Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood and LTN schemes - improvements for pedestrians and cyclists

[Winot]

A brief summary would be “make the use of private cars in a city become so incredibly expensive and miserable as to make doing so an utterly ridiculous choice, because the alternatives are so much cheaper and easier”

It’s happening in London*. We just disagree on how fast it can practically go. It’s easy to post on the internet (“Just make it happen!”); harder to persuade voters to vote for you, get the funding and follow through without a political backlash.

*An illustration - I needed to pick some bulky objects up from work (central London) before Christmas. So I borrowed the neighbour’s car and drove in on a Saturday afternoon. First time I’d done it since lockdown. There’s a greatly reduced road space available to private cars; you had to pay for parking (in a bit of town that’s basically closed at the weekend); and I got clobbered for the congestion charge fine because I’d forgotten it now applies at the weekend . All of which I agree with. So next time I’ll go up by tube and book a minicab or Uber to get me home.

 

[DaphneM]

Are you an Uber shareholder ?

no i'm a cyclist

 

[Hollis]

Well, it may be happening in central london - but while you have large municipal car parks cheaply available people are effectively incentivised to drive. My borough is implementing LTNs, has a problem with through traffic, yet has 1800+ cheap car parking spaces available for the local shopping centre. (Some run by the council).



Car parking and travel information for The Mall Wood Green

I don't know the practicalities of car-free shopping, but it would seem a move away from 'the weekly shop' would deal with grocery shopping and similarly white goods could be left to home delivery - as ikea are doing.

 

[Winot]

There is the Tokyo model Finding a Monthly Parking Space in Tokyo | Tokyo Cheapo

As I say, a massive administrative burden. As you probably know, Tokyo works very differently to London when it comes to zoning and administration.

I’d love to see London move closer to the Tokyo model but it wouldn’t be as straightforward as decreeing “no one can buy a car unless they have a parking space”.

 

[teuchter]

Your pictures above includes trucks, taxis and private hire vehicles.

So I’ve got no idea what you are proposing

The point is that EVs are better than petrol/diesel on emissions but don't make any difference to the multiplicity of other problems caused by widespread private vehicle ownership.

Things like public transport, taxis and car share clubs of course should go electric asap.

 

[teuchter]

As I say, a massive administrative burden. As you probably know, Tokyo works very differently to London when it comes to zoning and administration.

I’d love to see London move closer to the Tokyo model but it wouldn’t be as straightforward as decreeing “no one can buy a car unless they have a parking space”.

You can get some way there via CPZs for which the necessary admin structures already exist. You could simply stop issuing new permits.

 

[Winot]

You can get some way there via CPZs for which the necessary admin structures already exist. You could simply stop issuing new permits.

Yes that’s a neat way of stopping new cars from having a parking space. It’s not a solution to the problem of allowing new cars but only if they have a parking space.

 

[Crispy]

Instead of reducing car parking by (say) 15% across an area with scattershot parklets, trees, cycle hangers etc. I'd much rather remove on-street parking entirely from some specific roads that would benefit from reallocating an entire lane's worth of space to dedicated cycle or pedestrian space. Samre reduction in parking spaces, but a much more concentrated benefit.

 

[alex_]

A brief summary would be “make the use of private cars in a city become so incredibly expensive and miserable as to make doing so an utterly ridiculous choice, because the alternatives are so much cheaper and easier”

Sounds good to me.

I think to do this you need to start to enable the replacements, which to be fair with things like electric car club bays they are.

Also at scale, car clubs can make sure their cars only charge at super off peak - which will
Make them cheaper than domestic products electric car charging

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

It’s happening in London*. We just disagree on how fast it can practically go. It’s easy to post on the internet (“Just make it happen!”); harder to persuade voters to vote for you, get the funding and follow through without a political backlash.

*An illustration - I needed to pick some bulky objects up from work (central London) before Christmas. So I borrowed the neighbour’s car and drove in on a Saturday afternoon. First time I’d done it since lockdown. There’s a greatly reduced road space available to private cars; you had to pay for parking (in a bit of town that’s basically closed at the weekend); and I got clobbered for the congestion charge fine because I’d forgotten it now applies at the weekend . All of which I agree with. So next time I’ll go up by tube and book a minicab or Uber to get me home.

Yet cities like Paris are showing that these things can be done with surprising speed. It just takes someone in power to be suitably bold and ignore the naysayers, because very quickly it becomes the norm, and those naysayers just look ridiculous.

Change has to be forced, if you wait for general consent you’ll be there forever.

 

[Hollis]

Instead of reducing car parking by (say) 15% across an area with scattershot parklets, trees, cycle hangers etc. I'd much rather remove on-street parking entirely from some specific roads that would benefit from reallocating an entire lane's worth of space to dedicated cycle or pedestrian space. Samre reduction in parking spaces, but a much more concentrated benefit.

