of direct borough funding (per year) was also provided to support more localised investment in walking and cycling schemes across the city and to accelerate the roll-out of LTNs…but we all know that Boris Johnson and grant shapps are secret commies 🤣 I’ve no idea. I do know that people are covering their plates and driving through, and that’s probably an accident waiting to happen (although clearly down to signage 🤣). The emergency services have agreed the changes, so I would assume that on balance they think it’s the right move. Whilst ‘One’ are suggesting the emergency services have agreed the changes under pressure, they wont say what sort of pressure, or who it’s coming from 🤔. Perhaps it’s the commies again 🤣😂

Right. A roadblock that attentive drivers might accidentally miss 😂

You haven’t answered the question… who has been pressuring the emergency services and how exactly? We all know the answer of course.. no one. As for anyone driving through Dulwich Square without realising that they’re not meant to - well they should t be behind a wheel at all frankly. I have no idea what the ‘far left’ has to do with Dulwich LTN either 😂

I have no doubt that local people are genuinely involved (and personally can understand their not wanting to publicise their involvement). That said the proliferation of One groups across London and the degree of co-ordination suggests it is more than just a local grassroots group. I’m not really that interested, except that many of their supporters do bang on about transparency and accountability. I would be interested in the substance of their latest missive. Who has been pressurising the emergency services and how? Who genuinely believes that people are partially covering their plates and driving through due to inadequate signage? Sounds a little ridiculous / desperate. It feels like it may be time for them to start coming to terms with the changes tbh.

This is quite a serious allegation. What evidence is there of this? Pressured how and by whom? This is quite a spin on ‘it’s been agreed with the emergency services’. They think the vehicles pictured driving through with partially covered plates are the result of ‘poor signage’ 🤔 If it is as they say ‘small numbers’ driving through the square, that doesn’t suggest that the signage is unclear. I mean who honestly believes it’s possible to drive through there without noticing the signs / planters (assuming you’re driving with due care and attention)?! 🤨 Also, haven’t ‘One’ opposed any improvements to the layout / landscaping and signage proposed by Southwark? It’s all a bit desperate. At the height of the LTN ‘controversy’ a number of co-ordinated ‘One’ groups popped up across London. It doesn’t feel like a local grassroots movement, but has all the hallmarks of astroturfing. The lack of transparency about it’s funding / sponsorship and structure does not help with this impression.

Cars are getting bigger and heavier (new cars have become so bloated that half of them are too wide to fit in parking spaces designed to the minimum on-street standards. The average width of a new car in the EU and UK passed 180cm in the first half of 2023, having grown an average of 0.5cm each year since 2001). Speed enforcement is also pretty rare in practice and according to DfT stats, under free-flowing traffic conditions, 50% of car drivers exceed the speed limit on 30mph roads. Hopefully we'll see regulation to stop the car bloat arms race, and perhaps moves to use the same geofenced speed limiters deemed essential for electric hire scooters, but not currently SUVs. Would certainly be more effective and cause less noise, pollution and damage than speed bumps. Also the cost gets passed to the manufactures, rather than public authorities.

Nope, Sparticus started a discussion about the relative costs and revenues associated with car use, which is relevant to ULEZ (a charge on car use). I responded to him because I didn't agree with his point. Your standard knee jerk response to any debate about motor vehicles of 'but what about bikes', is not relevant. You seem obsessed with some imagined, binary opposition - bikes vs cars. Bike lanes have got nothing to do with ULEZ. You're engaged in the dictionary definition of whataboutery. It is a statutory requirement that any net revenue generated by ULEZ is reinvested back into London’s transport network. Again, if you have evidence of law breaking you should probably share it.

This is the definition of whataboutery. How does that relate to a rebuttal of the claim that cars are cash cows? You're obsessed with turning any discussion related to motor vehicles into a discussion on push bikes. It's such an obvious distraction tactic. If you can't defend a position, try and switch to a different topic. What have bike lanes got to do with ULEZ? It's embarrassing.

@Spartacus The benefits of private car ownership accrue primarily to the owner. Some of the direct costs are borne privately too (such as purchasing the car, fuel etc). But many other costs are borne by the public purse. Taxes attempt to recoup some of this. This is so obvious that it doesn't really need stating, except where someone is claiming that cars are some sort of cash cow and trying to minimise, or ignore the externalised costs in their calculations. I've mentioned land use (as just one aspect alongside many others), because land has a value. Huge amounts of public land are given over to people to store private vehicles. If you're discussing the cost of private car ownership, you can't ignore or discount some of those costs just because you've decided you want to. But this is really just another distraction from the topic. The conversation was about ULEZ. If you don't think there are costs to air pollution which are borne by someone other than the driver of a high polluting vehicle, you're wrong. Yet again, your argument seems to be that it's outrageous for the state to try and push some of that cost back to the individual generating them. This seems massively entitled to me; "I want to use any car I choose regardless of the additional costs that choice might impose on others, and I better not be asked to pick up the bill". You've stripped my comment of context, very obviously and very cynically. It's boring. I made this comment in response to Spartacus' suggestion that cars were a massive revenue generator / cash cow. I was pointing out that actually there are lot's of externalised costs which most estimates suggest are greater than the amount raised in taxes and gave a few examples. This was just one. My point is that car drivers constantly fight against attempts to reduce the subsidy that they receive and ULEZ is a classic example. If you choose a car with low emissions, it costs the state less (in managing the health impacts for example) than if you choose a high polluting car. So the question is do you socialise that additional cost, or do you follow a policy of 'polluter pays'. The latter seems to be obviously fairer.

