You uptick my view of (at least English) Conservatives. Keep it up and you can be promoted to NeoLiberal. :)
Taxing externalities is just Conservative common sense. If you want less of something, tax it. And we do want less congestion, noise, CO2 emissions. particulate emissions and traffic deaths. Pigou taxes QED. Today we have technology that can easily charge vehicles for using roads (in motion or parked) that would vary by time of day, place and proximity to other vehicles and exceeding speed limits. Noise can be controlled by periodic inspection to ensure mufflers are working properly and backed up by enforcement with directional microphone-cameras. [For CO2 emissions we need a taxon net CO2 emissions.] Street design plays a role as well.
That said, I've felt much safer about traffic (except that you guys drive on the wrong side of the street :)) in London than in Washington
This article suffers from a lack of appreciation for the massive, massive benefits of motor vehicles. Without them, urban centers couldn't exist as they do today; not nearly enough supplies (food, in particular) could be delivered to them. To talk of "negative externalities" without making any attempt at comparing them to benefits is to make an incomplete argument.
I've yet to see a rant against motor vehicles that doesn't come from someone who lives in an urban center, which is unrepresentative of a large majority of the use of motor vehicles. This perspective issue explains a large part of the partisan divide on the subject.
Who's seen the hilarious Toby Young story describing Oxford's traffic management proposals as 'lockdowns'?
Listened today to a conversation between Richard Hanania and Aaron Siberium on the low credibility of so much conservative discourse. Young - like many conservative provocateurs who are often right about some things, but can't resist being dicks - end up doing nothing to help balance the leftish hegemony.
"the terrifying Aids campaign". The Aids awareness campaign (or at least some of them) ads were directed by Nic Roeg, who also did Performance and Don't Look Now. Amazing to get a director like that to do a public information film.
Really enjoying the substack Ed. In my unloved corner of east London with high levels of deprivation and an ugly, delapidated and neglected social realm car use is maddeningly persistent, often for insanely short journeys. I doubt it's controversial to say there must be a significant correlation between high levels of crime (especially 'low-level' ASB-type offending and behaviour), the failure of the state to enforce the law and regulate behaviour in the public realm and high levels of car use. This is probably an understandable and very rational reaction for self protection (as much psychic, against depressing reality, as for physical protection). But the problem is that becomes a doom loop; the more car use, the more pedestrians are funneled in to inhospitable thin strips of land on the edges of roads, have to take their chances crossing high speed roads and generally feel harried and anxious, thus driving more car use. As useful as they are, I definitely agree cars deform character in subtle and unsubtle ways.
It's quite interesting to watch the Luther Rahman / LTN argument currently playing out in Tower Hamlets which is pretty obviously him just playing up to sectional interests who advance spurious and weak arguments for dismantling more humane spaces (predictably he behaves as if he were a tribune representing his supporters rather than governing in the public interest).
Modern megalopolises aren't possible without cars; they're what enable all the people from the hinterlands to treat the megalopolis as a common destination for commerce, culture, resources, travel hubs, etc., without living in giant residential towers close in to the city center.
"How I wish the 'infernal combustion' engine had never been invented. Or (more difficult still since humanity and engineers in special are both nitwitted and malicious as a rule) that it could have been put to rational uses — if any.”
I think it was Mary Harrington who first predicted that in the future personal car ownership would not be ubiquitous. I think she’s right. I think it’s the right thing to do. I don’t think people are going to be happy about it (despite the improvements to other parts of their life).
And being Britain, we won’t bother funding or building any replacement infrastructure or services ahead of time, to make it easier.
The automotive industry invented a whole new crime, "jaywalking," and lobbied for ordinances against it in order to push the pedestrians off the American street.
feel as if your instinct on most matters is pretty much spot on and balanced, but you are not quite giving both sides of the story here. cities need cars to function, and the best way to get London functional is actually to ban bikes from major roads. the roads can not accommodate both. i work in the city and owing to a disability rely on taxis to get to work, where I earn a very good wage and contribute of course. Yet so many roads are now one way, closed to taxis with so many pathetic restrictions as to make it very tricky to get a taxi most mornings. Take Lime Street, why is this closed to cabs for god sake? Do you expect businessmen in bowler hats to fly into London and take bikes with them to Lloyds of London as they whistle? This is fantasy Ed. Unfortunately London will never be a cyclist city in general, it's just not built that way and the most efficient measure would be to ban cyclists not cars and end the madness of the restrictions.
(As an aside, the state doesn’t really produce any great scary adverts anymore, as they did in my childhood, from those short videos showing boys getting electrocuted retrieving their football to the terrifying Aids campaign).
