This ode to the motorcar has gradually been dismantled over the past couple of decades, with the removal of roads turning the city centre into a far more pedestrian-friendly environment. The tram system is being expanded and soon – well actually, not that soon, thanks to endless delays – there will be a new station to accommodate high-speed rail services. Birmingham has been changing, but this latest move will accelerate the process. The imposition of a 20mph zone throughout the city seals the deal. No longer will the needs of cars dominate. Instead, walking, cycling and public transport will be the modes of choice, as car travel becomes slower and more of a hassle.
Christian Wolamr always poses as the reasonable, rational, engineering type who will, with heavy heart, tell you that yes, trains are the solution. In reality he’s as choo choo onsessed as Spud. Everyone dwawdling at 20 mph is good because that means more trains. Huzzah, etc. Whether 20 mph is good or not isn’t considered, only the effect upon trains.
And think of how weak the case for non-cars must be if you’re actively plotting to make using cars more hassle, eh?
Walking? Thorough Birmingham?! There are easier ways to die, I suppose…
Walking through the London borough of Newham wearing a Kippah on the head might bring about a swifter death than walking through Birmingham.
People like Wolmar don’t seem to take into account the fact that the 20mph blanket limit will impose extra time wasting, extra costs and extra inconvenience to those who cannot for whatever reason use the often awful public transport that Britons are offered.
One consolation is that it will make drive-by shootings easier.
So that’s good.
Which in turn is good for the economy, in terms of things like undertakers’ profits, and those of street-cleaners specialising in washing the blood spatters off pavements.
Being Britain, Gamecock assumes cops can’t drive over 20, either.
Won’t, not can’t. Gotta make sure you get there *after* the machete-wielding maniac is done and gone or else you might get hurt.
They will drive 90 in order to quickly apprehend you for posting about this online though.
Oh, knock it off, Gamers!
Yankee driving is glacial in its progress. Everyone knows dat.
It has been 40 years since I have driven in Europe. Then, European drivers were vastly superior to American drivers.
The difference, in a word, is the Europeans are involved.
Tbf I’ve never had a bad experience in Brum. They’re mostly a cheerful and friendly bunch, whatever the colour. I wouldn’t venture too far out of the city centre though, those are some depressing Islamic slums.
London, otoh, is a shithole where you’ll either be mugged or not appreciated.
Yeah he’s like the transport bloggers that pop up in my feeds. Some remote place now has a bus that runs twice a day on alternate Wednesdays and they’re writing gleefully that it’s all over for cars now.
It’s just one more reason to get out of Birmingham, which should have been evident before now.
Something these people never address is how much public money is thrown at them.
That Dartmoor Line isn’t running because of consumers gagging for a train from Okehampton to Exeter. It’s because the state threw millions at re-opening it, and based on passenger numbers, is throwing money at operating it.
The two forms of non-car transport that have seen real growth are aircraft and coach travel. Coaches have probably benefitted from ULEZ charges hitting cars, but it’s also the case that various technologies like internet booking, dynamic pricing and that you can keep yourself amused with a phone or a Nintendo Switch have made coaches a better value option than they used to be.
Trains just have all sorts of downsides compared to coaches. The one upside is speed, but in every other way, they’re worse. You have to buy expensive, custom vehicles. You need highly specialised drivers. They’re hard to change routes. They require a really nice track, where a coach will take a bit of road damage in its stride. Flix were running a Swindon to Luton Airport bus. Didn’t work, so they stopped it. Run coaches elsewhere. National Express run coaches to Silverstone, just for the Grand Prix weekend. You can easily run an experiment with a coach or a bus and kill what doesn’t work. You can adapt to changing circumstances. Someone builds a new warehouse, you can change the route to pick people up in a matter of weeks. And if they close it down, take it out. The train from Swindon to Gloucester stops at Kemble, presumably because of the old RAF base that has been closed for 30 years. It would be a lot more useful if it stopped in Cirencester, but that would cost a fortune.
“More useful”?
