Do We Rely On Cars Too Much?
This story from Birmingham shows the problems you get when you close a major route through a city centre so important maintenance can be carried out.
Birmingham to me, is one of the least pedestrian friendly cities in the UK and it seems to an outsider that everything has been given over to the car. On my last visit for example, I found no walking maps at all. I also went to St. Andrews to see Ipswich play Birmingham City last year and walking to the ground was a dangerous experience.
But then nothing must detract from the experience of driving!
The Joy Of Not Driving
There was this report on the BBC tonight. It says that over the last three years, there has not been a single day, when there wasn’t a closure of the M25. In fact, it’s worse than that, as this paragraph shows.
In fact, the Highways Agency does not even know when it last managed a day when the road was not shut in some way or other.
I’m very glad, I don’t drive.
I haven’t taken as many enjoyable trips by train, like the one to Birmingham last week, as the weather has been so bad, it’s been better to stay at home.
Who’d Want To Drive From London To Birmingham?
The weather wasn’t good and there had been a severe accident on the M25, so it wasn’t a good day to drive!
Who’d Want To Drive From London To Birmingham?
I took the picture, when the M1 ran alongside the railway by Watford Gap.
An Advert That’s A Waste Of Money
This advert in Hackney was placed in the ideal position, to be read by those in the front seats on the top deck of a double-deck bus, which is from where I took the picture.
An Adert That’s A Waste Of Money
So for a start, a lot of the people that view the advert are like me and don’t have a car.
But surely these days drivers buy fuel totally on price and that generally means a supermarket.
I suspect, if you find someone, who says that he or she was influenced by this particular advert to change to Esso, I’ll show you a liar.
Why Was This Idiot Allowed To Drive?
When I had my stroke, I was not allowed to drive until I’d proved I was safe. As my eyesight never returned to 20/20, I decided that it was probably best to give up trying to drive again. I suspect now, that I might be able to drive without any problems, but I couldn’t live with perhaps knocking someone over, even if it was impossible for it to have been my fault.
On the other hand, the idiot driver of the van shown in this report from the BBC, was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, who went on to kill a young mother and injure thirteen others. In other words he was a worse killer than the two who are accused of murdering Lee Rigby.
What doctor allowed him to drive after the diagnosis? He should be struck off at the least.
Drivers Are Being Persecuted
That’ll be the call that goes up after the government crackdown on bad driving. It’s reported here on the BBC.
Obviously, as a pedestrian, it doesn’t affect me.
But bad driving does!
I regularly cross the road at the junction of the Balls Pond Road and Southgate Road. several times, whilst crossing on the green pedestrian light, I have nearly been run over by someone turning right illegally out of Mildmay Park. Only buses are allowed to do this, but do it only rarely.
I also get very annoyed with drivers, who disobey Rule 170 of the Highway Code. This is the relevant advice to drivers.
Watch out for pedestrians crossing a road into which you are turning. If they have started to cross they have priority, so give way.
Many don’t. Especially on one junction near me, where drivers think they are clever to take it as if they are entering the pits at Silverstone. Luckily, I now know the driving habits at that junction and check carefully, but quite a few drivers, don’t have the courtesy to use their indicators, so I have to wait to see their intentions.
So let’s persecute bad drivers and use the fines to improve driver education, public transport and walking routes.
Wetherspoons To Open A Pub On The M40
It looks like Wetherspoons will be opening a pub on the M40 according to reports like this one from the BBC.
I have no view on whether it would increase drink-driving, but surely it would be just as easy to drink in a pub just off the motorway, than one in a service area.
But what I would like to see is better rail interchanges on motorways! Very few railway stations are close to motorways with large amounts of parking. Personally, I’m not too badly affected, as I don’t drive, but sometimes when I want to meet someone driving along the motorway, finding a suitable station is difficult.
Manchester In The Slow Lane
An article published in The Times today says that a survey has shown that Coventry is the speediest city in the UK.
It also says Manchester is the slowest!
Could it be that Manchester has a terrible bus system, with little information and single door buses, that take forever to load and unload passengers? So buses waiting at stops, slow everybody down. I commented on the public transport system in Manchester here.
The BBC Plugs A Dinosaur
The BBC is doing an outside broadcast from the newly-rebuilt Whiteley Village shopping centre near Fareham.
It may be what market research says what is needed in the area and what the major chains of shops, I don’t use, want, but it is rather a dinosaur, in that after my visits to One New Change and Trinity in Leeds, I believe that something more in tune with the modern world is emerging. The trouble with these two new in-city shopping centres, is they are difficult places to park the 4×4!
But then your life improves substantially, when you ditch your vehicle!
An Unusual Transport Interchange
On Friday, I had a small problem. I had a guest, who was going to take a ferry back to The Netherlands and I had to get to Gatwick. To complicate matters, my guest was low on go-juice and they didn’t know the intricacies of East London.
I have never driven since I’ve moved here to Dalston, but felt that the best route would be for my guest to use the Blackwall Tunnel to get on the road to Dover. As there is a large Tesco on the approach to the tunnel, it seemed that might solve the fuel problem and I could jump ship there and get the Underground at the nearby Bromley-by-Bow station.
It all worked very well and fifteen minutes after being dropped, I was on an Overground train to Clapham Junction after changing at Whitechapel.
The interface between drivers and public transport is not good in London. There are few places, where you get an easy drop off point to public transport, a filling station and other services on major roads.
But Tesco at Bow have provided an interchange. The only problem is that the walking route to the Underground is not very salubrious.
At least it wasn’t raining. The link to the store is here.
The Anonymous Widower 