Notice the use of the word FORCE

Daily Telegraph 24th march

I've said it many times before on this website and many other forums and websites

This government is collectivist, fascist, authortarian, totally against the British people in every aspect and frankly I sense that we are approaching a point where avoiding slavery and serfom can only be avoided by non democratic means.

The British people MUST remove these evil bastards from office IMMEDIATELY

If it were done in the correct/right way with proper planning etc it could be a good idea. With NuLabour - sheer lunacy.

And I wonder how many consultants they'll employ on this boon-doggle?

Not sure about that, but the Times yesterday had a story about bike shops having to fit bells to bikes or face criminal charges.

I had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't april 1st. But the legislation exists.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/si/si2003/20031101.htm

Would an appropriate non-democratic protest be a silent protest, eg not ringing the bicycle bells?

People just won't go into these new towns. They will go the way of the tower blocks planned in the 60's by similar loopy politicians.

People essentially trapped in their little areas, discouraged from venturing further. It's like a throwback to medieval times. Chances are that people won't ditch their cars anyway, because driving is an enjoyable experience and linked to a feeling of freedom IMO. And as they don't stop driving, they just drive slower and how much more pollution will that mean?

Easter weekend - hasn't it ideal for those without cars? Even going out with a car has been bad enough, let alone waiting in the freezing rain for a bus on a bank holiday timetable.

Interesting to note that Caroline Flint (the minister responsible for this particular piece of lunacy) has a flag on her ministerial car.
http://www.carolineflint.co.uk/news/june2006/worldcup.htm

Perhaps she might choose to make 60% of her journeys by public transport to set an example. Her driver Barry could carry a flag in front of her?

What total hypocrisy. She deserves to lose her seat at the next election.

Unless they build a rail infrastructure, nobody will be moving around these towns very quickly. 15mph buses anyone?

Force people out of their cars onto public transport - public transport that is dirty, unreliable, late and the most expensive in europe. Whilst New Lab fart about around the edges with plastic bags and surveillance cameras in bins, they do bugger all about trying to improve Britain's shameful, pathetically inadequate national disgrace of a public transport system. If New Labour genuinely cared about fighting 'climate change' they'd save the hundreds of billions they spunk away bailing out failed banks, buying nukes and killing brown people abroad and use it to subsidise public transport so it's actually something people want to use.

At first glance it would appear that April 1st has come early.

However nothing surprises me anymore. The agenda is unravelling at a very alarming speed but nothing seems to raise the pulse of the sheeple. I think we have reached the stage where the vast majority of people just don't care about such concepts as 'freedom' or 'truth'.

"Anyway we won the war right? So we must be free innit."

And this is done in the name of global warming? The last time I checked, cars weren't more efficient at lower speeds.

Aren't car speedometers only calibrated from 30mph anyway? I'm not sure how enforceable this is, I didn't think they could do more than warn you for speeding in a 20 as it is.

Either way, complete lunacy.

Well you don't have to buy a house there.

It's a bit like people who move next to a footy ground, and then complain about all the mess on a match day. Simple solution, if you don't like the idea, don't go there.

IMHO it's a good thing. We don't all want all want cars to be at the centre of our communities. As opposed to being dictatorial I actually think it's providing choice to those who want to live in a town, but without the car driver as always coming on top.

Also again IMHO, at the least it will provide a good comparative study about how we might to move populations around in the future.

Surely the way to provide the choice without being dictatorial is to offer something better, not ****** up a working system to the point that it's worse than the mess they want you to use?

Oh and about the speed thing. I take it people saw the episode of Top Gear when they raced a boat, a bicycle and a car across London to City Airport, and the bicycle won.

Overall travelling time, cycling in towns is actually the fastest way to get about. Add some decent bus lanes in these new towns and I reckon people will be happy as larry getting about without a car.

And to reiterate, no-one is forcing YOU to move there.

What the government needs to do is to reduce people's need to travel. A lot of people are slaves to their cars for commuting etc. and would love to be able to just wander down the road to work.

Private motorists (including myself, I commute by car) have had it their own way for too long and now the game is nearly up.

This thread is a bit of a wind-up so I thought I'd stir things up a bit more.

If they don't want cars... why build roads? Why not build cycleways and footpaths that lead to a light rail system? A 15mph limit is pointless from a carbon reduction point of view. Good from a safety point of view, but then having no cars in the centre would be better from both PoV.

I don't want to live there, but I wouldn't mind setting up a clutch repair and replacement business in the towns

A trotted out cliche which isn't true for everywhere. In the Midlands, its true the buses are as you describe but the trains and Metro services have, IMHO, improved. And if you can bear the buses, they ARE cheap, £6 for a ticket to use any bus for a week (off-peak)

London is probably a different issue, however!

