Great Western Coffee Shop

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/20/roads-car-use-health-driving

George Monbiot bemoans our road and private vehicle culture - "The vast expanse of road space, the massive investment in metal and fossil fuel, has delivered the freedom to sit fuming in a toxic cloud as your life ticks by" and suggests ways forward - "So here’s a novel idea: how about a 21st-century transport system for the 21st century?"

Lots of ideas ... including "and – yes, I believe in miracles – synchronising bus and train timetables?"

A long article and lots of suggestions - I won't quote it all here.  By the nature of the membership of this forum, I suspect I'll find more people in favour than against ... (and by speculating in that way, I have probably biased the poll anyway!) ...

I am pro rail and other public transport, and opposed to excessive car use. I do not drive.

I cant see public transport improving much, unfortunately. Elsewhere in these forums I have commented adversely on new shorter trains with tightly spaced seats and minimal catering. A fairly typical answer from advocates of the new trains is that full length trains, buffets, leg room and tables are now unaffordable luxuries, and that the priority must be maximising number of seats per vehicle over all else.
At a time when cars are becoming more affordable and better specified, trains are getting worse and more expensive.

And whilst driving carries the risk of delay on hugely crowded roads, rail travel seems subjectively to be getting worse as regards timekeeping and reliability.
Look at the near weekly major signalling breakdowns affecting services from Paddington for example.
Increasingly we have a fair weather only railway, with enormous disruption in what looks to me like expected weather for the time of year. Any reasonable passenger would expect some disruption in truly extreme weather, that does of course also affect road and air travel.
But it seems that the railway cant cope with very slightly adverse weather during which roads and airlines operate as normal.

And as for buses, it seems that some regulation actually prohibits them from connecting with trains !
Some rural bus services are not in fact that bad once you get to know them, but are useless for anyone not in the know.
A lot of bus stops are unmarked and few seem to have timetables or even any indication as to which services serve them, or in what direction.
Would it really cost millions and render the service unviable to put up some signs, on existing posts and structures where possible ? " BUS STOP. SERVICE 28 TOWARDS MINEHEAD" Back in the good old days, bus routes had every stop marked.
At least the vehicles are a bit better, some indeed have better leg room and more comfortable seats than modern DMUs.

He needs to cost his proposals & then work out from where the cash is going to from.

Time to throw a grenade into this discussion and step back ...

Over recent years as councils have experienced tighter budgets, Transport has invariable been squeezed. Also, about a year ago Grahame posted an article about Total Transport that seemed very good.

So, as councils collect money for Police and Fire services via a separate precept, surely another precept should be added for Transport so that councils can fund  a set of 'free' and fixed price services that are essential to maintain services and traffic flows.

Essential staff who have to work in a 24x7 world must have a safe option of transport and not be stranded because buses do not run on a Sunday. Congested corridors of traffic must be corrected by running fast, cheap/free public transport so that car drivers can be encouraged to use buses/trains.

A lot of local job adverts state that the applicant "must have own transport".

Once an employee has obtained a car and paid the fixed costs of running the vehicle, then the marginal cost of each extra mile is fairly low and often cheaper than bus or train fares.

I knew of people who could in theory use the train for commuting but instead drove to work. The usual reason being that reliable attendance at work was essential and a car therefore required for "bad train days" such as strikes, rain, snow, wind or heatwaves.

Elsewhere on these forums, gross overcrowding on Westbound trains on Maundy Thursday is discussed, together with somewhat similar conditions on days preceding other holidays.
The general view was that not much can be done and that those who "choose" to travel at such times must expect the conditions reported.
Let us remember that Maundy Thursday is a working day ! Not much hope of enticing people out of cars and onto trains with those sort of conditions.
Working people have to "choose to travel" so as to be at work in working hours, at which times the railway cant cope with present numbers, let alone any more.

Monbiot is a self-satisfied dreamer. This is the man who blamed the floods in the Somerset Levels a couple of years ago on the hill farmers who accelerated water run-off by cutting down the trees to keep methane-belching cows…

There have been hundreds of millions of technological developments over the years - most have fallen by the wayside and only those things that are really useful for the period have achieved a mass market. I’m thinking of things like spoons and chimneys, lace-up shoes, stirrups and in the modern world mobile phones, personal computers and, of course, motor cars.