Can't dispute the point, so engage in whataboutery. I haven't called for road charging generally, just challenged the idea that revenues from car taxes cover all of (the suggestion is more than) the costs they externalise. They clearly don't (and car storage is one part of that equation, along with health impacts associated with inactivity, road injuries and deaths, congestion, climate change, air quality etc). I did suggest that the owners of highly polluting vehicles should pay something towards the additional costs that imposes on everyone else. Happy for the same emission standards to be applied to bikes 🤣.

Nope. The 20 minutes on average is from the same RAC Foundation report. The Department for Transport's latest travel survey says 35 minutes. Either way, most cars spend most of their time not moving (at least 90%), Probably more in London.

No, you’re speculating / making assumptions. I’m using figures which come from research by the RAC Foundation The issue is simply that there is a cost to land use. Sparticus wants to talk about costs and revenues. It is a statutory requirement that any net revenue generated by ULEZ is reinvested back into London’s transport network. If you have evidence of law breaking you should probably share it.

According to research by the RAC Foundation, there are about 25 billion car trips per year, and some 27 million cars, suggesting an average of just under 18 trips per car every. Since the duration of the average car trip is about 20 minutes, the typical car is only on the move for 6 hours in the week: for the remaining 162 hours it is stationary – parked. Since there are 168 hours in a week, the typical UK car is parked 96.5% of the time. In London I suspect there are many cars which fail to move from one week to the next. So it's difficult to see how anyone can really argue that significant amounts of land are not given over to car storage. It is undeniably true that this is the case. What is not true is that motoring is a net positive revenue generator. It may be if you completely ignore the substantial externalities of motoring, but this is clearly naïve economics. All serious attempts to estimate the true cost of motoring conclude that it is subsidised (although by exactly how much may reasonably be debated). As for the £130m - it is all reinvested in transport. It. You're suggesting that it's fairly for the marginal costs of high polluting vehicles should be borne by the tax payer, not the polluter. That is wild imo.

They don’t pay the full cost of driving though, despite the moaning. Private cars are effectively subsidised. The amount of land given over to cars, the cost of deaths, injuries, air pollution, greenhouse gasses, congestion etc., these costs are largely externalised and when added to investments in road building and maintenance outweigh the revenues obtained by motorists, probably very substantially.

Well we wouldn’t want to increase investment at all then Best to follow a principle of polluter doesn’t pay and socialise the costs.

At least a small part of the externalised costs are being pushed back to the polluters, and more money can be invested in public transport.

This is tin foil hat stuff. The climate crisis is very real and governments have to take action. ULEZ isn't primarily about climate change, but air quality. The pro-high emission vehicle gang want to argue that drivers of the most polluting cars are being priced off the road, and also that the ULEZ is having no impact on removing older, dirtier vehicles from the road. Can't really be both. And yes, at the least, it also helps raise money. Pollution does costs money. Why should the bill (as well as the terrible health costs to individuals) of private car pollution be entirely externalised? In London, 9,400 premature deaths are attributed to poor air quality and are estimated to cost between £1.4 and £3.7 billion a year to the health service. The evidence shows that even small improvements in air quality can have health benefits.

I don't get the point in them nowadays. They've been replaced by streaming I would have thought.

There isn’t. Perhaps you don’t understand what modal share is. I don’t know and I’m not that interested. Your statement that ‘cycling modal share in London’s is decreasing’, is wrong. More interesting (or perhaps not) is why you want it to be true.

I’m not posting graphs. That’s you. I have linked to the latest TfL report. Cycling modal share in London’s is not decreasing as you have claimed, it’s increased. People can read the report themselves. I have also posted the table from the report for those who can’t be bothered reading the whole report. It shows modal share specifically, by year:

No Rocks. People travelling by bike account for 4.5 percent of all journeys made daily (‘mode share’) up from 3.6 percent in 2019 and the number of “stages” cycled has risen too, despite lower levels of commuting post pandemic. The 1.26m stages cycled daily is the equivalent of about a third of the trips on the entire tube network happening daily, or about a quarter of trips done on the bus network. This is an average for all of London. It’s almost certainly higher on Central London. I know you don’t approve of cycle lanes or any other active travel measures. But please take it to your roads and transport section. You can pursue your crusade there and will no doubt enjoy the echo. You don’t need to spread this nonsense across the rest of the forum.

Sorry Rockets, just to be clear. Are you still claiming that Because nothing you've posted above proves that statement. It all feels like a desperate attempt to obfuscate. Cycling modal share in London is not decreasing.

You said that: This is nonsense. Latest TfL report shows mode share for cycling consistently rising year on year over more than a decade: TfL travel in London -latest report Like I said above, this is a thread about Sadiq Khan's mayoralty. Maybe pick up your anti bike infrastructure crusade over on the transport section.

This is disingenuous nonsense. Despite fewer workers commuting daily into central London, cycling is up on pre-pandemic levels, which is not true for other modes of transport. The number of people cycling in central London has more than doubled since 2000 and cyclists now out number motorists in the City.