Not sure about that, as it seems Kemble is very useful to many. Every time I’ve been to that station, the car park is absolutely stuffed with cars, many of them being higher end makes as used by the Cotswoldocracy mob.
Any rail link from Kemble to Ciren. would involve a five mile branch line, (as was closed down in 1964), meaning trains would have to return the same way. That’s unless a connection could be made using the old Watermoor station previously situated on the Swindon to Cheltenham line, but with that area now obliterated by the Ciren ring road and completely overbuilt with supermarkets and housing, it would make an ongoing link to the old Town station highly unlikely.
It is useful but would be more useful in Cirencester.
We have a 20mph zone in my village. It is just performative. No one keeps to it. In effect it would just mean the noisy motorbikes make their noise for longer.
It was the result of a campaign by local females and a LibDem councillor.
The county council just said “yeah whatever” and put up a few signs and painted a big 20 on the road and added it to our tax bill .
Now all these women are feeling smug about their victory for local democracy.
Yarp they did the same round ere and I just drive at 30mph like a normal person. I’m not crawling at 20mph along rural roads that don’t even have houses, let the cops try to catch me if they can be bothered.
Wolmar the Bus Wanker says:
No longer will the needs of cars dominate.
In typical lefty dishonesty. Nobody gives a flying Rishi about “the needs of cars”, it’s the needs of the human beings who use them we care about.
My car does speak to me, but it’s never expressed any of its “needs”, at least not in my hearing.
Camera van; you’re nicked. It’s no bother to sit on their arse and lift a flap.
Where are the “populist” parties on this? If I was Lowe or Farage I’d be responding to the Birmingham 20 by announcing that blanket 20mph zones will be banned nationwide and that Local Councils will have to apply for speed limits lower than 30mph on an ad hoc basis.
Also announce that “safety camera partnerships” will be made criminal conspiracies; that speeding tickets issued by camera evidence can only result in a fine or points (never both); that all fines from motoring offences (including parking) go into the national general tax fund and never to local or special organisations.
Millions of votes right there before you’ve deported a single hill tribesman.
Why? If Birmingham wants to be 20, let them. Localism rules. Like the people of Oxford want it to be car hostile. Fine. As long as they understand that means less trade. That people in Abingdon or Newbury will go shopping and dining in Reading.
I think the people of Bath should decide if they want some data centre put next to the Royal Crescent. And the disincentive is that they don’t get to collect the business rates if they don’t build it. The people and the tourist industry value the aesthetic more than they would the money from a data centre. Maybe Trowbridge doesn’t care.
Other than things that cross lines, like motorways or railways, I don’t think transport is anyone’s business but the locals.
That might work if the local areas were more self-sufficient.
Now all that happens is that Bath chooses not to build their data centre, and just whines to the government that they don’t have enough money. And the government just steals even more from all of our wallets and hands it over.
I acknowledge your opinion but it is a fact that (like so much governance) transport is a mix of local and national funding and responsibilty. Our national taxes go to build and maintain local roads and streets in Birmingham. In return those roads and their maintenance have to meet national criteria.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-maintenance-funding-allocations/highways-maintenance-block-formula-allocations-2026-to-2030
The Left is more than happy to use this arrangement to force their national agenda on local areas. A lot of the anti-car stuff is national. It is almost certain that a blanket 50mph limit will be set on rural roads throughout England under Labour. The Right just sits there and accepts the new normal. Almost nothing is ever set back, let alone “our” ideas advanced.
Trump has shown that the local-national control tag team can be taken from the Left and used by the Right. Our twats need to wake up.
We are ruled by people who think slow traffic is a virtue and then we ask ourselves why our economy is not growing. Speed limits should bw increasing over time as our cars become more secure FFS
“cars become more secure” true: but the nut behind the steering wheel still has just as many loose screws.
The counter argument is that humans remain stubbornly soft and squishy when run over.
My take on that is “Green Cross Code” you numpties.
