| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Behemoth |
Ruth Kelly opens first Motorway car share laneThursday 20 March 2008 06:00Department for Transport (National) Ruth Kelly opens first Motorway car share lane The UK's first motorway car share lane was opened today by Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, giving drivers a new opportunity to cut both their journey times and carbon footprints. The 1.7-mile lane, built by the Highways Agency, links the southbound M606 near Bradford to the eastbound M62 towards Leeds. It is open to cars and taxis with two or more occupants, as well as buses and coaches, and bypasses the notoriously congested section where the two motorways merge. The new lane will save road users an average of six to eight minutes per journey - 30-40 minutes per week for regular commuters. Ruth Kelly said: "This new lane offers motorists the opportunity to reduce both their journey times and their carbon footprints. Currently, four out of five vehicles using this busy junction have only one occupant. I hope this new lane will encourage people to share their journeys, which will ease congestion, cut journey times and improve local air quality. "The Government is committed to finding innovative ways to get more from our existing roads and improving journeys for motorists. We have identified around 500 miles of motorway as potential priority sites for new traffic management measures, which may also include more car share lanes." The lane will allow vehicles on the M606 to bypass congestion at J26 of the M62 and gain priority entry on to the eastbound M62, which is a busy commuter route for motorists driving from Bradford towards Leeds. As the new lane creates extra capacity, other vehicles on the M606 and M62 could also benefit from improved journey times. It is open to cars, vans and taxis with two or more occupants. Minibuses, coaches and buses can also use the lane and motorcyclists will also be able to use it whether carrying passengers or not. The project has been funded by the Northern Way economic development partnership who are supporting improvements to the transport infrastructure that will assist economic growth across the north of England. John Jarvis, Northern Way Transport Project Director, said: "We are already suffering high levels of congestion on the North's motorways especially around our city regions where the motorways cater for long distance traffic and the needs of our resurgent city economies. If we can encourage greater levels of car sharing through the provision of dedicated lanes at suitable locations it will help lock in the benefits of additional road capacity and be good for the economy and the environment." The lane can be used by vehicles 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and will be enforced by West Yorkshire Police. The new lane has been constructed on the hard shoulder of the M606 and M62 eastbound slip road, connected by a short stretch of new carriageway. New lay-by areas have been provided as an emergency refuge facility for broken-down vehicles in place of the hard shoulder. Notes to Editors 1. Work on the car share lane began in October 2007. The contractor was Balfour Beatty supervised by Carillion WSP. It has been completed on time and on budget. 2. The lane will not be open to HGVs, but the extra capacity means they could benefit from reduced traffic flows in other lanes. 3. The Northern Way brings together the cities and regions of the North of England to work together to improve the sustainable economic development of the North. It is formed as a partnership between the three northern Regional Development Agencies (Yorkshire Forward, Northwest Regional Development Agency and One NorthEast). 4. The Advanced Motorway Signalling and Traffic Management Feasibility study examined the feasibility, costs and benefits of more widespread application of traffic management techniques such as using the hard shoulder as an extra lane during busy periods to cut congestion on the motorway network. Its conclusions were announced by Ruth Kelly on 4th March. Around 500 miles of motorway (800 lane kilometres or 400 route kilometres in both directions) were identified as possible candidates for hard shoulder running schemes. The study also found that the gantries and technology used to implement hard shoulder running could also support various forms of lane reservation, including car share lanes. Public Enquiries: 020 7944 8300 Department for Transport Website: http://www.dft.gov.uk |
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| RichardW |
They work well in Australia. Whilst we were there we spoted markings on some lanes like E2 or E4 (I think it was E). To be in each one you must have that many people in the car. It seemed the closer to a large town you got the higher the number was.
Justme |
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| marigold |
Awfully useful when one has a chauffeur... | ||
| orangepippin |
There are some good initiatives on the go at the moment - the use of the hard shoulder along the M42 past Birmingham is another good example. However these things do have the feel of sticking-plaster solutions. Perhaps we should be looking at the causes of congestion and trying to do something about it - and part of the solution might involve more capacity. | ||
| Jonnyboy |
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| Jonnyboy |
As a suggestion why not make them open to ultra economical as well as high occupancy vehicles?
Of course, it's more logical to keep the inefficient engines moving, so in the short term high occupancy lanes will increase pollution, but it's all about changing behaviour in the long term, right? |
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| orangepippin |
I think it is all about making sure the road capacity is adequate to meet demand. The UK is one of the worst places in Europe for road congestion. There will be a number of reasons for that, but it comes down to how committed the public service are to sustainable development.
To give you a local example, there is a proposal just down the road from us to build 325 new houses, which will increase the size of that town by getting on for 10% in one go. It is estimated that will in turn generate a 3% increase in vehicle traffic (and will put a similar load on other infrastructure such as water, refuse, flood protection, health care, education etc etc). Encouraging people to reduce "unnecessary" journeys or to car-share is all well and good (changing behaviour as you might put it) ... but against that scale of development it will have little effect. To put it very simplistically, if you want to build more houses you will have to build (some) more road capacity. If you don't want to build more roads then you can't build the houses. |
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| Bebo |
Govt policy has moved away from the old days of 'predict and provide' with regard to road building. The M25 clearly demonstrated that building roads actually causes more traffic. When they designed it they based the junctions / carriageway widths on estimates of current traffic that would divert to us it plus an allowance for growth. In reality the traffic that used it was much higher. They worked out later that this was because people decided to make new journeys because it as easier to do so (if you lived to the west of London it was suddenly much easy to visit Auntie Doris in Thurrock than it had been before so you did it more often).
