While it won't mean much to most of the people here, I find myself looking back on the John Major administration as a beacon of stability and competency. The John Major years, FFS.
Major's government was pretty unstable, with multiple scandals, rebellions etc. And they competently destroyed some public services. I would say his govt is responsible for the now dismal state of public transport in the UK.
I hated Tony Blair when he was in govt, and I did like John Major. Reevaluating later, Blair's government was more competent, stable and presided over a positive time for the UK. In many ways I liked Major because he seemed so inept.
By some accounts Gordon Brown helped prevent 2008 into a total global economic meltdown, but many just think he was utterly incompetent.
But this move by Sunak is contemptuous, the unpopular expansion of ULEZ saved a Tory seat, so now he's nakedly making drivers vs the rest another battle in the "culture war", in hopes of saving his party from destruction.
I'm not from the UK, but from the other side of the english Channel, i both agree with this take, and disagree.
I was working a lot with the EU at the time (european research program/BOOST4.0/H2020, i was basically the new sysadmin/dev that was send into those meetings because i was the new guy and nobody wanted to do it)(that's when my hatred of ATOS started, corrupt little shits).
I managed to understand some stuff (not much) during big informal lunches, dinners and stuff (i was paid poorly, but the benefits were great, i think i never ate this well :) ). From what i've understood from the European Brexit guy (who was also French, forgot his name), May did absolutely nothing for two years. She was absolutely blind to the issues that would arise and was focus on internal affairs. The people who were nominated to take care of foreign policies, as well as some UK assembly members kept delaying a lot of meetings (the one concerning me in particular: not a word on the funding of common research projects, nor on the handling of data. Do we keep london data in the air pollution research? Can you at least put a license on that? No? Yes? Do we scrap it?). I was less there in 2018 and out by 2019, but if i managed to hear properly, she was surprised of the work that still had to be done, then had long meetings with the EU brexit guy, then starting doing shit, added bureaucrats to the subjects. Not sure if anyone was sacked, but everything started moving once she was made aware of the issues, but it was a bit too late.
In the end, she agreed to a deal (that was quite fair) that she did not wrote, but that she did read (i heard a lot of noise about how the UK signed the deal without reading it: that was under Johnson, i'm a 100% sure she read the deal thoroughly, probably missed some caveats because of the time constraints, but that was mostly fair).
So sane: sure. Competent? That's a good question. I'd say yes, mostly, once she noticed something was wrong, she tried to fix it, maybe a bit late, but still. I think the late awareness wasn't totally her fault. Maybe her brexit guy was incompetent, or maybe he wanted to cripple her, either way she choose poor subordinate.
He’s a fuckwit who’s trying to start ‘culture wars’ in the UK as a way of deflecting attention from the current government’s failings and the effect of 13yrs of austerity spending
I don't think he's trying to deflect attention. I think that they've realised now that angry drivers are literally the only cohort left likely to vote tory in the next election and are now fully pandering to them.
Almost every way of asking citizens about the outcomes of "15-minute cities" both yields positive results, and is well known to align with positive outcomes in terms of happiness and community benefits.
Unfortunately the pro-car and often sovereign-citizen aligned community, mostly in the US, latched on to this as a sign of reduced freedom, because cars are such a critical part of freedom identity in those groups.
It's a shame to see our politicians giving this any time whatsoever, but it's unsurprising as it's necessary to maintain any semblance of support among a party that have not represented a majority for many years.
Most local councils in the UK use "15-minute cities" to restrict cars and little else. That has unfortunately given a bad name to the concept because driving becomes more difficult but none of the places one wants to go to are getting any nearer or convenient to access.
In my experience restricting cars typically means creating pedestrianised areas. These have been shown over the years to have significant benefits for shops, culture, etc in those areas. Sometimes the benefits do take a few years to come through, so when they do they aren't attributed to the lack of cars, which is a shame.
What they tend to do is actually to create "low traffic neighbourhoods", which effectively bans traffic just passing through, which is concentrated in fewer roads as a consequence. That does not do anything towards a "15-minute city", it just make people unhappy (if you live in a LTN who may obviously benefit from lower traffic in your street, though).
We get lots of through traffic on our little residential road from drivers guided by apps. They do not stick to the speed limit either and roar past at 40mph in a 20moh zone. And pollute the air and create noise.
As far as I'm concerned, LTNs for residential streets make a lot of sense.
Just moved to a LTN in Haringey and it's a breath of fresh air, often literally. I can sleep at night without through traffic roaring, people cycle around happily, I love it.
