November 10, 2003
The way we think about transport
Reading an exchange in the Letters section of the Times (subscription required for non-UK residents) I came across the following:
As for motorists subsidising railways, were it not for the railways, our roads would be even more crowded than they are.
Which, of course, is true. It's just the implication (spend more on railways) that is false. Can you think of any other industry where this sort of thinking would apply? "Mars Bars are selling out so I think we'll make some more Snickers." "Croissants are doing a roaring trade, let's start selling Frosties."
Of course not. What happens in the real (free-ish market) world is two things. First of all Mr Mars puts up the price. Second he increases production and then lowers the price. At all times everyone can get their hands on Mars Bars and at the end point more people can enjoy Mars Bars.
Just the same could work with roads. In Phase I tolls are introduced. In Phase II more roads are built. Easy peasy.
So, why doesn't this happen? Oh, because it will cause pollution and because it will lead to social exclusion and because we don't want to cover the whole country in concrete. That's the sort of thing that gets trotted out. For what it's worth I think it is drivel and I hope some day to get round to writing a proper take-down. We'll see.
Trackbacks
Comments
So you're pro-paving all of Britain? The problem isn't that roads aren't being built, it's that more roads and lanes don't decrease traffic in the long run.
I second that. And with cars growing larger in some places, the roads will never keep up!
WTF?
Please tell us what more roads and lanes do then Randolf?
They certainly DO decrease traffic congestion and in turn this helps out with exhaust emissions, fuel economy and ultimately less time spent stuck in traffic. When did cars become inherently evil and trains inherently good?
You seem to be of the mind that if auto commuting is made more miserable, then everyone will HAVE to take the train, or the bus or anything but a car, and LIKE it.
I would rather the decision as to what form of transportation I use be left up to me and not the Green Party.
Whoa there, Apache - it looks like someone is a little bit of a road rager...
Anyway, look at any American city that has used profligate road-building as its only solution to the traffic problem. People spend more time commuting in those cities, not less, since roads encourage sprawl. Notice I said "encourage," not "force." Nobody will ever make you give your car up, Apache. However, it seems starkly obvious that if we're going to make it easier for people to get where they need to go and we're going to use public money to do it (let's not forget what builds those highways), we should try a more balanced approach.
And no, building one little strip of street-level light rail through downtown doesn't cut it anymore.
Pave the Planet!
One World, One People, One Slab of Asphalt!
I used to have a T-shirt with that on it, and wore it proudly. I especially loved when some dipstick driving a Benz struck up a conversation along the lines of 'That's terrible! Why would you want to do that? I drive an hour to work each day just so I can be closer to nature. It'd be awful to pave everything!'
Unfortunately, this was so jaw-droppingly shortsighted and missing the point that I couldn't make the proper response, that being "Well, then it's YOUR fault we're paving everything! You want a road out to your little country hideaway, don't you?"
Why don't we restrict cars so that there'll be a sudden increase in the demand for roads!?
Permalink
IN BRIEF
November 23, 2004
'Captain commuter' wins Sydney a free day on the trains
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Darling's saver ticket for slow-train Britain
- he's going to do everything but close them
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November 21, 2004
Tollroads Jamaican style
- worth it if only for the pic of the toll plaza
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November 20, 2004
Postive externalities come to DC
- sort of
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Railways safer than ever
- says Christian Wolmar
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Is graffiti art?
- LFTTR think the question misses the point. FWIW I think many artists clearly have a lot of talent and it's a shame they don't have an appropriate, nay, legal outlet.
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Book review
- Subterranean Railway by Christian Wolmar
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One airline, 4 crashes, 8 dead: the real price of sugar snap peas in November
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November 17, 2004
British Transport Films Collection DVD Volume One
- Surely a must for any transport afficionado. It will be released just in time for Christmas.
