'No more war on the motorist'

thelawnet

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... orist.html

"On Monday Transport Secretary Philip Hammond will announce the M4 bus lane will be suspended.

Nothing is more symbolic of Labour’s war on the motorist,’ he said.

It will return for the 2012 Olympic Games, after which it will be scrapped permanently."

"The M4 bus lane which runs for 3.5 miles London-bound from close to Heathrow, has infuriated millions of motorists as it usually sits unused while they fume in traffic jams"

The point of course of the bus lane was that the M4 narrows from 3 lanes to 2 going into London, so they keep it with the third lane the bus lane. Whatever way you do it, you are going to have long delays at peak times as 3 doesn't go into 2 very well, so they made the bus lane so that at least buses and motorbikes (although also taxis, stupidly) would not have to wait, and cars have a steady 2 lanes.

Have we really had a 'war on the motorist'? As far as I can tell the motorist is at war with us, while no motorists have been killed as a result of this 'war', motorists kill people, usually entirely avoidably, on a daily basis, and the general policy is to appease the aggressor rather than making any attempt to curtail its violent power.

I guess we'd best not expect any better cycle provision under this government....

cee

thelawnet wrote:

so they made the bus lane so that at least buses and motorbikes (although also taxis, stupidly)

Not stupid.....taxis in the bus lane is fine as they serve more passenger mile a day than any other vehicle of their size.

Say one taxi takes just 10 people to work.

thats up to 10 cars not in the city centre because of 1 taxi.

so make it faster to use a taxi than a private car...and fewer people take their cars. simple.

electric_blue

Well now there are no options for getting to Heathrow quickly unless you use the extortionate Heathrow Express from Victoria which won;t be ideal for everyone.

good old tories - futile gestures are us!!

Will Snow

thelawnet wrote:

Have we really had a 'war on the motorist'? As far as I can tell the motorist is at war with us, while no motorists have been killed as a result of this 'war', motorists kill people, usually entirely avoidably, on a daily basis, and the general policy is to appease the aggressor rather than making any attempt to curtail its violent power.
.

You. Are. Cycling. To. Work. Get some perspective

cee

electric_blue wrote:

Well now there are no options for getting to Heathrow quickly unless you use the extortionate Heathrow Express from Victoria which won;t be ideal for everyone.

good old tories - futile gestures are us!!

you mean paddington?

electric_blue

cee wrote:

electric_blue wrote:

Well now there are no options for getting to Heathrow quickly unless you use the extortionate Heathrow Express from Victoria which won;t be ideal for everyone.

good old tories - futile gestures are us!!

you mean paddington?

I might be mixing it up with the Gatwick Express then

rjsterry

Just your average hyperbolic cheap dig at the opposition party, and worthy of no further consideration. We've discussed whether there was a 'war' on motorists (I don't drive myself, but Mrs RJS does, and I fund our car, by the way) some months back and it all went a bit helmet/hybrid/RLJ, so let's not go there again.

Philip Hammond has demonstrated on many previous occasions his willingness to jump for the Daily Mail headline rather than do something useful, so this is just par for the course.

kelsen

electric_blue wrote:

Well now there are no options for getting to Heathrow quickly unless you use the extortionate Heathrow Express from Victoria which won;t be ideal for everyone.

good old tories - futile gestures are us!!

Actually, there's a Heathrow Connect service which departs from Paddington and arrives at Terminal 1&2. It's every half hour and journey time is ~25mins. Fares are half the price of the Heathrow Express.

I have no idea why it isn't more publicized. Maybe to keep the prices of the HEX grossly inflated!

http://www.londontoolkit.com/travel/hea ... _train.htm

redhanded

Opportunistic populism...

The bottleneck on the eastbound M4 is the 2 lanes on the Brentford flyover and it doesn't matter if there are 3 lanes, or 30 lanes leading up to it as you aren't going to get more traffic through this bit of road.

The "bus lane" is probably more important for traffic engineering as it gets cars into 2 lanes about a mile before the flyover so smooths the flow of traffic onto the flyover.

With 3 lanes open to everyone, you'll just get drivers charging down the outside lane and trying to squeeze in at the last point before the flyover, other drivers will refuse to let them in, tempers will fray and there will still be jams. Lovely.

thelawnet

cee wrote:

thelawnet wrote:

so they made the bus lane so that at least buses and motorbikes (although also taxis, stupidly)

Not stupid.....taxis in the bus lane is fine as they serve more passenger mile a day than any other vehicle of their size.

