Amanda Martin

The penny has dropped that the offence Julian has been charged with is summary only: it will be dealt with by Magistrates.

Good position in the Hereford TImes.

Honestly Jean, I don't know how these schemes keep appearing. They cost an enormous amount of money and solve nothing and yet local authorities and LEPs keep rolling them out. It's all deckchair rearrangement and it's all money that can't be spent twice.

"Without support for cycling, etc., that means lots more people in lots more cars, all wanting to travel predominantly IN AND OUT of central Hereford for shops, work, hospital, cinema, etc. Surely all major plans like this should be put on hold until a new administration is in place? And don't forget, Jean has discovered she would lose her garden and trees, and presumably some other people who own land in the way of the route will be badly affected too." There seem to be hints of a "scorched earth" policy here. Would we also find a note saying "Sorry - there's no money?" Dippy Hippy, It's Our County are a pretty broad church but I don't sense any appetite for this unseemly road scheme frenzy and I think there will be a new approach emerging to our transport problems. There has to be a financial motive behind it because it certainly doesn't make sense in transport planning terms.

chilling

It definitely does. I forget the term in psychology that describes how we define our own sanity by reference to the responses of most of the people around us.

Do I strike you as insane? Don't answer that.

There's a lot of greenwash about, Maggie, mostly peddled (no pun intended) by narrow blokes in suits who haven't been on a bike since 1962.

This has to be stopped at all costs. This is the kind of thoughtless indiscriminate development that is destroying the character of the county, ramping up traffic problems, threatening the local economy and destroying quality by putting people into mean, soul sapping housing estates that repel the kind of people we need to revitalise Hereford with culture and investment. By all means, let's develop but not like this. We've been on this trajectory for four decades and the results are all around us. If we want to see the consequences of this stale, crass "jobs 'n growth" agenda , we only have to look as far as Newport: a failing, degraded city now populated mainly by people without the means to escape.

"Jesse Norman is a tremendous constituency MP with, for me, just one insurmountable personality defect: he's a Conservative. Yes, I have told him that to his face, too. He laughed and told me I was not the first to say so." Yes I've had that thought. I guess people ally themselves along cultural fault lines and it would probably be social suicide for him to be anything other than Conservative. 0 Quote MultiQuote

Good to see such a broad church of support for this tram idea. It would seem that people are not as anti-public transport as is often assumed.

Just to stay off-topic for a moment: Cargill Meat Solutions' business practices are morally repugnant and have no place in a civilised society. Its profits are built on exploitation and suffering and that makes it unacceptable, however much money it generates. I'm quite open about this and if people don't like my principles they don't have to vote for me.

I want to thank Grid Knocker, Roger and Mystery for the heads-up about who to contact. I've submitted our complaint and received an acknowledgement from Bill Longmore within hours. I've never heard of Class War but I think we have problems at a number of levels. There clearly are abuses occurring that are not sanctioned and these should be addressed but, in some ways, this is not as serious a problem as the wider political one. We've had a series of anti-libertarian governments that have been legislating away our civil rights; once these laws are on the statute books the police have no alternative but to enforce them. Somewhere in the middle is a shadowy twilight zone within which law enforcement agencies are being used to protect Establishment and corporate interests. State mission creep has meant that increasingly the police are being used as a kind of publicly funded army and there is a vast array of sanctions at its disposal to ensure our compliance, from intimidating journalists into keeping quiet about child abuse to incarcerating candidates on trumped up charges to prevent them from campaigning. As an electorate we've become anaesthetised by consumerism and kept ignorant by inadequate education. We haven't noticed the net closing around us and now there's a double whammy: the State has not only become over powerful and insufficiently accountable, but it has also outlawed the means by which we can make our objections felt by empowering the police to monitor and ban public protest, together with the characterisation of anyone who objects as "domestic extremists". I fear the remote threat of terrorism has been the Trojan Horse by which the State has tooled up to spy, monitor, threaten and coerce us all into political inertia. Julian Assange is living proof of what happens if you rattle those cages too loudly.

Just for the record, there's nothing veiled about my loathing of Cargills. :-)

Eek - I'm right with you on this.

Ok apologies Colin - no unfortunately I didn't. We can no doubt get the podcast

Greenknight, on the subject of being "off piste", and at the risk of annoying Colin, I would accept a lot of that but the fact remains that we cannot tarmac our way out of traffic jams and logic dictates that if we can't accommodate traffic growth then we have to start reducing it. The Newbury bypass has not solved the problem for the people of Newbury and that was the rationale behind it and how it was packaged, not for increasing capacity on the strategic inter urban highway by stealth, although many of us saw that hidden agenda. I agree with you about movements in and out of the CIty and County but surely that is all the more reason to free up road space for journeys that have to be made by car? I am not suggesting that the car will not continue to have a place in any integrated network. Of course it will but we need to start by targetting achievable objectives.

Mike, Moorfields would make a perfect "Home Zone". Google the images for Home Zone or "Woonerf" . I would have LIght Rapid Transit throughout the city, not just up and down one route. It's far less expensive than road building and people love trams/guided buses and would use them if it's cheap and convenient to do so. When I did my transport Masters, my dissertation was on a local bus service. Interestingly, my random sample cited frequency/ punctuality, comfort and convenience above cost in their statistically significant answers about their priorities for public transport and factors that influenced their decisions to use it. In other words cost is not the principal driver of modal choice: this is why people will allocate more and more of their income in order to continue to drive and the reason congestion/ parking charges will not, in themselves, deter car use.

