John Dales (Director, Urban Movement) Ideas for London presentation

transcript

@johnstreetdales j.dales@urbanmovement.co.uk

Ideas for London: Transport

Transport is a means to an end.

A greater London is the goal for London’s transport.

Not “an efficient transport system”.

“Any time we don’t have crowding during rush hour, there’ll be a receiver in the mayor’s office.

Why, listen, don’t you see? That’s the proof of our life and vitality?”

“This book is, in part, the story of a bad idea: the notion that our cities should be shaped by

the needs of cars, rather than people”.

“By diminishing public space, the automobile has made once-great cities terrible places to live”.

Towards a fine City for People2004

There should be no roads in cities…

…just streets

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

“We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

“Experience tells us that road building won’t solve the problems we face. Now is the time for brave and creative decision-making, not a return to road building policies that were tried

and failed in the 1990s.”

“Even if we do all the things proposed by the Mayor’s Transport Strategy, including the

unfunded stuff, congestion will still increase by 60% by 2031.”

No. It won’t.

Partly, because we don’t want it to.

What kind of London do we want?

“What the hell’s a Freeway?

Eight lanes of shimmering cement; smooth, safe, fast.

Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.”

Building faster roads creates wealth.We could build a series of flyovers into central

London, allowing the wealth to spread outwards.

Inner Orbital Tunnel = £30bn?

Crossrail 2 = £12bn?

Crossrail 3 = £12bn?

Crossrail 3½ = £6bn?

Total for 2½ more Crossrails = £30bnTa-daaah!

“It’s no use having complete calm on the top deck of a bus, if that bus is itself beached in

the traffic like an expiring whale, or indeed if it forms a queue of expiring whales.”

This vehicle is unfit for

use on urban streets

"I believe a city is more civilised not when it has highways but when a child on a tricycle is able to move about everywhere with ease and

safety."

Street-pricing

Workplace parking levies

Time/size/emission restrictions

Options!

More Crossrails

Better public realm

Better cycling provision

Bus (+ tram?) investment

Appliance of new technologies

Supportive infrastructure investment

“Even if a zero-emission miracle-car, running on tap-water and yielding only lavender-scented exhaust, appeared in dealerships tomorrow, it would not solve

the fundamental problem…”

“…The automobile was never an appropriate technology for cities. As a form of mass

transportation for the world, it is a disaster”.

“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public

transportation."

“The measure of any great civilisation is its cities, and a measure of a city’s greatness is to

be found in the quality of its public spaces, its streets, parks and squares.”

John Dales (Director, Urban Movement) Ideas for London presentation

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