What kind of father sacrifices his children in order, he thinks, to win an election

^ Yes, there are six local buses but these duplicate each others routes for at least part of the way.^

We have dear Maggie T and privatisation to thank for that. Private companies only like profitable routes. Though they'll take the subsidy to run a couple of useless services a day on rural routes...

To be effective public transport has to be nationalised and run to benefit the population rather than shareholders.

Yes, CC, but this government attacks everything by making things more expensive. That might work if you can afford to choose to opt in if you want to prioritise whatever it is they want to curtail; but for many, if not most of us, they are simply removing a choice that is available to the better off.

Carrots are better than sticks - governments in democracies are supposed to work for us, not control us. Yes, there will need to be a mind shift if people are to give up their cars and use public transport, but I think that many would do so if they could get to and fro in good time on a clean and reliable bus at a cost that was lower than taking the car.

Blondiescot

Germanshepherdsmum

Absolutely Doodledog. Realistically it will take years to provide everyone with any, yet alone good, public transport. People who live on a frequent bus route have little idea how difficult life can be for those of us in rural areas, wholly dependent on our cars and on deliveries.

Exactly. I've just quoted one example of how difficult it can be for us.

Exactly, I have to drive 4 miles for my nearest bus stop and I have to try to park outside someones house.

Callistemon21

^What will be banned is traffic passing through the neighbourhood^

Care workers for a start? How will they get to their patients?
Already they are on wages which do not reward the value of their work. Can they afford to change their cars, pay constant charges?

Delivery drivers?

People visiting relatives and friends?
We know someone who is finding it too expensive to visit elderly relatives; she cannot afford to change her car and using public transport is impossible.

Care workers, or others, visiting people within the zone won't be 'passing through', will they?

MaizieD

Callistemon21

What will be banned is traffic passing through the neighbourhood

Care workers for a start? How will they get to their patients?
Already they are on wages which do not reward the value of their work. Can they afford to change their cars, pay constant charges?

Delivery drivers?

People visiting relatives and friends?
We know someone who is finding it too expensive to visit elderly relatives; she cannot afford to change her car and using public transport is impossible.

Care workers, or others, visiting people within the zone won't be 'passing through', will they?

What if they live outside the zone?

Having said that I despair of Sunaks watering down of green policies.
So many opportunities missed, one of them to do with new build housing, are the building companies so powerful that no one has been able to get them to change?

Doodledog

LTNs is a poorly thought out scheme though. I agree that we need to take drastic action to reduce emissions, but IMO the way to do that is to massively increase good, cheap, reliable public transport (and not just in London). Then we can move onto making it more difficult to drive everywhere. The people coming up with ideas such as ULEZ and LTNs won’t be affected by them. Westminster apparently has more electric charging points than the whole of Birmingham and other huge areas, and anyway they will be taxied about on expenses.

The schemes are unpopular for good reason - they restrict movement, and particularly that of those who can’t afford an electric vehicle (which are not good for the environment either) and not fit enough to cycle everywhere.

Give us decent buses first, and people will probably support the car-restriction schemes (and I’m not a driver, so don’t personally pollute the air).

Quite! I couldn’t put it better myself.

Oopsadaisy1

Having said that I despair of Sunaks watering down of green policies.
So many opportunities missed, one of them to do with new build housing, are the building companies so powerful that no one has been able to get them to change?

One would think so. They seem to override any sort of common sense that would insist on infrastructure improvements before they could build thousands of houses on the periphery of small towns, for a start.

I think there is a danger that the public will lose patience with green policies altogether if they all come at huge inconvenience and cost. If they are brought in in a more imaginative way, with solutions coming before problems, and the less well-off being disproportionally affected, then I really think that most people would support them as a default.

Germanshepherdsmum

I’ve had asthma since I was a small child despite living in a rural area. I can’t go anywhere without my inhaler. I don’t underestimate the problems of others but you seem to think those in rural areas are fine Imogen. We’re not. Many of us suffer badly from the pollen from food crops and we have no alternative to using cars.

