On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 01:06:41 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:

Terry Harper wrote:

It may not solve M25 congestion, but it would allow individuals to
avoid it by encouraging park and ride.

Park and ride to where? If to central London, then those individuals
won't use the M25 for the greater part of their journey. The M25 has
encouraged a whole host of local and medium distance orbital journeys
which are extremely difficult to address with public transport.

A large part of then M25 traffic is transferring from one motorway to
another. It draws traffic out from the inner area, and in from the
outer sector, simply because there are no better alternatives. I went
to a family funeral in Sunbury on Tuesday, and my route took me via
the M23, then M25 and then M3. Before the M25 I would probably have
gone A272, A24, A244 then A3 to the Scilly lsles, then via Hampton
Court bridge, or else over Walton bridge from Esher. Both shorter
routes, but much more congested and taking considerably longer.

People heading in towards London are frequently looking for somewhere
to leave their cars and continue by public transport, as many threads
on this board will testify. Depending on their ultimate destination,
they may well use the M25 to get to another motorway, which is a
better approach to that place than is ploughing through the centre. In
other cases, they would like a railway line which gets them to their
destination. Only Thameslink offers a cross-London route for this
purpose, ignoring the West London Line as being orbital.
--
Terry Harper
Website Coordinator, The Omnibus Society
http://www.omnibussoc.org