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Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#51

Post by wcoenen »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #15
Pet_Ant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t address needlessly large EVs that damage roads and are a threat to pedestrians and bicyclists. These larger EVs are also inefficient use of battery cells than they’d be in smaller vehicles. Would love to see more Mini/Smart car EVs

A Tesla is heavier than a petrol Range Rover. All EVs are heavy.

The weight difference of comparable ICE cars and EVs is sometimes surprisingly small when you look at the variant of the EV model with the smaller battery.

For example, the BMW X3 is 1670 kg. The Tesla Model Y (SR RWD) is 1778 kg.

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#52

Post by DrScientist »

gertrunde wrote: post #42
yrro wrote: post #2

Car size should be regulated and a maximum should be enforced. Pavement parking (and other antisocial forms of parking) should also be banned. In the UK, local authorities are in charge of parking enforcement. In Oxford they largely don't bother: I see vehicles parked on yellow lines every day. I can't fathom why, this is an opportunity to raise revenue!

The article does discuss one of the main causes - safety. If you require various crumple/impact zones for safety reasons, which are usually all about controlling the impact deceleration over a longer period of time, i.e. less g-force on the occupants etc, then the relevant car parts get larger. Doors get thicker, front and back get extended etc. I suspect it would be quite difficult to walk back those changes, so it…

You can get an older reasonably sized car which has an NCAP rating of 5.

Note bigger cars will have more mass and thus momentum & energy to dissipate, might be less nimble and certainly in the early days of SUV types were easier to roll.

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#53

Post by oblio »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #15
Pet_Ant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t address needlessly large EVs that damage roads and are a threat to pedestrians and bicyclists. These larger EVs are also inefficient use of battery cells than they’d be in smaller vehicles. Would love to see more Mini/Smart car EVs

A Tesla is heavier than a petrol Range Rover. All EVs are heavy.

Well, they did say this:

> Would love to see more Mini/Smart car EVs

Teslas are big cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-segment, they're not Minis. The smallest Tesla is 4.7m long.

There are 3 car categories smaller than the smaller Tesla.

But yeah, EVs are heavy.

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#54

Post by oblio »

wcoenen wrote: post #51
mytailorisrich wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Tesla is heavier than a petrol Range Rover. All EVs are heavy.

The weight difference of comparable ICE cars and EVs is sometimes surprisingly small when you look at the variant of the EV model with the smaller battery. For example, the BMW X3 is 1670 kg. The Tesla Model Y (SR RWD) is 1778 kg.

That's only for big cars.

The smallest Tesla is a D-segment car, cars around 4.7m: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-segment

There are 3 different car categories smaller than the smallest Tesla.

For smaller cars, EVs are a mess, they're between 25 and 40% heavier than equivalent ICEs, that's a humongous difference.

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#55

Post by mytailorisrich »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #44
mytailorisrich wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's very difficult to impossible to widen existing roads. But nothing prevent building wider new roads... which isn't done because priority is actually to save as much money as possible instead of delivering good, future-proof, infrastructure. You can't have fewer roads in a country whose population grows by hundreds of thousands every year...

Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand. Population growth means that we need to get more people using active travel (which would also save the NHS a huge amount of money) and have effective public transport. To get more people using active travel, we need some decent cycle/scooter infrastructure, so we should be narrowing roads for the motor traffic. Cycle infrastructure would increase the th…

If everyone cycles you need a cycle lane at least the size of a car lane, and then you still need space for the bus, and of course you still need to accomodate vans, taxis, and emergency vehicles...

There is no silver bullet. Adding decent cycle lanes means wider roads, and there's nothing wrong with that.

> Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand.

How do you propose to build new housing estates, new schools, etc. and to link them to the rest of the country?

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#56

Post by happymellon »

gampleman wrote: post #28

I haven't read the article (paywall), but does it explain why roads in the UK are specifically worse than elsewhere in Europe? Like I've driven this year in Scotland, Czechia and Cyprus and despite constant roadworks in Scotland the road quality is so much worse its not even a contest. Why? At least visually it seems like the same sort of cars one sees driving around (although there may be fewer older cars in the UK,…

I cannot comment on the scenario that the roads here are worse than in other European countries, but from my observations of the roads in Hampshire I would guess that:

1. We have oversized articulated lorries running down smaller village roads. The ones that are extra tall, that we didn't have 20 years ago and which also damage trees. Other locations seem to do better with rules barring them from coming off the main motorways.

