Traffic- The elephant in the room.

its a nuisance , but shouldn't cost a penny.

everything in the modern world is slower.

I hope they ignore it, if they try to fix it they will make it worse, and charge us for doing so.

every country should have one road between towns and cities, that is the maximum necessary and the country should organise itself so that that is quite enough.
it is not the roads that need organising, it is the country

if you insist on looking at the roads and not the country, you are always going to run out of roads, ignore the roads there are quite enough
who could deny that?

Is there a related problem with housing ? , they are looking at housing and they are looking at roads
I don't think they should be looking at housing? I don't know.

do you know there are millions of houses in this country.

once a house is built, it is there, and there are millions of them. Could they be given away free ?
I don't see why not.

If a country supplied its houses free the government wouldn't be able to take them away after you die , or before you die because they wouldn't cost anything.
Houses can last for hundreds of years.

Once a house is built and paid for by the government surely that is it and a house can stand for a few hundred years with the occasional bit of maintainable
We are in the lucky position that we have already built millions of houses.

I don't see any need to build any more houses, or roads, for the next 500 years at least.

And here was me thinking Hole in my shoe

Fuel rationing would solve it. Say 20 litres per adult per week would encourage car sharing, use of public transport and cut down on unnecessary journeys. It should improve the air quality in cities too.
At the same time, improve public transport and make local buses free to everyone.

Yet is never mentioned by politicians even though the situation must cost the Economy megabucks.

They're not likely to mention it either, because most of it is caused by having too many people living in the same places caused by the growing population.

Of course immigration is at the heart of the problem, but the policy concerning immigration is the same for both main parties. Which is let them come here in their droves.

Never mind what the Tories say, it's what they do that should look at.
So until the Tories do something to check the influx we can regard their policy as exactly the same as Labour's which is to let them in.

I prefer going slow to car sharing, or fuel rationing.
i am sure we have trains, I like travelling by train as well

if you want to drive everywhere, you are part of the problem.

I bought my first motorbike when I was 17, because I didn't like car sharing when I went to work and I couldn't afford a car.
Then I grew to live motorbikes, so that was a happy consequence

A functioning public transport is the only solution. Rather than immigrants being the problem (yawn) the issue has been the growth of commuter towns and the growth of the "on your bike" culture where people now travel much further than before to their workplace and spend far longer commuting than they did.

schools starting at same time as working day is a bottleneck

How many roads and how many trains can we have? I don't know, and then again will those roads and trains need more roads and trains? I don't know.
I do know we have millions of roads and trains and houses , and we have a problem .

people are starting work too late in the day, that's good the roads were always free and empty for me.
starting work at 6:30

It's like the dustcarts going out block up roads at 7 in the morning

yes that's another reason not to build more houses.

Is it possible if we build more houses we may have too many houses?
If this is not possible I would say we shouldn't build them.

It took me the grand total of one and a half hours last week to drive from Wandsworth Bridge to Netherton Grove in Chelsea. Just under 3 miles in distance.

shocked at potholes in road travelling into Glasgow. nearly wrecked the car i was in?
unbelievable you can't sue the council for damages? i thought they test road surfaces
and had solved all this? you see different trial patches - red tarmac, concrete etc?

oil prices are low - time to tarmac is now?

The lack of investment in public transport, particularly the railways is clearly the biggest issue. Successive governments have failed to do much about it because it requires long term investment and doesn't win votes.

Haven't got too much sympathy for those in London trying to drive around.

I feel desperately sorry for those on a daily basis caught on M6, M42 and no doubt similar motorways and A roads around the country.

In theory, you can claim for expenses against the council for pot holes.  But only if they are proven to be negligent about issues they have known about.

Too many people in the UK and therefore too many cars. Too many houses being built in semi-rural areas where there is no work causing people to have to drive ever further distances to work. The traffic system now operates on a knife-edge; the tiniest problem and it's gridlock. The long term cost to the economy must be enormous.
Denmark in the 70's recognised that their current transport system relying on private motor cars was unsustainable and did something about it but in the UK it's as if there isn't a problem.
Bit like boiling the frog who doesn't notice the water is getting hotter and hotter until it's too late.

A functioning public transport is the only solution.

Yawn.

We already had one.
It's the sheer numbers that are the problem now. And moving people about like cattle in trucks is an unacceptable lefty solution that won't wash with people who want something better out of life.

And how many people feel safe travelling on the buses with the smell of drugs and kinds of people you're likely to encounter on public transport these days?

Unchecked immigration has ruined this country.

On the economy point. We popped out to a local tourist spot yesterday intending to have coffee and cake and wander round the gift shops looking for presents. Traffic in the town was at a standstill caused by one workmen's lorry in the High St with temporary traffic lights round it. Eventually got through ( a journey of normally 5 minutes took over an hour) and went home spending nothing.

Multiply that one incident by all the other people that day who didn't stop or spend then include similar problems all over the country and yes the economic cost to the nation of the UK's disfunctional traffic system must cost the nation enormous amounts.
It affects us all, we all moan about it and it continues to get worse yet no mention in any Party's manifesto and basically it's completely ignored as an issue.

Ignore it and perhaps it will go away.

We are still living off the efforts of past era.  Train systems, motorways, electricity and gas networks, sewerage systems, public buildings, museums, libraries.

In turn, the wealth was amassed from the efforts of the poor working class.

That may well be so Jezza but it's no use when you're once again stuck in a jam which goes no-where for hours. The traffic situation is now a monster problem.
I live near Birmingham. A few years ago I had to catch a plane to Sweden from Liverpool. About 90 miles up the M6 on a Friday afternoon.
No accidents or roadworks on the motorway but the journey took 5 hours due to sheer volume of traffic.
Swedes laughed their socks off and found it difficult to take in how it could possible take 5 hours to drive 90 miles on a motorway.

As i've been saying for years when they moan about giving another bank holiday

It often takes 3 to 4 times more to serve customers of a certain type
as you tell them the price by the time you have finally got them to understand
and pay for it they show you a discount card(although they cannot speak English
they all have a discount card)so you have to cancel start again.

I thought Steve Winwood and the lads   had reformed and was gunna listen to The Elephant in the Room when I saw this thread....most disappointed. I shall dig out Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory to relive a great band of the seventies.

Get into out of London via Essex on the a13
Faster on a elegant !
Got to a point where going a work well after 10
Leaving 8 is the only way

Swedes laughed their socks off and found it difficult to take in how it could possible take 5 hours to drive 90 miles on a motorway.

a lot less cars and people in Sweden.

which is good

which is good

a lot less cars and people in Sweden.

Exactly. And too many people and too many cars in UK now so big rethink on the traffic situation is called for.

Ban immigrants from having cars. Then fewer will want to come here.

Helps the immigration, traffic and housing problems at a stroke

There's no solution if you have too many people to support.
Once we had it good, then it started to deteriorate, now it's a complete mess.

Too many people living in the same places. The same with jobs, housing, education, health. Yet we keep being told we need more immigrants.
Yes we do - like a hole in the head.

This message that mass immigration is good for the country is the biggest lie since WW2.

And the main political parties all support it. The Tories in deeds if not in words.

More people are killed as a result of roadworks than terrorism.

Probably.