Say one taxi takes just 10 people to work.

thats up to 10 cars not in the city centre because of 1 taxi.

so make it faster to use a taxi than a private car...and fewer people take their cars. simple.

It's not quite so simple. A taxi usually has ONE person in it. Not 10. And they spend the whole day clogging up the streets, whereas the last time I used the M4 London-bound my car had 3 people in it, I drove to my destination, parked off-road, went about my business and then drove home some hours. I certainly didn't spend my day driving round clogging up the streets looking for fares.

jamesco

kelsen wrote:

electric_blue wrote:

Actually, there's a Heathrow Connect service which departs from Paddington and arrives at Terminal 1&2. It's every half hour and journey time is ~25mins. Fares are half the price of the Heathrow Express.

I have no idea why it isn't more publicized. Maybe to keep the prices of the HEX grossly inflated!

http://www.londontoolkit.com/travel/hea ... _train.htm

+1 to this. It takes 30 minutes to Paddington (as opposed to 15) but usefully stops at Ealing and other places for half the price. Lovely train, why on earth is it kept a secret?

thelawnet

Will Snow wrote:

thelawnet wrote:

Have we really had a 'war on the motorist'? As far as I can tell the motorist is at war with us, while no motorists have been killed as a result of this 'war', motorists kill people, usually entirely avoidably, on a daily basis, and the general policy is to appease the aggressor rather than making any attempt to curtail its violent power.
.

You. Are. Cycling. To. Work. Get some perspective

So you assume.

Here's perspective for you:

http://www.impacts.org/intercontconfere ... tation.pdf

Page 5:

Cycling 1.6% share in London. The target is 5% in 20 years time. Groningen does 60% right now.

Kieran_Burns

Groningen (Gronings: Grunnen, West Frisian: Grins) is the capital city and municipality of the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a population of around 188,000, it is by far the largest city in the north of the Netherlands. Groningen is a university city, inhabited on average by about 50,000 students


London population 11-12 Million

60% of 180,000 = 108,000
1.6% of 12,000,000 = 192,000 (5% = 600,000)

Slightly different perspectives when you consider the massively different places you are trying to compare.

ooermissus

electric_blue wrote:

Well now there are no options for getting to Heathrow quickly unless you use the extortionate Heathrow Express from Victoria which won;t be ideal for everyone.

I travel a lot and Heathrow is unusual in that it now has so many options to get into its adjoining capital city - Heathrow Express, Connect as others have pointed out, and the Tube - 33 mins to Piccadilly Circus for £2.40 off peak, £4.20 peak.

The problem with Heathrow is public transport links from outside London - though Crossrail should fix that (depending on what exactly they end up building).

mroli

You can also get the Picadilly Line to Heathrow.

And the bus lane is only coming into London, not going out so won't help you with getting TO Heathrow.

tgotb

redhanded wrote:

Opportunistic populism...

The bottleneck on the eastbound M4 is the 2 lanes on the Brentford flyover and it doesn't matter if there are 3 lanes, or 30 lanes leading up to it as you aren't going to get more traffic through this bit of road.

The "bus lane" is probably more important for traffic engineering as it gets cars into 2 lanes about a mile before the flyover so smooths the flow of traffic onto the flyover.

With 3 lanes open to everyone, you'll just get drivers charging down the outside lane and trying to squeeze in at the last point before the flyover, other drivers will refuse to let them in, tempers will fray and there will still be jams. Lovely.

I disagree.

Before the bus lane was put in, you used to be able to drive at 60-70, all the way to the flyover. When you got there you'd slow to ~40, with a slower bit at the merge point.

When the bus lane was put in, you had to slow to ~40 at the beginning of the bus lane; the merging problem was exactly the same, it just happened in a different place. Typical journey times (for cars) increased.

The bus lane does nothing to change the dynamics, it just moves the problem elsewhere. The proportion of taxis/buses/politicians in the traffic is sufficiently low as to make the "pre-segregation" irrelevant.

cee

thelawnet wrote:

cee wrote:

thelawnet wrote:

so they made the bus lane so that at least buses and motorbikes (although also taxis, stupidly)

Not stupid.....taxis in the bus lane is fine as they serve more passenger mile a day than any other vehicle of their size.

Say one taxi takes just 10 people to work.

thats up to 10 cars not in the city centre because of 1 taxi.

so make it faster to use a taxi than a private car...and fewer people take their cars. simple.

It's not quite so simple. A taxi usually has ONE person in it. Not 10. And they spend the whole day clogging up the streets, whereas the last time I used the M4 London-bound my car had 3 people in it, I drove to my destination, parked off-road, went about my business and then drove home some hours. I certainly didn't spend my day driving round clogging up the streets looking for fares.

