We are crying out for this!
The volume of traffic is enormous at times, especially during November and December. The roads we have around our conurbation are in a poor state. Bicycles, motorbikes, cars, buses and Mets all use the road network at some point slowing the whole thing down. Plus the amount of roads we have with cars parked along both sides slowing it all down further...
We need some relief and it has to come beneath the streets, or at least off the streets like a monorail.
Living and working in a conurbation like Manchester, we shouldn’t need a car. Cars should be for people who actually need one because they have a disability and can’t actively get around or those who have to commute across/around/out of the conurbation to work or those who use vans for work tools/deliveries. We should have adequate public transport or cycle routes to shuttle the rest of us on short journeys around the conurbation.
What would help with this, as well, is if we forgot about the idea of low income neighbourhoods and high income suburbia, and build neighbourhoods and suburbs that have a spread of housing types from social to affordable to higher up the price bracket. This would mean that people can live closer to work and not need a car.
I ditched my car back in January. When I had the car I thought I needed it and never even considered the fact that I didn’t need it and wouldn’t have entertained the idea of getting rid of it. But when it broke down and the cost of getting it fixed was more than it was worth, I thought “fuck it” and got rid. And that’ll be for good now.
I didn’t and don’t need a car. Most of us don’t! I live 4 miles from work, and I now either cycle or walk to work. I even put weighted balls in a bag and do a swift hard walk to work with 12kg on my back. If it’s freezing and pissing down I get the bus. I walk or cycle to the supermarket to do my shopping, the walk back with bags full of shopping is a good workout.
To go on longer journeys I use buses or the Met. But they are SLOW as fuck! I am only 20 minutes slower walking 4 miles to work than I am getting the bus (by the time I’ve walked to the bus stop, waited for the bus, then gone around six detours the bus takes and walked from the bus stop to work). If we could get a rapid non-detour non-road-using transport service like an underground or monorail, barely any of us would need a car and we can covert roads into proper cycle routes with a car lane for those that really need a car.
If the conurbation all thought like this, the place would be a belting place to live.
