London's Drive to Work Day

Except none of that has a ounce of fact to back it up, or does it? Meltdown was predicted for the Olympics, it never happened.

It didn't happen because lots of people worked from home, or took leave. Official reports suggest that there was a lot less traffic on the roads. People avoided London.

We've already experienced 'peak car'[\QUOTE]

"Peak Car" is an interesting idea, maybe someone should stick a freedom of info request into the DVLA to ask for the number of newly registered cars vs the number removed from the register each year. New car sales may be slowing, but is the number of cars being scrapped staying above those sales? If not, the number of cars on the roads may still be going up. Also, has anyone worked out the number of litres of fuel being sold? Is that going up or down? Are less cars driving more miles on average? There are still a lot of questions around it to my mind. Not that I object to the idea.

[QUOTE=RPM;3293213]and I think you'd be surprised at just how many car journeys are not actually into the centre of town for work on a daily basis.

Only about 2% of journeys into Central London are, I understand, with a destination of Central London. The rest are just passing through, sadly I can't find my citation for that.

London is a big city in a densely populated country, people have many reasons to drive though it and around it every day, none of these reasons will change, nor will the suggestion of a bicycle be an adequate alternative.

Bikes are great for short, inner city transport. For some of us, they are great for longer trips. For some trips, cars are ideal, for others trains should be. The trip requirement should determine the mode of transport, but all should be equally availiable. Sadly for some people, fear stops them picking the transport solution that they would like. And the transport solution that suffers most because of that is cycling.

Interestingly it's cheaper for me and my wife to drive to either of Wimbledon or Darlington than to take public transport, even when (in the case of Wimbledon) parking is included. Higher fares just makes this equation worse.

I think before you try to force people to change their minds about how they travel, you must first educate them of the alternatives in a positive and helpful manner. And then not be put out when they still reject your ideals. It's a free country and those who wish to drive are well within their rights to do so, however idiotic that makes them.

I think you may have got the wrong end of the stick as to what today was about.

My understanding of the idea was to show how important those who currently cycle are in keeping traffic moving and reducing congestion, not to try and persuade anyone to cycle instead. Those of us who cycle have made a concious choice to travel that way. Those in cars often don't realise the benefits of having bikes on the road instead of cars. If car drivers thought about each cyclist that they passed as one less car that is in front of them, maybe they would give us a little more room and respect.