Speed limits should bw increasing over time as our cars become more secure FFS
Courtesy of the bloke leading a speed awareness course I somehow was obliged to attend, I gather we won’t be getting an increase in the maximum motorway speed simply because the barriers in the middle of the road, those slightly corrugated aluminium strips, are designed to absorb impacts across the board at up to 70mph. So, to increase the maximum speed would require replacing those barriers – all of them.
The barriers are there because of a rule. Replacing them would be because of a rule.
You can always change a rule.
Sure. The point was not that it cannot be done. The point was that it would cost a shedload to do it.
I think Agammamon’s point might have been that a simple change of rule could remove any requirement to replace the barriers.
Testing for high containment barriers (such as the concrete divider along the M1) requires them to be able to withstand the impact of a 38ton HGV at a speed of 40mph at a 20 degree angle. Yet such vehicles are permitted to travel at 60mph.
They’re just rules, If they’re in the way, change them.
And note that the authoritahs can change rules to suit themselves. It used to be a rule that motorway designation required a hard shoulder. Then (to avoid high costs turning three lane motorways into four lane motorways) all of a sudden that rule vanished.
I omce had an engineer tell me that you can’t drive faster than x on a given road because that’s what it’s “engineered for”. I’ve driven x+20 every week for years. Apparently impossible
Newspeak.
The concept is that if you eliminate the word you eliminate the thought and none of the proles will perform the unspeakable action
All new barriers are higher spec. If a barrier needs replacing, fit a higher spec one. Probably costs bugger all to do it at the time you fit one. Once most of a motorway is higher spec, upgrade the other bits and declare that a supermotorway with higher speeds.
The 20mph zones here only apply for the 20yds of road where the revenue camera calibrations are painted
The bastards are increasingly using average speed cameras. 🙁
A point often missed about cars is that they’re fabulous contraptions and a huge boon to personal freedom and convenience.
Modern cars are all excellent, but can be drearily similar on the outside, and many really are a bit too big.
What the government should be prioritising is good looking coupes, chrome, tailfins and so on. Songs involving cars tend to be optimistic and joyful, while songs involving trains are usually about downbound despair.
Buses will never not be gloomy.
“…a huge boon to personal freedom and convenience…”
Which is exactly why the Left wants them gone.
Which is gloomier:
Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, or
Runaway Train by Soul Asylum?
Place bets now!
Steve, you may have inadvertently proved my point.
Chapman’s Fast Car provides the hope and opportunity. It’s not the car’s fault that the deadbeat dad prefers buses. (Buses aren’t mentioned, but you can safely assume).
I don’t know Runaway Train, but it doesn’t seem too cheerful:
Here I am, just a-drowning in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train
Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?
Riding along in my automobile
My baby beside me at the wheel
I stole a kiss at the turn of mile
My curiosity runnin’ wild
Try that on public transport
It’s much easier to make out on a train.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zARRwC1Dn74
I see your runaway train earwurm, and raise you a Locomotive Breath by Yethro Tull..
I thought of that one, too.
Adlestrop.
Sounds quite jolly. Ed Stewpot Stewart used to play it on Junior Choice
The runaway train came down the track and she blew she blew
The runaway train came down the track and she blew she blew
The runaway train came down the track
Her whistle wide and her throttle back
And she blew, blew, blew, blew, blew!
I Can’t Drive 55 by Sammy Hagar
So, does Cardiff now have abundant trains? Does Wales now enjoy abundant trains?
Dear culture-war motorists, look to the future. We’ll all be driving at 20mph soon
They always do this.
The Left brought us Replacement Immigration, industrial scale Muslim gang rape, NHS sex changes for children, LGBTQ in schools, sin taxes on everything the working class enjoys, nonce judges, deliberate economic failure and Net Zero.
But it’s those wacky right wingers who are the ones fighting a “culture war”. (It’s all so tiresome.)
If they didn’t have gaslighting, they’d be blind.
“Christian Wolamr always poses as the reasonable, rational, engineering type who will, with heavy heart, tell you that yes, trains are the solution. In reality he’s as choo choo onsessed as Spud.”
