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Tonight: Haringey Council draft plan on transport, LTNs, etc community meeting
Hey all
There's a not too well publicised online meeting tonight 6pm to air views on a major action plan of the Council's I suspect has been flying under the radar of most people. They've published a draft action plan for the borough on cycling, walking, driving infrastructure. Lots of great things in it but also lots of worrying things in it for car users. If you scroll down to the appendix at the bottom you'll see that Stroud Green has been earmarked as one of the possible sites for an LTN. There's a also a consultation on the proposals that so far has only received 300 responses. Partly because it's hard to find and partly because it's been done over Christmas. You need to read through the action plan and then answering some questions on it. This does require a bit of preparation and some thought, especially to see into the nuances of what is proposed and how it might affect people. (They seem to think that a good route walking route is up Muswell Hill which I find amusing.) The consultation closes on 10th of January so not much time to respond.
6pm meeting tonight:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/draft-walking-and-cycling-action-plan-public-meeting-tickets-219915291557
Proposal & consolation
https://haringeywalkingcycling.commonplace.is
There's a not too well publicised online meeting tonight 6pm to air views on a major action plan of the Council's I suspect has been flying under the radar of most people. They've published a draft action plan for the borough on cycling, walking, driving infrastructure. Lots of great things in it but also lots of worrying things in it for car users. If you scroll down to the appendix at the bottom you'll see that Stroud Green has been earmarked as one of the possible sites for an LTN. There's a also a consultation on the proposals that so far has only received 300 responses. Partly because it's hard to find and partly because it's been done over Christmas. You need to read through the action plan and then answering some questions on it. This does require a bit of preparation and some thought, especially to see into the nuances of what is proposed and how it might affect people. (They seem to think that a good route walking route is up Muswell Hill which I find amusing.) The consultation closes on 10th of January so not much time to respond.
6pm meeting tonight:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/draft-walking-and-cycling-action-plan-public-meeting-tickets-219915291557
Proposal & consolation
https://haringeywalkingcycling.commonplace.is
Tagged:
Comments
I wonder whether they have LTNs up North?
If an LTN worries you, wait till you hear about climate and ecological extinction.
Out if interest, is it still cheaper to own and run a car in London than these days compared to using an Uber when you need one?
I believe the rush to electric as some sort of panacea to the emergency our planet faces is terminally stupid, as it relies on a whole new swathe of resources that cannot be sustained.
Able-bodied people should be embracing and demanding a future of improved, cheaper public transport, simple car-share schemes, and a massive roll-out of bicycle infrastructure.
Would proper reliable, flexible and cheap taxi-type schemes with specialist vehicle adaptations not be the best way forward for those less fortunate too?
Regarding your first point. There’s about one line, with zero detail of actual action plans. If they are paying more than just lip service, I’d like to see more detail. i’d like especially to see how what are essentially punitive measures for drivers can be made less onerous for disabled drivers. I often hear LTN supporters say, it’ll be in my benefit in the long run but 1) we will still be stuck with longer journeys long-term and 2) leave us stuck in traffic jams for the months it takes for the traffic to apparently “adjust“. When they closed Middle Lane in Crouch End that time for a couple of weeks, I was left unable to get to the pool or to my doctor. Honestly the talk of blanket LTNs and prioritising walking leaves me feeling very anxious and excluded.
My point about cabs was not quite the same as Arkady's though. I'm not suggesting Ubers, for all the reasons you state - I do mean a specialist service for disadvanataged people.
My original point is still my main thrust - the biggest issue is the no longer conscionable selfish right of able-bodied people to carry on each having their own private transport.
We either stick to that journey and into the hell of ecological collapse, or we embrace a new future of sharing that might just avoid that it we're swift.
After the long Xmas break our new coffee shop owners had, might just see you there again one day soon. All the best.
Still, some people are strongly attached to their personal cars for convenience and the status that they imply, bolstered by marketing.
My main concern is that this development might reduce the desirability public transport and so actually slow that process down somewhat. Either way it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
https://www.rethinkx.com/transportation-executive-summary
If you think about it, creating fixed demand in a fixed market always leads to companies charging less, like the trains, and a fleet of cars that can drive and park themselves will be incredibly cheap to insure. Tech companies will also definitely spend billions on development of GPS (with or possibly without Galileo) and then gift it to the UK hoi polloi at a discounted rate.
