| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Cars, Cherry Trees, Chiswick and Carbon | |
| Posted by: | Mark Evans | |
| Date/Time: | 26/02/20 08:47:00 |
| Michael, please try not to get so upset when people disagree with you. You are misunderstanding the arguments that are being put to you. Nobody is saying traffic evaporation doesn't happen. Obviously if congestion gets worse people will consider alternative forms of transport, businesses will fail and people will move home to be closer to work so some traffic evaporates. The logical fallacy is believing that you can reduce traffic by creating traffic. I think where you are going wrong is by focusing on the number of vehicle journeys in isolation as a target. The statistics I quoted earlier were for journey miles by vehicle for London from the Department for Transport. These show that from 2008-2018 vehicle journey miles have fluctuated within quite a narrow range. During the same period average traffic speeds have fallen significantly - see the studies published by organisations like INRIX for confirmation. Consequently congestion in London has risen. What we should be aiming for with our transport policy is fewer vehicles on the road but if the distance travelled by vehicles over the last decade has remained the same and the time it has taken for them to cover that distance has risen then the number of vehicles on the road at an given time has also risen. Even if traffic evaporation succeeds in reducing the number of vehicles and the distance they travel this is meaningless if the reduction is less than the increase in average journey time. |