A query about bus, bike and taxi only lanes

For 2 of us to get into town and back, it's way cheaper to drive and pay for a couple of hours' parking. We also don't stop in several dangerous places to drop people off (or simply to sit and wait in case someone believes the timetable) with our engines pumping out particulates. We can also usually park closer to M&S than the nearest bus stop. Oh, and it takes us 5 minutes to get there rather than 25... (would probably be quicker if we didn't get held up by busses.)
 
ianp5a said:
Busses take cars off of the road and reduce congestion. So you should be thankful for them. And having a lane to ensure they get through at peak times, makes buses more attractive to people who may otherwise be sitting in the car in front of you. Hooray for the bus!
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Way too many bus stops, they need to be further apart. Most bus stops are now in the road instead of laybys. This means traffic is held up and causes congestion and increases pollution. I'm more likely to get stuck behind a slow frequently stopping bus than behind another car. Bus lanes do little to elliviate the problem especially when the bus has to turn right and they just pull out on front of you like they do when leaving bus stops.
I'd rather listen to my stereo in my car than put up with the annoying tinny headphone sound of someone else's music on a bus or on the tube.
 
boliston said:
id prefer it if the uk had more continental style trams - actually quite a nice way to get round a city compared with a bus!
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yes. Even walking and cycling are usually nicer, quicker and safer than bus. It doesn't have to be that way, but routing and timetables are designed to cater for a few pensioners and a few people on unemployment benefits rather than working people in a hurry.
 
daugirdas said:
yes. Even walking and cycling are usually nicer, quicker and safer than bus. It doesn't have to be that way, but routing and timetables are designed to cater for a few pensioners and a few people on unemployment benefits rather than working people in a hurry.
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Did your daddy roll up and beat you with the daily mail as a child or something, you know if you hate so much about this country as you apparently do from recent rants your more than welcome to move to any of the countries on the continent that you find more amenable to your lifestyle :bang:
 
MWHCVT said:
Did your daddy roll up and beat you with the daily mail as a child or something, you know if you hate so much about this country as you apparently do from recent rants your more than welcome to move to any of the countries on the continent that you find more amenable to your lifestyle :banghead:
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Were you beaten up for expressing opinion that is slightly off tangent to the most popular belief as it would strongly appear so? I shall take care of my bus-free lifestyle at my own convenience thank you very much :p
 
daugirdas said:
Were you beaten up for expressing opinion that is slightly off tangent to the most popular belief as it would strongly appear so? I shall take care of my bus-free lifestyle at my own convenience thank you very much :p
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Just do it slowly....and find a free parking spot. Think of your blood pressure ;)
 
viv1969 said:
Just do it slowly....and find a free parking spot. Think of your blood pressure ;)
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How can I take up more than one parking space at a time? One is not satisfactory enough :) I could buy a bus, but then all Glasgow would try to get on board :bang:
 
daugirdas said:
How can I take up more than one parking space at a time? One is not satisfactory enough :) I could buy a bus, but then all Glasgow would try to get on board :banghead:
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Only if you weren't driving it!! :lol:
 
viv1969 said:
Only if you weren't driving it!! :LOL:
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How would they know I am driving it? How would they know me if they don't read this forum? I am not on TV yet. Should I paint it in black with orange skulls and danger signs? Actually that may attract some nice audience.
 
nilagin said:
Way too many bus stops, they need to be further apart. Most bus stops are now in the road instead of laybys. This means traffic is held up and causes congestion and increases pollution. I'm more likely to get stuck behind a slow frequently stopping bus than behind another car. Bus lanes do little to elliviate the problem especially when the bus has to turn right and they just pull out on front of you like they do when leaving bus stops.
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Buses remove a huge volume of traffic from the roads, by a long, long way. Especially in congested areas where people have a real incentive to take public transport. It may be that some cities implement some things badly or have other constraints that you don't see. A good transport authority will fine tune the network based on a lot of data that you don't have.
nilagin said:
I'd rather listen to my stereo in my car than put up with the annoying tinny headphone sound of someone else's music on a bus or on the tube.
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I listen to podcasts and radio shows like Radio 4 comedy. Perfect. I sit back and laugh and let someone else drive me. Luxury. Getting angry in your car at buses will not get considered a valid criteria for the transport authority to make changes.

boliston said:
id prefer it if the uk had more continental style trams - actually quite a nice way to get round a city compared with a bus!
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Yes trams and other mass transit types also help reduce congestion. However many trams have to share the roads with cars and buses for part or all of their journeys. And therefore hold up traffic or get held up too. The tram near me has a section of separated lane that has been grassed over and looks great. But they still have to stop at traffic lights. And if you travel on them every day there is very little difference in experience to going by bus. They are even made to look the same inside.
 