I didnt think that speed limits ending in 5 were enforceable? Seeing as my speedo doesn't have a line for 15mph.

If it's positive choice they provide, ie reliable, fast, affordable public transport then enough people will use it for it to make a significant difference. But that's not how new labour work, they're only interested in telling us what we can't do, lecturing us about how we should behave and generally been authoritarian lunatics. It's all stick and no viable alternatives.

Really!

How very noble of you

How the hell are people going to get to work?

A quote from the article

"Speed limits of just 15 miles-per-hour are to be introduced on major roads in planned new towns across the country as part of an effort to reduce global warming."

This seems to be the point your missing, they aren't changing an existing system. They're trying something out in a new system, i.e. a number of ecologically friendly new towns, which no doubt will attract residents who are willing to "put up" with the incoveniences of public transport as they believe in the goals of the place being built in the first place.

I'd love to pedal me bike on a Motorway, but the dictatorial rules set out when they where built say I can't, even though my taxes go towards building them. It's just in this case the shoe is on the other foot.

If you want to see how pleasant one of these types of places to live can be I suggest you go and research Freiburg.

Sustrans are doing the cycleway bit - they got £50 million of lottery cash recently. But I agree, public sector could give more money to cycle/pedestrian routes. Is this government building roads? I thought they pulled the major roads programme. Light rail is expensive and disruptive to build, especially if goes through the streets.

all these new towns will just ecome more commuter towns.

by building new towns you are just creating polution, as every morning and evening a mass stream of vehicles will leave to work in the nearest big city, these towns act very much like suburbs to they nearest city.Hence claiming this scheme will reduce polution is a farce, it will infact create it.

Improving cities, building smart tower blocks, utilising land properly will solve all the problems, then instead of people driving miles a day they will use public transport for quickness.

If the new build flats built in all these cities were actually lived in there would be no need for these new towns anyway.

I take it there's mass unemployment in Amsterdam?

How about they set up businesses in the local area, and walk to work. It's surprising how many people actually manage to get around without their own engine.

Bit like houses, personal car ownership is actually quite a recent phenonema. Funny on how this site we seem to be blinkered to our own weirdness compared to the rest of the continent for one type of asset, but then can't understand how anyone can possibly live a different way when it comes to the second most expensive asset we might buy.

As for why they're building road. Well I guess low speed electric vehicles going 15 mph or so for local journeys will need the space, as will local bus services, and delivery/service vehicles.

And going less than 30 isn't all about being green, there are also big road safety issues about going over 30 in built up areas.

I'd hope they take away all road markings as well, and have no traffic lights.

I for one would use public transport far more often if it was available, reliable, fast and affordable...but to be honest it is none of these and I can't see it becoming so in the foreseeable future.

Shouldn't be a problem for all those people who drive dirty, unreliable and costly cars!!!
The cost of fares is the big hurdle with public transport. But if fares were halved, the number of passengers would need to double to prodce the same income and there probably aren't enough trains or buses to cope with a doubling of passengers.

This 15mph thing is only for new 'eco' towns. There will be no disruption if the light rail is installed at the same time as the rest of the town is built. It's expensive and there is the crux of the problem. Doing it on the cheap as ever. It's easier and less expensive to have everyone driving around at 15mph than do some proper funding, planning and engineering

Seeing they haven't built the streets yet I'd suggest of they do use light rail then the costs to build won't be restrictive, and there will be minimum disruption.

As for commuting, again I suspect the population of these new town would initially be self-selecting, i.e. a bit ecological from the off, so if they have to commute to other towns I suggest they would be more likely to car share for their commutes.

One of our major clients runs a very popular car sharing scheme, which sort of goes against the perception others might have of the employees as they make passenger jets. It's encouraged to cut down on parking requirements and ease traffic flow at shift changes, but it works. Encouraging similar sorts of schemes for the inhabitants of these new towns would I think be quite an easy thing to market.

15mph isn't economical.

I agree that having shops and work near where you live should reduce the need for you using anything other than your feet or a cycle.

They should go the whole hog and make carless towns. Real eco towns where everything is within reach, where it makes all it's own energy and where people have safe happy clean lives.

A local bus into Reading will cost you £1.50 one way. Forget it if you want to get back from town after 8pm. Years ago the (Labour) idiots in Reading changed the traffic layout to favour the buses with the result that a previous 10 min car journey to park in the town centre now takes twice that and concentrates the pollution right next to the hospital, now how sensible is that?

