Bodmin council admits getting more people to cycle, walk and take public transport is 'unrealistic' - so decides to build another road instead

userfriendly wrote:

Raise petrol costs. Raise VED. And lo and behold, more people will take to bicycles.

Charge people for "Free Parking" in out of town business parks and shopping areas

Speaking as someone who has commuted on country lanes and as an ex courier, even I would think twice about doing it again. Add the average fitness level of a typical commuter, terrain like that around Bodmin, drivers who do 60+ even on single-track lanes around there and I for one can see why it's not a popular method.

Most people are reluctant to spend the extra time involved in turning their commute into a ride. Add in that most employers, particularly small businesses are unwilling/unable to provide shower and changing facilities and this is an up-hill battle.

Things that work in cities and larger towns are just not solutions for the country. Increasing the costs of car ownership for those with no viable alternative is just stupid. I saw a study a few years back that said most (70%?) of commuter car journeys were under 2 miles. In the country that simply isn't so.

I think it's time that those occupying Westminster find a more targeted solution to the car issue than VED & fuel taxes. Since most of the problems with car use are urban anyway.

I may prefer to ride myself, but I recognise I am in a minority here.

userfriendly wrote:

Raise petrol costs. Raise VED. And lo and behold, more people will take to bicycles.

No it won't. I am old enough to have been driving in the late seventies when petrol climbed from 50p a gallon to over £1 a gallon and by 1985 it was £1.50 a gallon. Now that's a gallon or 4.55 litres. Plenty of talk and that no-one would carry on driving if petrol went over £1 a gallon. That's 21p a litre.

So no the costs of motoring will not deter because they are relative. The relative cost of driving has gone down and that's because despite the austerity we are actually getting richer and richer as a country.

People may moan about the costs of motoring but the roaods are not full of small economical cars with owners just about able to keep them on the road. There are plenty of people who are quite willing to pay more and more for their cars. They are not deterred by costs however much they moan about the cost.

I still think that they should be taxed to the hilt and so long as people will sit their idling their engines or buying bigger and bigger cars rather than smaller and smaller ones, then petrol is still to cheap. Putting up the cost of motoring will not deter people from driving.

If you want to get people out of their cars then you have to make it impossible for them to use them for certain journeys. If you cannot actually park the car or drive it in the middle of towns then that may work. You just have to persuade councils to forego the parking revenue (as if ) and to be the first town to say it doesn't want people shopping there if they bring a car. ie very brave if done by individual councils.

I am, as you can see, pretty pessimistic about reducing the use of motorised transport.

Don't blame Dr Beeching, whatever the outcome of his report was, Ernest Marple was going to build more roads to help enrich his families road building business> Beeching has been incorrectly blamed for Marple's greed and corruption for far to long.

RedfishUK wrote:

Now I imagine the bus service in a rural area is pants, but people will use decent public transport. When I moved to Leeds from London 15 years ago everyone thought we were odd for only looking at suburbs with railways stations.

Are you trying to equate Leeds with Bodmin! one a fairly large city the other little more than a village! Leeds has a population of c500,000 and Bodmin town less than 20,000!

I wonder why one might be able to support a decent public transport system and the other isn't!

Although i could mention the per capita subsidy for public transport. Unsurprisingly London has the highest and the west country the lowest!

Are you trying to equate Leeds with Bodmin! one a fairly large city the other little more than a village! Leeds has a population of c500,000 and Bodmin town less than 20,000!

no i was saying that people will shun poor public transport, but will use reliable, frequent public transport...and by extension as we have no real cycling infrastructure, if it existed people would use it.

(Also my experience is only of a limited area of Leeds, the train line only serves a few towns and villages, nearer 20,000 of Bodmin than the 500K of the whole Leeds Unitary area)

What Bodmin council seem to be saying is that there is no point investing in other solutions because at the minute no one is using that mode of transport.