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A Sunbeam Champ. This was a cheaper version of the Raleigh Budgie, but with solid tyres (and bigger wheels possibly?)

Here is is when it had been passed to my younger sister's ownership. Look at that slack chain.

these benefits are quantified when building a road see NATA. what is not quantified well is the dis benefits of road building e.g they screw a city up through noise, generally not being pleasant..etc. and not really moving that many people that efficiently.

OK, so our city will have no roads.
Where will the buildings be?
How will the materials to build them be delivered?
How will the people who build them get there?
How will the people that live, work or shop in them get there?
How will the goods that are sold in shops get there?
How will people get those goods home?

Can't be by bike, because there are no roads. Can't be by train because trains are noisy, inefficient and unpleasant and those are your reasons for eliminating roads. Can't be by canal or helicopter for the same reasons. Which brings me to my last question,

Who the fuck would want to live there?

glad you are so assertive on the matter. enjoy yelling at people in your car becuase they are ALWAYS FULL in urban areas.

Inference fail. That was my appraisal of Greenpeace's attitude, not a precis of my own.
Oh and by the way, I don't drive. I suggest you use something other than your blind prejudices to inform your opinions.

I like a bit of deep and melodic house. This is absolutely my favourite track
YouTube - Quiet Nights - Andy Caldwell (Original Lounge Mix)

followed by Craig Jensen's take on this classic.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

The real cost of motoring has remained remarkably constant and those who (supposedly) reap the benefit cause huge problems (which are obvious although of course hotly denied by some), which burden general taxation.

Motoring as a whole. But you specifically stated private motoring. Does the private motorists tax really fall behind their fare proportion of the costs incurred?

No. This misses the distinction between private and public wealth. Also, I don’t need to measure the supposed benefits as I’m not trying to make that utilitarian comparison.

No it doesn't and yes you do. You said "subsidy". That implies a social cost over and above any social benefits is being borne. You must therefore do a proper cost/benefit analysis and to do that you must enumerate the benefits as thoroughly as you have the costs. Only any cost deficit can be counted towards the subsidy. You made the accusation: therefore the onus is upon you to prove it.

Besides, that motoring can bring economic benefits to people is obvious and not in dispute at all. The point is, firstly, that they’re not paying an adequate price to reap these benefits (as demonstrated by the shortfall from motoring-related taxes to address the problems), and consequently the benefits of motoring are distorted in the eyes of many. Secondly, consider the vast number of pointless discretionary trips undertaken by car that most assuredly do not bring any economic benefits.

If the benefits are felt by society as a whole, and not exclusively be the private motorist then before you can say the motorist is not adequately contributing, you have to also establish just how much of the benefit they are exclusively receiving. And even the most pointless trip uses fuel and wears out the car parts a bit, which all adds up in the tax coffers, the business profits, the employees' pay packets, the places they spend their money, the charities which benefit, the towns that prosper, and so forth. Then who are you to consider the trip pointless? A commute to work is a day's work done. A trip to the shops is shopping done and people employed. A visit to (or drive with friends) is holding the fabric of civilised society together. Is any trip pointless - and if the absence of the car would mean that trip was not made at all is the car so bad?

I don't understand the relevance of this? A death is a death is a death and causes damage. Why does it matter here who's to blame?

Because you are asserting that the private motorist is subsidised, not motor traffic as a whole. Therefore you cannot go including data from anything other than private motorists.

The estimated modal share of private motor traffic in the UK is around 60%.

so why try and lump the entire cost on that 60%?

While of course fewer roads should be built, the cost of this and especially maintenance should be overwhelmingly met from taxation on the mode that uses them the most.

Or the community which benefits from having them - such as the people who get their food cheaper and fresher, or the businesses who can now attract more customers, or the towns which can get more visitors.

There is no question that the Dickleburgh Bypass will likewise have generated more motor traffic, (out of interest, what is the demography of Dickleburgh? Affluent commuter village or deprived rural community or something in between?)

Traffic along there actually seems the same or less - it's a short bypass, moving traffic from a single carriageway with houses right on the street, to a dual carriageway across some fields (and there's nothing biodiverse about East Anglian grain farms. soil, chemicals and grain, and not much else.) Often the road is completely empty still. I think it was more a road safety thing. Dickleburgh is a deprived rural community I suppose. It's too far away from anywhere to be a commuter town.

This sounds worryingly like climate chaos denial. I’m not going to address those points here beyond noting that I’m not in that camp.

