Assembly in China / End of Lode Lane

I can't verify the figures, but bear in mind that shuttle buses are driving in town traffic with lots of stops and starts, despite all the bus lanes and automatic traffic lights they intend to install, they sit at stops for a significant proportion of the route which is also hilly. Lorries, on the other hand, spend most of their time on the open road. I suppose it's fairer to compare the buses MPG with a cars urban cycle MPG, but still the cars the buses replace wouldn't be sitting at bus stops either they'd be going straight to a park and stopping. Greg

It amazed me so I queried it. Frankly the whole park and ride scheme has more to do with letting the council sell land to Travelodge and getting huge government grants than it's stated aims or reducing pollution and congestion, the whole capacity of the scheme is only 10% of the daily intake of tourists so isn't going to significantly impact the congestion problems either. Greg

Being a cynic I expect each side to claim the figures that support their case are the big issue 8-). The anti-air-travel brigade don't want it known that it produces far less pollution if 50 reps fly from Manchester to London in one plane than drive in 50 cars, they would rather point out that they would be better in one train, along with hundreds of other people, so flying must be the most evil thing in the universe!.

Greg

Oh don't get me started!, they say the park and ride car parks will be free with subsidised bus fares, but when pushed admit they will be "forced" to put up all the parking fees in town "significantly" to persuade people to use the park and rides, so the 90% of visitors who can't get into the undersized park and rides and the 100% of shoppers who don't want to cart their purchases on shuttle buses will have to pay lots more, you can just see the pound signs in the eyes. It's a very contentious issue and they know it, I had a 'disagreement with the County Councillor who holds the traffic portfolio at the last council meeting as he insisted the rises would "not be significant if he had anything to do with it", if they're not then by definition the increases won't persuade people to use the scheme so are unjustified? 8-).

Greg

Well up to a year or so ago I had a Scarborough 'Tradesman's Parking permit' which makes most of the mess go away and I notice that the council offices car parks are always full on Saturdays when nobody's working, so the people who make the decisions probably never pay for parking in Scarborough...

It'll make them worse - unless there a full (i.e. not intermittent) bus lanes. Without conductors, busses block the roads while passengers are getting on, making things worse rather than better! Obviously, if these park and ride busses don't stop on the way it won't have that effect.

I suspect your are right about the real motive though, it's funny how these schemes always involve selling prime land, and yet the Council Tax never comes down, and the Chief Exceutive gets a new office, or the planning sub-comitte suddenly realy must go to Prague for the weekend to research something or other (expenses paid).

I'd be a lot more convinced if the money raised/saved was actually accounted for rather than just disppearing into the general pot, i.e. "sold land at " = "built social housing/hospice/etc". Doubtless the council will say it's far too complicated to do that, but then what are the accountants doing if they can't - now there's an opportunity for savings!

Richard

Funnily enough they get all defensive when you point that out 8-) Greg

On the other hand anyone prepared to work for Scarborough Council probably considers free parking for going shopping a fair recompense for having to put up with the jokes.

No work yet down at The Corner I notice :-)

I wonder what's gone wrong there...

A bus shouldn't be that heavy, but it is likely to be running in something like urban cycle, and you need to use that sort of figure for the cars when you make the comparison. I think that's a mistake that gets made a lot, and sometimes it's made the other way to favour the bus solution.

It's also worth remembering that there are congestion effects driven by the number of vehicles. You need the same road-space between any two vehicles, whether bus or Smart, but you need more Smarts.

I don't think there's a single correct answer, but you do have to think carefully about how you're asking the question. And some people just go for the emotional and obvious: how many of them bother to measure one of those "huge" Land Rovers?

Only one bus every ten minute using each bus lane is definitely not going to keep it full, so yes I would agree, the automatic lights giving them priority are also going to upset the whole traffic management in the town. But hey, what do we know!.

They're also building a bypass of Reighton on the main road from Scarborough to Brid, nothing wrong with that, except that they are absolutely adamant that it only needs round abouts at the two ends and not where the main road from my village, Hunmanby, joins into it. So we have to emerge at a T junction near the end of a long straight run where cars will easily reach

80, it seems it will take a few deaths before they 'discover' the blindingly obvious and have to spend far more building the roundabout after the event than they would now. Unofficially I've been told the simple truth, there isn't enough money in the pot for three round abouts so it's either this or nothing, but money will be found after enough people have died to clock up enough points to get the junction changed, that's the ludicrous way government works in this country.

Greg

Lord knows, I used to live very near there so took notice of it all but since moving out of town I really can't be bothered with the fiasco. I strongly suspect the final outcome will be nothing more than a large number of houses all over the area and no facilities for tourism at all, since from the developers point of view that makes the most profit. I will be very surprised if all the claims of building nice new tourist facilities, car parks etc are anything more than a ploy. Greg

Well you're not the only one to think that.

However, who's going to buy a time-share in Scarborough for Febuary?

I have a nasty suspicion that the funding has fallen through...

Ah! .... It'll qualify for speed cameras. More income.

No speed cameras in North Yorkshire.

Is that true? I thought that Durham was the only English County without fixed speed cameras.

Well, my 110 is longer than my Audi A4, by a whole 1.3cm. Takes up loads more road space!

The landy's shorter and narrower than my old Lotus, which people describe as "tiny"...

On or around Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:27:27 +0100, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

Which lotus? Europa?

No, a 1989 Esprit SE, or it would be if I put the damned thing back together. I stripped and rebuilt the engine, just need to put the shot blasted and painted tanks back in, redo the pipework and some of the electrics, put the last few bits of engine back together and get the engine back in. That should take me about another 3 years given my rate of work.

Also, according to google, the landy *is* longer than the esprit by about 20cm, not so sure about that but it's in no state to be measured again, I measured it about 3 years ago when I was house hunting. It's certainly wider though, the landy is about 7 cm narrower than the esprit, and the pinz is about 3cm narrower than the landy but about

30cm longer. At the moment, the pinz is about 10cm shorter than usual due to me removing the front chassis members, differential and axle.

Yes but the average daily trip by aircraft is much much more than you can drive in a full day in a car.

Larry