[BBC News] Plans for £4m black spot solution

[StuartT]

Hardly, there is a gas pipeline underneath the Port Erin Line, as well as the Iris Scheme. That doesn't seem to be a problem.

 

Also forward planning, this is precisely why we need a railway network - something independant of the roads which will not get snarled up. It would also allow you to get heavy goods vehicles off the road totally, only a good thing in the IOM - something which a busway would not.

 

Incidentally anyone who has actually looked at public transport in the long term and in the wider world would appreciate that tramways, and light railway are used to a far greater extent by commuters than specialist busways. Of those places which used Busways as an alternative to tramways and light railways, many of them are converting them into tramways as a more viable long term solution, and have chosen not to extend their busways.

 

As for the railway or any other public transport system not paying - possibly not in the current economic climate and with the current line of thinking. That is precisely why we need the carrot and stick approach - to give a suitable competitive long term solution to traffic problems - and a stick of making it prohibitively expensive to use motor cars in order that the system will be paid for in the long term.

 

The place for buses would be in a town which eliminated cars from their streets, and to act as a feeder for the railways. Not as a long distance form of transport on already clogged roads.

 

One of the excuses used to justify not using the railways as a commuter system was the cost of specialist rolling stock built to manx loading gauge and for the 3ft gauge track. In the case of the Ramsey and Peel lines, there is no reason why they could not be relayed to standard gauge and ran using modern 2nd hand stock from the UK. If this was a sucess then the option could be considered for the Port Erin Line too, with the 3ft kept as a 3rd rail for enthusiasts specials.

 

Of course the car bound manx people just keep looking in the short term for any excuse to keep themselves in their cars, rather than come up with a long term future alternative which could last for 100+ years rather than 10.

 

As for the railway being a problem at QB, not necessarily as you could always build an over pass (with a bridge/under the railway), but if you were sucessful in discouraging car use sufficiently then it wouldn't really be a problem. And if it irritates a few more motorists having to wait for trains to come through, then that can only be a good thing as it would make it more inconvenient for them to use their cars.

 

Yes you need the carrot, but it is plain to see from the attitudes of a lot of posters, you also need a stick. Of course most of you appear to be unable to think in terms of anything except the short term and along current lines, rather than outside the box.

Yet again you astonish us all with your detachment from the real world. Somehow you think the solution to 90 minutes of mild congestion a day is to construct near-useless railway lines. You are suffering dangerously high delusions of granduer. Not only would your scheme cost at least tens of millions of pounds, it would be utterly useless.

 

Firstly, the number of heavy vehicles using Manx roads is tiny, and they do not contribute substantially to congestion. They get in on the Ben either before the morning rush, or after the evening one. To use rail for freight, facilities would have to be constructed for the loading and unloading of containers at Douglas (where the line never reached the linkspan in the first place) and at every other town, at which point they would have to be put on...HGVs. Sending freight by rail may work in Britain where journeys can be 100s of miles and where they actually have a proper rail network, but the Isle of Man only has two tourist lines, which it struggles to keep going as is. Cars cause congestion on the Isle of Man, something buses would reduce.

 

As someone who has looked at (and experienced) public transport in a number of global locations, I can but agree that trams and light rail have a lot to offer residents - of large cities. To say they are used more than buses even there is absurd. However, in small towns like, say, Warrington, buses are used. They are cheap, operate on existing infrastructure (roads), and provision can be made to give them superior access in certain circumstances. There are no actually long journeys on the Isle of Man that would be better served by light rail. Presumably you forsee people taking the light rail to, say, Port Erin, then getting a bus from there? Why not just get the bus (or the xpress bus) to Port Erin? Maybe have some bike lockers at one of the bus stops.

 

I'm not even going to comment on your stupid B overpass idea.

 

Look, your ideas are crazy-expensive, unsuitable and do not even provide a clearly superior alternative. In your world, Manx roads are similar to the M25, but really traffic is not that serious a problem.

 

It is nearly unbelievable that in a thread that questions the value for money in a £4million junction scheme produces a response like this that would cost 10s if not 100s of millions of pounds, yet provide few obvious benefits, and still not be more convienant than a private automobile. Next.

 

You show a certain detachment from reality, if you believe an already failed solution - buses are going to help the problem. I do not believe Manx roads are the M25 - however we seem to be wasting far greater sums on them than are really appropriate.