Either you are joking or are seriously misguided here.....

How many people use one taxi on an average day in london (8am-6pm)? 100? 500? 1000?

Taxi's don't exactly have to spend long 'looking for a fare' if at all. Radio to a call centre and fancy gizmo's to book work over the phone! So a taxi drops off a fare....and in the daytime, will pick up again within 5-10 minutes!

It wouldn't be a very sucessful business if the spent more time finding passengers than actually transporting them!

It really is that simple. Taxi's reduce congestion. Not increase it. And remember....the council is responsible for setting the number of taxi's on the road (in licensing them).....so their numbers are fairly consistant.....whereas....on a rainy day for example...the number of private cars on the road increases massively....

tgotb

jamesco wrote:

kelsen wrote:

electric_blue wrote:

Actually, there's a Heathrow Connect service which departs from Paddington and arrives at Terminal 1&2. It's every half hour and journey time is ~25mins. Fares are half the price of the Heathrow Express.

I have no idea why it isn't more publicized. Maybe to keep the prices of the HEX grossly inflated!

http://www.londontoolkit.com/travel/hea ... _train.htm

+1 to this. It takes 30 minutes to Paddington (as opposed to 15) but usefully stops at Ealing and other places for half the price. Lovely train, why on earth is it kept a secret?

Anyone know whether you can take bikes on Heathrow Connect? This is a possible strategy fo me to get from office to evening races at Hillingdon next Summer; anything to avoid riding 20 miles in traffic on a TT bike...

thelawnet

Kieran_Burns wrote:

Groningen (Gronings: Grunnen, West Frisian: Grins) is the capital city and municipality of the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a population of around 188,000, it is by far the largest city in the north of the Netherlands. Groningen is a university city, inhabited on average by about 50,000 students


London population 11-12 Million

60% of 180,000 = 108,000
1.6% of 12,000,000 = 192,000 (5% = 600,000)

Slightly different perspectives when you consider the massively different places you are trying to compare.

Well it's not like it's hard to find places that do much, much better than London, Groningen is just one example, you could try Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, plenty of others.

Multiplying % by numbers is just nonsense btw, it doesn't show anything, differences in population profile and journey length are relevant of course, but not absolute numbers; but you can't derive journey length (which, almost anywhere in the world, is in most cases < 2 miles) from population size.

electric_blue

mroli wrote:

You can also get the Picadilly Line to Heathrow.

I said quickly


point taken about the direction though - didn't know that - clearly the correct thing to do then would be to open a similar bus lane int he other direction.

asprilla

What has cycling got to do with the M4 bus lane? We aren't even allowed on there.

ooermissus

electric_blue wrote:

mroli wrote:

You can also get the Picadilly Line to Heathrow.

I said quickly

33 minutes to Piccadilly Circus is quick - try doing that in a black cab.

solsurf

what a great piece of road, for my sins I broke down on that stretch of road three years ago, not one of the best days I've had. All of that combined help me make up my mind to move from Staines to Staveley.

Anyway off for a ride now, yippeee

electric_blue

ooermissus wrote:

electric_blue wrote:

mroli wrote:

You can also get the Picadilly Line to Heathrow.

I said quickly

33 minutes to Piccadilly Circus is quick - try doing that in a black cab.

I only ever used the Picc Line to get to Heathrow once and it took a lot longer than 33 minutes. And that doesn;t include the bus replacement service which we ended up having to use to finally get to Heathrow.

Usually takes more than 33 minutes just travelling from Holborn to Acton.

It's s.l.o.w. - don;t believe LU's propaganda, er I mean, timetables.

jamesco

TGOTB wrote:

Anyone know whether you can take bikes on Heathrow Connect? This is a possible strategy fo me to get from office to evening races at Hillingdon next Summer; anything to avoid riding 20 miles in traffic on a TT bike...

Oddly, they don't specify this on their website. However, here it states the usual - outside peak times a normal bike can get on and anytime for folding bikes.

My girlfriend takes her folder on it and has never been told off.

dawebbo

You really haven't thought your taxi point through...

Taxis only reduce congestion if they reduce the number of journeys. ie. people share a taxi. 100 fares with 1 passenger each time is the same as the 100 people driving themselves (setting off at the equivalent time that the taxi would have picked them up) - but the taxi is also on the road between fares, whereas the private cars are parked somewhere not adding to the congestion.

Harveytile

Asprilla wrote:

What has cycling got to do with the M4 bus lane? We aren't even allowed on there.