The motor car offers personal mobility in the same way that a hundred years ago the horse did. But the motor car is, relatively, a lot cheaper to keep than a horse, it goes a lot further and can carry more. It also protects you from the weather and doesn’t kick you if it’s feeling a bit uppity.

The car goes when you want it to go and takes you directly to your destination - which in many cases is better than the train or bus can offer unless the destination is in or near a town centre. Nobody has ‘missed’ their car and it does not expect you to wait at a pole on the roadside for a sometimes indeterminate period before you can get in.

There is a serious issue with cars in areas with dense populations - but other people have realised that long before Monbiot appeared on the scene. Anyone remember Colin Buchanan’s Traffic in Towns of 1963?  On the other hand I had to get from Reading to a village near Havant last week. If I had used public transport it would have taken half a day and left me with a walk of over a mile or I would have had to take a taxi from the closest station (which may not even have a taxi rank) or Havant. I made the journey door-to-door in an hour and fifteen minutes and there wasn’t a cloud of toxic fumes to be seen. And even if we had been held up for 15 or 20 minutes by traffic - the journey would still have been faster than walk-bus(1)-train-change train-walk (or taxi).

On the other hand, if my business was in the London area or much further afield then I would most likely have used public transport.

(1) with a circuitous route to the station going right around the pedestrian area in the town centre which together with the protracted stops as a result of one-man operation now means the bus takes twice as long from my house to the station than it did 50 years ago. It's about 2 miles - and an HST from Paddington could have reached Twyford in the same time!

Where would we be without dreamers sometimes? What some call dreamers others call visionaries. 

On the matter of the Somerset Levels. If your expertise in upland hydrology and the effect of agriculture is better than mine I will bow to your superior knowledge. However, in my professional opinion Monbiot was at least in the main right. Though the failure to keep the rivers dredged the rivers was also a factor.

There is a huge amount of evidence from published studies to support this effect of intensive stocking.  For example a study on Welsh hill farms showed that intensive stocking of sheep reduced the amount of rain soaking into the ground, dramatically increasing the rate of runoff of the rain into the rivers. Reduced stocking improved this as did the construction of small belts of woodland from which the sheep were excluded. As a result of this it was proposed to give farmers grants to restrict the amount of sheep they kept per acre. 

When the canals were first built they line them with clay to stop the water leaking out.  However the clay needed to have all the cracks created by excavating it and relaying it blocked up.  The technique they used was to run a flock of sheep back and forth over it to compact it.  This was still used on dam projects up to the 1950's.  Nowadays they use a roller with special tines in it. Its called a sheep's foot roller.

 

Getting me started on the Somerset Levels is not good ...

• I fully accept that better management of water flow from hills would help
• Dredging of rivers, and removing multiple dumped vehicles will help river speed and drainage
• Building a drainage lagoon in the Severn can reduce the effect of the tide and allow water to escape throughout the day

The Somerset Levels are a natural wet land, and flooding is expected, but Somerset's experience a few ago shows the danger of centralising everything and not responding to local needs.

Back to rail and transport, whilst I accept the George Monbiot is a dreamer, and that cars are necessary for many journeys, we must as a society commit ourselves to an efficient public transport that allow our towns and cities to function, and will allow people to do their jobs.

And also destroys one of the most important habitats for water birds that we have in the UK
 

No, the Somerset Levels are most certainly not natural in their current state, heavily managed and drained over 100's of years, much the same as large parts of the Netherlands.

The Somerset Levels certainly were natural wetlands even before man started changing it by virtue of it's low position relative to the Bristol Channel and it's function as a drainage basin for the hills surrounding it's landward borders. It has certainly seen a lot of change over many hundreds of years of man made drainage but it is stil physically inclined to be a wetland.

Oh dear!

We seem to have been swamped by the Somersetshire Levels...!

My point about Monbiot's take on upland farming is that it is not the only explanation for the events which happened recently - upland farming has been around for centuries in that area and the Levels have flooded again and again in that time. Possibly it's also partly due to the Levels being at around sea level...

Judging from the articles he wrote at that time he seemed to see farming as the only culprit and failed to consider any of the other possibilities apart from dredging being environmentally unsound. His attitude seemed to be, and I might be drawing a completely wrong conclusion, that people don't need food on their table and it's the inhabitants fault for being flooded.