- Disc 1 - On The Rails
- Blue Pullman (1960)
- Elizabethan Express (1954)
- Train Time (1952)
- Rail 150 (1975)
- Diesel Train Driver (1959)
- On Track for the 80's (1980)
- Cybernetica (1972)
- Disc 2 - Off The Rails
- Under the River (1959)
- Snowdrift at Bleath Gill (1955)
- This Year - London (1951)
- This is York (1953)
- The Great Highway (1966)
- A Day of One's Own (1955)
- John Betjeman Goes By Train (1962)
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November 15, 2004
Crossrail website
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November 11, 2004
Brake fault forces Virgin to cut speed on flagship tilting trains
- you know, just for once it sounds as if the HSE could be right
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November 08, 2004
TV Alert
"When trains crash", 1930 Channel 5 tonight. Talk about timing
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November 07, 2004
Ufton Nervet crash
- 6 now confirmed dead
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November 06, 2004
One person dead as train derails
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November 04, 2004
FirstGroup wants to add the tracks to its trains
- that's brave
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November 02, 2004
Car charge to rise to £6
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October 30, 2004
Psst wanna buy a railway station?
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October 26, 2004
'Kart Vader'
- He tears around Quebec City at 100mph. In a go kart. At night. Wearing black. And he films it.
Spotted by Jay Jardine.
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October 24, 2004
The downside of auto-mobile bans
- drivers text instead
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Councils ban shrines to road crash victims
- a story that neatly combines both transport and the issue of the day: mawkish sentimentality
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October 20, 2004
The air hostess, the long hair and the sun roof
- one of the more imaginative ways of staying awake at the wheel.
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Wheelchair-using MP travelled in 'cattle truck'
- so, that's just the same as the rest of us then
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23 escape from burning train
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Wikipedia accuracy under fire
- so, it's back on with the
Glossary?
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October 19, 2004
Rail chief quits after four months
- walking away from £130,000. Golly
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October 14, 2004
New comment on old posting
- Tim Hall explains the story of the Highland Railway, its new locos and its soon-to-be-ex-Chief Mechanical engineer
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Out now: DVD version of leaves on the line
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October 13, 2004
New link
- Transport Watch UK. Lots of facts, lot of comparisons. Doesn't look good for rail
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October 11, 2004
Take the car and save the planet
- walking kills, apparently
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Hybrids better than the real thing
- golly
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Don't invest in mega-projects
- says Peter Gordon
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October 05, 2004
Prescott backs plan to reopen branch rail lines
- well, he says he does
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October 04, 2004
New Glossary Entry
- the Advanced Passenger Train
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October 03, 2004
People are building their own speed cameras
- One fellow is even
selling fully functioning ones
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Pendolinos and Voyagers may prove to be one of privatisation's disasters
- says Christian Wolmar
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Omedetō gozaimasu!
- Tech Central Station on the 40th anniversary of the Shinkansen
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October 02, 2004
Compulsory purchase to go
- in US? Johnathan Pearce has some musings
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October 01, 2004
Indian railway runs out of wheels
- because it refuses to import
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All for sprawl
- Tyler Cowen links to a couple of articles including one from the NY Times magazine which is attracting a lot of attention
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Underground maps as art
- according to Brian
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September 30, 2004
Recent comment
- Uncle Roger on the difficulty in working out accurate subsidy figures
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Europe by train
- Tim Hall on Stephen Karlson's adventures
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Carpool lanes = communist gulags
- Tim Hall is beginning to get it, possibly
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September 29, 2004
P&O axes 1,200 jobs as ferry travel sails into past
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September 27, 2004
Hurtling towards a £7.6bn bill at full tilt
- Alistair Osborne on the WCRM fiasco. Actually, I thought £7.6bn was on the low side
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September 26, 2004
A double-decked shame
- RJ3 laments the passing of the Routemaster. It's
those EU bastards, I tell you
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Tilting trains are rubbish
- according to Ross Clark. Now he tells us
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Delays plummet by 28%
- says Network Rail
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September 25, 2004
New glossary item
- the Health and Safety Executive - in which I demonstrate my almost complete ignorance of this institution
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Scant improvement in train times
- according to latest figures
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September 22, 2004
EU plan will hit safe women drivers
- and it's all in the name of sex equality
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Unions gang up to demand railway renationalisation
- they mean it isn't already?