The fact is, if New Labour really genuinely did think that climate change was the biggest threat mankind faced, they'd all be in parliament tomorrow bringing in laws to make public transport either free or heavily subsidised. And they'd cancel trident and stop handing over public cash to speculators and use it to build a high speed rail network like they have in Switzerland and France. But none of these things will happen - they'd rather mess about with half-baked, ill thought out tinkering, PR and ********.

I also think there's a big similarity between the recent othodoxies that "house prices only go up" and "everyone needs to drive to get around"

They both come from the same sheeple mentality of not fully investigating the facts, or taking the path of least resistance.

I saw a BBC article on this 15 mph speed limit. It seems that it will appy only in the proposed eco towns, which I imagine will be designed so that motorists wouldn't need drive much in the town. Will buses, taxis and bicycles be limited to 15 mph too? have they thought of that?

-15mph speed limit to be enforced to enable drivers to reverse?

And people breaking wind faster than 15mph?

When will the maddness end!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Give me a common sense goverment not a nanny state goverment!!!!

The motorised stuff yes, but how they measure that on a bike I don't know.

You can't actually be prosecuted for speeding on a bicycle, as you don't have to have a speedometer fitted. The charge you get done for is "pedaling furiously" which is a legislative hangover from the days when horses and bicycles where they only forms of transport on the road. The gentry didn't like the hoi-polloi going out from the new manufacturing towns in clubs, exploring their land and frightening the horses :-)

This is much more about bullying state power that any sound ecological reasoning.

It's soft fascism. NuFascist aren't dragging refusniks off to be gassed............ YET

I cycle but when I've taken a car as I'm going somewhere after work or haven't had time to adjust my gears to optimum 15mph is the speed I travel much of the time. The mile or so where you can hit forty is simply cancelled out by lots of waiting in line.

I think genuinely urban areas should have 15mph speed limits.

Why is this only limited to new towns?

I live in an old medieval city. Would love it to be safer for walkers and cyclists.

Cars are very dangerous at 30mph.

<physics pedant>
Speed != Velocity
</physics pedant>
;-P

The brain boxes have to keep thinking up new wacky ideas to keep their jobs.....see.

I see it in the NHS - oh lets just revamp the whole thing every two years, change this and that - no wonder there is no solid foundation for progress !



Did you know 10% of the Bournemouth taxi drivers lost their licences this month, because they refused to complete a patronising BTEC exam newly introduced in the area to make sure they have a "qualification". Such topics included how to read a map, and how to say hello! Some of these drivers have been in the job for over 25 years for goodness sake!!!!

Heres the story if you are interested

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/mostpopul...ht_taxi_law.php

Join the revolution - LEAVE THE PEOPLE YOU SERVE ALONE!!!!

Lets have some common sense please people!!!!

Why not have 10 ft barriers on every pavement so pedestrians dont wonder onto the road?

What? You don't think they'll use speeding cameras do you The fines can pay for NR.

Public transport is okay if you dont mind germs. I guess catching the flu four times a year isn't a big deal to the government workers who can take 2 months a year off work without losing pay. But for those of us who have to turn up at work every day, public transport is nothing short of a hazard.

That's not a ringing endorsement of bicycles. It's a damning verdict on our road network.

I braved public transport around central London this weekend, and boy did I regret it. Closed lines, power failures, stations shutting with no warning. I was going back and forth like a headless chicken just trying to get a bloody train home! Around me were tourists with this look on their face like "wtf?"

People like Livingstone and his cronies have this antiquated picture of London as the new Amsterdam. Trams and bicycles, everybody happy. It isn't going to work. Our population is exploding, not shrinking. Words really fail me on the lack of planning in this country. Take a trip abroad to find out how it should be done. Multi lane motorways, buildings spread out, clean efficient public transport etc.

There's something a bit odd about fervent cyclists.

What's odd about them? Surely there is something you are fervent about.

well there's a nice little business opportunity for blokes with red flags...provided they are fully insured and protected with rear view mirrors and plate-mail armour.

Must be a slow Monday at the Telegraph.

15MPH imagine that.

Personally, I don't think it's possible to go that fast in a car on the M25 without the lungs collapsing or other serious bodily injury.

Where's Clarkson when you need him?

The 15mph limit means two things :

(1) When revolution comes we'll all have to riot in slow motion.

(2) With police outriders in accompaniment, the crooks will be able to get to the helicopter pads with the goodies relatively faster.

A planned red light district, fantastic!

I just don't do what the government wants anymore. When they introduce stuff I just ignore them. 'Turn your back on the British government' should be everyones motto.