The whole approach now is to try to reduce car usage associated with new development. Google PPG13 : Transport if you want to find ot the detail. |
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| orangepippin |
The new development I mentioned above is situated about as far as it is possible to be from the major centres of work, therefore you can be fairly sure that 100% of the new houses will generate commuter car journeys. This is because the "whole approach" now is actually to build more houses. That is taking precedence over everything else. |
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| Bebo |
Didn't say that I agreed with the policy. Its nice in theory, but it only works in well in areas with a well established public transport network and lots of local facilities within walking distance. In rural aras / small villages (and even small towns) there is no getting away from the fact that the car is going to be peoples first choice. | ||
| orangepippin |
Yes, it is pretty obvious that transport strategy is oriented towards large conurbations, which have a public transport infrastructure.
I am often told that "predict and provide" is old-fashioned. But surely the planning agencies do have a responsibility to work out the necessary infrastructure to support the new developments they seem to want to build. It seems we can't build our way out of road congestion, but we can build our way out of the housing crisis. That's clearly not joined up thinking and not sustainable development. Who takes responsibility for the resulting mess? |
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| Behemoth |
Clearly not the developers who've trousered sever hundred thousand, perhaps there should be a levy on new houses in such areas to pay for enhanced transport networks, so that the person making some demand (buying the house) pays towards it. maybe there already is I don't know.
The planning agencies don't actualy finance, build or sell the properties. They may set the ground rules but the private sector is the actor here, serving public demand. there are plenty or properties/brownfield sites in Liverpool but people want to live in Pocklington. Who's to say they can't, a council official? It's not unusual for infrastructure imrovements to lag behind, after all it's better to spend money where it is needed rather than where it might be needed if something might happen as they'd like it to. The lag time however shouldn't be extensive. However it is a bit chicken and egg. Put a dual carriage way through the area with a clover leaf junction every two miles and you'll have developers begging/bribing to build on the fields in between. |
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| orangepippin |
Developers can only build where the local authority grants planning permission. Another thread on DS explained that developers gross profit is probably in the order of build 2 houses and profit on the 3rd - when they get planning permission. If you look at the share prices of UK housebuilders you'll see that your money might be better off under the mattress.
Local authorities can use planning rules (S106 I think) to force developers to pay for some local infrastructure, although in general this tends to be tactical infrastructure (play areas, or the odd roundabout) rather than strategic infrastructure (new roads etc). This basically eats into the developers 3rd house profit. It is likely that the developer will try to put some of this cost back on to the sale price of the houses, hence imposing an infrastructure tax on the incoming house owners. I'm not sure that is right, although arguably the existing community probably loses out in terms of quality of life if there is large-scale new development (certainly in the example I gave previously one's risk of being involved in a car accident will go up). Developers also pay taxes. The big unexplored area is how much the local authority and central government benefit from house building. When I asked our local authority finance director this, he stated that they make a profit, but naturally would not be drawn on how much. If you think about it though, he had to say that. Demand for houses is driven by demographics and net immigration. Many (not all) the levers for that are controlled by government, not the private sector. Central government wants to build hundreds of thousands of new houses per year. It's the public sector that is the "actor" here, not the private sector. |
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| Rob R |
True enough, and local authorities can only grant permission where developers want to build. |
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| orangepippin |
True enough, but travel across the country, as I often do, and you will see new houses being built absolutely everywhere, putting a massive strain on local transport infrastructure. HOVs may be a good thing, but they don't sound like the strategic solution to match the government's strategic house building programme. Predict and provide may be a thing of the past, but it is not hard to predict transport chaos if we don't have some joined up planning soon. | ||
| Treacodactyl |
I don't think that's completely correct. Our local authority has turned down many planning applications and they've been overruled by central government. |
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| orangepippin |
I was just trying to point out that Behemoth's view that "the private sector is the actor here" is not how it is at all. You are right of course, this is a central government thing. The "independent" planning inspectors are a very powerful force in the government's favour, their decisions have instant legal force and cannot be challenged. | ||
| Bebo |
You can actually challenge an Inspectors decision. The process is called judicial review and I think its done through the high courts. |
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| orangepippin |
When our local town council and our local authority jointly (for once) opposed a local housing development, the government inspector approved it. The wording of his judgement was insulting to the town. I did not know it could be challenged in court. I asked the inspectorate how we could appeal, and they told me there was no appeal process, that was that, his judgement had immediate legal force and the developers would be building the next day. We now have a block of 3 storey houses towering over the rest of an estate because the inspector said there was a precedent in the town centre. The town centre does indeed have 3 storey buildings but they cannot be seen from the new development.
Since 3/4 quarters of the local authority's revenue comes from central government, at the end of the day they are not going to challenge it even if they could. So much for local democracy. |
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| Behemoth |
My point was developers build where they think they can sell for a reasonable profit, not where they are told to. That's why large parts of the North West, where development is being encouraged, remain undeveloped.
Obviously there is a lot of dancing around each other going on, part of that dance is government policy and planning another part is developer lobbying and influencing, they are not passive. Ultimately planning, development and all the rpoblems are actually responsive to what people want to do, where they want to live, it's not telling them where they have to live. As such it will always be messy and disjointed. It could be done better though. |
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| orangepippin |
Yes, with central government riding rough-shod over its own development guidelines to local authorities, it could hardly be done worse. It is not only predict and provide that is history, but sustainable development as well. Now it is just build build build. Totally irresponsible. |
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| Behemoth |
yes, favourite around here seems to run along the lines of.....there's a small patch of brownfield or an old garage, large garden, I want to develop it. Proposal for 12 two bedroom flats ( or more) goes in. Gets rejected locally, we need family housing, developer appeals on the grounds the site is too small to be profitable for family residential use, inspector agrees and that to meet national target flats can be built but make it 8 or 10 instead and make on 3 bedroom. Completion is followed by rental occupation by students and 'young professionals'. |