mr.chicken

I love the anti-LTN "logic". Too many cars on the south circular? I know let's have more cars!

I love the cognitive dissonance on this subject. The council is wildly incompetent at everything but especially LTNs, with two notable exceptions: 1. Running conspiracies 2. Implementing LTNs ironically: you see when the council puts one in they do a perfect job so if it doesn't work perfectly then no fixes could possibly help and the only path is removal. It can't be both, except here it apparently can!

Right o the torygraph: the mouthpiece of a government which has decided anti environmentalism is its cause celebre in its latest manufactured culture war. Funny how so many worldly people who just claim to care so much about poorer Londoners can do little but quote right wing gutter press 🤔

@Rockets you may have noticed that the central government had banned ICE car sales from 2030. That's a far larger thing than the council can do plus this way they don't have to put up with the inevitable gales of whining and pointless judicial reviews. So in other words, the council are doing their bit, the government is doing their bit and it's all moving forwards. I know you think the council are at a superhuman level of competence. Also you are factually incorrect about congestion because it has increased in the control areas well away from where LTNs are installed. The boundary roads have seen less increase than places far from the LTNs, so it looks very much like LTNs have had a positive effect. PS your "no u" is somewhat below your usual level trolling. Can't you do better?

This is one of the more hilarious threads. Perhaps if you'd been less busy trying to hound any pro LTN people off forum and more time listening this would not come as a shock. Pollution is one of the many problems with cars. Changing to electric cars will fix a good fraction of the car pollution problem but none of the others. For the cars that remain, electric is the way to go. But there are still too many cars. You know those buses you pretend to care about getting stuck in traffic? Electric cars won't fix that, it will just make the stationary traffic less filthy. Unsticking the buses means fewer cars, electric or otherwise.

Well the latest round of speculation makers about as much sense as the other histrionic conspiracy nonsense about the council and transport, so sure, why not?

What's all this got to do with the CPZ, @Rockets ?

In as much as it fits the cars are good everything is bad, no CPZ mantra it's relevant. Otherwise not so much.

CO2 is what causes global warming, which will be bad but it's otherwise pretty harmless to humans in these concentrations. NOx and particulates aren't globally important in the same way but are very harmful to humans at the concentrations found in London. I don't understand what point you are trying to make @CPR Dave, NO is a similar density to air, NO2 is a similar density to CO2. Particulates are denser still.

He's been doing it for years. I'm glad the taller house they built next door didn't ruin the garden. It's always such a delight.

@legalalien, are they? Specifically to which bit of legislation do you refer?

The CPZ is not purely about problem parking areas so the argument that some areas don't "need" is is specious. It's also to disincentivise driving, because people are dying in droves due to pollution and the roads are so clogged that it's hard to have great bus links. The council most certainly has a mandate on public transport and the environment and the CPZ checks both boxes.

Really because Rockets is saying things like: That's not evidence or critique. This is all about casting shade on the researchers by questioning motivations etc.

Not a hundred percent sue what a divvy is, it sounds good! Either way storage for cars is free unlike say a skip or bike. Plus when the bunch of car journeys and cars decreases the space can be repurposed. MinI parks, green space etc. That won't come that soon but better late than never.

@exdulwicher Don't you see it's not true that no one else gets 10 square meters of free space other than most drivers. It's just that the vast majority drivers get a free 10 square meters of space to park 24/7 (unlike anyone else who wants to occupy that space). 🤣

Indeed. It's a combination of factors. It's unregulated imports of dangerous goods which meet no safety standards aided by large companies (i.e. Amazon) who profit from it. Sale of goods which are mostly used for illegal purposes (how many of the 1000W £190 conversion kits are used for off road biking), and near zero enforcement of the existing, perfectly good laws from a police force which has seen substantial budget cuts. And of course the rise of the "gig economy" where people can only survive doing deliveries by using cheap, illegal e-bikes, with the refusal of the government to step in and protect those workers and make it illegal to incentivize people to break the law.

Douglas Adams has a great quote: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” I think this is why the naysayers think that electric cars are bad but aren't rocking 8 tracks and carburetors. And of course there's good money and power involved in being vociferously for the natural order of things. In 10 years time, if you told people you were advocating for people to be able to have more noxious fumes coming out of their car, opening up the quiet residential roads to heavy through traffic and encouraging car use by dedicating a huge amount of available public space to unrestricted parking, they'd look at you like you'd grown an extra head. All such moves are vociferously countered when they first come in and the movements to undo them all fade away pretty quickly. Got to ask: where did you even find one of those? Japan? They're almost nonexistent here.

No, compared to petrol, lithium is very much not a fire hazard. It's sometimes possible to get a lithium battery to catch fire. It is very, very easy to ignite petrol. Electric car fires hit the news because they are so rare. Petrol car fires are almost never in the news because they are too much of a regular occurrence (around 300 per day) to be newsworthy.

That's a lot of long words to say "pish". Induced demand is well established in the academic literature. You're dismissing it using many more words, but it's still a dismissal. You have no actual analysis behind those. I also love the recent meme on here about blind studies. It's literally impossible to blind people to whether the traffic system they are currently driving in has been altered. Not everything that should be studied can be studied blind. Insisting on blind studies is insisting on the status quo. It came up on this thread which you are active on so you very well know it but remain quiet. Or maybe I just can't hear your voice from all the way up there on your very high horse.

