Disclaimer: The ranting below includes large quantities of foreign gramathics. Reader discretion is adviced.
Originally posted by Guigsy
vOn, speeding does cost lives. The stopping distance at 35mph is a lot further than 30mph (not just 1/6th further). That 5mph can also double the death rate (or something similar).
It's almost always around 6 metres or 21 feet for 1.5 tonne car. But I'm not questioning deadly effects of speeding or that speeding cost lives.
What I do question is whether most of the cameras are indeed put in places to protect people. Take the Limehouse Link once again as example - how putting super-duper digital cameras around 4 lane underground highway and restricting the speed to 30 mph is saving lives? No pedestrians, vagabonds, neither mopeds nor bicycles are allowed in the tunnel, so I don't understand who’s life are we saving by clogging the only way in and out of the Embankment and Canary Wharf. The priority should be to empty the city as quickly as possible in rush hours. All the cameras around Highway, Wapping and Tower Hill are placed in the areas where pavements are separated from the street by iron fences. However, down the Embankment and Victoria Embankment where there is a true risk of confused tourist jumping from illegally parked left hand drive busses and drunks parade from bar to bar there is not a single camera for miles. Same county, same council. Yet, in the area fenced like a Top Gear test track speeding is bad, but in highly crowded areas of sustained risk you can as well do some bonnet bowling with German kids and Japanese photographers?
I am anti speed, I am pro safety. I am hoever, against sponsoring councils of retards that can't assess risks and set their priorities correctly.
If you're approaching a set of lights, you should be prepared to slow down. What if they were red already? It's probably why they're there.
It's pedestrian crossing round the corner on slight slope. The more I look at it the more I’m convinced it was intentionally put there, just round the turn so you don't see it. no one ever wonders around there, the light goes red automatically at random times, I see it on at 5 a.m. and no soul anywhere in miles. There is a proper crossing for tourists, closer to the attractions, 15 meters away, clearly marked and visible. I travel that road twice a day and I see that flash going off few times a week. And believe me, 90% of times it is a choice between running empty pedestrian crossing on red or having bus full of tourists plow through your tailgate. Again,
I'm not against red light cameras, but unless they are on big crossings, where you can stop the car behind the line they should also check whether there was pedestrian to cross the road or not. Not so difficult, if it can sense the car going by, it can sense whether the button was actually pushed or not. If there was no pedestrians and no risk, then the
driver should be sent a written warning. Should you get 3 warnings in a year then the points would be deducted, you clearly behave like a Roadrunner. But otherwise I see no reason for whooping 3 points, an offence and wreck someone's insurance quotes because he just saved lives of his family on the back seat.
Funny thing about penalties - did you know that if it happened to me, a foreigner and I challenged this situation and, God save me, loose (and I would, cause I would have no evidence) there would be £6000 court order for challenging? Convenient - pay the fine, even if you know it wasn't right, or risk 6 grand on your head. What to choose, what do we choose?
Clearly this thing is getting out of hand. I call for governmental
watchdog. To control where to put cameras, how to install them and configure. If there countermeasures already in place, don’t waste peoples time. And most of all run statistics.
If there is a place that generates vast number of first time offenders every week, there is something wrong with place not the drivers.
Who said buses are slower in London? I thought they were now having to adjust all the time tables because they have to wait around too much. I don't think there are many people that work in the city that hate the congestion charge. Why are they turning it against you? In what way? Blame the idiots that don't know how to drive. That's why we need all this enforcement.
I live in so called zone 2, not too far from the my work - about 7, maybe 8 miles. It takes me 35-40 minutes to get to the City by DLR and tube. I tried bus during Central Line failure in April and May. 3 miles from Bank to Holborn took anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes. After few days I just walked, took 15 minutes on average. But that sounds about right, official reports said the cars are traveling about 1 mile an hour faster since CC introduction and the average speed increased from 9 to 10 miles per hour. Ergo, the buses in congestion charge are still ineffective, too slow to consider them a reasonable transportation.
But the story starts elsewhere.
First, you have to answer yourself who benefits from the Congestion Charge? Commuters? No, the trains are now more packed and their tickets aren’t any cheaper, in fact they are about to go up again. Traffic? No, read the above, less cars, but cars weren’t causing traffic, more about the numbers later. Environment? No, because what’s left on the road is much dirtier and smelly than what’s out. So, who does benefit out of this scheme? Transport For London and cabs.