It makes far more sense to get proper cycling infrastructure in place before spending money on parklets.. Tbh - I get rather tired of the excitement of parklets.. we have one locally and nobody uses it accept to post photos up on twitter saying how wonderful it is. .

 

[Agent Sparrow]

you shouldnt need a private vehicle in a city

I’d broadly agree with that, with noted exceptions for disability access and alongside affordable provision of things like zip car for when personal transport is unavoidable (eg heavy lifting). But what about journeys from London to elsewhere in circumstances where public transport isn’t an option (eg takes an incredibly long time, does not even reach the location and/or there’s too much stuff to carry on PT)? Even if a car is used a handful of times a year for inter city journeys, it needs to live somewhere the rest of the time.

Reducing parking as a blanket action is not one that specifically targets those who use their cars routinely across the city. Increasing residents parking would possibly be fairer.

 

[sparkybird]

Where would the cars park out of interest?

Car ownership in Lambeth has been falling steadily for 40 years. We are in the top 10 lowest car owning boroughs in the UK. 58% of households don't have access to a car. This is a rise of 35% since 2001. I expect the trend to continue.
Blanket CPZs across the borough is a brilliant idea as partial implementation just pushes the free parking to someone else's street

 

[sparkybird]

I’d broadly agree with that, with noted exceptions for disability access and alongside affordable provision of things like zip car for when personal transport is unavoidable (eg heavy lifting). But what about journeys from London to elsewhere in circumstances where public transport isn’t an option (eg takes an incredibly long time, does not even reach the location and/or there’s too much stuff to carry on PT)? Even if a car is used a handful of times a year for inter city journeys, it needs to live somewhere the rest of the time.

If you only use your car for occasional trips out of London it's probably cheaper hire a car and or use a combo of public transport and car hire, which is what I do now. The cost of keeping a car just to use it a handful of times did not make economic sense.

 

[teuchter]

Yes that’s a neat way of stopping new cars from having a parking space. It’s not a solution to the problem of allowing new cars but only if they have a parking space.

I don't think I follow what you mean.

 

[thebackrow]

Yes that’s a neat way of stopping new cars from having a parking space. It’s not a solution to the problem of allowing new cars but only if they have a parking space.

there's a whole load of different ways you can achieve it. There are always two basic levers - cost and convenience.

Simply reducing the number of spaces increases the difficulty of finding a parking space, means you might have to park further from your home, decreases the convenience of car ownership which might nudge you into thinking its more hassle than it's worth (I remember reading years ago about places in posh west London with high car ownership where people said they were lucky to park within a couple of streets)

On cost you can increase the charge for permits (which looks like is in the kerbside strategy).
I've seen someone suggest that new residents shouldn't be able to apply for a parking permit (and there are already car free developments where residents can't).
You could set a limit on the number of permits and then reduce that number each year but some how you've got an allocate them. Again, market driven solution would be to auction them which would find the true 'value' - at some level people would judge costs of a personal car didn't outweigh the benefits and rentals/car share/public transport was enough for them. You'd probably need some trade permit scheme for people whose work genuinely justifies a motor vehicle (although again, price incentives might make some of them more likely to look at non-motorised alternatives. The local washing machine repair guy who has a VW camper van with full camper fit out internally as his 'works vehicle' comes to mind.

But what about journeys from London to elsewhere in circumstances where public transport isn’t an option (eg takes an incredibly long time, does not even reach the location and/or there’s too much stuff to carry on PT)? Even if a car is used a handful of times a year for inter city journeys, it needs to live somewhere the rest of the time.

Almost certainly doesn't make financial sense for those people to own a car. A friend of mine in Bristol was looking at buying a car so she could visit friends in other cities recently and it just didn't make sense vs renting for the amount she was going to use it.

Basic ownership costs - Servicing, tax, insurance at least £1000 (Car ownership costs 2022). exclude fuel as thats the same whether you rent or own.
Lease costs (as a proxy for depreciation) - small engined smallish car, 48 month lease to keep it cheap. £263 per month = £3168 p.a. (Seat Ibiza 1.0 TSI 110 Xcellence Lux MY23 Lease | Nationwide Vehicle Contracts)
So that's over £4200 a year.

Europcar 8 day rental (Saturday morning to Monday morning) for a Ford Focus (similar sized car) is £627 so 4 weeks of holidays spread over the year has only cost you £2500. That leaves you £1700 for weekends and odd zipcar trips at short notice.
Longer rentals are cheaper - it's only £1200 to rent that same car for a full month in one go.

People massively underestimate how much it costs to have a car sitting there doing nothing.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Tbf sparkybird and edcraw I’m not the hard sell to convince. I’m having an amusing moment to myself thinking about how this conversation would go down on Streatham Mum’s Network

 

[DaphneM]

I’d broadly agree with that, with noted exceptions for disability access and alongside affordable provision of things like zip car for when personal transport is unavoidable (eg heavy lifting). But what about journeys from London to elsewhere in circumstances where public transport isn’t an option (eg takes an incredibly long time, does not even reach the location and/or there’s too much stuff to carry on PT)? Even if a car is used a handful of times a year for inter city journeys, it needs to live somewhere the rest of the time.