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ianp5a said:
Buses remove a huge volume of traffic from the roads, by a long, long way. Especially in congested areas where people have a real incentive to take public transport. It may be that some cities implement some things badly or have other constraints that you don't see. A good transport authority will fine tune the network based on a lot of data that you don't have.
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Do you have the data to support that? I'm willing to bet the majority of bus passengers don't drive or have the use of a car rather than car drivers leaving their car at home and taking the bus instead.
My place of work is 8 miles away. Takes less than 10 minutes to travel by car. Using public transport, which doesn't follow the same route, would take an hour longer according to Google maps. I'll stick to the car thanks, that way I can go to the gym on the way to or from work and spend more quality time with my family.
 
I will stick to my 45 minute each way drive too, thus avoiding 2.5hr each way version on public transport door to door.
 
nilagin said:
Do you have the data to support that? I'm willing to bet the majority of bus passengers don't drive or have the use of a car rather than car drivers leaving their car at home and taking the bus instead...
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I'd imagine a lot of bus passengers are retired who would be more dependant on taxis if they were not near a bus route - thereby adding to the number of car journeys. It would also mean more low income people being forced to run a "banger" if that was their only way of getting to work apart from the bus.
 
I'm quite lucky here. It's only 9 miles to work and the bus takes only about 10 minutes more than driving. Costs about the same too. I use both (though not on the same day*). I can also have a snooze on the bus and it hardly ever crashes if I do that - I'm sure my car would crash every time!

For me, an advantage of buying a weekly bus ticket to get to work is that anything else I want to do with it is effectively free. If I want to go to a gig and have a few beers, I wouldn't want to drive anyway so having the ability to get there and home without having to pay any extra is great - plus it means more money available for beer!


* I have a friend who once drove his car to another town then caught the bus home!


Steve.
 
nilagin said:
My place of work is 8 miles away. Takes less than 10 minutes to travel by car. Using public transport, which doesn't follow the same route, would take an hour longer according to Google maps.
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Be happy it is just 10 minutes. Take those buses away, and it would take you much longer, as the number of people would be forced to go by car would multiply enormously at rush hour times. Remember, your statistic-of-one situation does not apply to everyone. Many people are stuck in traffic daily for an hour or more.
Steve Smith said:
I can also have a snooze on the bus and it hardly ever crashes if I do that - I'm sure my car would crash every time!
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Dang. Got one of those cars eh? And they told us Sat-nav would solve everything.
 
boliston said:
taxis do not take up valuable parking space in city centres
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But you've clearly never seen the chaos they cause blocking up the streets around Piccadilly station in Manchester. They're a rule unto themselves on those roads. I can't count the amount of times I alone have almost been in a collision with them, as the swing around without looking, cross an unmarked cross road without slowing down and so on..
 
ianp5a said:
Be happy it is just 10 minutes. Take those buses away, and it would take you much longer, as the number of people would be forced to go by car would multiply enormously at rush hour times. Remember, your statistic-of-one situation does not apply to everyone. Many people are stuck in traffic daily for an hour or more.
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I'm fortunate, now, in that I travel in the opposite direction to rush hour traffic so lack of buses won't pose a problem. Even when I did travel in the same direction as rush hour traffic it was unable to use the empty bus lane which causes the congestion. The bus lane was once part of a dual carriageway and guess what, it was hardly ever congested on the 20 odd years I drove the same way before the bus lane was introduced.
 
Cool. I hope you realise that traffic 20 years ago was very different. It is really down to boring statistics how the spacing of the bus stops and the frequency of buses are decided. They are not doing this just to get at you.
 
I've never had a job that I could use public transport for anyway...hell the last place I worked had I wanted to use public transport, I'd have had to get the 8am bus too the city from home, to get into centre for about 11am then the bus out 20 minutes later to reach the office about 12noon for the start of my shift at 1pm, then come 10pm I'd have to run to get the 10:10pm bus to the city centre, sleep in the bus station to get the 7am bus home, but of course that wouldn't get me back home to 9am which would be too late to catch the 8am bus too work :eek:
 
When I was back in Bristol, the local train would only take 5min to where I needed (+15min walk), but sadly 1 train /50-120 min just didn't cut it; they also missed quite a few trains or ran them late because everything else had priority. So it used to be 20min in the car instead. Let me guess the timetables still look as bad, except there is nowhere to park now. Bus - 45min (if it turns up) / £5 vs walking @ 55min / free :lol: I am glad I made a run.
So yes, it can work, but the authorities usually make sure that it doesn't. Good work :thumbs:
 
Yes. You mean they need to put more busses on. Uh Oh! Change the subject. :) Lets get back to being angry at taxis.
daugirdas said:
So yes, it can work, but the authorities usually make sure that it doesn't. Good work (y)
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Yes. Transport authorities can screw things up. Although we don't know what constraints they have. Financial, possibly. I'm lucky where I live, there are so many commuters, they cover the cost of a good service.
 