It seems a typical 'blame the victims' attitude, just as did Bishop Alcuin, the English scholar safe in Charlemagne's court, who blamed the monks of Lindisfarne for being attacked by the Vikings because they weren't holy enough...

But Monbiot's take on transport is, at the best, impractical and ineffective in solving the perceived issues. He ignores population growth in the country as a whole and large cities in particular, changes in employment and its distribution and a host of other things. To all complex problems somebody will come up with a simply, catchy, populist 'solution' which is either ineffective at best or at worst, bad.

Ker-boom!  :D

I can see it happening as it would fit in with the current trend of decentralisation, which is to devolve the provision of services and collection of revenues to local authorities while prescribing what shall be provided and proscribing expenditure collected for one purpose on another, ie ringfencing.

Would people accept such a precept? Only very reluctantly. Fire and Police can be paid with a grumble as there's no alternative, these are services we need and cannot, yet, provide for ourselves, but Public Transport is optional; why should I pay for buses when I have a car? It's also doubtful that such a precept could raise enough for a decent bus and train service, leading to degradation of service. It would be a great way for Westminster to wash its hands of both a problem and an expense at the same time.

Man has indeed been farming uplands for centuries. However, the way it is done and the reasons for doing it have changed. Particularly in recent decades.

It's not principally about allocating land for  'methane belching' livestock but rather the growing of maize to feed said livestock. Maize is also increasingly being grown for the nice subsidies it attracts for bio-fuel use. Farmers have also switched from sowing in the spring to sowing in the winter, leaving the soil bare in the part of the year with highest rainfall.

These issues were realised by the previous Govt. Specific conditions were attached, in 2005, to the subsidies given for maize growing for non human consumption. Ground cover crops were to be grown with the maize, and winter cover plants sown immediately after harvesting. Farmers were also warned not to grow maize in areas prone to soil erosion. After maize is harvested there is neither stubble or weed to bind the soil.

These subsidy conditions for non-food maize growing were removed by the Coalition Govt in 2010.

Upland farming methods were not the only contributor to winter 2013/14's flooding in Somerset. They were a significant part though. George Monbiot was right. Certainly not a self-satisfied dreamer. His article in 2014 was backed by a peer reviewed scientific study carried out in the previous decade. A study that informed Govt policy in 2005. A policy now abandoned. Not just abandoned. Maize cultivation has been specifically exempted from any and all soil conservation measures.

If you think upland farming is like it was years ago you are mistaken. Limited winter feed meant the number of animals was much more limited.  Now with almost unlimited supplies of winter feed, the number of animals per acre has increased dramatically. That is the problem. 

Written before I saw bignosemac's more fulsome reply

The fundamental problem is that the population has increased by some 10 million in the last 40 years and the rate of growth is accelerating. According to the Office for National Statistics the population in

1971 was 55.9 million
1981 was 56.3 million
1991 was 57.4 million
2001 was 59.1 million
2011 was 63.3 million
2015 was 65.1 million.

This larger number of people requires more land for housing and as nobody is making land any more - at least in the UK - the result is that more food has to be produced from an ever smaller area. Unless we import even more food which only pushes the problem elsewhere and means we have to export more 'stuff' to pay for it.

So farming has to become more intensive.

So until somebody can come up with an answer that doesn't involve the wearing of hair shirts I continue to maintain that Monbiot is talking out of the place the sun doesn't shine.

I guarantee that no other rail forum has an informed, passionate discussion on upland farming in the middle of a rail-related thread.  I love this type of education.  :D

I agree, so lets understand the downsides and try and find ways to avoid them.

For example as I said further up this thread:


There may be other ways as well. Some have questioned whether we need to consume as much meat as we do. (Some say we should all become vegetarian, but that doesn't make sense for me as some farmland is only good enough for pasture).  The land used to produce winter (and summer top up) food for the animals could then be used to feed humans. 