Well it isn't. (Although why not challenge such politically charged stuff? It should be a science, but it's more like religion.) I'm merely pointing out that if you include water vapour, which occurs naturally and makes up 95% of greenhouse gases, CO2 has a tiny part to play and man-made CO2 even less. And CO2 generated by private motor traffic even less. Greenpeace on the other hand would have you believe that the car is the primary cause of global warming, because it suits their politics to do so. Scientific fact can piss off.

Fuck bike polo, this is the shit!

Point is light bikes make things alot easier because they are lighter. However if you are 15 stone my theory is fucked:)

I am 15 stone and your theory is sound. The lighter a bike, the more easy it is to carry it upstairs into my flat.

As for riding, I never got over 22mph on my 17kg aluminium mountain bike, but as well as the ludicrous weight, that's also cos it's got stupid fat tyres, suspension forks and other pointless drag-creating shit, like a front changer, 2 chainrings and maybe 3 sprockets I have never used.

My Harry Quinn is about 8kg and I have got it up to 29mph so far. Never really had the energy+clear road at the same time yet to really push it ;-)

My 20kg Raleigh Superbe feels really fast but I've never had a computer on it. It's rod brakes are crap, so I never try to go that quick, but it gains and carries momentum.

The hidden costs, e.g. to public health, other public services, pollution, loss of biodiversity, effects of climate chaos, etc.

We're going off topic, but I raised the point so I'll answer it and then we'd better get back on topic. Your assertion was specifically that the government subsidises private motor traffic which not one of these sources backs up. Arguing that the government builds roads, road accidents cost money or that cars use fuel is not the same thing. Crucially, not one of your sources contains any measure of the benefit to motor traffic (and in particular private motor traffic, since that was your point) to the country. Without showing the financial benefits the car brings you have nothing to weigh the financial costs against, and therefore you cannot show that there is any kind of subsidy. quite apart from the tax income the motorist generates, there are the soft benefits - the possibility of transporting goods and people, the speed at which this happens, the things that it facilitates: business, export, getting people to work, school, holidays, shops, etc.

The American study - well the costs and taxes are completely different over there, as are patterns of car use and development. It addresses a different assertion to the one you made. (And if falls for the same traps as some of the other sources, but as it's not really relevant to your argument in the first place I won't go into these twice, but instead raise them below).

The UK study is interesting, but it fails to identify private motor traffic as a proportion of the total and it fails to attribute blame. To say that a driver died is not the same as saying a driver caused the accident. (It's interesting to note that deaths are falling in most categories (e.g. cars by 19%) but they are rising fast for motorcyclists).

The Roadpeace source is much more interesting. Unfortunately, the most interesting (i.e. controversial) cost, the "human cost" is the least comprehensively explained. Regardless, as a whole it does nothing more than show that road accidents cost the taxpayer money. Which is obvious.

So road building. It is simply not the case that roads are built solely for cars, and their costs cannot therefore be wholly dumped on the private car user. What do you cycle down? What what do you walk down? How are goods delivered to your local shops? What do buses run down? How many centuries before the car was even invented was the vast majority of the UK's, and especially London's entire road network built? Roads are and always have been the means by which people and goods are moved. Even tar paving predates the car. Roads benefit the motorist and non-motorist alike and their costs should be borne by the general purse. Cars are merely one occupant, and a very recent one at that.

We of course need existing roads to be kept in good repair, even to cycle or walk down and sometimes we need new roads to replace unsuitable old roads. The idea that new roads are inherently bad is nonsense, along with the idea that they inevitably reduce biodiversity. Take the A140 Dickleburgh bypass where I used to live. Here the old Roman road with the houses, trees, farms, etc was bypassed leaving those residents with a quiet, safe, clean village once more, while the new road was cut through some typical flat agricultural farmland. The miles of cuttings were planted with over 100 rare species of native British plant life, many saved from extinction just by their use in road and railway cuttings provision was made for fauna too, with hedgehog and badger tunnels, and a system of ponds for frogs and so forth. Within a few years there were far more ducks, pheasants, geese and so forth living in the area, which must be indicative of a wider success in introducing life. And the thing is, this is not unusual. This is typical of the British approach to building a new road. They are nearly all done like this.

I raise this last paragraph because we are talking about building a whole city here, so it's good to know the general practice is in fact to increase biodiversity ;-)

The Greenpeace article, like most of their output, is infantile, and if you think that biofuels are better for the world than dinosaur ones you need to do a lot more research - and maybe visit some of the people displaced from rainforests that have been cut down to grow fuel crops, or are starving because fuel crops displaced food ones to satisfy a demand manufactured entirely by the green lobby. Promoting them is naive and irresponsible. Then there's their bold and simplistic assertion that the car causes climate change. If (and it is a big if) climate change is caused by human activity, we are told that car emissions are a very small part of our output. And CO2 is a very small part of a car's output. And man-made CO2 is less than 0.3% of greenhouse gases. And that assumes that the greenhouse effect is a proven driver of climate change anyway, which so far remains to be seen. So if the "private car" causes climate change at all its effect should be barely measurable.

