Barky Posted 30 November 2016 Share Posted 30 November 2016 11 minutes ago, midland_red said: Nice idea Barky, but the facts do not substantiate it. As far ago as 1937, road engineers sampled traffic on the new London arterial roads. The new Great West Road, almost as soon as it opened, carried 4.5 times as much traffic as the old route. But Charles Bressey, the MoT's chief road engineers, noted that 'no diminution however occurred in the flow of traffic along the old route. and from day to this the number of vehicles on both has steadily increased.' So it was known - as far back as 1938 - that building roads generate traffic and so you cannot solve congestion that way. Bressey's report - The Highway Development Survey, 1937 - was published by HMSO - Leicester Reference library may have a copy, the Unviersity of Leicester library certainly will if you want to follow this up. If you're concerned about old data, you might want to check out the 2002 ORBIT study into the M25 here which produced more evidence that road building generates traffic http://abstracts.aetransport.org/paper/index/id/1591/confid/9 That was a time when car ownership was quite low and had a lot of room to increase. These days there must be very few people who haven't got a car but would go out and buy one instantly if only a new road was built. I'm sorry but it just doesn't make any logical sense to me and reports from nearly one hundred years ago don't seem as though they should be regarded as in any way relevant to the current state of the roads. How is it that the rest of the developed world has better roads than us then, do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Livid Posted 1 December 2016 Share Posted 1 December 2016 Is it just me or has it been particularly bad around Leicester for the past couple of days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lcfcrinaldi Posted 1 December 2016 Share Posted 1 December 2016 1 hour ago, Livid said: Is it just me or has it been particularly bad around Leicester for the past couple of days. I have thought this too. I live in Hinckley and travel to Regent Road in Leicester for work, I leave home at about 6:15 to start work at about 7. And even at these times, I feel like it has been a bit more congested than usual. I put it down to it being cold and people not wanting to walk anywhere. Also, it always tends to get busy around Christmas, with people doing there shopping and rushing around to see each other. The most irritating thing about traffic, is that people turn into complete morons and will do absolutely anything to get ahead or in front of everyone else. Or when the traffic clears they go at a ridiculous speeds to try and make up some time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkie1999 Posted 1 December 2016 Share Posted 1 December 2016 All these new one man band courier business's starting up every where doesn't help. Still at least we get cheap deliveries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davieG Posted 1 December 2016 Author Share Posted 1 December 2016 Quote Local authorities should consider lower speed limits, clean air zones and even redesign speed bumps in a bid to reduce air pollution, health experts say. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said "smooth" driving would cut air pollution, linked to 25,000 deaths a year in England. But pollution experts said the measures will only make small improvements. Prof Ian Colbeck, of the University of Essex, said the plans pressured local government at a time of budget cuts. The health advisory body's guidance is now out for consultation. Air pollution disproportionately affects people living in deprived and urban areas, especially children and the elderly. Soot and gas Figures show that motor vehicle traffic reached a record high in 2016, with 320 billion vehicle miles travelled on Great Britain's roads - a 1.4% increase on last year. NICE says tiny specks of soot from vehicle exhaust, brake linings and tyres, as well as nitrogen dioxide gas, damage people's health by increasing the risk of cancer and respiratory and heart diseases. As a result, it is urging local authorities to do more to tackle air pollution. Its recommendations include: More 20mph speed limits in congested residential areas Re-designing speed bumps to stop cars speeding up and slowing down between them Restrictions on engine idling during short stops such as outside schools and hospitals More charging points for electric cars in residential areas Placing the most commonly-used rooms in new houses away from polluting roads Training drivers to be more fuel efficient by driving more smoothly Image copyrightSCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Image captionThe report says a number of measures would "act cumulatively to produce significant change" It also suggests avoiding putting cycle lanes on highly polluted roads and considering the use of trees to screen cyclists from motor vehicles - but it warns that this should not be at the expense of street ventilation, which helps the air pollution to disperse. The guidance says that it would be advisable to adopt a number of measures - rather than just one - because this would be more likely "to act cumulatively to produce significant change". 'Every little helps' Prof Richard Skeffington, from the department of geography and environmental science at the University of Reading, said there was little that was new or radical in the recommendations and many seemed "mostly common sense". He added that there was no overall assessment of the likely effects of the proposals on air quality. "The message of the report seems to me to be 'every little helps - possibly'. "The report does reject some ideas, such as street washing, but generally the actions proposed seem likely to make small incremental improvements at best." Wow it took experts to come up with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkie1999 Posted 1 December 2016 Share Posted 1 December 2016 38 minutes ago, davieG said: Wow it took experts to come up with that. All these measures are just short term fixes as eventually we'll become completely grid locked, and therefore the need for speed humps won't exist because we won't be able to go 20 mph but we'll still be chucking out tons of of carbon monoxide sitting in traffic queues. There's only 2 real solutions, ban combustion engines on roads, but that's not really fair as the average super tanker uses a gallon of unrefined crude every metre and just 16 of them create as much pollution as all the cars in the world and they don't have to suffer the indignation of speed humps, Or have a free for all, let everyone do what they want on the roads and withdraw the funding that keeps these research facilities that are investigating air pollution and ways to reduce it, that way the problem is no longer measured and so no longer exists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bellend Sebastian Posted 2 December 2016 Share Posted 2 December 2016 Well that'll sort it http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38170794 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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