@Arkady I wonder if this is the same guy who told you that an entrepreneurial former plumber from North London buying a couple of slum properties and turning them into rentable accommodation (actually increasing the supply of available property) and paying tax no less than seven times in the process is solely responsible for the housing crisis?
I found a research document from HolbornFoxX written on the back of a fag packet that says the electricity grid could not cope with the required volume of autonomous electric vehicles (particularly in geographically bigger countries) and there is also no viable plan to recycle the used batteries.
The lobbying power of the petroleum industry also cannot be ignored and the coal industry would still be required to generate enough power, unless we go fully renewable and nuclear of course, which we won’t.
That idiot does not have a degree in Geography though so maybe best to listen to RethinkX, they apparently had their last conference in Dubai, the well known leader in renewable energy.
Half the reason gas engineers charge what they do are the costs of being registered; of course this is presented as greed for the engineer when it is really the greed of the corporation running the ‘Scheme’.
I may have been a tiny bit salty this morning, I normally let the pseudo-intellectual nonsense presented as facts wash over me but today I felt like questioning the ‘facts’ quoted about business to see if they would stand up to scrutiny.
A significant percentage of people who still own cars don't use them for work. Someone posted some stats on that here once, but it's obvious just by looking out of your window. Most people have them because they're convenient for other trips.
Why would driverless cars be run 'as a cartel'? There's competition for cab firms. People have overwhelmingly chosen Uber because of the cost and service, *despite* what the licensing authorities would like. Driverless cars would be cheaper than Uber is at present - because there is no driver to pay. This would further pitch the economic argument away from the need to own your own vehicle, hastening the decline.
You have a habit of presenting oblique and obliquely-evidenced arguments (gas engineers? vaccinations?) while somewhat ironically dismissing the opposing argument as 'pseudo-intellectual' or whatever. What you haven't done is isolated and countered any of the specific arguments and evidence presented in the RethinkX report. Instead you've played the man not the ball and decided to call the CEO an idiot. Baffling. Like the worst aspects of Twitter.
Comments like “Driverless cars would be cheaper than Uber is at present - because there is no driver to pay” prove this fact beyond all doubt.
Also why would a company such as RethinkX need a ‘CEO’? It is just a made up term to add credence to a report that you happen to agree with.
I do run a business and have done for 22 years; you can insult me (or use football analogies if you really want) but it is clear as day that you think you understand how it works while having an incorrect yet sanitised view of the realities.
As an aside (seeing as you are still obviously trying to pseudo me) I brought up Gas Engineers because I used to be one and ran my own business which turned out to be a pretty big deal and is the reason why i still run a different business now.
The accreditation system is ran by CAPITA yet branded as ‘Gas Safe’.
CAPITA literally take the michael with fees as well as stealing customer information from Gas Engineers (who have to register customer details) and marketing to said customers directly or selling the data.
It is massively unfair competition dressed up as a safety scheme ran by one provider (so also known as a cartel), yet is a reality of modern business practice.
The RethinkX ‘report’ is not a report. I write reports for work that are used in both civil and criminal courts and they contain evidence as they have to be credible, believe me when I tell you that the RethinkX report is not credible and the ’CEO’ is an idiot.
I was actually joking about discussing vaccinations as I could think of nothing worse although I would presume that you have ‘done your research’ and have had three jabs from the good eggs at Moderna / Pfizer.
Uber only take a 20-25% fee from the driver. The driver has many more expenses to make a living than just covering the cost of the vehicle, so there's a lot to play for in that remaining 75%, when it comes to reducing end-user costs. Businesses are in competition with each other and this, as a rule, drives down fees. *That's* capitalism.
Your whole licencing body take seems off the mark to me. As I noted above, Uber have massively disrupted the urban taxi market and brought down fees despite the opprobrium of many licensing bodies including TfL. Nor are their licensing fees a significant percentage of the end-user fee.
No CORGI (aka The Dog) were even worse and were stripped of running the register for being so bad.
