Electric cars 'will not solve transport problem,' report warns

> People don't use trains because "they're expensive, and I might need to leave 8 minutes early or later some day"

That's an unfortunate side-effect of trains having timetables. When a train is 5 minutes late, it's really frustrating because a) you don't have any agency, b) you usually cannot see anything related to the reason for the delay, and c) the idle waiting makes the time feel longer.

When a car is stuck in traffic for 30 minutes, it doesn't feel like you're losing 30 minutes. It just feels like a force of nature happening to you, and also it feels shorter than waiting for a train for 30 minutes because you're still engaged in the act of driving. You still have some agency because you have the choice of trying to change to that other lane that always feels like it's moving faster.

It's nice that that's possible for you, but I'm afraid it is not universally possible for everyone and everycity. E.g. bike access to our university (plus institutes etc.) when coming from the city is via narrow but heavy traffic road (to university, a bunch of suburbs, two autobahns), or an adjacent pedestrian path (with a lot of studends and badly trimmed overgrowth), or through the hills with forests and no direct path.

The solution here would add & maintain bike lanes (or a stand-alone bike road), but for the above example that would mean deforesting and cutting into 2 or 3 km of hillside. And for the duration of that effort, suspending the primary road between the city and {university, one suburb, one autobahn access} which also happens to be the secondary connection to {two additional suburbs, another autobahn access}.

Space is not at a premium the U.S. There is plenty opportuinity there to start working towards a very efficient transit infrastructure which will allow for Bikes, Cars, Buses and what not.

I have travelled/driven between the west coast and middle of Arizona (and somewhat into Utah) and road infrastructure generally was much much better than what we have here in the U.K.

As a relative/subjective view, consider that on most major roads in London, it will be difficult to place two London buses side-by-side. (try walking between Bank and let's say Baker Street)

In CA, Silicon Valley proper or south of San Jose or going even further into Southern California, most residential streets are large enough to allow parking even big RVs (almost as big as London Buses) adjacent and still leaving space for cars to move about. From what I remember of San Francisco, the main roads were very wide (streets not so much), it was not difficult to manoeuvre a Chevy Suburban, whereas in London you can rent a studio roughly the size of that vehicle.

Modern day capitalism and the increasing specialisation of jobs combined with problems in the housing market means that people do extraordinary commutes. If the bus or the bicycle is your transport option then you are not going to be setting off at 6.30 in the morning to drive 100 miles to sit at a desk for 8 hours.

In the 1970's nobody drove 100 miles on a daily basis to get to work although there was a small army of travelling salesmen in 'rep' cars that did put in the miles.

Nowadays those reps are probably flying so nothing has improved on that front.

It is hard to untangle this mess, people have careers, kids at schools and considerable investment in automobiles. Also, when companies merge there can be highly dysfunctional travel arrangements going on as a result.

If it is bicycles all the way then that could mean electric bicycles, which means an effective maximum travel distance of 15 miles or an hour of travel time each way.

A government could unpick and sort the mess out, for instance, in the public sector you might find you have people from city A commuting to work in city B and vice-versa to do similar jobs, e.g. in the NHS or education. A government could look at this and use their weight to pay for people to do a job swap, so pay grades are the same but people are working locally. For instance, we have a secondary school French teacher in city A working in city B, and another in city B working in city A. There could be a straightforward incentive to un-do this travel mismatch, where everyone wins. Under normal circumstances opportunities for the French teacher in city A to get a job in city A might not come along. Same for the counterpart in city B.

This would have knock on effects in the private sector as the main earner in the household might be able to also go for a more local job at a lower pay rate with benefits in getting two hours of their life back every day.

The bicycle definitely can be part of this future, if the government could get a sizeable quantity of public sector workers to have local jobs part of the package could include electric bicycles.

Objectively speaking, I hear you. The numbers are in your favor.

And full disclosure, I have not yet tried cycling in London.

But from a car drivers perspective, to me it seems that if by any chance, I made a contact with a cyclist even at breaking speed, I would injur the poor soul very badly.

And when I play that back but me being the cyclist... I can't get myself to get on a bike.

Dangerous in what way? It's my understanding that it's mainly cars that are a danger to bicyclists.

That's simply not true. Cycling in many European countries is no more dangerous than being an occupant in a motor vehicle and a significant proportion of cyclist injuries and deaths are caused by motor vehicles.

Proper cycling and walking infrastructure combined with a reduction of car usage in cities makes cycling an extremely safe activity. In addition the extra health benefits from physical exercise more than offsets any increase in risk from a collision at a societal level.

As for cyling not being usable in many weather conditions - perhaps in extreme winters, but in London there're very few days in the year, if any, that I can't happily ride the 22km round trip to work and back.

In case of bicycles, isn't the danger coming mainly from the fact that they are often used on roads alongside cars?

Bikes would be much safer after reaching critical mass, where it would make sense to have dedicated infrastructure for them.

As it stands, the current infrastructure is basically hostile at every level.

This is not true. In Germany bike lanes are only required to be used when there is a sign saying so (and when they usable and safe, which you cannot expect, sadly). By default bike lanes are optional.

So wherever there is a bike lane he lost his right to use the road, it works just as designed.

That's exactly what segregated bicycle facilities are all about, discrimination. Of course in South Africa you were also discriminated by the color of your skin not just by your vehicle of choice. From the article: "When in 1935 a cycle lane was painted on Louis Botha Avenue, the city authorities touted it as a safety solution, but its true purpose was to get black cyclists from Alex out of the way of white motorists." Roads are not car-centered. They are built for vehicles, and bicycles are vehicles. Bike lanes are built to keep us off the road that motorists believe it is theirs. Do you think cyclists didn't ride on the roads in the Netherlands before they built bike lanes? Of course they built them to let "progress" (i.e. the car) pass unimpeded.

yeah right, and 1 month old infants too.

But if taking a car gets cheaper, people who now walk, cycle, or take a bus will start taking cars.

Also, with self-driving cars that are cheaper, I expect that people who now drive a car to the suburbs will move further out of town to get cheaper housing because a) driving is cheaper and b) self-driving would mean they can do things on their commute (work, watch Netflix, etc)

I think the uncomfortable truth is that, to fight climate change, we must give up some luxuries. Flying, driving a car, electricity, low priced almost disposable clothing, electronics gadgets, etc. must get more expensive.

>The gas is taxed for the environmental reasons

Then why was it highly taxed before carbon emissions were considered a problem at all? I can tell you: because it's easy to tax (very much like estates).

Oh, but it is a wonderful tax income. Around here, only a fraction (about 1/8) of car-related taxes are spent on maintaining the roads.

Thanks! So you're looking at roughly £15 a day in overall costs. (Maybe a touch more when you add in maintenance and repairs.) It's interesting that if you had to pay the congestion charge or for parking, the scales would easily tip twards the train. So in conclusion, it's really too bad the transit tickets in London are so expensive since it's clearly pushing a lot of people to drive instead.