Reply to: Manchester - No to congestion charge

[the_rangdo]

And what does Hazel Blears have to say onthe subject

All of us now in Greater Manchester, councillors, MPs, and Ministers need to look at the situation and see where we go from here. I think many people did not realise that the charge would not come in until 2013.

So basically we're all thick and didn't know we had 5 years to save up for it.

[the_rangdo]

Half a mile you say? Gosh, yes, I can see how essential a car would be in a place as isolated as that.

Cheers for the sarcasm

So after that half a mile walk I then find said bus (normally the 167 up here in the sticks) has decided not to turn up. It's only every half hour and I want to get to M'cr. So do I wait another half an hour, or do I walk another half mile back home and ride in the car? Half a mile I can handle if there's something reliable at the end of it.

The other option is go to Rochdale train station to pick up the train (assuming the other bus turns up), the same one that went missing when the snow hit last week, cos of course it's grim in the north and 2cm of snow means we're doomed. They couldn't find a train somewhere along the track FFS

And if you don't actually want to travel into the centre of M'cr and, heaven-forbid, travel radially from one provincial centre to another, zippo benefit at all.

We've a looooooong way to go to get to world-class transport, £2.75bn (not all of which would be spent on actual transport improvements) wouldn't even make a dent in the real bill.

[scooby]

And just to really make my mind up, they sneakily extended the outer ring that was supposed to be contained by the M60. Just at Jn19 of the M62 it suddenly extended outwards which would collar me nearly every time I wanted to go anywhere. Wasn't on any of the initial proposal maps, but was included in the voting pack was an updated map.

What else would sudenly change following a yes vote?

I noticed that!! they were heavily saying that travelling round the M60 wouldnt catch you. but looking at the maps, anyone heading clockwise would be caught at that point. That would be an awful lot of extra dosh.

[lilelvis2000]

Same here, and everything starts with at least half a mile walk to get a bus that may or may not turn up because it's the first one of the day and the driver CBA getting out of bed.

I voted no, most of the public transport is owned by private companies anyway so maybe they should use their profits from the past few years to add a few extra buses, cars, trams, whatever.

Hardly a world-class system, just increasing capacity and making vague promises about bus fare reductions, oh and if you vote yes we'll look at re-sequencing the traffic lights to make traffic flow smoother

And just to really make my mind up, they sneakily extended the outer ring that was supposed to be contained by the M60. Just at Jn19 of the M62 it suddenly extended outwards which would collar me nearly every time I wanted to go anywhere. Wasn't on any of the initial proposal maps, but was included in the voting pack was an updated map.

What else would sudenly change following a yes vote?

I imagine that given a Yes then after 5-10 years they would have extended it out even further.

This will never work with private bussing. Its my understanding that the councils cannot see the companies true operating costs for routes. They just trust the figures they are given by said companies. So after dishing out huge sums of cash...guess where it will go?

It could have worked if manchester was to operate like London transport. Othewise the owners of Stagecoach, First et al would reap the benefits. I imagine they are very dissapointed! I'll need to find some quotes from them.

Any idea when they'll try again..if ever. Or are they waiting for the government to install a national system and ride on top of that.

[dang65]

everything starts with at least half a mile walk to get a bus

Half a mile you say? Gosh, yes, I can see how essential a car would be in a place as isolated as that.

[the_rangdo]

i live in rochdale

Same here, and everything starts with at least half a mile walk to get a bus that may or may not turn up because it's the first one of the day and the driver CBA getting out of bed.

I voted no, most of the public transport is owned by private companies anyway so maybe they should use their profits from the past few years to add a few extra buses, cars, trams, whatever.

Hardly a world-class system, just increasing capacity and making vague promises about bus fare reductions, oh and if you vote yes we'll look at re-sequencing the traffic lights to make traffic flow smoother

And just to really make my mind up, they sneakily extended the outer ring that was supposed to be contained by the M60. Just at Jn19 of the M62 it suddenly extended outwards which would collar me nearly every time I wanted to go anywhere. Wasn't on any of the initial proposal maps, but was included in the voting pack was an updated map.

What else would sudenly change following a yes vote?

[TimberWolf]

How do you do your weekly shop on your bike?

I saw a chap not only doing his supermarket run today by bicycle, but he had his daughter on the back of his bike too. What a wonderful day out both of them must have enjoyed, and what an adventure full of memories his daughter can treasure for the rest of her life. Which will be about 2 years I reckon based on our suicidally dangerous roads. Clearly this isn't such a practical option as a cheap day out with the kids if they are teenagers and upwards, unless they have bikes too.

[tim123]

There's no such thing as an "uncrackable" device, the only option would be to legislate penalties for interfering with the tracker. There would then be the legal troubles with ones that went genuinely faulty and proving deliberate interference.