Reducing parking as a blanket action is not one that specifically targets those who use their cars routinely across the city. Increasing residents parking would possibly be fairer.

If you only need a car a handful of times a year then it’s going to be cheaper to get a taxi or hire a zip car for those times

 

[Winot]

I don't think I follow what you mean.

My scepticism is solely about the practicality of this idea:

Personally I’d argue that if you can’t demonstrate you have a suitable place to park it you shouldn’t own a car

which I took to mean that you have to have a direct link between a specific car and a parking space.

Your idea is a borough-wide CPZ (which I agree with) and then stopping granting permits for it. That means that people with existing cars/permits are fine but that no one living in the borough can park there because there are no new permits being given out. That means (under the beesonthewhatnow scheme) that they aren't allowed to own a car because they can't demonstrate that they have a stable place to park it.

thebackrow your post is also just about dissuading people from parking/owning cars - I agree with doing that.

 

[Winot]

dp

 

[teuchter]

My scepticism is solely about the practicality of this idea:


which I took to mean that you have to have a direct link between a specific car and a parking space.

Your idea is a borough-wide CPZ (which I agree with) and then stopping granting permits for it. That means that people with existing cars/permits are fine but that no one living in the borough can park there because there are no new permits being given out. That means (under the beesonthewhatnow scheme) that they aren't allowed to own a car because they can't demonstrate that they have a stable place to park it.

It's effectively the same end result isn't it - if you have a car, and there's a CPZ and you don't have a permit, you can't park it on the street. No need for anyone to "demonstrate" they have a space, either they do or they don't.

Of course an issue either way is that anyone with off street parking bypasses the restrictions, and I suspect it's the more wealthy who are more likely to have off street parking, just because they'll tend to have bigger properties.

 

[Winot]

It's effectively the same end result isn't it - if you have a car, and there's a CPZ and you don't have a permit, you can't park it on the street. No need for anyone to "demonstrate" they have a space, either they do or they don't.

Of course an issue either way is that anyone with off street parking bypasses the restrictions, and I suspect it's the more wealthy who are more likely to have off street parking, just because they'll tend to have bigger properties.

OK I see the confusion - you are happy with people being prevented from buying their own car. I was trying to think of a solution which would allow them to buy a car by demonstrating that they had a space.

Your system does work then. I’m not sure I’d be prepared to go that far yet (and I am sure that - at the moment - it would be political suicide).

 

[sparkybird]

Tbf sparkybird and edcraw I’m not the hard sell to convince. I’m having an amusing moment to myself thinking about how this conversation would go down on Streatham Mum’s Network

Like leaded petrol..... One of the admins recently saying the census data on car ownership can't be true as she looked on her street and every house has a car....

 

[teuchter]

OK I see the confusion - you are happy with people being prevented from buying their own car. I was trying to think of a solution which would allow them to buy a car by demonstrating that they had a space.

Your system does work then. I’m not sure I’d be prepared to go that far yet (and I am sure that - at the moment - it would be political suicide).

I'm not actually saying I'd necessarily propose it: just that it would be possible to do without major additional admin burden.

For someone with their own off street parking, it wouldn't prevent them from buying a car.

 

[alex_]

Like leaded petrol..... One of the admins recently saying the census data on car ownership can't be true as she looked on her street and every house has a car....

Yeah, obvs the one parked straight outside, plus I asked all of the girls at Prosecco club and they all have cars.

 

[alex_]

Quite a lot of these are fundamentally “if you earn less than 60k you aren’t allowed a cars”

Alex

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Quite a lot of these are fundamentally “if you earn less than 60k you aren’t allowed a cars”

Alex

It does remind me of arguments to push up the cost of all aeroplane tickets to reduce flying, which of course wouldn’t stop rich and cooperate frequent flyers (the main problem) but would penalise those less well off who fly occasionally. Arguably emission zones do similar though.

I don’t have an acceptable option btw.* I just think it’s a shame that there’s a core group of drivers who speed, disregard other road users and flat refuse to consider alternatives to driving so that all of this feels necessary.

*I do have a completely unacceptable fantasy option but I’m not posting that 20 minutes before bedtime

 

[Winot]

Interesting graphic:

 

[liquidindian]

Quite a lot of these are fundamentally “if you earn less than 60k you aren’t allowed a cars”

If you're not minted you there should be alternatives so you don't have to spend a hudge wodge of money on a car.

 

[alex_]

If you're not minted you there should be alternatives so you don't have to spend a hudge wodge of money on a car.

There should be shouldn’t there ?