Traffic woes in Britain and some possible solutions
Getting stuck in traffic stinks no matter where you live. More cars and more drivers don't mesh very well with stagnant roadway projects, and the problem is just as bad in Britain as it is in the States. In fact, in the last 30 years, traffic has almost doubled in Britain, helping to cause a 52 percent increase in carbon emissions.
Would you pay money to lower your carbon emissions? How about if saving carbon emissions allowed you to zoom past all of the stopped traffic spewing their exhaust into the air? Fine... so maybe the point is saving time more than saving emissions, but at least you'd be killing two birds with one stone, eh?
[Source: Motorcycle News]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Matt 8:26PM (12/28/2007)
The best way to solve the traffic problems would be to remove the buses from the roads.
YES I know that buses are "green" in that they potentially reduce the number of vehicles on the road (assuming all the passengers would be driving otherwise) - BUT - in my experience in London, 75% of slow traffic is caused by people being stuck behind or having to move around buses, or buses having to move around OTHER buses, or buses going down roads not suited to buses meaning the traffic going the other way has to stop and try and squeeze through.
Basically what I am ranting about is that buses seem to cause more traffic. Maybe if all those passengers were in cars, we'd all be zipping along at 30mph without any issue. As it is, we are crawling along at 0-10mph, stopping with the buses as they stop ever 150metres.
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Chris M 10:52PM (12/28/2007)
Matt has got it. What is needed is a public transit system that doesn't interfere with traffic, and the traffic doesn't interfere with it.
Elevated railways and subways are a good solution, but even better is a system that doesn't make customers wait, goes direct to destination nonstop, automated, and available 24 hours a day every day. That is Personal Rapid Transit. See:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/prtquick.htm
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Scatter 7:05AM (12/29/2007)
While I agree with Chris that PRT is one important way forwards, I disagree with Matt: it's cars that cause traffic, not buses.
A bendy bus is 18m long and carries up to 145 passengers at rush hour. If you got rid of buses and just half of those passengers switched to cars you'd have 70 additional cars (it would be nice if car sharing took off but I doubt it) taking up 350 metres of road space for each bendy bus taken off the road. It would be chaos.
Sure there are routes where buses get stuck and cause a jam but overall they definitely reduce traffic in London.
The solution is simple in my view. Get rid of all private cars from city centres. Have lots of pedestrian zones and bike routes; a cracking and cheap public transport system including PRT, hybrid buses, light rail, underground; and finally electric taxis, scooters and delivery vehicles.
There you go - no traffic, very fast journeys and safe, clean city centres.
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