What's going to get us to leave the car.

[USER1999]

Watford has some pavements with lines down the middle, clearly marked cycles or pedestrians. Sadly, the inhabitants of Watford are incapable of being in the correct lane. This could be down to stupidity, ignorance, phone use, not paying any attention at all, or all of these. My guess is most of them are retarded.

 

[Swango1980]

You are correct everyone wants what suits them.
Spot on with the land ,there are to many buildings to close together in this country .
Everything is packed into city’s.
That’s why utilities are under the roads when something needs doing there’s chaos.
But if they want us out of our cars they need to sort an alternative , that’s just not happening here anyway.
Quite the opposite councils are closing amenities due to budget cuts.

They are between a rock and a hard place. In the industry I am in, when I started most, if not all local authorities had multiple members of staff working in their transport and roads departments. You'd have guys skilled in intelligent transport systems, traffic signals, design, etc. Many years experience. However, today most of the highway authorities have effectively lost all their staff. In some cases, they'll have one guy doing a job that used to be done by a dozen. Yes, I'm sure there was a bit of slack 15 years ago in some authorities, but now I bet it is the complete opposite, where they simply cannot keep on top of everything, from reacting to incidents, evaluating general operation, planning improvements where needed, evaluating improvements done by others (e.g. developers trying to mitigate a big development by coming up with a scheme), seeking funding, etc. And, these guys (often just one or two people) are often responsible for the road network in the entire county, not just one town). So, previously you may have had many guys who were experts and certain aspects of the industry, whereas now you have one or 2 people who are basically having to learn the bare minimum of many aspects to the job just to get buy, and therefore finding it difficult to focus on their strengths.

And, that is just in transport. No doubt most other departments are under the same sort of stress? So, I certainly do try and give them some slack when it appears that not a lot is getting done.

In general though, the way our towns and cities have developed it simply a result of how it evolved from the industrial revolution, where the larger towns were always going to originate in the prime areas. If we wiped the entire UK clean and started again, no doubt it would look very different as we could build in hindsight, with all the current technology allowing us to do things differently.

 

[SocketRocket]

I did say it could be the answer but I just look at my home city.
There are no cycleways into the city centre except for down by the Mersey.
They refurbished a major road into the city centre a couple of years ago ( edge Lane )
This has the oldest cycle shop in Liverpool on it but they didn’t put a cycle path in.
You take your life in your hands cycling in Liverpool and probably most city’s the roads are shocking.
There is no plan to remedy this as far as I know.
But a business man will get to London 30 mins faster on hs2 for only 106 billion pounds.
That is not joined up thinking imo.

If you clear the roads of parked cars where are they going to put them?
Terraced houses here have no driveways!

Read my post again? drive to park and ride centres then comute around the town/city/ district from there. The idea is to stop people from bringing their cars into the centres.

 

[SocketRocket]

The second hand value of an ICE car will be zip in 2030. So where will they go? Africa is my guess. So some guy in sub Saharan Africa is going to be tooling about in my AMG which he bought for naff all, still polluting, probably driving to the rare metals mine where he works creating fuel for batteries, while I am driving about in an expensive milk float.

But when oil runs out his car will be stuffed and yours will be running

 

[USER1999]

Oil won't run out in my lifetime. It may get more expensive, but it won't run out.

Without the tax on it, oil is still pretty cheap.

 

[Imurg]

Watford has some pavements with lines down the middle, clearly marked cycles or pedestrians. Sadly, the inhabitants of Watford are incapable of being in the correct lane. This could be down to stupidity, ignorance, phone use, not paying any attention at all, or all of these. My guess is most of them are retarded.

Sounds like many people travel to Watford from Aylesbury and vice versa.....

 

[clubchamp98]

The second hand value of an ICE car will be zip in 2030. So where will they go? Africa is my guess. So some guy in sub Saharan Africa is going to be tooling about in my AMG which he bought for naff all, still polluting, probably driving to the rare metals mine where he works creating fuel for batteries, while I am driving about in an expensive milk float.

You can still use your AMG after this date but it will be £20 a litre.
This is how they will persuade us to go EV.
But am sure the oil companies will have something to say on the subject.

 

[clubchamp98]

Read my post again? drive to park and ride centres then comute around the town/city/ district from there. The idea is to stop people from bringing their cars into the centres.

