In message , at
13:41:05 on Tue, 15 Feb 2005, Dan Gravell
remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
The number of people in the car is irrelevant. Although one could
easily make a case that the people who have had bad experiences of
public transport are much more likely to be single travellers who
therefore end up one-per-car.

It's indicative of the unsuitability of private motor vehicles for
urban environments, or specifically London.

Quite the reverse. The people whose lifestyle appears to dictate that
they are unwilling to be held ransom by the vagaries of public
transport, are much more likely to make singleton journeys. They don't
ant to be held ransom to car-sharing either.

The amount of space occupied by a small number of travellers is
discussed in another branch of this thread.

Being stranded, missing meetings, failure of public transport to
deliver on its timetable...

Given that the worst, most unreliable and slowest form of public
transport in London, the bus, is bound by exactly the same
infrastructure as the car (in fact, slightly better given bus lanes)
quite how so many people would come to the conclusion that their car is
better despite the roads being full to bursting already is beyond me.

Because many of them have travelled from far enough away that a train is
the alternative. And having been stranded, and missed an important
meeting, once too often, revert to the car.

Perhaps they don't care for logic. Perhaps they all have complex
journeys that would take four bus rides. Perhaps they don't give a toss
about other people using buses who do have a brain cell. I dunno. But
what I do know is that I still don't understand how people come to the
solution of the car, given that it's clearly no better anyway.

Because it's door to door, and runs when they want it to - not on some
mythical once-every-15-minutes that tuns out to involve half an hour
waits in the rain once too often.

Yes, there are a lot of people in the suburbs who drive to the shops
and back. I'm sure they weren't counted in the survey, which was
about long distance commuting to jobs in Central London.

The thing is that a lot of what I perceive isn't in central London. The
congestion charge thankfully go rid of a lot of that. What I see is car
usage in the suburbs, zones 2-3 etc, where the congestion charge should
be extended to.

Is that on the trunk routes that most of the commuters are using?

People actually drive long distances into central London?

What's "long"? There are very large numbers who drive more than 50
miles.
--
Roland Perry