He has that same thing as Attenborough. He comes across as a nice bookish bloke with a reassuring voice and confidence to make you think he knows what he’s talking about.
“And think of how weak the case for non-cars must be if you’re actively plotting to make using cars more hassle, eh?”
It’s weak in Birmingham because Birmingham’s traffic is more “network” than “wheel-and-spoke”. London is more wheel-and-spoke. People live in Bow or Hammersmith and go into the centre to work, and come out. In Birmingham, someone might live in Erdington and go to work in Castle Bromwich. Acocks Green to Edgbaston. It means the traffic is more distributed across the city and that lowers the density of each route. Which might mean you have to piss about changing buses. Birmingham just also doesn’t have the insane density of London. Fiveways/Hagley Road is a pain, but it’s not on the same planet as Marylebone road. I’ll avoid driving beyond Chiswick into London, but most cities in the UK, there’s less than half a square mile of really bad traffic.
It’s generally observable that anyone calling themselves a transport commentator is just someone with a boner for choo-choos, and their Mini-Me abomination, trams. Half the UK rail network should be shut down for financial and environmental reasons. Trains are useful for commuters into London and for people going from cities and large towns to other cities and large towns. All those trains from Ambridge to Camberwick Green that carry about 10 people per carriage. It would be cheaper and greener to put every passenger in their own taxi.
Attenborough…. ugh!… and that before my second coffee….
The other week I was using Traksy to follow a train from Paddington because I was picking up my sister & her husband from it at Newton Abbott, and it started out late & getting later. I noticed another train impeding it, which was Paddington to Bedwyn. I assumed Bedwyn was in Wales from the name, but no, it turned out to be a tiny place in the back of beyond in Wiltshire. WTF? It’s a terminus from Paddington? Then I looked at the map. Several garrisons just south of there…
“Bedwyn station was opened on 11 November 1862 by the Great Western Railway company as part of the Berks and Hants Railway from Hungerford to Devizes;[3] the line continues in use as part of the Reading to Taunton Line. In 1900 the Stert and Westbury Railway allowed Devizes to be bypassed, and Westbury became the next major station west of Bedwyn.[4]
In 1905, to cater for traffic for army camps on Salisbury Plain, the line west of Bedwyn was linked (via the Grafton Curve and a bridge over the Kennet and Avon Canal) to Grafton and Burbage on the north-south Swindon, Marlborough and Andover Railway.[5] This line was closed in 1961.[citation needed]”
But most of this is just historic now. Garrisons don’t need a station. There are all sorts of weird stations like Stonehouse. Why do you need a stop on the London to Cheltenham line 2 miles after Stroud? Kemble makes some sense as it is a stop that breaks up 30 miles between Swindon and Stroud.
This all comes down to railways not being private sector. Even “privatisation” wasn’t, not really. GWR didn’t have the power to close lines or stations. And the public sector won’t make cuts until the budget is cut. All these wanky Warminster-on-Sea to Middlemarch trains run because there was spare money from mainline trains. And post-Covid, that money fell, so we’re spending £9bn/year of taxpayers money to keep them running.
Beeching’s report was 1963 when cars were in 35% of households. They’re now 78%. And I would guess outside of cities, the number is much closer to 100%.
I was sitting outside the pub the other day, listening to the local youths tearing up and down the road on their quad bikes.
Clad in black hoodies and ski-masks, it’s a regular occurrence in the summer. Notable absence of plod enforcing the 20mph limit there.
Go through any of the tunnels in the ring road and you can see plenty of evidence of them being used as a race track, mostly in the wee hours. I mean, I don’t know how you get tyre marks a meter up on the side of the tunnel walls?
Even the deliveroo guys on electric bikes are whizzing around faster than 20. But woe betide any regular normie putting their foot down.
The thing about public transport though – it has to be reliable. Just the last few days, Cross Country trains were completely cancelled across the network resulting in major disruption. Just yesterday, I was struggling to get to Birmingham International because all the trains to London Euston were cancelled or delayed due to problems with the overhead cables.
As for the trams here in Brum, I occasionally use them to get to work, and they are usually pretty reliable, until they’re not.
