In article ,
(Basil Jet) wrote:

On 2014\05\12 20:46, wrote:
In article ,
(David Walters) wrote:


http://www.standard.co.uk/news/trans...r-22mile-ringr
oad-tunnel-under-london-9354896.html

Plans to transform central London with a 22-mile-long
underground ring road can be revealed today.

Costing £30 billion to construct, it would remove tens of
thousands of cars from the crowded streets above.

What a hare-brained idea! What would the portals do to their localities
and why would it divert anything from the streets in central London?

This looks like 1960s car insanity to me, likely to generate a lot more
traffic.

It'll reduce jams on the M25 though! ;-)

Initially maybe but it would grow total traffic and jams would return very
soon. Did they learn nothing in the 1960s and 70s?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

I can guess what lessons you've drawn from the past, but whether they're
valid is questionable.

The 1960s and '70s was a period of increasing prosperity in which more and
more people found that they could afford to buy their own vehicle and move
about freely. It was also a period in which successive Governments tried to
reduce London's population. For example: Milton Keynes. Since 1979, our
country has experienced continuously falling prosperity and today a much
smaller percentage of working people have well-paid jobs than was the case
in the '60s and '70s. The population of London has grown enormously and no
longer is any attempt made by politicians to move people to new towns. The
inevitable and entirely predictable result is that London's population has far
outgrown the infrastructure.

The growth in car-ownership has stalled partly as a result of low incomes,
partly because the roads no longer function properly and partly because
young people cannot afford car insurance. There is no reason to assume that
increasing road capacity would lead to a substantial increase in car travel.

It should always be borne in mind that in the '60s and '70s car ownership
increased in general, including in parts of the country where the roads were
not improved. There is no reliable, incontestable evidence that car ownership
increased merely because roads were improved.

On 13/05/2014 08:45, wrote:
In article ,
(Basil Jet) wrote:

On 2014\05\12 20:46, wrote:
In article ,
(David Walters) wrote:


http://www.standard.co.uk/news/trans...r-22mile-ringr
oad-tunnel-under-london-9354896.html

Plans to transform central London with a 22-mile-long
underground ring road can be revealed today.

Costing £30 billion to construct, it would remove tens of
thousands of cars from the crowded streets above.

What a hare-brained idea! What would the portals do to their localities
and why would it divert anything from the streets in central London?

This looks like 1960s car insanity to me, likely to generate a lot more
traffic.

It'll reduce jams on the M25 though! ;-)

Initially maybe but it would grow total traffic and jams would return very
soon. Did they learn nothing in the 1960s and 70s?

What was that "lesson"?

That traffic only flows freely when it has zero road space allocated to it?