Miles of queues on M25 and Dartford crossing yet again today
For pretty much the fifth day out of five this week there are miles of queues in Kent heading to the Dartford crossing.
Knock-on effects are seeing traffic backed up around Dartford and Greenwich.
While varying incidents have caused congestion this past week, it come against a backdrop of ever increasing traffic levels which clearly are not sustainable.
Traffic levels are already back to pre-lockdown levels despite many employees still on furlough – including 500,000 in London. Across the country it’s 1.3 million people.
Last weekend traffic numbers were already above pre-lockdown levels, while figures for buses, trains and tubes were all around 40-60 per cent.
The road network was at capacity before lockdown. It simply cannot cope with a mass switch of people from public transport to cars.
Latest transport use graph. Rail hit a provisional 50% of pre-pandemic use on May 24. Meanwhile roads are back to normal and Tube is nudging high-50s. Usual key: road weekly moving average is solid line, rail is heavy dashes, Tube is light dashes. pic.twitter.com/CEpYgIPFpB
— Philip Haigh (@philatrail) June 2, 2021
Despite that obvious fact, Government have this week insisted upon further above-inflation fare increases on London transport as part of a measure which will see £300 million of cuts and further fare increases this year alone, rising to £730 million in 2023. Public transport is deregulated in Kent with no input from Government on bus fares.
There seems little effort to encourage people back onto public transport right now. Initiatives seen in many other nations such as reduced fares for a limited time are nowhere to be seen.
In France, five million cheap tickets have gone on sale.
Belgium gave away 10 free tickets to every citizen last year.
In the UK, traffic is rising quickly with no apparent strategy in place to prevent gridlock.
Totally agree John, and local spin off traffic will be all blamed on cyclists and cycle lanes! Govt policy non existent to help. And soon enough there’ll be two tunnels feeding into the same size roads, so then they’ll expand the roads by yet another lane no doubt, knock down a load of trees and rows of houses with compulsory purchase and bump fares on PT up even more to finance it.
With London already overpriced transport system and people making less money, guys shall we make it more expensive yet again.
In Paris the mayoral candidate wanted to make the whole network free for all, I guess à middle have to be found
Think they should trial a 70 mph on the bridge. And the tunnel on the right 60mph.get let the tankers just go. Without a escorts and the traffic lights. The tanker drivers a professional driver. Sure they can drive a mile safely through the tunnel.
The root problem for traffic in and around London is the population growth over a wide area. All along the river huge blocks of flats are going up packing more and more people into the same area. High density housing means either traffic must increase or people will have to accept everyone cannot own cars in London. Therefore ease of public transport and safe high volume cycle / scooter routes and perhaps a subsidised river transport service must become the norm for living in London, indeed any high density population area. There is an endless demand for more affordable housing in London (indeed in many other places). To cap it all there is nowhere near enough being built to give everyone a reasonable standard of living space. The situation can only get worse if we (and the councils and the government carry on as we are.
Then there is the pollution issue!