Not quite true. My brother Sean just had his social distancing PIF shown at the BFI alongside classics from the seventies and eighties (Lonely Water 1973 by Jeff Grant, Sea In Their Blood 1983 by Peter Greenaway, After Dark 1979 by Mike Dodds).
Oxford is analogous to London. It has LTNs and long has anti-car local councils at city level and more recently at county level. It has a very pretty city centre which is becoming increasingly difficult to get across. The latest plan is to divide the city into pizza slice zones and charge people who wish to cross from one zone to another. This diverts more traffic on to the already overcrowded ring road. I think it might work if you live in the city but not if you live outside and travel to work or school in the city. Nor does it work for travellers to the regionally important hospital centre which really suffers from the city’s anti car parking policies.
Car-centric policy is also a sub-problem of centralisation and the desire for one size fits all policies. Only 30% of London commuters (as defined by the ONS's Travel to Work Area, which is big, taking in c.9 million commuters) travel to work by car. But this is much lower than any other TTWA in the UK (only Brighton and Edinburgh are also below 50%, and then barely - 47% each). Central government naturally isn't going to annoy the majority of commuters literally everywhere except one city. And local government in the UK, due to our extreme level of financial centralisation, rarely has incentives to make tradeoffs in the benefit of wider economic interests over vociferous locals either (similar story with planning of course). I wonder if the Mayor of London was responsible for decisions on street usage in the summer if he'd have came to the view as the Mayor of Paris?
What? Carry groceries home on foot? (In the rain??) Have to live in a apartment tower with limited space, noisy neighbors & limited if any greenery? What if the jobs are in un-walkable spots? No thanks. I’ll take the inconveniences of a car any day over what it would mean to not have one. There isn’t much “community” in large apartment buildings or public parks anyway. Cars are already quieter & smaller than they were 50-60 years ago. Electric cars ware even quieter (which may make them more dangerous)
Maybe the problem is too many people? Or the “corporate life” where we have to commute to a far away job & buy all our groceries in a huge grocery store?
You uptick my view of (at least English) Conservatives. Keep it up and you can be promoted to NeoLiberal. :)
Taxing externalities is just Conservative common sense. If you want less of something, tax it. And we do want less congestion, noise, CO2 emissions. particulate emissions and traffic deaths. Pigou taxes QED. Today we have technology that can easily charge vehicles for using roads (in motion or parked) that would vary by time of day, place and proximity to other vehicles and exceeding speed limits. Noise can be controlled by periodic inspection to ensure mufflers are working properly and backed up by enforcement with directional microphone-cameras. [For CO2 emissions we need a taxon net CO2 emissions.] Street design plays a role as well.
That said, I've felt much safer about traffic (except that you guys drive on the wrong side of the street :)) in London than in Washington
This article suffers from a lack of appreciation for the massive, massive benefits of motor vehicles. Without them, urban centers couldn't exist as they do today; not nearly enough supplies (food, in particular) could be delivered to them. To talk of "negative externalities" without making any attempt at comparing them to benefits is to make an incomplete argument.
I've yet to see a rant against motor vehicles that doesn't come from someone who lives in an urban center, which is unrepresentative of a large majority of the use of motor vehicles. This perspective issue explains a large part of the partisan divide on the subject.
Who's seen the hilarious Toby Young story describing Oxford's traffic management proposals as 'lockdowns'?
Listened today to a conversation between Richard Hanania and Aaron Siberium on the low credibility of so much conservative discourse. Young - like many conservative provocateurs who are often right about some things, but can't resist being dicks - end up doing nothing to help balance the leftish hegemony.
"the terrifying Aids campaign". The Aids awareness campaign (or at least some of them) ads were directed by Nic Roeg, who also did Performance and Don't Look Now. Amazing to get a director like that to do a public information film.
Really enjoying the substack Ed. In my unloved corner of east London with high levels of deprivation and an ugly, delapidated and neglected social realm car use is maddeningly persistent, often for insanely short journeys. I doubt it's controversial to say there must be a significant correlation between high levels of crime (especially 'low-level' ASB-type offending and behaviour), the failure of the state to enforce the law and regulate behaviour in the public realm and high levels of car use. This is probably an understandable and very rational reaction for self protection (as much psychic, against depressing reality, as for physical protection). But the problem is that becomes a doom loop; the more car use, the more pedestrians are funneled in to inhospitable thin strips of land on the edges of roads, have to take their chances crossing high speed roads and generally feel harried and anxious, thus driving more car use. As useful as they are, I definitely agree cars deform character in subtle and unsubtle ways.