Londons charging scheme doesn't require trackers and it makes a huge amount of revenue while the city is still very congested, I don't believe that these schemes will do much to relieve traffic congestion and are simply a way to increase revenue from motorists.

That's why I put it in quotes.

But the system will in some way have to be uncrackable in the sense that it can determine when a bogus car tries to cheat the system. Currently we have that problem in London with clone cars and all that (usually) happens is that the charge is written off (at some inconvenience to the real owner of the car). This is considered not to be a viable solution for a countrywide system.

And I don't see that whether the system will reduce congestion is relevant to the technicalities of how it might work :-(

tim

[TykeMerc]

Yes there would. A new system would have to be "uncrackable".

Current tracking systems work on the basis of co-operation by the person being tracked, or by the device being "secret".

Neither of these will work with a road pricing system that, some percentage of the population, will do anything to opt out of.

tim

There's no such thing as an "uncrackable" device, the only option would be to legislate penalties for interfering with the tracker. There would then be the legal troubles with ones that went genuinely faulty and proving deliberate interference.

Londons charging scheme doesn't require trackers and it makes a huge amount of revenue while the city is still very congested, I don't believe that these schemes will do much to relieve traffic congestion and are simply a way to increase revenue from motorists.

[tim123]

There are quite a few existing solutions for tracking so there wouldn't be a need to develop new technology.

Yes there would. A new system would have to be "uncrackable".

Current tracking systems work on the basis of co-operation by the person being tracked, or by the device being "secret".

Neither of these will work with a road pricing system that, some percentage of the population, will do anything to opt out of.

tim

[TykeMerc]

I said a mobile-phone-like unit, built into the car and tamper-proof (wired into the car's security system) that would transmit a short packet containing GPS coordinates and average speed every 30 seconds or so. Not saying I *like* the idea BTW, just speculating on how it would work.

Battery power wouldn't be a problem any more than it is for the headlights.

Sorry I read it as you thinking that actual mobile phones could be used.

There are quite a few existing solutions for tracking so there wouldn't be a need to develop new technology.

[PAH]

Mobile phone technology would make more sense, as it's mostly already in place.

All they'd need to do is charge a set fee whenever the mobile crosses certain boundaries (for city/town centre congestion charging), and for distance covered. They don't actually need to worry about which roads or anything too specific, they can use a higher level location tracker to do very simple charging that covers large areas.

Then simply charge x pence per mile calculated to have been covered over the course of a month.

If people complain about it not being accurate enough, and they're paying too much, the govermin will offer them a more accurate device for their car!

Then again, maybe this approach is too simple. The govermin love spending billions on unworkable solutions.

[OwlHoot]

I said a mobile-phone-like unit, built into the car and tamper-proof (wired into the car's security system) that would transmit a short packet containing GPS coordinates and average speed every 30 seconds or so. Not saying I *like* the idea BTW, just speculating on how it would work.

Battery power wouldn't be a problem any more than it is for the headlights.

[TykeMerc]

The base stations wouldn't be doing the work. What I meant is a mobile-phone-like unit that would determine its own GPS location and include this in the packet sent to the base station.

I wouldn't be surprised if they do this already, or have provision for doing so.

Which wouldn't be useful for GPS locating cars even if every mobile had a GPS receiver and if the receivers were switched on all of the time which would suck the battery life like mad, take these scenarios:-

1. Multiple people in 1 car
2. Person with someone elses phone
3. Person on a train/bus/tram/bike/foot with a phone
4. Person in a hire car
5. Person in a legally borrowed car
6. Hacked GPS location software on phone to give a false location
7. Person follows safety advice and turns their phone off when driving

As I said previously the location of any cell phone can be established down to a few metres already by simple triangulation of the cells which has nothing to do with GPS at all. It does require multiple overlapping cells like you get in cities, on the open road or in the countryside where cells are relatively far apart it's not useful for location.
Incidentally even if my fairly modern (sub 9 months old) phone had GPS built in (which it doesn't) I wouldn't use it for GPS nav as I have a decent bit of PDA software and a small Bluetooth receiver, the PDA screen is much more suited to navigation than any phone I've ever seen.

[OwlHoot]

Yes, but their cell location system is very, very low power and nothing to do with GPS, in areas with very few overlapping cells the location it yields is limited to it being in an area as large as the cell. In a city with loads of cells the position can be located accurately by triangulation GPS has nothing to do with cellphone technology, it's a bolt on by some phone manufacturers. ..

The base stations wouldn't be doing the work. What I meant is a mobile-phone-like unit that would determine its own GPS location and include this in the packet sent to the base station.

I wouldn't be surprised if they do this already, or have provision for doing so.