Islabikes new range

"JNugent" wrote in message
...
Adam Lea wrote:

"wafflycat" wrote:

Rhetorical: what happened in the interim to get us so utterly dependent
upon cars?

1. We removed one third of the rail network.
2. We privatised a lot of the bus services, resulting in the closure of
bus routes that were useful to many people, but weren't profitable
enough.
3. Living standards have risen to the point where a car is affordable to
the masses, instead of just the rich. Once this happens planning policies
tend to assume that driving will be the default option so build shops,
facilities that are out of town and difficult to get too without a car.
4. The out of town facilities, with their large, free car parks become so
popular that the smaller local shops (easily accessible to people on
foot) can't compete so go out of business.
5. With the loss of the local shops, people have to travel much greater
distances to get their food. In many cases this means they now have to
drive (so much for the freedom of the car!).
6. Longer working hours means that people have to make fewer, larger
trips to the shops because they don't have the time to make lots of
journeys.
7. As car use has expanded, development has sprawled out rather than
following the rail/bus routes so that many suburbs don't have viable
public transport alternatives. Also, businesses now locate near bypasses
and motorways and thus cannot be accessed very easily other than by car.
8. Road planning has favoured trying to maximise the throughput of motor
traffic, often at the expense of making the alternatives (walking,
cycling) less safe/convenient which discourages these alternatives.
9. The type of vehicle you drive seems to be an indicator of status.
Bicycles are seen by some as "poverty transport".

You're more or less right (with reservations about one or two of the
processes you describe).

Is there a downside to any of this (apart from the effects on
train-spotters)?

Or, OTOH, is there something wrong with citizens being able to travel
(say) a hundred miles door to door at the drop of a hat, without having to
seek permission from anyome else, and to be able to do it well within two
hours?

You honestly cannot think of any downsides to mass car use?

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:13:39 +0100, "Adam Lea"
said in :

In situations where it is impossible to park a bike legally or without
causing inconvenience to other people then yes I would but to be honest I
have never come across such a situation in my lifetime so far.

Same here.

And even less so since I bought a Brompton. Smart restaurants are
perfectly happy to place them in their cloakrooms.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:17:01 +0100, "Adam Lea"
said in :

You honestly cannot think of any downsides to mass car use?

You ask this of the Nugentoid of Cager IV?

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

JNugent writes:

I didn't comment on "dependence". Neither shall I, since there is no
point in doing so. Whether or not we should be dependent on
"modernity" is ...

.... slightly beside the point.

The qeustion is whether and to what extent we should be dependent on a
mode of transport which is as dangerous and as wasteful of space as
the motor car in the hands of an average driver. The same question
would apply whether the car had been invented in 1983 or 1893.

If modern science wants to come up with something a bit more practical
on either of those grounds, I'd be all for it.

What I cannot work out even now is how many self-proclaimedly
intelligent people could possibly have imagined that the PP was
claiming something that he plainly was *not* claiming and could not be
taken to have been claiming.

That might be because they're not. Suppose instead that they are
concerned that _third parties_ will read the statement with a degree
of absolutism that it was not intended to have, and use it to
reinforce their delusional fantasies. Such people do exist,
they're in my killfile.

Result: we will move even further into a car-centric culture and your
originally ludicrous example of using a car to pick up a sandwich from
the shop across the plaza will begin to seem quite normal.

As you know (or should know), I actually suggested that as an example
of a situation where a car would *not* be used.

It's a situation where a car is not currently used. But there are
drive-thru fast food outlets and drive-thru ATMs already, why not
drive-thru sandwich shops? Actually, they probably do exist as
Subways franchises, if you will allow Subways as a sandwich ...

Ever tried walking around Dallas? In large parts of the city it
really isn't something that's catered for much. Crossing the road is,
in many places, an option open only to the fit and healthy.