It's quite interesting to watch the Luther Rahman / LTN argument currently playing out in Tower Hamlets which is pretty obviously him just playing up to sectional interests who advance spurious and weak arguments for dismantling more humane spaces (predictably he behaves as if he were a tribune representing his supporters rather than governing in the public interest).
Modern megalopolises aren't possible without cars; they're what enable all the people from the hinterlands to treat the megalopolis as a common destination for commerce, culture, resources, travel hubs, etc., without living in giant residential towers close in to the city center.
"How I wish the 'infernal combustion' engine had never been invented. Or (more difficult still since humanity and engineers in special are both nitwitted and malicious as a rule) that it could have been put to rational uses — if any.”
http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-tolkien-sold-his-car.html
I think it was Mary Harrington who first predicted that in the future personal car ownership would not be ubiquitous. I think she’s right. I think it’s the right thing to do. I don’t think people are going to be happy about it (despite the improvements to other parts of their life).
And being Britain, we won’t bother funding or building any replacement infrastructure or services ahead of time, to make it easier.
The automotive industry invented a whole new crime, "jaywalking," and lobbied for ordinances against it in order to push the pedestrians off the American street.
"mini-car-free zones in parts of London’s suburbs"
Zones free of mini-cars, or mini-zones free of cars?
feel as if your instinct on most matters is pretty much spot on and balanced, but you are not quite giving both sides of the story here. cities need cars to function, and the best way to get London functional is actually to ban bikes from major roads. the roads can not accommodate both. i work in the city and owing to a disability rely on taxis to get to work, where I earn a very good wage and contribute of course. Yet so many roads are now one way, closed to taxis with so many pathetic restrictions as to make it very tricky to get a taxi most mornings. Take Lime Street, why is this closed to cabs for god sake? Do you expect businessmen in bowler hats to fly into London and take bikes with them to Lloyds of London as they whistle? This is fantasy Ed. Unfortunately London will never be a cyclist city in general, it's just not built that way and the most efficient measure would be to ban cyclists not cars and end the madness of the restrictions.
(As an aside, the state doesn’t really produce any great scary adverts anymore, as they did in my childhood, from those short videos showing boys getting electrocuted retrieving their football to the terrifying Aids campaign).
Not quite true. My brother Sean just had his social distancing PIF shown at the BFI alongside classics from the seventies and eighties (Lonely Water 1973 by Jeff Grant, Sea In Their Blood 1983 by Peter Greenaway, After Dark 1979 by Mike Dodds).
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=hauntedgenerations&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=
Sean's film features himself as his character Quentin Smirhes. It is somewhat different to the darker offerings, but in the same spirit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGkBFhlnDIs&ab_channel=QuentinSmirhes
Oxford is analogous to London. It has LTNs and long has anti-car local councils at city level and more recently at county level. It has a very pretty city centre which is becoming increasingly difficult to get across. The latest plan is to divide the city into pizza slice zones and charge people who wish to cross from one zone to another. This diverts more traffic on to the already overcrowded ring road. I think it might work if you live in the city but not if you live outside and travel to work or school in the city. Nor does it work for travellers to the regionally important hospital centre which really suffers from the city’s anti car parking policies.
Car-centric policy is also a sub-problem of centralisation and the desire for one size fits all policies. Only 30% of London commuters (as defined by the ONS's Travel to Work Area, which is big, taking in c.9 million commuters) travel to work by car. But this is much lower than any other TTWA in the UK (only Brighton and Edinburgh are also below 50%, and then barely - 47% each). Central government naturally isn't going to annoy the majority of commuters literally everywhere except one city. And local government in the UK, due to our extreme level of financial centralisation, rarely has incentives to make tradeoffs in the benefit of wider economic interests over vociferous locals either (similar story with planning of course). I wonder if the Mayor of London was responsible for decisions on street usage in the summer if he'd have came to the view as the Mayor of Paris?
What? Carry groceries home on foot? (In the rain??) Have to live in a apartment tower with limited space, noisy neighbors & limited if any greenery? What if the jobs are in un-walkable spots? No thanks. I’ll take the inconveniences of a car any day over what it would mean to not have one. There isn’t much “community” in large apartment buildings or public parks anyway. Cars are already quieter & smaller than they were 50-60 years ago. Electric cars ware even quieter (which may make them more dangerous)
Maybe the problem is too many people? Or the “corporate life” where we have to commute to a far away job & buy all our groceries in a huge grocery store?