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September 21, 2004
Top car makers support road-jam charging
- Ford, GM, Honda, Daimler
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Journey times cut as 125mph tilting train sets record
- after £8bn and the odd bankruptcy tilting trains that actually tilt are finally here
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September 18, 2004
ABD calls for environmental audit of public transport
- all those particulates
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Camera Partnerships must come clean on real causes of accidents
- says ABD
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September 16, 2004
The Green Quadratic
- ASI paper on planning from 1988. Now available on-line
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September 14, 2004
Up with conductors
- they're really good, you know
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Speeding Britons fined in car race to Spain
- "Among the cars were Ferraris, Porsches and Rolls-Royces."
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MPs to lose free airport parking
- oh, how my heart bleeds
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The case against driving licences
- Paul Clark in Lew Rockwell
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September 10, 2004
Drivers trade privacy for insurance discounts
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September 08, 2004
Free mints infuriate delayed commuters
- some even threw them away, ingrates
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Privatize the roads! Liberate the streets! All we have to lose are our parking tickets!
- Anthony Gregory in Lew Rockwell
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M6 Toll hits 10m journey mark
- er, about a month ago
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September 07, 2004
California high-speed rail plan
- all sorts of claims being made but Peter Gordon doesn't like the
precedents
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September 06, 2004
Swedish farmer fined 1,211 kronor for illegally parking a snowmobile in Warwick
- Krister Nylander lives 205 north of Stockholm and has never been to Warwick. "They can wait till Hell freezes over and I can get to Britain on my snowmobile to pay the fine.”
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September 05, 2004
"Obsession is not too strong a word to describe how railway enthusiasts feel about railways"
- Matthew Parris goes to Peru and meets some trainspotters
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September 03, 2004
Hidden costs do not justify the level of tax on petrol in Britain
- says Graham Seargeant
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Shovelling cash
- utilities to pay for digging up roads
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Alistair Morton, builder of the Channel Tunnel, is dead
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Government 'willed' Railtrack to fail
- says Corbett
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Cyclists saddled with seafront speed trap
- in Bournemouth
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Historic Amsterdam tram photos
Aaaah. Where's amg going to pitch up next?
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Why so little US electrification?
- Tim Hall ponders the answer
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September 02, 2004
London Underground Map
- as it really is.
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Electric v steam
- in 1923. But who won
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Freight or passenger in the US?
- they're in conflict. Stephen Karlson considers the options
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September 01, 2004
Fares and charge up in London
- says Livingstone
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'Fair fines' planned for speeding drivers
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Railtrack is cleared over Hatfield crash
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August 31, 2004
Thousands 'ready to quit Aslef'
- where would we be without brotherly love
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August 30, 2004
Rural watchdog attacks road sign blight
- See it's not just me who can't abide the
avalanche of street furniture.
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What the traffic will bear
- Bob Poole discusses the merits of tolling
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Prague trams
- photos. Aaah
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August 24, 2004
What if you can't drive?
- Catallarchy's Sean Lynch considers the options
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97% of accidents within speed limit
- according to the ABD
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August 22, 2004
Prosecute motorway lane hogs
- says RAC
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August 20, 2004
Radio tags for congestion charge?
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World's longest road opens
- in Russia
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Sprawl is cheap
- says Iain Murray
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August 19, 2004
Strike threat to BA and Eurostar
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Toll roads are safer
- at least according to my reading of this Marginal Revolution post
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Peking metro to hit 1000km mark
- I'm not sure even London's is that long
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August 15, 2004
Squander Two calmly talks about speed cameras
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Parking anarchy in St Albans
- Police withdraw traffic wardens, Herts council won't have any until October, it's bedlam!
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The future of transport
- as seen from the past
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Trains less efficient than cars
- yes, I know, it's old news
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Ferry solution, please
- Eamonn Butler wonders how you could introduce competition to a subsidised ferry service in the Western Isles
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August 14, 2004
Drink less, speed less, save on insurance
- Marginal Revolution has the story
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So you're pro-paving all of Britain? The problem isn't that roads aren't being built, it's that more roads and lanes don't decrease traffic in the long run.
Posted by Randolph Jurisprudence III on November 10, 2003