Then the times article. How do you quantify this? Well you can't, because it's just a woolly piece of opinion. Do people see others in cars and want one themselves? Maybe. but we don't, so it's not always the case. Isn't it more likely that people want cars because they have a transport need for which the car fills more suitably than any alternative? I think so, and I think therefore that it is the need that we need to change if we are to change the solution

really a girl called posy 'should' be a model though.

Or a Flump:

And the non-sporty people would of course gradually get more sporty. :)

Indeed, but it's the unfit we need to sell cycling to - the rest already do it. Real cycling cities like Amsterdam don't sell cycling as a sporting activity like the British feel the need to, but as an everyday part of life. It works.

The congestion charge did show that you can make driving less popular by showing up more of its real cost

Only to a very small degree. As a regular commuter through the centre, I never noticed a significantly smaller number of cars. I think making driving more expensive has a limit to its effectiveness, and we've pretty much reached it. Have you noticed by the way how almost all "normal" cars have minicab stickers on them these days, or is it just an A4 thing?

the Government still subsidises private motor traffic to the tune of billions and billions.

Are you entirely sure about this, because the billions the government rakes in through motoring taxes, fuel taxes, fines and so forth completely dwarfs the pittance invested in the road infrastructure. What is being subsidised?

We want higher-order solutions than cycle lanes and fortunately we've managed to keep those to a minimum in Hackney.

Hackney does have some nice little alleyways. It could use more. There are loads of blocked off streets in the borough, as well as Tower Hamlets and the City. And as for Islington, there are vast swathes of that borough that could benefit. Of course the cycle roads need to be shared use and overlooked by shops, businesses, houses, etc, or you get the Milton Keynes experience, where cycle paths become rich pickings for muggers who know they won't be seen.

The reason why the motorcycle option is not treated as seriously is of course because motorcycles share some of the same problems that cars create, while the comparison with pedal cycles isn't as straightforward as it may first appear.

Motorcycles should be addressed in any serious discussion of urban design as a unique tier of urban transport, rather than being ignored or lumped in to "cars" or "bikes" depending on which of the two the lobbyist is opposed to. It's difficult to think of an argument against either type of vehicle which also applies in the same way to motorcycles. Equally motorbike use has issues that car use or bicycle use probably doesn't, and these need to be considered on their own merits too.

Auroville anyone ?
Its spaced out, but car free afterall

edited: Yes, this is on Earth. Pondicherry to be precise (famous through Life of Pi)

Ooh, that looks really nice from the air at least ;-)

One thing about London which I think limits its potential as a cycling city is that it is at once too big and too small. It is a city of villages, so if your need can be met locally it is probably within walking distance, and taking the bike is a hassle. If it cannot it is likely bloody miles away, and the bus, tube, motorcycle or car seems like a more practical idea than a bicycle - especially if you figure 'well I'm making the trip anyway so I shall stock up on lots of things while I am there' and then need to carry a load of stuff all the way back home.

We cycling enthusiasts are a bit weird and don't think anything of riding 15 miles (well not me, I draw the line at 7) but for the widespread use of bikes as a primary transport by non-sporty people you kind of need everything to be no more than 3-4 miles away. And in particular, your place of work needs to be that close to your home. That's rare in London. In short the populace will always choose the most convenient form of transport for the task in hand, and cost cannot be a significant factor or nobody would ever use the tube or train. Running a car is far cheaper, yet most Londoners don't do it, because it's less convenient.

I don't think you will remove people from cars by making driving any more inconvenient or expensive. It's already really bloody inconvenient, expensive and stressful. Driving in London is a hateful business, so it can be assumed that the vast majority of drivers don't do it through choice. If you took away the minicabs, chauffeur services, police, commercial vehicles, taxis, buses, ambulances and so forth from the roads in central London I'd bet that there would be hardly any traffic left. The war on the private motorist, if there ever was one, has been won. So if most traffic in London is commercial, then it must be necessary. And if any private traffic is going through Central London then they must have a bloody good reason for it. Or they are insane.

The approach instead has to be promoting cycling and walking by taking all those back streets and rat runs that were made one-way, single ended, traffic calmed, and otherwise ruined and turn them into shared space pedestrian and cyclist streets (with retractable bollards at the ends for emergency vehicles), providing cyclists with a car-free fast efficient network of high quality roads, whilst taking little or nothing away from the existing trunk routes. Indeed these could then be improved by removing the crappy little cycle lanes, to give a carrot to the drivers, (but also improve cycle safety given that they encourage nearsiding and nearly all cyclist deaths in London last year were caused by nearsiding trucks).