Now, my point of view. It costs me £4 every day to get to work and back. Two way ticket. To travel 16 miles a day. My car would have to burn 20 litres of fuel to average £4 per 16 miles. Clearly it would be cheaper for me to get to the city by car. And it would be more convenient, as I wouldn’t have to change the trains. I took night shifts for the time being and drive to work after 7pm. Couldn’t be more happy. I don’t have to sniff someone’s armpits on Central Line, I don’t have to walk a mile to station. No cancelled trains, no broken ticket machines. Even if Germans abandon their busses on London Bridge approach again and traffic moves only 10 miles per hour on average I can just about make it in time comparable to the underground. I can not see any advantage for me, or my family to take the tube or bus.
But let’s look at the whole issue from yet another perspective:
They say since they got rid of personal cars from CC zone traffic dropped by 40%. That’s the figure Ken repeats most often. In reality it’s UP TO 40% of what it used to be, in reality in peak hours traffic is down by slightly less than 20%. It means, clearly, that 80% of all traffic was always caused by busses and taxis. Here’s an idea:
IN PEAK hours between 7:30am and 10:30am and from 2:30pm till 6:30pm
- Let private cars back to the city, all of them except vans. Diesel Vans would have to pay £5 congestion charge and petrol vans up to 2.0l £3 charge. That will stop firms running white van with every baguette all around the city.
- Busses on most routes are half empty and follow each other – make every other bus a small city cruiser, like the ones they use for City Airport, 30 seater, instead of double deckers
- Order busses to stick to bus lanes, basically reverse the bus lane scheme – busses will have only each other to overtake; they can’t enter areas outside bus lanes otherwise. However, to help public transport cabs will be banned from bus lanes. At the end of bus lanes and in-between them we’ll make them a shared zone of some description to get them safely to the next red lane.
- Introduce daily license and by force spread cabs across the city, evenly, using congestion charge scheme – those who refuse to work in controlled shifts or stick to their own areas and want to work in the city will have to pay £50 per day to the TFL. Finally poeple will be able to find cab on Finsbury Park and a space without a parked cab in Kings Cross. Who knows maybe even I will be able to take cab to supermarket down the road without cabby going “I’m not loosing my queue for 2 quid mate”.
- Introduce City Parkings, £4 per day, one carnet allows you to park anywhere in City. Do that instead of meters, build multilevel parking between buildings, convert basements to underground parking.
- Introduce land tax discounts for offices with own parkings.
How will that benefit London? Less double-deckers and less cabs will be cleaner for the city, they cause more pollution than all the petrol traffic altogether. There will be less busses illegally parked alongside river and city attractions, as daily parking for the buses that move around city on tour will finally cost less than accidental on the spot fine. Cheaper commuting will move money and investment back to London. The subsidised City Parking scheme will be easier to control than cameras and CC which, for the time being is making loss instead of profit if press is correct. Since cabs will have to stick to high need areas (train stations and coach arrivals) less black cabs cruising streets at low speed in search for McDonalds and yuppies will make traffic faster. Lack of them on bus lanes will make buses faster and more effective. Cab and what’s left of parking money will sponsor Underground, so Ken can cut fares by half, so it makes sense to take a tube instead of car, and it doesn’t cost more than daily minimum wage to get to part time work.
Why do that? Because there is no reason to penalise commuters or anyone else for your or your predecessors underachievements. Because personal cars are good for people that drive them. Because not everything has to make money in short run. Underground is on red? You don’t want to privatise it? Then just agree to losses. In the long run, the tube will bring people to work in London and you will charge them taxes, and their employers will pay taxes, and on their lunch break they will eat sandwiches from shops taxed by councils. Because councils make money on the local taxes, don't they? But what they have to always remember – is that
they work for people that elected them. Not for the buses. Not for the photo developement people. Major and councils are not to make our life more difficult, not make our daily existence more expensive but to make it easier and better. It is mine, the citizens, the taxpayer's, my good, my convenience, and my comfort above any public company, union or strike. Me. The elector. Ich. <--. Moi. And once they get the priorities straight it will be soon before they realise – who gives a monkey hairy googles about Transport For London. If they can’t make money, make it competitive market, someone will.
Instead, if we let the bonkers continue treating motorized commuters like evil spawn we all know by 2005 Congestion Charge will be still making losses but at the time it will be across entire London and any city with more than 500,000 people.
If you think about it, just 20 years ago, your hippy dad would drive his VW Beetle to work, smoke in the office, park for free dowstairs, switch the telly to national channel in order to see England kicking three letters in World Cup. Today, for you, none of these things are allowed for free. And now they will tell you how they want to you to get to work.
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You up for round 3?