The increased area used for housing is not only (probably not even mainly) due to increasing population but changes in household habits. More of us live alone and more single people live in whole houses rather than flats. There's been a general shift from towns and cities to villages and smaller towns, reversing the trends of the 20th century. Within towns, we're largely abandoning the late-20th century move to blocks of flats and returning to individual houses with gardens. Layouts are also demanding more road space. And drives and sometimes garages, of course, (which also increase flooding risk by expanding the area of impermeable asphalt). I'm not saying these changes in housing habits are necessarily bad – they obviously have good and bad aspects – but it's not as simple as more people = more houses.

The problem is that until now the equation has been "more people = more houses". I agree that in the longer term this is no longer sustainable and other countries provide a selection of ways forward that might be suitable. France still builds lots of individual houses in the suburbs, but it is a much larger country with a smaller population and as it's on balance a bit warmer farmland is a bit more productive. Germany has similar issues to us and there, at least in and close to towns, blocks of several flats are built. Typically there are six, eight or ten to a block - each flat is as large in floor space as a normal suburban house and almost all have large(ish) balconies and lifts serve the upper floors. Clearly these flats come in different sizes and all are defined by floor area. In more modern buildings the sound-proofing between the flats is excellent. The buildings all have cellars for storage and for housing the communal kit for heating and utilities: water, sometimes gas, telephone terminations, TV distribution, etc. The cellars sometimes include a communal laundry, ventilated drying rooms for clothes to avoid condensation in the flats, and always a car park with spaces for all the flats.

This latter has the advantage that the buildings can be more closely packed as parking space is not required, the cars are protected from the winter snow and the streetscape is unencumbered with vehicles. The legal position is that, roughly, the structure is owned by a co-operative the owners of which are the inhabitants of the flats. There are all sorts of safeguards to avoid the case where one owner doesn't want to pay for his/her share of repairs or improvements - but there is of course always room for disagreement but these are not very common.

The point is that flats of this type are perfectly suitable for families with children and the building packing density is higher than the typical UK suburban development. The downside is that the gardens are communal - although may people have a garden in a sort of 'garden colony' elsewhere. Imagine lots of suburban gardens with hedges but no houses - except for a wooden garden house.

It might not be entirely suitable for all comers - there are still people with individual houses in Germany - but in towns the concept works well.

It's a concept that works very well in several countries and would work well in Britain, in terms of providing suitable space for households on less land and as a bonus using fewer materials to do so, and needing less energy to heat. Balconies, as you say, provide space for kids, some storage, plants, drying, barbecues etc etc. But for some reason it's unpopular here; maybe because we're too wedded to the idea of a garden but I think it might also be because most examples of such blocks that have been built have been council flats, or social housing to use the current term. British attachment to private ownership of housing makes that a stigma to overcome.

And the short termist approach we generally have to property rentals - if that could be changed to follow for example the French or Dutch models, I think the numbers of long term renters might increase and would help to make our ridiculous property market (both sales & rentals) a little bit more sensible.

But that cuts both ways. Your average landlord isn't going to enter into a long lease with a tenant that they are uncertain about. So what you'll find is that anyone on benefits, the minimum wage, without good references or with a bad credit rating will be excluded from renting such properties. Also, landlords may well be less inclined to maintain properties with a long lease, as they don't stand to benefit, and where a tenancy turns sour, they may resort to unfair tactics. 

For long-term rentals, what you really need are professional, long-term investors, who aren't going to have to sell a flat to fund their retirement or because they lost their job. You also need properties that have been built to require minimal maintenance. There aren't that many of either around to date, what we perhaps need are some tax breaks and regulation changes to encourage 'patient' capital, such as pension funds, employers and maybe even trade unions to enter the market?   

Agree with what you say Noggin, the system is in dire need of an overhaul.

The reason I mentioned the French system is that it is much more like (afaik) a business lease whereby the tenant is responsible for a large part of the maintenance and can make the place more like a home by carrying out structural and cosmetic alterations.

The Dutch system which I have direct experience of, has one most redeeming feature in that rent levels are controlled and any unreasonable increases can be appealed to the municipality rent board whose ruling is final. This I think encourages longer term, stable occupancy and discourages short termist profiteering by landlords shifting people on every 6 months.

I also read an article recently (I can't remember where/when so no link, sorry!) on the growing numbers of new build properties in the UK, particularly blocks of flats, which developers are constructing on a 'build to let' basis, financed primarily by large developers and institutional investors, who are almost always looking towards the long term, so there is some hope of change!