 

As for the real world, most motorists are failing to live in it if they believe that they can continue to use their cars without regard to the congestion they cause, or the damage they are causing to the environment. Or if they really believe that spending sums of money such as 4M per roundabout is justified just to allow them to use their metal boxes. A railway system may cost much more than 4M, but if you think in terms of it being a long term solution - let's say a 100 year rather than just a 4 - 10 year one (if these countless roundabouts, road widening, and traffic lights really are ever a solution), and compare it to the total cost of highway expenditure Island wide, then you should find that things will balance out far more.

 

Add in the disincentives to car use which is genuinely needed(I'd totally ban cars from Douglas with the exception of Disabled vehicles, and any business which has a genuine need to use them - at a massive premium of course), a decent bus service around Douglas and other towns, and a properly integrated public transport system would pay for itself.

 

Even if a railway scheme did cost £100 Million, if you build it as a 100 plus year solution, it would still work out as equal value (less than 1 Million per year) than a 4 million roundabout which may possibly have the desired effect for 4 years (1 Million per year) if even that!

[homarus]

I would have thought £4 million would go a long way towards making the "Marine drive" fit for traffic once more, and be a far more scenic route in to work .

It would also breathe more life into one of the most beautiful places on our island ?

[Keith]

I would have thought £4 million would go a long way towards making the "Marine drive" fit for traffic once more, and be a far more scenic route in to work .

It would also breathe more life into one of the most beautiful places on our island ?

 

OY! Sod off! I walk my dog along there!

[StuartT]

I would have thought £4 million would go a long way towards making the "Marine drive" fit for traffic once more, and be a far more scenic route in to work .

It would also breathe more life into one of the most beautiful places on our island ?

 

 

Hmm the marine drive roadway - what a great success eh? Ran as a tramway without a problem for nearly 50 years. Then closed, to be rebuilt as a road - which had to be closed due to landfalls only 20 years later...

Edited July 5, 2008 by StuartT

[VinnieK]

Add in the disincentives to car use which is genuinely needed(I'd totally ban cars from Douglas with the exception of Disabled vehicles, and any business which has a genuine need to use them - at a massive premium of course), a decent bus service around Douglas and other towns, and a properly integrated public transport system would pay for itself.

 

If you banned cars from Douglas (which would presumably solve the congestion issue), why on earth would you then need to slap a heavy premium on businesses which actually genuinely need them to operate, other than to satisfy your own personal crusade against the internal combustion engine?

 

Seriously, have you actually thought about this at all? There's little apparent benefit in such "massive" premiums, and plenty of problems such as placing ever greater strain on the ability of businesses to operate.

[homarus]

[quote name='Keith' date='Jul 5 2008, 06:55 PM' post='336925

 

OY! Sod off! I walk my dog along there!

 

If the road was re-opened you wouldn't need to walk , you could drive it !

[triskelion]

StuartT, your fantastical leaps over mountains of logic and great chasms of reasoning are almost inspiring. Cars are here to stay for the foreseeable future, they are just too good are means of transportation, unequalled in their ability, at the very least, to liberate people from insular and constrictive communities.

 

Far from thinking outside the box, you refuse to acknowledge it even exists and thus your fanciful dreams of an all-Island rail network are so far removed from reality that you may as well construct it out of confectionary.

 

How buses can be judged to have failed is quite beyond me; perhaps you misjudge to role they fill. Do they not provide a relatively lost cost means of transport to those unable, for numerous reasons, to use private automobiles? The disabled, the elderly, parents, lower-wage earners, children, yound people - all are granted mobility from across the Island thanks to the maintenance of the Isle of Man Bus Company. Sure, the times may not be suitable to all, but the majority are served well enough.

 

Perhaps you think they failed to prevent congestion? Were they ever designed or intended to? Of course not.

 

If a car pack were constructed at the Cooil, with a lower daily rate that would paid in Douglas, traffic from the south would reduce, allowing easier access from along Peel road, and those parked at the Cooil could use a Park & Ride bus service. There parking ticket could even serve as their bus ticket as well.

 

The aim of QB scheme is to reduce congestion and accidents, which a Park&Ride scheme would do, with out your unnecessary multi-multi-million pound rail scheme, or the DoT's Super-Duper-Wuper roundabout.

[manshimajin]

Trams can be as successful as buses and commuter trains - viz. Vienna, Melbourne, Warsaw. But that ain't the point is it?

 

Is it really worth spending £4 million on a roundabout to make a (perhaps) 30 second improvement in travel times in peak hours? or should we:

 

a) save the money (taxpayers money) and save all the delays and frustrations whilst it is being built,

 

b) spend the money on something that will contribute more to people's lives (public transport, safer roads, resurfacing roads, care homes....), or

 

c) build a new tower at the airport....