Plenty of times I’ve showed up at the tram stop only to find that there are no trams due to various issues.
I’ve been on a few trams where they have literally just stopped dead for no reason. (Just turn it off, then back on again is actually what they do to sort it out!)
Then there’s the issue of the people who use public transport – 90% are normies just trying to get about, however the remainder are the kinds of people who you want to give a wide berth to. Cars avoid all these issues.
All this is , is a personal crusade by your typical socialist who wants to force everyone to conform to their way of living.
Sadly, I only think it’s going to get worse.
“The thing about public transport though – it has to be reliable. Just the last few days, Cross Country trains were completely cancelled across the network resulting in major disruption. Just yesterday, I was struggling to get to Birmingham International because all the trains to London Euston were cancelled or delayed due to problems with the overhead cables.”
The thing with trains is that everything is stacked against reliability.
1) There is almost no open competition about train manufacturers. So unlike cars and coaches, you don’t get the market creating a Toyota for trains. Even worse, there’s an emphasis on making trains as a national job creation exercise. There are many coach companies National Express or Flix can pick from, which leads to upward improvement.
2) Train drivers are inflexible. They not only have to be trained to drive a particular route for months but on a specific type of train. You get a driver sick, you can’t call a bloke who normally drives a different train. Coaches just require a PSV.
3) Trains are intolerant of poor surface, poor weather. They have zero contingency when a track is blocked, someone jumps in front of a train. A National Express coach just does a little diversion.
4) Trains are run by idiot ministers who don’t care and manage a bunch of bureaucrats who don’t care. Whether it’s shit or not they get paid. National Express are run by greed pig capitalists who want to make money. They want full coaches, happy customers. Because happy customers are customers that spend money with you again.
I use trains for speed. If I want to go to somewhere reliably, I use a coach. I have yet to have a National Express coach cancelled and the worst arrival time was 5 minutes late.
The worst part is that shit trains get in the way of more reliable, more efficient coaches. National Express can’t compete with highly subsidised trains. If you scrapped the £11bn of rural subsidies and they went head-to-head, you’d get coaches.
On the Small Dead Animals blog the headline “Riding mass transit is like inviting 30 random hitchhikers into your car” is usually followed by a story about a nutter killing someone on a bus or train.
Cutting throats or setting them on fire mostly, and eating bits of the deceased on occasion too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean
Any discussion is blinded by their obsession with city centres, often due to most of the moronirarti living there.
It is impossible for me to do my job without a car – the first bus leaves at 11:05am, I’m expected on site at 9. And it would be impossible to do this morning’s field work without a car. First stop, little village in nowhere, second stop anothe little village in the next valley over, then onward to the office.
Wollie’s response is probably to say “well, you should get a job where you live”. There ARE no jobs in my field where I live. “Ok, live where the job is”. I can’t afford to move house every three months.
You don’t get it! – in Wolmar’s alternate universe no-one (except the nomenklatura) should be allowed to own a house: you must rent a council flat and Big Brother will find you a new council flat every few months when your workplace moves.
There will no longer be workplaces
Having experienced a 20mph speed limit almost Borough wide in Merton (!!!) I was debating with some wokish types and I did concede that I wouldn’t execute someone in favour of a 20mph zone but I’m wondering in retrospect if that concession was an error. The author is arguably on a par with Murphy and given the demands on oxygen and the ecosystem such a fool would make is it not better for him not to be making them longer term?
What I want (walking, etc.) will be the modes of choice as soon as I make what other people want impossible.
It’s Choice, Glorious Choice!
Cycling or walking home with a weeks-worth of family shopping, a toddler and a baby in a pushchair, when it’s bitter cold and pissing down with rain – or the alternative loading it and kids onto a tram then walking the two miles home from the nearest tram stop to your house.
Some people have thought-free brains.
No no no no, you’re supposed to waste your time by ‘going to the little shops every day’. You’ll have fresh food! Go to the butchers, and then the bakery.