-dan

Adam Lea wrote:
"JNugent" wrote in message
...
Adam Lea wrote:

"wafflycat" wrote:
Rhetorical: what happened in the interim to get us so utterly dependent
upon cars?
1. We removed one third of the rail network.
2. We privatised a lot of the bus services, resulting in the closure of
bus routes that were useful to many people, but weren't profitable
enough.
3. Living standards have risen to the point where a car is affordable to
the masses, instead of just the rich. Once this happens planning policies
tend to assume that driving will be the default option so build shops,
facilities that are out of town and difficult to get too without a car.
4. The out of town facilities, with their large, free car parks become so
popular that the smaller local shops (easily accessible to people on
foot) can't compete so go out of business.
5. With the loss of the local shops, people have to travel much greater
distances to get their food. In many cases this means they now have to
drive (so much for the freedom of the car!).
6. Longer working hours means that people have to make fewer, larger
trips to the shops because they don't have the time to make lots of
journeys.
7. As car use has expanded, development has sprawled out rather than
following the rail/bus routes so that many suburbs don't have viable
public transport alternatives. Also, businesses now locate near bypasses
and motorways and thus cannot be accessed very easily other than by car.
8. Road planning has favoured trying to maximise the throughput of motor
traffic, often at the expense of making the alternatives (walking,
cycling) less safe/convenient which discourages these alternatives.
9. The type of vehicle you drive seems to be an indicator of status.
Bicycles are seen by some as "poverty transport".
You're more or less right (with reservations about one or two of the
processes you describe).

Is there a downside to any of this (apart from the effects on
train-spotters)?

Or, OTOH, is there something wrong with citizens being able to travel
(say) a hundred miles door to door at the drop of a hat, without having to
seek permission from anyome else, and to be able to do it well within two
hours?

You honestly cannot think of any downsides to mass car use?

My reservations would be centred firstly around the pre-emptive occupation of
on-stret car-parking spaces by those who do not bother to provide themselves
with off-street parking and who (IMHO, sometimes quite arrogantly) lay claim
to something approaching ownership if the road outside their homes, to the
exclusion of others.

But apart from that, and since I am not (in general) dismissive of rising
living standards for the masses for whom you have such obvious disdain -
should I be able to think of another downside?

Nothing's too good for the workers. However, I see that some take the
opposite view.

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008, JNugent wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

[...]

There are a good few million people in the same situation as me. Cars are
simply not the easier option for us.

The poster who started the sub-thread made no observations or claims
about such comparisons, so what you wrote (and there was more of it than
is quoted above) is something of a strawman, isn't it?

The poster i replied to said - in the bit which you've so helpfully
reduced to "[...]":

"things need to be really congested or very close for a car not to be the
easier option, certinaly with supermarkets or work, even out in greater
london"

That was what i was responding to. Which is, you know, why i replied to
that post, and quoted it.

So what you wrote is something of a red herring, isn't it?

tom

--
got EXPERTISE in BADASS BRAIN FREEZE

Daniel Barlow wrote:

JNugent writes:

I didn't comment on "dependence". Neither shall I, since there is no
point in doing so. Whether or not we should be dependent on
"modernity" is ...

... slightly beside the point.

The qeustion is whether and to what extent we should be dependent on a
mode of transport which is as dangerous and as wasteful of space as
the motor car in the hands of an average driver. The same question
would apply whether the car had been invented in 1983 or 1893.

No, it isn't the question.

The question was whether the car can cover the day-to-day transport needs.
And it can, as you well know (subject to all the intergalactic travel
restrictions already mentioned in the thread).

What I cannot work out even now is how many self-proclaimedly
intelligent people could possibly have imagined that the PP was
claiming something that he plainly was *not* claiming and could not be
taken to have been claiming.

That might be because they're not. Suppose instead that they are
concerned that _third parties_ will read the statement with a degree
of absolutism that it was not intended to have, and use it to
reinforce their delusional fantasies. Such people do exist,
they're in my killfile.