Exactly! I have asthma. The main culprit was dust mites! Diesel fumes were also horrendous, but we now have much cleaner diesel and cleaner, greener petrol. Electric cars pose many problems, especially if we all had one. Insufficient charging points, lithium batteries (a problem to dispose of cleanly I believe) cars bursting into flames, and lack of power on longer journeys, particularly if you’re using the heater/air conditioning, the radio, the lights, the Sat Nav. My verdict on electric cars, not good enough yet. I’ve ordered a new petrol car. It’s very economical and clean.

Callistemon21

^What will be banned is traffic passing through the neighbourhood^

Care workers for a start? How will they get to their patients?
Already they are on wages which do not reward the value of their work. Can they afford to change their cars, pay constant charges?

Delivery drivers?

People visiting relatives and friends?
We know someone who is finding it too expensive to visit elderly relatives; she cannot afford to change her car and using public transport is impossible.

The many disabled people who rely on their cars to get anywhere ? Not a single mention anywhere as to what, if any, concessions will be made.

But they have to pass through a lot of side streets to reach the ones they are going to. Not once but every time they visit, and for every different house at which they spend their allotted fifteen minutes, then they have to find somewhere to park for those fifteen minutes, not once a day but multiple times - that can use up a chunk of the allotted time..

Callistemon21

^What will be banned is traffic passing through the neighbourhood^

Care workers for a start? How will they get to their patients?
Already they are on wages which do not reward the value of their work. Can they afford to change their cars, pay constant charges?

Delivery drivers?

People visiting relatives and friends?
We know someone who is finding it too expensive to visit elderly relatives; she cannot afford to change her car and using public transport is impossible.

Care workers are not "passing through"
From the link I supplied
Private motorised vehicles still have easy access to all homes and businesses without driving directly through the neighbourhood.
In fact care workers would find it easier to move around the area s through traffic would reduce.
Ditto for those visiting.

Elegran

But they have to pass through a lot of side streets to reach the ones they are going to. Not once but every time they visit, and for every different house at which they spend their allotted fifteen minutes, then they have to find somewhere to park for those fifteen minutes, not once a day but multiple times - that can use up a chunk of the allotted time..

Yes, and it's far from ideal for the person whose house has cars parked in front of it 24/7. The next thing is a residents' parking zone, so the care worker has to go even further out.

Electric cars pose many problems, especially if we all had one. Insufficient charging points, lithium batteries (a problem to dispose of cleanly I believe) cars bursting into flames, and lack of power on longer journeys, particularly if you’re using the heater/air conditioning, the radio, the lights, the Sat Nav. My verdict on electric cars, not good enough yet.
Absolutely. They are not viable if everyone has one - multi-story carparks would collapse for a start. I can only assume that the thinking is that it doesn't matter if most people can't get about easily, as the better-off will be able to do so, particularly if they live in areas that are well served with public transport. So much for levelling up.

maddyone

Germanshepherdsmum

I’ve had asthma since I was a small child despite living in a rural area. I can’t go anywhere without my inhaler. I don’t underestimate the problems of others but you seem to think those in rural areas are fine Imogen. We’re not. Many of us suffer badly from the pollen from food crops and we have no alternative to using cars.

Exactly! I have asthma. The main culprit was dust mites! Diesel fumes were also horrendous, but we now have much cleaner diesel and cleaner, greener petrol. Electric cars pose many problems, especially if we all had one. Insufficient charging points, lithium batteries (a problem to dispose of cleanly I believe) cars bursting into flames, and lack of power on longer journeys, particularly if you’re using the heater/air conditioning, the radio, the lights, the Sat Nav. My verdict on electric cars, not good enough yet. I’ve ordered a new petrol car. It’s very economical and clean.

There are many causes of asthma however there has been a coroner's verdict on a child's death which blamed air pollution in cities
www.livingstreets.org.uk/news-and-blog/press-media/coroner-rules-that-london-s-air-pollution-was-responsible-for-child-s-death#
How many more does it need?

