Boris waxes lyrical in the Guardian.
"When Cameron's Conservatives come to power it will be a golden age for cyclists and an Elysium of cycle lanes, bike racks, and sharia law for bike thieves. And I hope that cycling in London will become almost Chinese in its ubiquity."
I long for a government that would take cyclng seriously, the health benefits, a fitter population, less pollution and congestion and a safer environment. Alas, this of course is just more humorous hyperbole from the Tory one. Sadly, more roads, more congestion and more self interested rich gits running the country is the only thing we can expect from the Tories.
More roads = more reasons to vote Tory.
ReplyDeleteHow very 'environmental' of you. Is 'more roads' what the Tories mean by 'more green' policies? Isn't that just lying?
ReplyDeleteHave you ever thought when selfishly sitting in a traffic jam polluting the world, we could have all got to work quicker and cheaper, if we had paid more tax, funded public transport properly and caught the bus?
The problem is not too few roads. The problem is 23m cars rising to 40m in the next 20 years. ther is just not the space for them all.
ReplyDeleteMost congestion is in urban areas where there is no space for more roads. An extra motorway here and there, alongside the M6 etc, might temporarily alleviate some congestion but it won't help get into the centre of Birmingham or to the football match (and building these out of town retail car parks is the worst, it can take hours to get out of them and they are totally inaccessible by public transport).
They have got all the space and 7 lane roads everywhere in California, yet it didn't stop me being in a traffic jam for 3 hours trying to get 30 miles to LA airport.
I've seen what an even more car dominated society is like in California, and it is slower, dirtier, more alienating, isolating communities more, more inefficient and more energy consuming. Try getting about in California without a car.
I went to a football match over there and it took me 2 hours to get off the carpark. All around the stadium, the carpark stretched as far as the eye could see, there were even buses bringing people from one end of it to the stadium! It was absurd.
Cars are a blight. It will require legislation to make them go away. But such legislation will be VERY unpopular. What you HAVE to do is to make it better, sexier, easier, a lot cheaper to take Public Transport than it is now. One place in Norway actually made P.T. free....another funded it from property tax...EVERY taxpayer gets a bus pass every month. This made the bus passes very affordable. So you see...there ARE ways. (Of course there were people who sold them to their friends..a sort of mini black market, but they got used didn't they!?)
ReplyDeleteI suggest you cycle, don't walk to the Sustrans supporters page and pay up.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sustrans.org/default.asp?sID=1091003559498
Around 10000miles of cycle paths and quiet roads and they've a major plan for improving Londons cycling for the olympics.
"When Cameron's Conservatives come to power it will be a golden age for cyclists and an Elysium of cycle lanes, bike racks, and sharia law for bike thieves. And I hope that cycling in London will become almost Chinese in its ubiquity."
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Its moments like these that I am reminded why I like Boris Johnson, but at the same time am glad the Tories are not in power ;)
it didn't stop me being in a traffic jam for 3 hours trying to get 30 miles to LA airport.
ReplyDeleteAirport? You took a plane? Some environmentalist. We Tories travel everywhere by solar-powered airship.