First of all, here’s my solution for dealing with road traffic congestion. On any given road where congestion is occurring every other car with a single occupant should be removed from the road and crushed. The owner would then be given a bike and bus/rail pass as compensation. I envisage some kind of large helicopter with a big claw picking the cars straight off the road for immediate disposal though I appreciate this might not be feasible.
I also think speed cameras should be replaced with a giant mallet that swings down on the offender flattening them and their car into the tarmac. Or perhaps a trap door in the road that drops them into a fiery pit of fiery fire.
With my stance on this issue clear, I find myself wanting to comment on The Great Petition. While single-issue petitions don’t really mean shit in the wider scheme of things, especially ones that are hyped by the Daily Express, this has resulted in possibly the most intelligent thing to come out of Tony Blair’s office in the last ten years. This email is long. It has sentences that are not sound-bites. It covers many points of view. It is, above all, quite calm and lacking in hyperbole. It’s in the sort of reasoned, level-headed voice you wish governments would use on a daily basis.
That’s not to say I believe him or anything. The motorists lobby is strong enough to force a climb-down on this not to mention the whipping he’s been getting from the reactionary tabloids. And the “big brother” issues are serious, regardless of who’s collecting the data.
But road pricing is a sensible move. After all, it costs me twice as much to travel by train at peak hours so I tend not to. Why should motorists be excluded from this sensible approach to dealing with transport capacity is beyond me.
So Tony, why did you wait until now before treating your subjects like intelligent human beings?
Good to hear your opinions. I’m a non-car-owning cyclist too, and would dearly love the roads to be quieter, for environmental reasons and to make my journey to work safer. But I think it’s going to be a long time before there are any big changes in car use, and it’s going to be even more painful than the smoking issue (hmm, could have thought of a better comparison there, perhaps).
Agree that it’s frustrating that Tony’s email gives an indication of the sort of leadership on difficult environmental issues which could have been tackled over the last 10 years. Well, if one was to believe him. We’ll see…
You obviously don’t own a car!
As for my opinion, I’ve spent the last few minutes drawing up my plans to slow cars and improve safety :
Unfortunately, most people don’t get to choose the times they start and finish work, hence why there is a peak time in the first place. Perhaps encouraging companies to offer more flexible working hours for their employees would help.
Working from home is obviously the answer. Now if only I could persuade my boss!
(How you doing, Pete? Long time no…)
But we already pay to use the roads! Rather than double charge us, why not put car tax up?
And as catnip says, most of us don’t choose when we are on the roads, I’d much rather take public transport but, since changing jobs, that would entail at 3 hour commute, 6 hours a day on trains and buses. Not feasible.
Working from home is ok now and then but you, for a lot of people, need to be in the office for a lot of things.
I TOTALLY agree that this is a problem that we, the people, need to be addressing, but the basic facts are that most people will ignore this until it hits them HARD.