+1. :roll:

thelawnet

TGOTB wrote:

redhanded wrote:

Opportunistic populism...

The bottleneck on the eastbound M4 is the 2 lanes on the Brentford flyover and it doesn't matter if there are 3 lanes, or 30 lanes leading up to it as you aren't going to get more traffic through this bit of road.

The "bus lane" is probably more important for traffic engineering as it gets cars into 2 lanes about a mile before the flyover so smooths the flow of traffic onto the flyover.

With 3 lanes open to everyone, you'll just get drivers charging down the outside lane and trying to squeeze in at the last point before the flyover, other drivers will refuse to let them in, tempers will fray and there will still be jams. Lovely.

I disagree.

Before the bus lane was put in, you used to be able to drive at 60-70, all the way to the flyover. When you got there you'd slow to ~40, with a slower bit at the merge point.

When the bus lane was put in, you had to slow to ~40 at the beginning of the bus lane; the merging problem was exactly the same, it just happened in a different place. Typical journey times (for cars) increased.

The bus lane does nothing to change the dynamics, it just moves the problem elsewhere.

So you say.

This road expert would disagree with you: http://www.cbrd.co.uk/indepth/m4buslane/

In case you've missed the point from the picture, you have:

Lane 1, Lane 2, Lane 3, prior to J3
then coming up to J3 exit:
Exit Lane, Lane 1, Lane 2

I.e. there are still effectively 3 lanes for all traffic - much of the traffic leaves at J3, and the new traffic entering at the J3 on-ramp (a little bit further down the road) is joining into a two lane motorway.

So it's simply not true that you have the same merging problem, you actuall reduce the merging problem by performing it at a point where the traffic is reduced - between the exit and the entrance for J3.

You claim that merging the traffic at a point of reduced flow, albeit a mile or two earlier, is less efficient than leaving it till the last possible moment. I suggest that's far from clear.

The proportion of taxis/buses/politicians in the traffic is sufficiently low as to make the "pre-segregation" irrelevant.

Well yes, that's the point. If there were too many buses/taxis/motorbikes, the third lane would be just as busy as the other two. The point is that the bottleneck exists, and they sought to move it back. Rather than simply blocking off the lane, they were able to give a small number of vehicles a smoother journey without disrupting the bulk of the traffic.

thelawnet

electric_blue wrote:

mroli wrote:

You can also get the Picadilly Line to Heathrow.

I said quickly


point taken about the direction though - didn't know that - clearly the correct thing to do then would be to open a similar bus lane int he other direction.

Well no, because the only reason they did it was to better manage the merge from 3 lanes to 2. Going the other way it's the opposite, 2 into 3, which clearly presents no bottleneck at all.

greg66_tri_v2.0

thelawnet wrote:

This road expert

"Expert"? Loose use of that word, IMO: http://www.cbrd.co.uk/about/

As to the rest of it, well, it's always nice to hear (a) a person's real life experience contradicted by (b) someone else regurgitating what another person has scribbled on the internet about what should happen.

Genius.

thelawnet

cee wrote:

thelawnet wrote:

cee wrote:

thelawnet wrote:

so they made the bus lane so that at least buses and motorbikes (although also taxis, stupidly)

Not stupid.....taxis in the bus lane is fine as they serve more passenger mile a day than any other vehicle of their size.

Say one taxi takes just 10 people to work.

thats up to 10 cars not in the city centre because of 1 taxi.

so make it faster to use a taxi than a private car...and fewer people take their cars. simple.

It's not quite so simple. A taxi usually has ONE person in it. Not 10. And they spend the whole day clogging up the streets, whereas the last time I used the M4 London-bound my car had 3 people in it, I drove to my destination, parked off-road, went about my business and then drove home some hours. I certainly didn't spend my day driving round clogging up the streets looking for fares.

Either you are joking or are seriously misguided here.....

How many people use one taxi on an average day in london (8am-6pm)? 100? 500? 1000?

No idea, but how many of those people would use alternative means (tube, bicycle, walking, etc), if taxis were less convenient.

Just because taxis are used doesn't prove that they are reducing congestion.

I've used taxis in central London (not often admittedly, as I don't like them), the idea that otherwise I would have driven into London, or perhaps taken the car on the train to work with me, is just ridiculous.

Taxis are given excess privileges that incentivise their use and increase demand. Got to get to a meeting across town? Most people will jump in a cab. Why don't they get the tube, which is relatively empty outside of rush hour? Because taxis are excessively convenient/privileged.