We have them already they work to an extent.
But it takes 30 mins to get into it if you get a space ,there is very little space to build new ones in major city’s.
But people see less cars in the city centre so think it will be ok to just park there .
Humans are very selfish nothing will put a stop to that.

 

[clubchamp98]

But when oil runs out his car will be stuffed and yours will be running

Maybe but that’s going to need a big hike in electricity generation.
It all would be Utopia but!
There’s to many lobbyists in this country to let all this happen.
I think the Oil Companies will prove Global Warming is a Myth.

 

[bobmac]

You can still use your AMG after this date but it will be £20 a litre.
This is how they will persuade us to go EV.
But am sure the oil companies will have something to say on the subject.

Meanwhile, renewable energy gets cheaper, cleaner and will never run out.
£20 per litre for polluting petrol and diesel or £2 per 'gallon' of clean renewable electricity. Even cheaper if you've got solar.

 

[clubchamp98]

Meanwhile, renewable energy gets cheaper, cleaner and will never run out.
£20 per litre for polluting petrol and diesel or £2 per 'gallon' of clean renewable electricity. Even cheaper if you've got solar.

Total agreement but we do need to start building them power stations now.
They don’t go up like a Chinese hospital!
Renewable will never supply everything.
Plus “£2 a gallon “ the government are going to need to replace the tax revenue they lose on oil based fuel .
Guess where they will get it from? The EV motorist it might be cheap now but that will change rapidly.

 

[bobmac]

Total agreement but we do need to start building them power stations now.
They don’t go up like a Chinese hospital!
Renewable will never supply everything.

What power stations?

 

[bobmac]

Renewable will never supply everything.

It does in Norway

 

[clubchamp98]

What power stations?

If everyone has a EV the grid is not good enough to all charge them during the night.
The power needed to charge all these cars is not there now.
It might be in the future but that takes planning now.
But am not seeing much of that.

 

[clubchamp98]

It does in Norway

How many people live in Norway compared to the UK?
Plus Norway obviously have more forward thinking politicians than we do.

 

[SocketRocket]

If everyone has a EV the grid is not good enough to all charge them during the night.
The power needed to charge all these cars is not there now.
It might be in the future but that takes planning now.
But am not seeing much of that.

Hopefully battery technology or hydrogen production will develop such that it wont be a problem. I know its not there at the moment but its getting better.

 

[clubchamp98]

Hopefully battery technology or hydrogen production will develop such that it wont be a problem. I know its not there at the moment but its getting better.

Yes I am sure it will be done eventually but I don’t have much faith in our political leaders to deliver this.
They give us dates 2032 now but we all know it’s hot air.
Next car for me is an EV as hybrid ones will also be banned.
I am not being awkward for the sake of it I just can’t see them doing it in the time they are quoting.
I hope they do but just can’t see it.

 

[bobmac]

If everyone has a EV the grid is not good enough to all charge them during the night.
The power needed to charge all these cars is not there now.
It might be in the future but that takes planning now.
But am not seeing much of that.

Maybe you're not looking.
Only 60% of all car owners have off street parking and not every EV plugs in every night plus overnight demand for electricity is almost nothing.

Ev ownership will increase gradually as will the charging infrastructure so those who cant charge at home will charge at work, supermarkets restaurants etc.
Right now there are over 30,000 charging points in Britain and growing every day, just like petrol stations grew when the car first came out.
The difference is businesses dont need to build petrol stations in their car parks

Next car for me is an EV as hybrid ones will also be banned.

Only the sale of new hybrids will be banned, you will still be able to buy second hand.

 

[SocketRocket]

We have them already they work to an extent.
But it takes 30 mins to get into it if you get a space ,there is very little space to build new ones in major city’s.
But people see less cars in the city centre so think it will be ok to just park there .
Humans are very selfish nothing will put a stop to that.

People may not have the choice in the future. There are massive spaces around towns and cities for building car parking, it really isn't a problem, none of it is a problem, as I said its just people feeling comfortable with the way they live now and fearing change.

Someone suggested Oil won't run out, does anyone have proof of this even with the projected increases with world population and extra demand on a finite resource where more and more people will want their share of our good life. And I havent even touched on climate change and how this will impact on our lives. Changes in the way we live will have to come and we will be affected by it, our only choices are to adapt ourselves or let natural consequence change us in its own manner.

 

[bobmac]

And here's where they are