There are days when not a single news story grabs my attention. I currently have 24 BBC News tabs open.
£7bn scheme to tackle congestion. I am pleased that new and re-opened rail schemes are 'being considered' and that there is some investment in buses...in the West Midlands. I also think it is positive that schemes that are specifically environmentally damaging - as opposed to just generally - are not going ahead. I am singularly under-impressed by the Tory Tim Collins describing the road-building as 'belated'.
Overall, I am not impressed. There is strong evidence that traffic expands to fill the available road space. I also watched a TV programme a few years back that suggested that the M25 was like Guinness - if everybody travelled at 50mph and kept a sensible distance people would actually travel more quickly than trying to drive at 70-80 mph and constantly stopping and starting.
It would also impress me more if I could see more evidence of investment to ensure that it doesn't take the hour and three quarters to travel the 60 miles from London Victoria to Whitstable that we experienced on Sunday.
With Alastair Darling planning to pave much of the country with motorways and John Prescott planning to build ten millions home on the Green Belt, I suspect that most of lowland England, at least will become one shapeless urban sprawl. I am already of the belief, evidenced by own eyes, that there is just one field that separates Greater Greater Manchester and Greater Merseyside. It is extremely difficult to go anywhere in lowland England without seeing urbanisation.
The Environment Groups also comment. The Green Party, as usual, get it entirely wrong, by saying the pedestrianisation of towns is a great success, whereas there is a school of thought which believes that pedestrianised towns encourage attacks on the person.
I think the congestion charge in London is a splendid thing, and would advocate its extension to other congested cities. I would not wish to see tolls on motorways and by-passes, because this would just encourage people to drive through towns. I was deeply influenced by a series of TV series called Six English Towns, which showed the dreadful churn of vehicles grinding bumper-to-bumper through historically and aesthetically interesting towns.