No I don't think it does. I'm in London so within 15 minutes of me is an incredible amount of stuff due to the tube, rail and bus network. I think LTNs in London are a great idea regardless of whether they bring about "15 minute cities".
They don't care about the policies. If you believe that any of these people are good faith actors or care about the benefits of policies then you haven't been paying attention for the last 13 years.
This is pure politics. They know they're going to get smashed in the next election. They're just trying to get as many of their number to hang in there like barnacles.
In order to do that they have to throw a bucket of chum to their base to get them up on their hind legs to do a little dance.
The next general elections are due to take place by the end of January 2025, so probably next year, and he has started campainging.
He knows that "15-minute cities" are not popular so he is using it.
Frankly, a number of local councils have given a bad image to the concept and that's a shame but they have only themselves to blame. I am sure that most people would actually like 15-minute cities but councils are not doing that at all, they are only restricting cars and so many people are not happy.
In any case, it's utopian (or dystopian) to think that people will be able to work within 15 minutes of their home unless we implement a collectivist-style management of employment and housing. But at least there should be investment in moving healthcare, schools, shops within 15 minutes, then they can start discouraging cars...
This is the natural consequence of 50 years of car centric urban design. It turns out there's a limit on how many cars you can fit into a limited space. It's not policy that hates cars but geometry: https://thewaroncars.org/transcript-episode-79-the-end-of-ub...
It only seems utopian if your main experience of cities is car-centric sprawl.
In Amsterdam the average commute is under 25 minutes. But the average for bicyclists and motorcyclists (who make up ~50% of commuters) is ~15 minutes. For pedestrians and tram riders it’s ~25 minutes. Cars, trains and buses have the worst journeys of 40-50 minutes, but they’re travelling much greater distances (because if you live close you have better options).
We’re not going to get everyone’s commute down to 15 minutes, but Dutch cities demonstrate that you can get huge swaths of the urban population using active travel and public transport with intelligent planning.
The Netherlands aren’t even anti-car - they have one of the densest motorway networks in the world. Cars are just deprioritised in the cities.
> It only seems utopian if your main experience of cities is car-centric sprawl.
Not really. There is no way most people can walk or cycle to work within 15 minutes as a rule.
This has nothing to do with being "car-centric" but rather the consequence of life: You live here, you find a job there, your spouse finds a job over there.
The average family isn't that spread out in their work-life habits as you make out. Most cities have an urban core where most commercial enterprises are, and most people commute into that area.
The vast majority of Dublin City Council (population ~600,000) is <15 minutes away from the city centre by bicycle. As such most people are within a 15 minute journey of most places of business that they could need, and most workplaces. Little work has been put in to make it this way, it's just a consequence of being an old, dense urban core. By contrast, people who live in the surrounding suburbs have woeful commutes that only make sense by car.
This is a consequence of building sprawling cities - it's not some innate fact of life. Developing dense cores that people commute to from relatively nearby areas results in short commutes for most people and makes active travel feasible. One core serving an ever expanding catchment area results in long commutes pushes people into cars.
Regardless, the main point of "15-minute cities" isn't to solve everyone's existing commute. It's to develop areas so that all essential services are available by active travel. It's to make shopping, education, healthcare, businesses and leisure accessible so everyone has the option to conduct their life with less travel, as opposed to a model where a vehicle is strictly necessary.
It is extremely common for families to be that spread out since the average commute time in the UK is about 30 minutes each way and more than 10 miles.
> It's to develop areas so that all essential services are available by active travel. It's to make shopping, education, healthcare, businesses and leisure will be accessible so everyone has the option to conduct their life with less travel, as opposed to a model where a vehicle is strictly necessary.
Correct, and the point is that you don't achieve that by restricting cars. You do by moving those services nearer to people.
This isn't the US, you can't add shops in residential areas by removing parking spaces.
The only way is to turn houses into shops, which neighbours will be dead against, and those shops will eventually close anyway because people want more choice and lower prices.
I'm undecided on this. On the one hand, the idea of living in a city where everything is within 15 minutes is great for many reasons. It incentivizes walking, which is healthy. It reduces the need for cars, which is good from a pollution standpoint, infrastructure standpoint, and personal finance standpoint. 15-minute cities also make much better use of land and space. They can do more things with less land. And land is inherently valuable due to its limited supply as well as growing population (assuming a society doesn't conquer more land).
But on the other hand, having a car also has its benefits. Many anti-car people really underestimate the value of having your own means of transportation, going to and fro on your own time, and the inherent privacy being in your own car provides. I love driving because I can listen to a podcast/music or making a call without someone breathing down my neck or hitting me with their bag as often happens on the train/bus.