I lived like that in Italy for a few years because I didn’t have a car. Sucked balls. Small town in northern Sardegna. If the locals loved it so much then why did they build a supermarket on the edge of town while I was there;)
Couple hours every other day wasted when I could have been drinking in the cafe;)
Now I order online once a month and have groceries delivered in one big order. Spend about 1 hour every 30 days on grocery shopping.
That’s an Anglo Sax thing, for at least some Anglo Sax’s.
It’s kind of ‘food is only fuel’. That’s the mentality.
But not everyone thinks like that. For some, good fresh bread is life itself. And doesn’t suck balls.
I take the time I save not driving and shopping to make my own bread. And I have a freezer and refrigerator – I am not eating poorly.
Get a bread machine. They even have a timer so you wake up to it. Panasonic SD-B2510WXC. Costs about £120.
Been the toddler in that scenario. 50s Rochdale. My parents never had a car – the bus services were OK there in them days, and the pre-Beeching railways to go on holiday. I learned to drive with the pay from working in Woolie’s stockroom during the summer before Uni, though I couldn’t afford a car for another couple of years.
Yes, the past is a different country
If you’ve got a toddler and a baby, why are you going out to work, so why cannot you buy a little amount of shopping every day and put it in the bottom of the pushchair. Alternatively if you are going out to work and hiring a child-minder you can shop on your way home.
When we had a toddler and a baby my wife managed to do the mid-week shopping while I did the heavy stuff on Saturdays.
Of course we weren’t living in a shit-hole.
What’s funny is that the same people that have boners for trams and bikes are also the people who have a boner for women working full-time.
The old model of women not having cars worked because women didn’t work the 9-5. They were housewives and maybe did some work at home, or worked a bit part time. They worked around their children, and they shopped in the daylight.
The people most resistant to losing cars are women, because they’re not just transport. They’re also a safety cage. They’re a way to keep your coiffured hair looking good. They’re a way to carry a load of shopping. I don’t mind walking home from the station at midnight. I’m just not pretty enough to be raped any longer.
Catch-22. Without the motorcars, the pedestrians can’t get there.
So they got rid of the cars before they built the replacement for the cars is what they are saying?
Sounds like normal government incompetence. Its ‘walkable’ if you can get there – but you can’t get there.
I remember him doing a piece in the Evening Substandard about the exit of the boss of an organisation I worked for. Everyone on the inside knew it was total bollox, but he was the respected ‘transport expert’ who’d obviously been fed a line by someone to distract him from what was really going on.
Since then I’ve read a few pieces and thought he’s just projecting something, whether it’s his agenda or someone is leading him down the garden path.
I see that twat Peter Hitchens is also on an anti car crusade. Another choo choo moron.
I think Peter Hitchens considers himself to be some great thinker, whereas his brother Christopher (RIP) was a great thinker.
Whenever you watch, read or hear any story in the MSM, remember Gell-Mann amnesia.
Agreed on Christopher. Absolute genius.
Peter Hitchens basically thinks everything after 1960 is bad. I suspect there’s some arrested development going on and he still yearns for childhood.
He also lives in Oxford. Which, because it’s littered with old churches and other shit that can’t be knocked down, means cars don’t work well. Which means no-one wants to move their business to Oxford, unless it’s selling overpriced tat to tourists. It used to be a significant place in the region, but it’s just a university and a museum now. Even the people who come out of the university with some amazing medical innovation don’t set up there as it’s too expensive. They got to Didcot, Abingdon. Places with good roads and sensible house prices.
Cars do not have needs. They are inanimate objects. People have needs. The same person can be a pedestrian, a cyclist, a car driver, a bus passenger and a train passenger on the same day. And over their lifetime may also use a wheelchair, mobility scooter, motorbike, stand-up scooter etc.
The goal should be to let people get where they want when they want with reasonable convenience – not to pick between modes of transport.
That depends on your dictionary of choice: many view *the right sort of petrol* and functional tyres as being needed by a car
The car does not need such things. It can remain in one place forever. It is the driver who needs fuel, tyres, etc.