Greenknight - Newbury's bypass has not solved the problem, Batheaston's bypass has not solved the problem and the truth is, wherever you put it, a bypass would not solve the problem for Hereford either, particularly now that we have around 800 new homes planned for the city centre with no thought for how these people are going to travel around. You are right about one thing, though: for people visiting Hereford, Park & RIde can play a part and this should be another tool in our armoury for reducing traffic movement on the core and peripheral network.

Colin and Mick, I understand the scepticism but if the tram and lights out initiatives are pursued in isolation, they will fail. In order to persuade people out of cars, you have to make the right choices the easy choices and that means complete integration between modes - a piecemeal solution will not work. Part of the A49 is already one lane in each direction and there is no justification for having a dual carriageway through the heart of the city, particularly as we already know (and you have confirmed above) that the majority of traffic movements are local. Take out the local traffic and redesign the road to slow and control what is left and immediately you have a much less intimidating and hostile street environment that encourages footfall and cycling and speeds up bus journeys. Mike, we have to remember that the A49 itself was built as a bypass. All urban and peri urban roads have built in obsolescence and the seeds of their own failure and a further river crossing would be throwing good money after bad, although I would want to look at the network data and modelling parameters before ruling it out. Generally speaking, because of the trajectory we have been on since the Sixties and are still on in this country, road building has not and never can solve our transport problems. Increasing capacity in already congested networks merely encourages more and longer car journeys, increases car dependence and liberates demand that has been suppressed by congestion. These are not my opinions; they are facts of transport planning life. At best it's a palliative and we do not have the money to waste on deckchair re-arrangement. I've never had occasion to go to Mooriflelds before and yesterday and Saturday were the first occasions on which I have really explored and got to know the area. I was struck by the interesting network of streets with their characterful little houses but, again, dominated by parked cars because the residents are both perpetrators and victims of the problem ; one resident told me his neighbours used the car to drive into town! We really have to step out of our comfort zones on this issue and stop thinking of cycling as the preserve of children or lycra clad eccentrics. For urban journeys of less than five miles it is the obvious and grown up mode of transport and the tram initiative depends on it for its success. Cyclists may want to use the tram for part of the journey but will not do so if the rest of the network is as dangerous and hostile as it is at the moment. If I am elected, I would like to organise the streets in my ward into community sub-groups to get people in touch with each other and help them to communicate with me. This could be as informal as an evening in the pub once a quarter, with easy access to me the rest of the time for specific problems. For some time, I have been thinking of organising a number of public meetings, with "slides" and presentations of my study trips to the Netherlands. I realise I am going to have trouble selling an alternative vision to the stale old "predict and provide" approach we've been fed for decades by politicians who don't understand transport planning and, in some cases, don't really want to understand. Honestly, we can't go on as we are.

Quality of life for whom? There's nothing like being on foot to get a feel for your ward. Yesterday I was in Newtown Road and Edgar Street and it occurred to me again what bleak thoroughfares we have created from our urban streets. Julian's father grew up in Newtown Road and remembers the bustle: the children playing, the coming and going and the women scrubbing the doorsteps. Now all sign of human interaction and neighbourliness are gone and the little houses have become grubby and neglected as their occupants have retreated from the impatience and latent hostility outside their front doors - this is a well documented phenomenon. The noise was deafening and it took a full ten minutes to cross Edgar Street. These spaces should be places of community but instead they have been completely surrendered to traffic. At the southern end of Edgar Street, the fine Regency town houses present an echo of past splendour that should still be characterising Hereford's urban centre but they are dilapidated and crumbling and no business with premises fronting a busy road stands a chance. I realised that this is where we put our poor and they go because they have no choice. Meanwhile, in Moor Street and other residential streets off Edgar Street, I started getting feedback about parking problems. It seems that, in spite of the much trumpeted 600+ spaces in the Old Market Development, shoppers choose, instead, to park in Moorfields to avoid the charge. It really doesn't have to be like this. I've seen the alternatives for myself and I really hope people will trust me on this one. Along with Colin's "lights Out" and light rapid transit initiative, we must improve cycling infrastructure for local journeys and we must have the courage to take road space from traffic and reallocate it to cyclists - "build it and they will come". Traffic is not only a problem for local residents and those of us sitting in congestion: it is degrading and impoverishing the local economy by making Hereford unattractive and driving out anyone with the money to make the inner city area thrive. Following the attempt to prevent the felling of the lime trees in Edgar Street, some of us met the HIghways Agency to discuss remodelling the A49. I am more convinced than ever that reducing the A49 to one lane and making cycle lanes in each direction is a crucial first step to recivilising the city and recreating commununity and prosperity. The Highways Agency has funds for properly engineered cycling infrastructure on appropriate trunk roads and there is no reason why we should not have some of it. Colin I really hope you can support me on this. It will be controversial, and to us in Britain it will seem counter-intuitive, but I know it can work.

Fantastic. You don't mess about do you?

:Looks good to go so the more individual letters in support the better. Just one thing, are you sure the local trips figure is correct? I would be surprised if it was as high as 90%. It's usually more like 60-70% of network movements within a core area.

Do you still want someone to do this? You've got a better grip of the detail at the moment (as you know, I'm also currently wrestling with leaflets and policemen) so let me know broadly what detail you'd like included and I'll get literary on its a*s

It is, indeed.