On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 10:01:19 +0000 (UTC), "Cast_Iron"
wrote:

If I'm going to town I usually use the bus although its a
bit rough with the being thrown around in it or use the
m/cycle if I am in a hurry. It does make me laugh watching
peole get more and more p!ssed off with each other becuae
they are stuck in queues.

I was visiting someone in London one day and made some comment about the
traffic congestion (this was long before Congestion Charging or even the
position of Mayor was thought of). The person I was tallking to agreed that
it was bad. When I suggested that if one was to say to all those people
stuck in traffic jams that "They could make a useful contribution by not
using their car" they would probably consider you to be mad. The expression
on the other persons face was a picture, the penny had suddenly dropped.

Exactly. The congestion does need to come down. I think in London its
not too bad a thing having the CC, but they have the advantage of a
quite good PT capacity compared to other areas.

Round here the council decided that the best way to reduce traffic
round the city center was to constrict ring road to reduce the number
of lanes. It was a disaster the result was that buses are now stuck in
congestion and have to take paths that are not part of their route and
occasionally skip stops. The council even started re-arranging the
hunctions to improve traffic flow. The problem is that the ring road
is the main way of getting across from one side of town to another.
Rather than narrow it, they sould have improved it to alow flow from
one side of the city to another. It looks like this is what they are
trying to do. Unfortunatly the bus service is only good if you want to
go where the buses run and its very expensive. If you are going as a
family is considerably cheaper [1] to go by car and pay the parking
fees, which is wrong. It should be cheaper to encourage use.

[1] It would cost us about 40p in fuel (say at usual company milage
rates about 2 quid to 2.50 in total) or by bus about 7 quid, which is
only marginally less than a taxi both ways.
--
This post does not reflect the opinions of all saggy cloth
cats be they a bit loose at the seams or not
GSX600F - Matilda the (now) two eared teapot, complete with
white gaffer tape, though no rectal chainsaw