Of course there the whole motorcycle option which is always ignored in these discussions. If motorcycles could be treated with bicycles as the solution, rather than lumped with cars as part of the problem I think more progress could be made. Once more bike is one less car, engine or not.

this is wrong. the City of London has grown "organically". Most of the rest of london has been designed. Covent garden, Soho, Mayfair, Fitzrovia, etc not to get into the Victorian suburbs.

Sorry - being pedantic.

To be pedantic right back, individual areas have been designed, but their placement and the interaction between them is still fairly haphazard. Apart from south london of course which goes rows of terraces, park, rows of terraces, park, rows of terraces, park, Brighton.

edited to add that the place in the pictures above looks bloody awesome!

Private cars are banned from the majority of Oxford Street, so actually none of the space is given to cars. All the legal traffic is buses and taxis, which you need if people are to get their shopping home and you have gone and banned cars and made the parking prohibitively expensive.

But today on Oxford street is a bad example to choose. It's atypical. It is also a hellhole. Luckily there are plenty of other places to shop. If it was this bad all the time, then it would be changed. That's something that may happen if they can get rid of the through bus routes down mortimer street or something.

I'm going to throw an idea into the mix and say that London is probably the perfect city already. That's because it hasn't been designed. It has grown up over a couple of thousand years organically, to suit the needs of Londoners. It has been shaped by its people and has adapted as new needs have come along - e.g, some wider roads, underground sewers, tube trains, expansion, industry, suburbs. We may not like all of it, and there may be an awful lot of things that do not suit us, but it suits most of the people most of the time, and that makes it as good as a city can be. Start with a clean sheet of paper and you can't hope to get a city that people can connect with on a personal level. However inconvenient certain aspects of it may be, people over the centuries have loved London. I can't imagine anyone is similarly passionate about Milton Keynes.

Cool. Norfolk is lovely and flat for riding on, and there's a fair few decent roads that used to be railways. I was up there with my girlfriend a few weeks ago, around Wroxham, Hickling (where my mum lives), Happisburgh.

Bah!
I am too ill to come out and play. My cold has turned into full on man-flu and I'm feeling like shite. I don't think I'm going to HTFU in time so I'm out.

That's the last 2 xmases ruined by the lurgy. fuck.

You guys are awesome. thanks.
I've no idea if the petition will do any good. Probably not, but it will make the SSO members very happy if they hit the magic 1000, so it's worth it just for that.

apologies if this is bad form. At least I only want your signature, not your money ;-)

My girlfriend was born with Scoliosis, which is a spinal curvature. These days she helps run a website - http://www.scoliosis-support.org/ - which provides support to other sufferers. She has asked me to pass on this request to everyone I know, so that they can get 1000 signatures on the petition. It would totally make their christmas:

Scoliosis and Kyphosis are curvatures of the spine that usually develop during the teenage years. If not caught early enough, these curvatures become deformities that require bracing and often a long and painful surgery to fuse the spine. In America and other countries, kids are regularly screened at school in order to catch cases before they become serious. This system works well; the screening simply consists of getting the child to bend forward so that a nurse can check their back for abnormalities. It costs nothing but the nurse's time, yet scoliosis surgery costs many thousands of pounds.

PLEASE sign this petition, help save kids from the trauma of surgery and also help save thousands of pounds for the taxpayer!

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/scoliscreening/

You need to click to respond to the email you receive in order for your signature to be added to the list.

Just goes to show, blind people shouldn't be allowed to drive

this is such a low degrading tread. it is everything that cycling is against.

dreaming about cars and the marketing for them.

i'm really surprised there is over 20 pages of this shit on a fixed and ss forum. weak.

Fuck off, prick.

I love my LBS because they also do cake and tea.

There isn't an option for "mostly bike some tank"

:-)

http://www.spacehijackers.org/html/projects/freehackney/index.html

http://www.spacehijackers.org/html/projects/dsei07/tuesday.html

That's awesome ;-)
But don't you need the arms trade in order to keep the tank on the road?

My girlfriend and a friend want to join me, but they are not fast, so we'll probably end up bailing partway in. Either that or I keep going and leave them to it.

Forum top trumps would be awesome. You'd have to use scans of real top trumps, but they could be any deck about any subject - e.g. cars versus pets, or sharks vs skyscrapers.

I can't but if you eat and drink enough booze over the break it will be the right size for you.