Indeed. This also affects the size of car. People will buy a car big enough to take all the family and the dog to the beach once a year while the rest of the time it’s just one person in it.

Far too many people, who should know better, still believe there is a fixed amount of traffic, all of which has to go somewhere’. The reality is that in cities like London the volume of traffic is governed by the capacity available.

This is why car clubs are a useful first step away from motornormativity. By having to pay all the costs through usage, members surprisingly find there are many journeys better made by other modes.

The Black Swan, an old inn with cherry blossoms in front.

How beautiful. The Black Swan at Oldstead

If passed, a lot will depend on the nature of the regulations and the speed with which they are produced. I would be looking particularly at signing requirements as if these are too onerous little will happen.

A big issue for London is lack of overnight parking even in relatively wealthy areas. This has been strengthened by the spread of car-free housing developments in inner London.

@lloydsbankinggroup.bsky.social make it difficult and too easy to change the address on an account. Difficult - you can only do it in branch or on their app. Easy - once in branch no security checks at all

Best thing you could do. The key to getting compliance is high levels of detection and enforcement. Need to get away from the driver being ‘unlucky’ to get a ticket to expecting a ticket for any contravention. Linking it with criminality achieves nothing.

It’s been a battle to move away from the highway engineers’ approach of setting a speed limit based on the speed that cars actually travel.

To the extent that it does take traffic out of Blyth it will be at the expense of local businesses

It is the likelihood of getting caught which deters. Even if the budget for road policing doubled, the detection rate would remain pitiful. Las may see this as an administrative issue but could increase the detection rate to >80% at no cost to the public purse.

While I would agree in principle, given the extremely low level of enforcement currently I don’t think the threat of a criminal record carries much weight. Drivers think they are ‘unlucky’ to be caught

One option not mentioned is to give local authorities powers to enforce speeding. Given the experience with transferring yellow box junctions, bus lanes and weight limits, they have been far more innovative and focused than the police have been

About 30 years ago a survey of European cities found that both the public and politicians wanted urban transport policies that favoured public transport and active travel, but the politicians believed the public wanted more roads and space for traffic. Little has changed.

In areas with little or no off street residential parking, research shows that maximum car ownership is determined by the amount of overnight parking spaces available. If you have been converting parking spaces to other uses that will drive car ownership down.

Surely. But it also needs sufficient support staff to convert photographed contraventions into NIPs or FPNs. If the perceived chance of getting caught is very low then it won’t help much.

All depends on the motorists’ perception of the chance of being caught. When we introduced bus lane cameras and started to penalise >80% of contraventions the number of contraventions dropped by nearly 90% in 6 months. Same with yellow box cameras.

I had the same problem. We maintain a grass verge outside our house, which would otherwise be quickly covered with brambles and nettles. We have some planters there to stop parking. But @stirlingcouncil.bsky.social told me they had to be removed as they could force pedestrians onto the road.

If this congestion comes about, public transport will be considerably quicker (especially if authorities provide bus priority) and potentially considerably cheaper than an AV. Congestion means fewer revenue journeys in which to cover fixed capital costs. So dearer per journey

A cloud line marking a weather front at sunrise on Loch Ard

I’ve rarely seen a clearer weather front

To a degree this is self regulating. As congestion increases the cost per trip of an AV will also increase thus suppressing demand. Even if passengers can do other things in the car their time still has a value and this will also suppress demand as congestion grows.

The fact 20mph has, in effect, become the default in Scotland with none of the fuss in Wales shows just how much of that fuss was just whipped up.

Very much so. But this can lead to a change of mindset where opposing any particular policy or action becomes the objective rather than a serious consideration as to whether the policy is any good or not.

There’s a trend in some politicians to oppose anything an administration does on principle. It’s another aspect of the party being more important than the entity being governed.

Don't tell places like Manchester and Brighton about that

The RAC publishes an annual report brining together data from all the UK local authorities via their parking reports.

Is there some evidence that parking enforcement has been reduced? After all PCN numbers are up

At 20mph a hit pedestrian has a 10% chance of being killed. At 30mph it’s a 40% chance of being killed. There aren’t published figures for 24mph but it must be about 25%

Someone driving at 24mph hitting a pedestrian is significantly more likely to kill them than if they were driving at 20mph

We need a left wing Taxpayers’ Alliance