 

If the DoT really want to go ahead with this I just hope that it is only half-completed at the time of the next Tynwald elections.

 

[WTF]

I would have thought £4 million would go a long way towards making the "Marine drive" fit for traffic once more, and be a far more scenic route in to work .

It would also breathe more life into one of the most beautiful places on our island ?

 

pointless, you still end up coming in to douglas via the swingbridge. you may aswell stick to the old castletown road or the new one and come in via white hoe and leigh terrace. marine drive requires backtracking to port soderick and then you get a twisty road!! add around half a mile to the journey to queue up past magnet? good thinking

[triskelion]

So the accident argument is a joke then:

 

"The Quarterbridge junction has the highest frequency of recorded accidents on the Island. In the past 5 years from 2003 to 2007 there have been 20 accidents at the junction, mainly slight and damage only"

 

4 minor accidents a year! What? That's hardly anything. Cars do not approach the current junction at speed, so the likelihood of a serious accident is very small.

 

However, if you were to, say, expand the junction...

[Gladys]

I hope someone from the DOT is reading this. Seems absolute claptrap to me. Why not spend the money on something which will be a lasting enhancement to our sustainable lifestyle?

 

Someone asked above about why the carrot is rarely used infavour of the stick. Well, the simple reason is that the carrot costs money, whereas the stick usually generates money.

[monasqueen]

I would have thought £4 million would go a long way towards making the "Marine drive" fit for traffic once more, and be a far more scenic route in to work .

It would also breathe more life into one of the most beautiful places on our island ?

 

OY! Sod off! I walk my dog along there!

 

That brings the thread back to dog shit again, doesn't it?

[homarus]

I would have thought £4 million would go a long way towards making the "Marine drive" fit for traffic once more, and be a far more scenic route in to work .

It would also breathe more life into one of the most beautiful places on our island ?

 

pointless, you still end up coming in to douglas via the swingbridge. you may aswell stick to the old castletown road or the new one and come in via white hoe and leigh terrace. marine drive requires backtracking to port soderick and then you get a twisty road!! add around half a mile to the journey to queue up past magnet? good thinking

 

Come on ' WTF' what's half a mile between friends ? I do take your point but it seems to me that there is no ideal solution to this problem .

But £4 Million or so to make the 'Marine Drive' fit for traffic once more would at least ,add another option (via Blackboards or Santon) for the motorist and make' Port Soderick more accessible , don't forget that there is a wacking great carpark sitting right above 'Port Soderick '{ empty at this present moment) where the motorists could leave their cars if they did not wish to drive all the way into Douglas !

In could tie in with a regular small shuttle bus service as are seen in numerous places across?

That way dog owners could also gain the benifit of driving their four legged friends to 'Port soderick ' where they could shit on the beach in a controlled enviroment(the dogs that is not the owners!} , with the tide taking away their mess .

I.M.O. Certainly no more far fetched an idea than creating a massive £4 roundabout just to look good for aerial shots of the T.T. !

Edited July 6, 2008 by homarus

[oldmanxfella]

But £4 Million or so to make the 'Marine Drive' fit for traffic once more would at least ,add another option (via Blackboards or Santon) for the motorist and make' Port Soderick more accessible , don't forget that there is a wacking great carpark sitting right above 'Port Soderick '{ empty at this present moment) where the motorists could leave their cars if they did not wish to drive all the way into Douglas !

 

The only time you will ever see Marine Drive repaired is when Port Soderick finally goes for apartments. Only then will the taxpayer be asked to stump up the cost for other peoples benefit.

[Sparky]

So the accident argument is a joke then:

 

"The Quarterbridge junction has the highest frequency of recorded accidents on the Island. In the past 5 years from 2003 to 2007 there have been 20 accidents at the junction, mainly slight and damage only"

 

4 minor accidents a year! What? That's hardly anything. Cars do not approach the current junction at speed, so the likelihood of a serious accident is very small.

 

However, if you were to, say, expand the junction...

 

And £4m could go a long way to re-educate drivers that when approaching a junction that they reduce their speed and put the car into a gear that allows them to control the car and stop safely if required to do so, which is what you have to do to pass your test is it not? Not only would this solve the problem at QB but would have an impact at all junctions around the Island!

 

Does "20 accidents at the junction, mainly slight and damage only" justify a scheme of this grandeur when one solution which does not seem to have been looked at with this and many other schemes is education. You could stand a bobby on the roundabouts for an awful long time for £4m, I'm sure that after a few people were 're-educated' by the police that the message would soon get across.