I'm sure there's probably some middle ground to be found here.
I think that the middle ground is actually what "the anti-car people" have been pushing lately. The anti-car people that I know (that includes me) don't want to take your car away and watch the world burn, they mostly want you to have only one car per family, better electric than ICE, reasonably sized, to keep it out of the city center and only use it for longer travel on routes that are inconvenient on public transport. That's a middle ground that makes a lot of sense to me (avid and competent driver, but stressed out and disillusioned road user and car owner).
>But on the other hand, having a car also has its benefits. Many anti-car people really underestimate the value of having your own means of transportation, going to and fro on your own time, and the inherent privacy being in your own car provides. I love driving because I can listen to a podcast/music or making a call without someone breathing down my neck or hitting me with their bag as often happens on the train/bus.
No one is underestimating the benefits of having a car. The problem with cars is that you receive the positive externalities like coming and going whenever you want, and all the negative externalities are given to other people.
A city that is good for driving is not going to be good for any other mode of transit. Your ability to drive directly takes from others ability to walk or ride a bike. The neighborhoods that need to get bulldozed to build the ever increasing road infrastructure are the cost of your ability to listen to a podcast without being near other people. The people who didn't get bulldozed then have to breath in the pollution from your car lowering their quality of life and life expectancy. Fast roads are terrible for walking, and motorists are killing pedestrians at an ever increasing rate.
I'm not anti-car. I own a car because it's very hard for Americans to get by without one, due to the car lobby. I'm pro-pedestrian and pro-transit.
>I'm sure there's probably some middle ground to be found here.
Low traffic neighborhoods are the middle ground. It's literally just diverting through motorists onto roads that are designed for through motorists.
Car culture is about entitlement. Anything that reduces motorists ability to drive as fast as possible absolutely everywhere they want is going to be seen as an attack in the wAr oN cArS!!!
48 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadI hated Tony Blair when he was in govt, and I did like John Major. Reevaluating later, Blair's government was more competent, stable and presided over a positive time for the UK. In many ways I liked Major because he seemed so inept.
But this move by Sunak is contemptuous, the unpopular expansion of ULEZ saved a Tory seat, so now he's nakedly making drivers vs the rest another battle in the "culture war", in hopes of saving his party from destruction.
I was working a lot with the EU at the time (european research program/BOOST4.0/H2020, i was basically the new sysadmin/dev that was send into those meetings because i was the new guy and nobody wanted to do it)(that's when my hatred of ATOS started, corrupt little shits).
I managed to understand some stuff (not much) during big informal lunches, dinners and stuff (i was paid poorly, but the benefits were great, i think i never ate this well :) ). From what i've understood from the European Brexit guy (who was also French, forgot his name), May did absolutely nothing for two years. She was absolutely blind to the issues that would arise and was focus on internal affairs. The people who were nominated to take care of foreign policies, as well as some UK assembly members kept delaying a lot of meetings (the one concerning me in particular: not a word on the funding of common research projects, nor on the handling of data. Do we keep london data in the air pollution research? Can you at least put a license on that? No? Yes? Do we scrap it?). I was less there in 2018 and out by 2019, but if i managed to hear properly, she was surprised of the work that still had to be done, then had long meetings with the EU brexit guy, then starting doing shit, added bureaucrats to the subjects. Not sure if anyone was sacked, but everything started moving once she was made aware of the issues, but it was a bit too late.
In the end, she agreed to a deal (that was quite fair) that she did not wrote, but that she did read (i heard a lot of noise about how the UK signed the deal without reading it: that was under Johnson, i'm a 100% sure she read the deal thoroughly, probably missed some caveats because of the time constraints, but that was mostly fair).
So sane: sure. Competent? That's a good question. I'd say yes, mostly, once she noticed something was wrong, she tried to fix it, maybe a bit late, but still. I think the late awareness wasn't totally her fault. Maybe her brexit guy was incompetent, or maybe he wanted to cripple her, either way she choose poor subordinate.
The one place where we mostly don't argue and fall out over politics.
Don't turn this into reddit. Go post it somewhere else.
Flagged.
Unfortunately the pro-car and often sovereign-citizen aligned community, mostly in the US, latched on to this as a sign of reduced freedom, because cars are such a critical part of freedom identity in those groups.
It's a shame to see our politicians giving this any time whatsoever, but it's unsurprising as it's necessary to maintain any semblance of support among a party that have not represented a majority for many years.