So? Have you seen Starmer? His policies, if they can be called that, involve taking whatever the conservatives are doing that hasn't been ruled literally illegal and shuffling a half step to the left. The guy's absolutely a (small c) conservative and would be pretty much aligned with the Tories if they hadn't swung so far right. He's also a terrible leader. On subsequent days he defended Kahn saying he was legally obliged to make the ULEZ then attacked him repeating the Tory talking points. That is beyond pathetic. Starmer is terrified of losing old red wall votes and is convinced that they buy into all the Tory culture war crap, so if the Tories start a whole "wokist London elites are coming for your cars" thing, Starmer will trail dutifully behind. Just like when the Tories attack Starmer's own profession, he trails mutely behind saying nothing. This is the old "the electorate are stupid except for me" argument. I voted labour for the first time because of local issues. There are other credible options locally like the lib dems. They leaned in hard on an anti-LTN stance and they also lost votes. Voting lib dem is ALSO sticking it to the Tories Voting for the clear majority (which Labour are in Southwark) is not a protest vote. And Labour were not the only choice. The libdems were out in force and I had in person visits and many flyers. They sought to capitalise on Not Tory and Not LTN. Turns out people wanted the former, but not the latter. What you keep effectively saying is if they vote Labour it's on non local issues (despite people not liking Labours local record) and if they don't vote Labour that shows how much they don't like Labour on local issues. In other words there is no possible poll result which would convince you that you're mistaken about the average voter's attitude. Note also that the Tories have used their power in Parliament to try and help themselves along in this election by changing it from AV to first past the post. They are the only substantial non progressive party, but the progressive vote is split. Their only hope is that the vote is split enough that they can win on a minority vote. If it was Labour 30%, Green 30%, Conservative 31%, would conclude that people hate the ULEZ and democracy wins out even with 60% of the vote going to pro ULEZ parties?

I can't find this report or the data, only reports on the report. Happy to read it if you can find it, but i just get links to Southwark news, and a few dead google drive links. Fantastic! You are at odds with a number of other anti-LTN posters in this regard, though I note with interest you decided to not join threads where you'd be on the other side of the debate. You steered clear except to raise one issue with the CPZ. If you have to make stuff up about me... then you must know your point is not really correct. I do not label "everyone" who disagrees with me. I give that label to people who (a) shoot down absolutely everything that would affect cars in any way and (b) refuse to say what they would be happy with. I love that you pretend to actually care about this. Naturally you are very very selective in who you choose to single out for criticism. We've had talk about genocide and pogroms, not to mention continual unwarranted attacks and you have been entirely silent on the matter when the attacks come from posters who also don't like LTNs. You're also happy to use sarcasm (something you're complaining about me using) as well as borderline misrepresent other's posts for the purposes of taking a quick jab. You also have described a well researched and widely accepted topic as "pish" and seem to think I'm "patronising and patriachal" for not accepting your word at face value. You're trying to hold the moral high ground from next to the moral equivalent of the dead sea.

@heartblock Ok two things. 1: I'm working on the assumption people agree that pollution from vehicles is too high, the traffic is bad which negatively affects buses, and that strong mixing bikes and cars is unsafe for bikes and prevents people cycling. No anti LTN/CPZ/ULEZ/anti 20mph limit in some cases person has been prepared to commit on measures they would be happy with to improve the problems I listed. And by "measures" I mean ones that would have an effect and the council can actually implement. It's a pattern of shooting down everything that would have any effect of car usage. I am all ears to suggestions, but I've yet to hear any that would in any way work. 2: Scattered, unstructured observations are not the same as good data. Where it's been studied carefully nearby, boundary road traffic is up less than the control areas. Croxted road residents may be correct about the rise, but not about the reason, and it's likely that removing the LTN world make our worse still. Even if traffic rises happened at around the same time as LTNs went on does not mean the latter caused the former.

That's begging the question: should the CPZ fees only cover administration? The CPZ is required by law (if I understand correctly) to be self financing, so the cost must cover administration. But there's nothing that says the only cost must be administration. The only purpose of the CPZ is not the revenue (that's a requirement) just the benefit it brings. Charging more for vehicles that take more space, cause more pollution, more road damage and are more dangerous to pedestrians (requiring better, more expensive infrastructure) seems entirely proportionate.

@Rockets well if all else fails try insults 🤣. I'm surprised you didn't yet again accuse me of personal attacks while actually leveling the insults. You're not obliged to post useful things to the channel, but if you just want to case shade without substance on anti-pollution things then I'll be here to point out the lack of substance. If you want to say something, then say it. Until you commit and make a concrete criticism of the substance, I will continue to point out that you can't actually find anything concrete to disagree with. In other words, you agree with it. But that must be an awful "personal attack" because I'm not accepting what you personally said 🤣

I've seen many very peculiar claims from you, but you still haven't said what specifically is wrong it the article. You know substance: facts you think they got wrong, incorrect inferences from the data that kind of thing. And you can't find any because you actually agree with it. The Guardian is much more critical of Starmer and his policies than the Telegraph is of Sunak and his ones. The Guardian has a more or less permanent section in "opinions" called "Starmer's path to power" which is more or less a laundry list of everything they think Starmer is doing wrong. The Telegraph opinions section is all about... blaming Starmer. Zero introspection on what the Tories might not be doing right. So to claim that the Telegraph and Guardian are essentially the same is at odds with reality.