There is a local obvious one in Telford – “Ironstone” is being built in the path of the main western traffic flow around Telford. There is no shown evidence to see how the boulevards that show happy folk walking amongst the traffic will cope with the level of traffic that jams up every morning and evening. The traffic isn’t just going to go away, this is generally traffic that doesn’t have an alternate public service – eg the rural south east of Telford and the outlying districts (Wenlock, Bridgnorth) of whom travel to and from the North west of Telford and through onto Market Drayton, Shrewsbury and Wem. I would like to know the road mappings in Ironstone – there was vague “trust us we know what were doing” noises at the public meetings – but no data was forthcoming. People don’t trust corporations anymore. Any response please?

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Lawley drive along with the Horsehay and Ironbridge bypasses and with the M54 were supposed to form the western arm of Telfords ring road when they were completed. Having looked at the plans on lawley.info it appears that there will be at least four sets of lights on Lawley drive between the roundabout by the new church and the M54 J6. West centre way appears to be partially pedestrianised at its juction with Lawley drive. What a plan for utter chaos! people may remember a cyclist was prosecuted for holding up traffic on west centre way a couple of years ago and now its going to get traffic lights and pedestrians!

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you must be joking? The car dominates our town

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So in otherwords we can look at chaos at ironstone!!!! Its going to take upwards of 15 minutes to drive the mile or so through it!!!

and M.Allpack by promoting sustainable transport you mean discourage people from driving so that the alternatives look better. I go tnews for you: no matter how you might promote sustainable transport in ironstone its not going to change my needs and I will still need a car to go to work, to get to the shops – in fact to get pretty much anywhere outside my house.

Things like making the roads wider or providing elevated walkways for pedestrians or leaving a bit of ground uncovered with concrete or would have reduced the profits wouldnt it… dont mind the fact that thousands of people are going to have to live with the chaos and safety risks for the forseable future!

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I heard a long time ago that cost-cutting (in the late 60s or early 70s) stopped the Horshay – Lawley – Wellington road being a dual carriageway “Western Primary” – the evidence was left at Horshay heading towards the motorway Island at the retail park. Perhaps a good thing as it would have destroyed even more communities than Telford did.

I think that shows that even then there was evidence for predicted traffic flows show there is a use of the Western loop of Telford – and now they’re building a new town in the middle of it. Let’s all close our eyes and imagine no cars.. there you are, they’ve all gone, just like that. Sorry, no they’re still there for a while.

Gridlock in Ironstone will be your result.

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theres too man cars on the road, lets plan them out by design, come on planners, use your imagination, more bus stops, less parking spaces, for example

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Peter, you said oil price rises are due to ‘market speculation, fuelled by hysterical apocalyptic claims about fuel running out’.

So, if you think that those who warn about peak oil are ‘hysterical’, then am I right to assume that you think ‘peak oil’ will not occur, then, and that we should not concern ourselves with the future?

On July 10th 2008 the International Energy Agency announced that worldwide demand for oil will rise 1% in 2009.

The high prices, it said, can be explained by the fact that supplies of crude oil are tight.

Demand for oil by China, India and the Middle East is also seen as a factor behind crude oil’s almost sevenfold surge in price in 6 years.

Is the International Energy Agency being hysterical with its analysis?

Are you confident that supply of oil is going to keep up with the worldwide burgeoning demand for oil, Peter?

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Huw,

Most analysts agree that we have oil for at least another hundred years – ‘peak oil’ may arrive – but that doesn’t mean we’ll be running out soon afterwards. There are still many untapped reserves of oil in the world – which are becoming more viable, partly due to the high price, and partly due to improvements in technology.

In the same way as speculation by city and international spivs led to a house price bubble, we now have an oil bubble based upon speculation in the futures markets on the price of oil.

We are already seeing technology bringing alternatives to oil for personal transport, and bear in mind the technology steps that have been made in the hundred years or so since we started using cars. I applaud the Swedes for their action, but you can be sure that they’re canny enough not to be doing what we’re doing.

We appear to be taking a solely punitive approach, which harms people’s ability to exercise their personal freedom to travel, damages their job prospects, and ultimately plays into the hands of the big polluters and consumers of oil, at our expense. Has anybody reading this seen any major improvements in public transport that would allow most of us to get to work without our cars and still show the kind of flexibility that employers require?

Anyone noticed public transport costs going down as a result of the high motoring taxes we have to endure?

Yet still we have planners who prefer to live in a Utopian world where people have the time in their working day to gaily skip to work or wait happily in a nice clean railway station for a train where they’ll get a seat and a nice cup of tea.

We could wipe the UK off the map tomorrow and it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to the climate, or to the price of oil – so why are we putting ourselves through so much economic pain just to indulge the fantasies of environmentalists?

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“build us the roads we deserve so i can drive to the shops and park for free ”
wot’eva!
Realistcally there has to be a balance – because, overnight the government of any shade are not going to turned into Green revolutionaries – the oil companies have immense influence so public transport as the primary transport service is simply not going to happen quickly. Also globals don’t want “public” anything they want us to be “individual customers” which is a cancer in our system that eats away at good investment money to give it to shareholders.

More bus stops is a cute though un-thoughtout idea – can you imagine a journey which takes 3 or 3 to 10 times as long by bus than it would now – due to stopping so often. Also this only considers the urban town centre folk who, with a bit of re-organising could have far better public transport – so you think everyone else can ‘go hang’?

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I like Sweden.

It produces cars like the Koenigsegg CCX-R Edition; produces 806bhp on pump fuel, but 1018bhp on E85 biofuel! :-)

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With the arrival of the Tata car, mass-produced personalised transport is coming to a country of 1.1 billion people, India.

Toyota’s decision to make Prius cars in China will also vastly increase car ownership there.

Should Indian and Chinese planners invest in sustainable transport systems and public transport?

Or should they just tell themselves that this is an environmentalist fantasy and that, if they were wiped off the map, it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to the climate or to the price of oil?

How economically viable and sustainable do you think it would be, Peter, if the Indians and the Chinese borrowed the RAC’s plans for getting all 2.4 billion people moving around in cars?

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