As far as I'm concerned, LTNs for residential streets make a lot of sense.
But does it help overall to bring about "15-minute cities" if nothing else is done? No.
This is pure politics. They know they're going to get smashed in the next election. They're just trying to get as many of their number to hang in there like barnacles.
In order to do that they have to throw a bucket of chum to their base to get them up on their hind legs to do a little dance.
He knows that "15-minute cities" are not popular so he is using it.
Frankly, a number of local councils have given a bad image to the concept and that's a shame but they have only themselves to blame. I am sure that most people would actually like 15-minute cities but councils are not doing that at all, they are only restricting cars and so many people are not happy.
In any case, it's utopian (or dystopian) to think that people will be able to work within 15 minutes of their home unless we implement a collectivist-style management of employment and housing. But at least there should be investment in moving healthcare, schools, shops within 15 minutes, then they can start discouraging cars...
In Amsterdam the average commute is under 25 minutes. But the average for bicyclists and motorcyclists (who make up ~50% of commuters) is ~15 minutes. For pedestrians and tram riders it’s ~25 minutes. Cars, trains and buses have the worst journeys of 40-50 minutes, but they’re travelling much greater distances (because if you live close you have better options).
Source: https://www.numbeo.com/traffic/in/Amsterdam
We’re not going to get everyone’s commute down to 15 minutes, but Dutch cities demonstrate that you can get huge swaths of the urban population using active travel and public transport with intelligent planning.
The Netherlands aren’t even anti-car - they have one of the densest motorway networks in the world. Cars are just deprioritised in the cities.
Not really. There is no way most people can walk or cycle to work within 15 minutes as a rule.
This has nothing to do with being "car-centric" but rather the consequence of life: You live here, you find a job there, your spouse finds a job over there.
The vast majority of Dublin City Council (population ~600,000) is <15 minutes away from the city centre by bicycle. As such most people are within a 15 minute journey of most places of business that they could need, and most workplaces. Little work has been put in to make it this way, it's just a consequence of being an old, dense urban core. By contrast, people who live in the surrounding suburbs have woeful commutes that only make sense by car.
This is a consequence of building sprawling cities - it's not some innate fact of life. Developing dense cores that people commute to from relatively nearby areas results in short commutes for most people and makes active travel feasible. One core serving an ever expanding catchment area results in long commutes pushes people into cars.
Regardless, the main point of "15-minute cities" isn't to solve everyone's existing commute. It's to develop areas so that all essential services are available by active travel. It's to make shopping, education, healthcare, businesses and leisure accessible so everyone has the option to conduct their life with less travel, as opposed to a model where a vehicle is strictly necessary.
> It's to develop areas so that all essential services are available by active travel. It's to make shopping, education, healthcare, businesses and leisure will be accessible so everyone has the option to conduct their life with less travel, as opposed to a model where a vehicle is strictly necessary.
Correct, and the point is that you don't achieve that by restricting cars. You do by moving those services nearer to people.
And adding bike lanes. And removing parking spaces, so that it can be replaced by small commercial estate.
The only way is to turn houses into shops, which neighbours will be dead against, and those shops will eventually close anyway because people want more choice and lower prices.
But on the other hand, having a car also has its benefits. Many anti-car people really underestimate the value of having your own means of transportation, going to and fro on your own time, and the inherent privacy being in your own car provides. I love driving because I can listen to a podcast/music or making a call without someone breathing down my neck or hitting me with their bag as often happens on the train/bus.
I'm sure there's probably some middle ground to be found here.
No one is underestimating the benefits of having a car. The problem with cars is that you receive the positive externalities like coming and going whenever you want, and all the negative externalities are given to other people.
A city that is good for driving is not going to be good for any other mode of transit. Your ability to drive directly takes from others ability to walk or ride a bike. The neighborhoods that need to get bulldozed to build the ever increasing road infrastructure are the cost of your ability to listen to a podcast without being near other people. The people who didn't get bulldozed then have to breath in the pollution from your car lowering their quality of life and life expectancy. Fast roads are terrible for walking, and motorists are killing pedestrians at an ever increasing rate.
I'm not anti-car. I own a car because it's very hard for Americans to get by without one, due to the car lobby. I'm pro-pedestrian and pro-transit.
>I'm sure there's probably some middle ground to be found here.
Low traffic neighborhoods are the middle ground. It's literally just diverting through motorists onto roads that are designed for through motorists.
Car culture is about entitlement. Anything that reduces motorists ability to drive as fast as possible absolutely everywhere they want is going to be seen as an attack in the wAr oN cArS!!!