Why would anyone be so concerned about that that they are prepared to
fabricate spurious "meanings" to a post?

Result: we will move even further into a car-centric culture and your
originally ludicrous example of using a car to pick up a sandwich from
the shop across the plaza will begin to seem quite normal.

As you know (or should know), I actually suggested that as an example
of a situation where a car would *not* be used.

It's a situation where a car is not currently used. But there are
drive-thru fast food outlets and drive-thru ATMs already, why not
drive-thru sandwich shops?

No reason at all. I suppose you could describe McDonald's and Burger King as
sandwich shops, but it's not the sort of shop I meant and you knew that
(especially as I "placed" such a shop in a pedestrianised piazza).

Actually, they probably do exist as
Subways franchises, if you will allow Subways as a sandwich ...

It's hard to see what better description you could use. And there's no
problem with a drive-through sandwich shop where the stop is made as part of
a reasonably "long" journey, is there? Or is there? Should drivers not be
allowed to eat? Or should they perhaps be forced to park? What is the problem
with "drive-thru"?

Ever tried walking around Dallas?

No. Never been there. No desire to go there.

In large parts of the city it
really isn't something that's catered for much. Crossing the road is,
in many places, an option open only to the fit and healthy.

What does that have to do with the UK? And it's all moving a long way from
trying to justify putting words in that PP's mouth, isn't it?

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008, JNugent wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

[...]

There are a good few million people in the same situation as me. Cars
are simply not the easier option for us.

The poster who started the sub-thread made no observations or claims
about such comparisons, so what you wrote (and there was more of it
than is quoted above) is something of a strawman, isn't it?

The poster i replied to said - in the bit which you've so helpfully
reduced to "[...]":

"things need to be really congested or very close for a car not to be
the easier option, certinaly with supermarkets or work, even out in
greater london"

That was what i was responding to. Which is, you know, why i replied to
that post, and quoted it.

So what you wrote is something of a red herring, isn't it?

No, your post was the red herring.

There was nothing in the PP's post which required or stated cars to be
"better" than any other form of transport. All he said was that they are
capable of satisfying transport needs. Full stop. There was nothing
comparative in it, despite your mystifying belief that there was.

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008, Adam Lea wrote:

"Roger Merriman" wrote in message
. uk...

i have family/friends back in wales and a house so i'm back and for a
fair bit, with the fact that there is two of us and the prices of the
trains, easy £200 compared to barely £40 pounds you do have the toll
charge.

Are there no cheap tickets that you can get by booking in advance (super
advance I think they are called)?

Since privatisation, the situation's got a bit weird with that. There are
cheap advance tickets (sometimes amazingly cheap - a friend did Glasgow -
London for a fiver), but only a limited number for each train, and they
generally sell out very fast, or at least they do on popular services like
a friday evening London to Holyhead. If you can get one, they're brilliant
value.

Another thing worth bearing in mind is GroupSave - i'm not sure if this is
a National Rail thing or something that several individual Train Operating
Companies have all brought in under their own steam, but if you buy two
adult off-peak tickets, you get two more free, and can then take kids for
a quid a pop. No advanced booking required. This does a lot to overcome
the problem that cars get cheaper when travelling in groups but trains
don't. Although you do have to travel off-peak.

tom

--
got EXPERTISE in BADASS BRAIN FREEZE

JNugent writes:

Daniel Barlow wrote:

The qeustion is whether and to what extent we should be dependent on a
mode of transport which is as dangerous and as wasteful of space as
the motor car in the hands of an average driver. The same question
would apply whether the car had been invented in 1983 or 1893.

No, it isn't the question.

The question wafflycat asked was what happened to make us dependent on
the motor car. You used laughably bogus rhetorics to attempt to
dismiss it as a silly question by equating the car with "modernity".
I pointed out that the issues people are concerned about have bugger
all to do with the age or level of technology involved.

The assertion that "the car can do everything for everyone", however
you want to read it, was made in response to that question.

-dan