I doubt anyone is arguing in favour of asthma-inducing policies. I also suffer from it, so welcome anything sensible that cuts emissions. If you can throw in a policy that cuts pollen, too it would help. Are we going to cut down on fields more than is happening already?

The point is that LTNs and ULEZs are not the way forward. Or at least not before there is good public transport.

My kids went from very rural to larger cities.
I was concerned as 2 have bad asthma.
I needed not to have been concerned.
Their asthma improved a lot.
I cant speak for everyone.

And as I have said before, they had black stuff in their noses after a while, in the cities.

What about tradesmen and delivery drivers Glorianny? They’re not driving private motorised vehicles.

Germanshepherdsmum

What about tradesmen and delivery drivers Glorianny? They’re not driving private motorised vehicles.

Local traffic will still be permitted only through traffic is stopped.
I've just read that most new housing estates are built as LTNs. No one demands a through road. People are happy to only have traffic which accesses just the properties in the estate.

New housing estates tend not to have through roads.

If new build areas are designed as LTNs that's great. I hope they also have bus stops (and buses that stop at them), more than one small shop per thousand houses, and other amenities that allow people to live there without taking cars into the existing residential areas for basics.

That is the sort of forward thinking we need, not penalising people just for going about their lives.

MaizieD

Callistemon21

What will be banned is traffic passing through the neighbourhood

Care workers for a start? How will they get to their patients?
Already they are on wages which do not reward the value of their work. Can they afford to change their cars, pay constant charges?

Delivery drivers?

People visiting relatives and friends?
We know someone who is finding it too expensive to visit elderly relatives; she cannot afford to change her car and using public transport is impossible.

Care workers, or others, visiting people within the zone won't be 'passing through', will they?

How are they not?

Callistemon21

MaizieD

Callistemon21

What will be banned is traffic passing through the neighbourhood

Care workers for a start? How will they get to their patients?
Already they are on wages which do not reward the value of their work. Can they afford to change their cars, pay constant charges?

Delivery drivers?

People visiting relatives and friends?
We know someone who is finding it too expensive to visit elderly relatives; she cannot afford to change her car and using public transport is impossible.

Care workers, or others, visiting people within the zone won't be 'passing through', will they?

How are they not?

Through traffic is designated as passing from A to B without stopping.
Some of these ways are what used to be called "rat runs" a short cut through a residential area. The aim is to stop that happening.

New-build estates are a small fraction of the places where real people live.

How do you police the difference between 1) those carers who come from elsewhere and are passing through suburban (or mid-city) streets to spend fifteen minutes getting someone up, showered, dressed and breakfasted before moving on and passing through the streets again to the next client, and 2) other motorists who are passing straight through those same suburban (or midcity) streets because they are between their starting point and their destination?

If you make side streets into one-way routes like a maze, with complicated timings for banning some traffic while allowing others (the preferred option here), you have lots of local residents spending four times as long and six times as much fuel and pollution negotiating them (im)patiently every time they go to or from anywhere, and building up even higher levels of stress than they did previously.

Doodledog

If new build areas are designed as LTNs that's great. I hope they also have bus stops (and buses that stop at them), more than one small shop per thousand houses, and other amenities that allow people to live there without taking cars into the existing residential areas for basics.

That is the sort of forward thinking we need, not penalising people just for going about their lives.

That is exactly what we need. We have many new housing estates in this area, some very large indeed, but they are sadly lacking in public transport for the most part - and I can't think of any which have amenities such as shops actually on the estates themselves. never mind things such as schools, doctors' surgeries etc.

Shelmiss

“just cannot get my head around the idea of a father prepared to sacrifice his children for a petty political gain“

good grief, going a bit over the top aren’t you?

That’s what I thought too 😂

Why should the UK impoverish itself when the likes of China has no intention of doing anything to restrict emissions?
Why should citizens here have to be massively inconvenienced and put out of pocket in the mad rush to go green?
What the UK puts out is a tiny drop in the world ocean.