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ianp5a said:
Lets get back to being angry at taxis.
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OK in my experience of the times I've driven in London, they are driven much in the same way as buses, i.e with a total disregard for other motorists. However I used to encounter the same black cab driver on a lot of mornings on my commute to work and would invariably end up behind him on country lanes, he'd always pull over and allow me to overtake because he didn't want to drive too fast (probably trying to drive as economically as he could).
 
boyfalldown said:
Yes it does. How can it possibly be different
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Did you not see the other post which I quoted? Taxis are used more intensively than private cars, so they don't take up the same amount of central London parking space. That's the resource they don't use.

This isn't trivial. There are roughly 25,000 black cabs in London and they make roughly 200,000 paid journeys per day. (I would have thought it was more. But I guess quite a lot of them are long, eg from Heathrow.) If all those taxi journeys were instead made by private car, you'd need to find space to park an additional 175,000 cars in London. At 6m of kerb space each that would fill up 500km of roads, parked on both sides. That's about the same as London's entire network of Red Routes. Or in a car park it would require 3 sq km of land. There's not much "spare" land in London but to help visualise it, that's almost exactly the size of Kensington Gardens plus Hyde Park plus Green Park plus St James's Park combined.

I guess TfL decided that encouraging the use of black cabs by allowing them to use bus lanes would be a better solution than asking the Queen whether she'd be amenable to covering all those parks with tarmac.
 
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StewartR said:
Did you not see the other post which I quoted? Taxis are used more intensively than private cars, so they don't take up the same amount of central London parking space. That's the resource they don't use.

This isn't trivial. There are roughly 25,000 black cabs in London and they make roughly 200,000 paid journeys per day. (I would have thought it was more. But I guess quite a lot of them are long, eg from Heathrow.) If all those taxi journeys were instead made by private car, you'd need to find space to park an additional 175,000 cars in London. At 6m of kerb space each that would fill up 500km of roads, parked on both sides. That's about the same as London's entire network of Red Routes. Or in a car park it would require 3 sq km of land. There's not much "spare" land in London but to help visualise it, that's almost exactly the size of Kensington Gardens plus Hyde Park plus Green Park plus St James's Park combined.

I guess TfL decided that encouraging the use of black cabs by allowing them to use bus lanes would be a better solution than asking the Queen whether she'd be amenable to covering all those parks with tarmac.
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I saw your post Stewart. I just don't agree with you. Just explain

If I get my wife to give me a lift to Heathrow,drop me off and return and park how that is any different from calling the cab company down the road, getting them to take me to Heathrow and return home, park at the end of the road before the next booking.They've returned home empty because they're not allowed to pick up unless booked?.

Short answer there isn't. infact if I was a betting man I'd wager that my car produces less emissions and is better maintained ten the average cab. But I've no way of showing that.

Your assumptions are also very flawed above. Contrary to belief London aint the only city in the UK and you seem to assume that each taxi journey would be replaced by a whole car which isn't the case, and that if the service wasn't available everyone who uses a taxi would instead drive. Thats also wrong. The only assumption that actually bears any scrutiny is that a single passenger in a taxi use the same amount of road space and (roughly speaking) the same amount of fuel and produce (roughly) the same amount of emissions as a single passenger in a car
 
Actually: To be equivalent to a taxi, your wife should not then drive home. She should sit at the airport taxi rank reading a newspaper and sayin' "where to, guv?" to her next fare.

Sorry, just being picky. Carry on...
 
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ianp5a said:
Actually: To be equivalent to a taxi, your wife should not then drive home. She should sit at the airport taxi rank reading a newspaper and sayin' "where to, guv?" to her next fare.

Sorry, just being picky. Carry on...
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but that assumes that I'd booked a taxi that was allowed to pick up rather then prebooked only. To be picky back. I did say that too ;)
 
What is the point of banning all arriving taxis from joining the rank and making them drive back empty. And only letting taxis arriving empty to join the taxi rank?

You could ask your wife I suppose.
 
ianp5a said:
What is the point of banning all arriving taxis from joining the rank and making them drive back empty. And only letting taxis arriving empty to join the taxi rank?

You could ask your wife I suppose.
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I could, or I could ask the men who licence taxis why they licence some for pick up and some for pre-booked only. As I'm sure you know they do
 
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Indeed they can. But not every licensed taxi in London is a black cab. Many (or even most) are pre booked only. Hence my example
 
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