2. The local council has been defunded by central government, who also tries to take more locally raised money central for pet projects in London. As such we don't have the cash for road repairs. There are a lot of patch jobs these past couple of years that don't last, the roads need proper resurfacing. I see a lot of EVs around here, and I don't know what it's like in Czechia but the additional weight of the EVs are only making it worse when compounded with the other problems.

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#57

Post by gertrunde »

monooso wrote: post #27

> Car designer Chris Longmore... blames safety legislation for the dramatic increase in size since the 1990s. This doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For example, the 2022 Toyota Aygo X has a 4 star NCAP safety rating (out of a possible 5) [1], and is about the same size as the original 1970s VW Golf [2]. [1] https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/Toyota/Aygo%20X/46259 [2] https://www.automobiledimension.com/model/toyota/ayg…

This maybe does stand up more than you think it does...

The Aygo is, in theory, categorised as A-segment, along with the VW Up! and Fox, as opposed to the Polo (B-segment) or Golf (C-segment).

i.e. maybe not directly comparable with a car considered to be two size categories further up the scale.

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#58

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #55
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand. Population growth means that we need to get more people using active travel (which would also save the NHS a huge amount of money) and have effective public transport. To get more people using active travel, we need some decent cycle/scooter infrastructure, so we should be narrowing roads for the motor traffic. Cycle infrastructure would increase the th…

If everyone cycles you need a cycle lane at least the size of a car lane, and then you still need space for the bus, and of course you still need to accomodate vans, taxis, and emergency vehicles... There is no silver bullet. Adding decent cycle lanes means wider roads, and there's nothing wrong with that. > Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand. How do you propose to build new housing estat…

> If everyone cycles you need a cycle lane at least the size of a car lane

No you don't - bikes and scooters take up far less room than the same person being sat alone in their car. The increased throughput of people would drastically improve the efficiency of the road. Also, if the people choose active travel instead of driving, then you also remove a large number of cars from the road and also reduce congestion for the people who have to drive.

New housing estates will need joining up to the existing road network, but they also need to have good public transport links to avoid the roads being just filled with people stuck in cars in traffic. Also, they should have good walking/cycling options too which is often completely neglected by developers. Obviously new developments will need some road building, but it's a mistake to think that adding roads will reduce congestion.

Ultimately, personal cars don't scale beyond a certain population density. If you aim to add more roads, the shops and facilities end up becoming more separated which then leads to more people choosing to drive to get there. The extra people driving then leads to more congestion which leads to more roads which leads to facilities becoming spaced further apart and requiring even more space for parking facilities. It's an exercise in futility.

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#59

Post by robnado »

yrro wrote: post #2

Car size should be regulated and a maximum should be enforced. Pavement parking (and other antisocial forms of parking) should also be banned. In the UK, local authorities are in charge of parking enforcement. In Oxford they largely don't bother: I see vehicles parked on yellow lines every day. I can't fathom why, this is an opportunity to raise revenue!

I feel that all those people who talk about reducing car size and use probably don’t have a family. I have twin 6 month olds and the only cars we currently use is the Toyota Corolla from a local car sharing service. Two car seats in the back leave basically just enough room between for my wife to fit sideways inside the middle seat. She can’t stay in there for longer than a few minutes and if we get in a car accident, she is not gonna have a good time. Also, have you tried putting a child in a car seat while avoiding hitting their head on the roof of the car? It’s a tricky thing. Those are two reasons that two people who worked hard on reducing their environmental footprint end up in a situation where we have to look into buying an SUV. And don’t get me started on avoiding cars altogether: with hospital appointments that take 15 min to drive to but would take hours of public transit to get to, the need to buy more food at a cheaper price and the fact that transit options are often not accessible with a stroller (good luck bringing a double stroller up and down a few flights of stairs) means that you need to use a car. My suggestion: please either fix public transit so families can actually use it and organise the city so services are accessible, or offer cars that can accommodate a reasonable sized family while being environmentally friendly.

Fyi, I live downtown in a major North American city that is known for having good public transit.

Re: Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars

#60

Post by [deleted] »

robnado wrote: post #59
yrro wrote: post #2

Car size should be regulated and a maximum should be enforced. Pavement parking (and other antisocial forms of parking) should also be banned. In the UK, local authorities are in charge of parking enforcement. In Oxford they largely don't bother: I see vehicles parked on yellow lines every day. I can't fathom why, this is an opportunity to raise revenue!

I feel that all those people who talk about reducing car size and use probably don’t have a family. I have twin 6 month olds and the only cars we currently use is the Toyota Corolla from a local car sharing service. Two car seats in the back leave basically just enough room between for my wife to fit sideways inside the middle seat. She can’t stay in there for longer than a few minutes and if we get in a car accident…

[deleted]
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