The problems of UK transport are to do with an abysmal public transport system, too many cars and people travelling too far. The UK goernment's response is to build more roads and airports and promote a huge increase in domestic air travel. This is consistent with Blair's politics of the enthusiastic pursuit of everything American and employs the favoured coping mechanism of the Blair government - denial - to ignore real underlying problems.George Monbiot promotes Alan Storkey's proposals in today's Guardian. ... Storkey's key innovation is to move coach stations out of city centres, to the junctions of motorways. One of the reasons long coach journeys are so slow in the UK is that - in order to create a system that allows passengers to transfer from one coach to another - they must enter the towns along the way, travelling into the centre and out again. In the rush hour you might as well walk.
Instead of dragging motorway transport into the cities, Storkey's system drags city transport out to the motorways. Urban buses on their way out of town, he proposes, keep travelling to the nearest motorway junction, where they meet the coaches. By connecting urban public transport to the national network, Storkey's proposal could revitalise both systems, as it provides more frequent and more viable bus services for the suburbs.
The coaches would never leave the trunk roads and motorways. Some services would constantly circle the orbital roads; others would travel up and down the motorways that connect to them. You would change from one coach to another at the junctions. Just 200 coaches on the M25, Storkey calculates, would ensure an average waiting time of between two and three minutes. They would be given dedicated lanes and priority at traffic lights, disentangling them from the cars that now hold them up and force them to bunch. The tabloid newspapers might fulminate, but it would not be long before people stuck in their cars began to notice the buses roaring past on the inside.
With faster links to the motorways provided by dedicated urban bus lanes, and relief from the need to find a parking space, this could bring the overall journey time to below that of car travel. At rush hours and on bank holiday weekends the public system could be very much faster. It might even be made comfortable. Double-deckers could increase the leg room without losing much fuel efficiency, and why shouldn't every coach have TV screens and power points? In other words, the country's slowest, most uncomfortable and most depressing form of mass transport could be transformed into one of its fastest, smoothest and most convenient systems. An effective coach system could make a serious dent in car sales, and even reduce the demand for domestic flights.
Storkey's system costs next to nothing. It requires no new roads, no railway lines, no major public subsidies.
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