They immediately stole the entire register of customers and then set about marketing to them directly (while masquerading as an authority) and offering to do servicing and repairs.
They then (and still do) started to sub-contract the work out to existing engineers which they also obviously had full contact details for.
They basically use the cheapest (generally meaning least experienced) engineer and then work up the line until they have a middle ground and unleash them onto the general public.
People like me resisted this change and instead marketed ourselves directly to customers and actually found the likes of CORGI and British Gas useful because customers would think you were a saint if you could actually turn up on time. I was good at repairing boilers as well so was viewed as a saint because when I left people were suddenly warm and could have a shower.
Out of interest I just looked up CORGI on Wikipedia and they state pretty much what I am saying above.
Capita are a different beast to CORGI in many ways. They know that the Civil Servants have no qualms about wasting the public purse and scrutinising contracts is not really an agenda so they tie the client in with ridiculously bad contracts before finding loopholes and clauses to carry out the least amount of wok as possible.
An example of this is the fact they promise to inspect X number of gas engineers every year.
However instead of employing X number of inspectors they just hire a hotel suite for a day and do mass testing, aka filling in a paper questionnaire which is impossible to fail.
As I have mentioned on here before (and was sneered at), licensing schemes in this country only prosecute the law abiding unless an accident happens. It is done by design.
Alas with cheap labour flooding the entire building industry and the MSM egging it on while at the same time labelling British trades-people as lazy and greedy for having the audacity to be able to afford a house I left the entire industry and retrained in law.
You state that I use oblique references? Well maybe that is because they are actually factual as opposed to literally made up by a privately funded think tank and put onto Twitter to suit your narrative?
I was not even going to bother replying to your latest post but after the “studies show” type comment I couldn’t resist having a look to see if your statement about car ownership declining in cities was correct, and it is not.
The graph for London is below, I have also checked for England and it is the same.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/314980/licensed-cars-in-london-england-united-kingdom/
You stated that “Businesses are in competition with each other and this, as a rule, drives down fees. *That's* capitalism."
No, *that’s* schoolboy economics.
Capitalism finds the greatest level of fees that a market will bear and then uses it as a new minimum.
Alternatively the market forces will exceed this level and then row back slightly, creating a new normal before pushing forward again.
This is exactly the same way the government operate when taking away human rights.
An *oblique* reference for you:
If you can get a pint of beer for £2.50 in the three pubs on Seven Sisters Road (which you can) then how come 100 yards away The Swimmers can sell a pint for double at £5.00, how come the market forces do not apply?
You do know that Uber have consistently made Billion Dollar losses?
They have the CAPITAL to do this and as soon as they have decimated the competition they will drive up the prices, alternatively they may have a different end goal such as running the driverless network.
They also use personalised algorithms based on cookies amongst other things so the more you use the service the higher the price gets, simple economic policy and used by all kinds of businesses like airlines.
Let me try again regarding reports, seeing as you write reports as well.
I write reports for work that are used in both civil and criminal high courts, if I exaggerate or lie in said reports I will have a claim on my indemnity insurance at best and could be made bankrupt or imprisoned at worst.
I am around people who wield very strong judicial and political power for much of the time; it is a bit different of a different market to peddling out pretentious cyber-waffle.
I refuse to read that ‘report’ again as it was making my eyes bleed, if you wish to take this as a victory then please do, and do keep sneering while looking out of the window.
DVLA figures show car ownership is falling in London and many other cities:
https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/car-ownership-falls-dramatically-in-urban-areas-as-young-people-shun-vehicles/208584
RAC too -annual registrations dropped for the fourth year in a row in 2020:
https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobility#a12
Lambeth a delightful exception to the national picture: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/13/car-usage-appears-increase-london-borough-low-traffic-neighbourhoods/
Significantly it's been falling as a percentage of households - especially among younger people - since before the total numbers started dropping off.
I'm not sure you can be serious about the pub point. You still haven't explained why taxis minus the driver, who accounts for 75% of the fee, wouldn't be cheaper. Uber are in a unique position at the moment, but they won't have an effective monopoly forever (even if they *have* started turning a profit, as of last year). The monopoly will decline as soon as they put the price up and others can compete.