Adair: the chances of us doing anything better than the Aussies are slim to well, none. Just wait – we won’t even have the transport working right *during* the show.

Peter Hampshire: Right on the money. I am a big believer in “localisation”. I am originally from Berkshire, and I know just what a beautiful part of the country it is.

After moving huge amounts of people around efficiently during the 2000 Olympics, Sydney’s transport networks has gone into meltdown. A once reliable rail service is now a joke and every road in Sydney seems to be clogged with traffic.

Our State Government’s solution is to increase the number of bus services. Brilliant! When the roads are congested let’s throw some more 10 metre leviathans into the mix. That’ll really fix it. If you are going to sit in traffic, you might as well have some privacy. Listen to the radio or a cd while you stuck in between a fleet of near empty buses.

I hope London gets it worked out to show the boofheads running the circus down here that it can be done.

Don’t Priuses have a worse total environmental impact over the course of their lives?

In any case, why do you find it hard to argue against the idea of taxing SUVs punitively?

Are we trying to correct a negative externality (excessive CO2, higher chance of Jemima getting squashed as she walks to school, higher chance of one toppling over onto your foot as it goes round the corner) or are we trying to impose our ideas of how other people should live their lives and using faux-scientific moralising as our justification? Why tax just SUVs? What is so special about an SUV? What is wrong with looking at emissions or some proxy (such as mileage?)

As for whether I own an SUV… I live in a riverside flat in Docklands on an IBM salary. Does it *sound* like I could afford to run an SUV too?!! :-p

“Nevertheless, I think part of James’ original point has been largely overlooked here; are price rises which the rich can afford (and afford to complain about) helping us all cut down unnecessary travel, or are they hurting the poor? Probably both, and sadly it’s probably going to be hard to encourage the one while avoiding the other. ”

This is an interesting point. However, it’s probably possible to help the poor quite easily: my understanding is that, based on Stern’s calculation of the cost of emitting CO2, petrol in the UK is taxed at a far higher rate than an externalities argument would require. Therefore, we should be lowering fuel duty in order to ensure its price accurately reflects its cost…. having the price too high surely pushes people in the direction of less efficient transport choices! :-p

I don’t know. Londonders. Give them a city full of black cabs and they alternate between complaining there are too few and they are or too expensive. Give them a near ubiquitous underground system and watch as they argue about whether it’s overcrowded, overpriced or both.

Growing up in Dorset I would have bitten my arm off to get around as conveniently as I now do when I go into, and around, London. My arm I tell you. In areas where public transport is not even available, the car becomes all too essential.

Never having been a proper Londoner, I am not really qualified to remark on the Ken or his policies. Of course, if I lived in London I’d probably be a vocal opponent of any price rise, including congestion charging. Taxation is always hard to get right, particularly punitive taxation. I’m more likely to buy a Prius than an SUV, but while I find it hard to argue against an SUV tax I’d probably have an entirely different attitude if I did own one. I’d call it bullying rather than a fair recompense for a fuel and road hog. (Richard, do you secretly own an SUV?)

Nevertheless, I think part of James’ original point has been largely overlooked here; are price rises which the rich can afford (and afford to complain about) helping us all cut down unnecessary travel, or are they hurting the poor? Probably both, and sadly it’s probably going to be hard to encourage the one while avoiding the other.

The simple problem is that many of our ‘systems’ – from road transport, light and heavy rail, to airports, are overloaded – we don’t have the capacity to move the number of people who wish to travel.

From one perspective, I have little doubt that the next twenty years will herald technologies which allow us to solve the problems we are all too aware of, that are currently caused by burning fossil fuels. But that doesn’t get around the wider issues of ‘space’ and ‘flow’. Ultimately, everyone could buy a ‘green’ Toyota Prius tomorrow, and whilst we might heat the earth a little less, we’d still be facing some of the longest traffic jams ever seen.

So whilst I support some of Transport for London’s policies – such as the Oyster card, (although I agree with you about it being a problem for visitors) and their plan to alter the congestion charge levels so that charge is based on vehicle emissions – the major problem is that it appears to be an organisation full of people who are desperate to control and contrain movement. This is to completely mis-understand how cities work – and how people try and wish to move around them.

In the short term, taxation is the easiest way to ‘stop’ people out of moving; but longer term, we have to accept that we have in fact out-grown many of these hundred year old systems such as railways and cars – and we need to find new ways to move about.

In Pasadena recenly, we heard an impassioned plea by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, for designers to rethink the big ‘system’ picture of transportation, and ‘stop redesigning cupholders’. Fundamentally, all the government is doing with ideas like its proposed road-user charging scheme that we’ve seen so much press about this week, is tinkering.

More on this over at the movementdesign bureau blog if anyone is interested:

http://movementbureau.blogs.com/projects/

Given the unfortunate constraints of short platforms and congestion (neither of which are the train operators’ faults), I’m not sure how it’s possible simultaneously to claim that a resource is both overpriced and overcrowded.

As unpalatable as it may be to suggest it, I would suggest trains are either undercrowded (as a result of overpricing) or overcrowded (as a result of underpricing).

Given the the level of crowding can be assessed objectively, and that this assessment would support the claim that trains are overcrowded at peak periods, this would imply to me that peak-time trains are, indeed, underpriced.

Alex

ps – the massive advantage to black cab fairs going up was that afterwards you could actually find one!

pps – you are right about overground trains though – they are overpriced / overcrowded / dirty / unreliable and aren’t going to be getting better while the govenment keep insisting on giving franchises to Virgin or Stagecoach.

Oh you have a procurement process that routinely takes the lowest bidder? Sound like “Cake and eat it too”.

The pricing is enough to make you want to buy a Toyota! And that is a funny one. It is a congestion charge but if you have a green car you don’t pay. So does that mean it is a pollution change? A city full of less polluting cars will still be congested.

Having said that I love living in London. Was out in the city last night travelling in after the CC time had expired and parked for free on a single yellow line, had a great time and on the way home got to see Big Ben and the House of Parliament. They are such stunning buildings – they just take your breath away.