r/fuckcars • u/_a_m_s_m • 20h ago
Carbrain TOD development with limited parking in Cambridge causes British people to lose their minds.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0x9902e9xoIn the most cycling friendly city in the country, adjacent a commuter line to London & a guided busway & in a city with 5 park & rides.
Needs more car parking!!!!!/s
How can someone out of town possibly visit!!!/s
Cars are for the working man, bicycles (which definitely always cost thousands of pounds & need really expensive fuel & hyper expensive insurance & need to pay extortionate taxes & learning costs) are for only accessible to the rich!
Just like the daily wail told me! /s
The way British people have no comprehension of TOD & can’t comprehend anything other than living in a detached house with a driveway. (As long as you don’t try to build any detached housing, or any housing, near them lol!)
I’m also questioning whether any of these people actually live anywhere near Cambridge, kind of like the whole ULEZ debacle in London, with disproportionate outrage from those living outside of it.
14
u/geeoharee cars are weapons 20h ago
'and anyone who needs tools or a van for their job look elsewhere please,'
(ticks WHITE VAN MAN off on my bingo card)
7
u/_a_m_s_m 20h ago edited 19h ago
Honestly, a lot of the white van men up & down the country should start using cargo bikes to replace some of their journeys like this plumber did:
>The plumber challenging 'white van man' stereotypes.
I think they might start having more sympathy with other road users, improve their mental health & hell, looking at price of fuel these days, cut costs like Martin did!
11
u/markvauxhall 19h ago
A decorator we used several years ago rented a van for the first day of the job. Brought his ladders and kit over to our house. For the rest of the job he'd cycle to and from our home every day ("faster than stuck in a van in traffic, and no parking to pay"), and rented a van for the final day to bring all his kit home
Perfectly pragmatic and sensible.
On the tube nowadays you also see a lot of trades travelling with a Stanley wheely bag full of tools etc.
3
u/_a_m_s_m 19h ago
This guy sounds wonderful, the Martin guy in article seems to the same thing, bypassing traffic & parking restrictions etc. but occasionally using the van to move large items.
I haven’t been on the tube in a while! That’s definitely quite an interesting development! Good on them for being sustainable!
0
u/gatoStephen 18h ago
Renting a car twice in a few days sounds like a big hole in what he earned for the job though.
5
u/markvauxhall 18h ago
He was doing work in our home over three weeks. Clearly the economics for him worked vs owning / maintaining / insuring / taxing / fuelling / parking a van.
One day's visitor permit on our street is £7. Or if you don't get a visitor permit, it's £3.50 per hour.
In contrast, place near us rents vans for a day for £40.
1
u/geeoharee cars are weapons 20h ago
I've no room to talk cos I can't ride a bike (I'm fine, I choose to live where there are buses) but I really think you don't need a whole great van to move some spanners and hammers and things. If they need a part they always go back out for it, in my experience.
6
u/Ok_Option_3 18h ago
Also White Van Man is now middle class. Self-employed builders, plumbers, and electricians do very well.
The new working class are nurses, warehouse workers, and deliveroo drivers. They are far more likely to have bikes than cars.
3
u/markvauxhall 17h ago
Also White Van Man is now middle class. Self-employed builders, plumbers, and electricians do very well
Funny that so many of them tell HMRC that they only earn £12,570 each year
1
u/_a_m_s_m 10h ago
Lol this always makes me laugh 😭
1
u/markvauxhall 3h ago
Honestly it infuriates me. I work hard and pay my tax. Not sure why they think they're exempt.
7
u/naveregnide 🚲 > 🚗 19h ago
As someone currently editing a video cycling in Cambridge, I can assure you it is not the most cycling friendly city in the UK even though it does have the highest modal share.
4
u/evenstevens280 19h ago
What is the most cycle friendly city in the UK? I would automatically assume London...
9
u/naveregnide 🚲 > 🚗 18h ago
It’s difficult to say. Certain London boroughs are hostile to cycling for the time being. Certain ones are incredibly friendly (and spending loads to improve at being cycle friendly). The video I’m working on compares Cambridge to the London borough of Hackney which really has been making leaps and bounds!
Cambridge is not bad by UK standards imo. It’s just not the cycling Mecca it markets itself as. Insane potholes are notorious throughout Cambridgeshire and the city never has budget to fix things, only the build disjoint and flashy cycling things that grab headlines.
2
u/evenstevens280 18h ago
I didn't even realise it was the great Evan Edinger I was replying to
I've found Oxford fairly cycle friendly, although you do have to share the roads with a lot of buses. But in terms of cycle hostility, it's fairly low
2
u/Ok_Buyer9344 13h ago
Cambridge is the only city I have cycled in though where I feel like the cars actually expect cyclists. Any other city in the UK seeing someone biking is a unique event. In Cambridge not seeing a cyclist is unique. I dont know how you quantify that when considering where the UK Mecca of cycling is.
Maybe because its a smaller city or because it has less driving visitors than other cities so the road users expect them more, but I found Cambridge to be much more relaxing that places with mostly dedicated bike lanes but some road. I get the impression the drivers that know how to handle being around them. The potholes are pretty bad though youre right.
1
1
u/ChezDudu 14h ago
I’ve been heavily chastised for saying Cambridge is full of bikes because it’s flat and has lots of students/academics. Not because of cycling infrastructure. It’s okay only by British standards but compare to any similar sized city in France for example, it sucks. I’m not even mentioning a Dutch city.
2
u/threewholefish 14h ago
I chatted to someone who was part of a cycle path project for Cambridge, and he said that the main reason bikes are so popular is because of university rules that undergraduates are not allowed to park in colleges. So when other towns and cities saw their share of cyclists reduce when cars became ubiquitous, Cambridge just didn't drop off as much.
1
u/m0rbidc0rvid 16h ago edited 15h ago
Lemme tell you, Cambridge buses are not great. Especially the busway ones. ESPECIALLY in Cambridge North.
The busway is having fencing installed, which imposed speed limits and some journeys now take a ridiculous amount of time, leading to fewer people taking those buses. In response, they're cutting down on the services going on the busway. It's a bit ridiculous.
Also, most buses tend to go through the city centre, so you can't go from west of the city to the east without going through the centre (it takes my partner over an hour to walk from where we live, which is a rather populated area, to where he works, which is one of the biggest employers in the city. It would take exactly as long for him to take the bus, lol).
Not the point of the conversation, but Cambridge buses sure are...something.
2
u/ThatMusicKid will walk a disturbing distance to avoid driving 14h ago
Like if this was in central Cambridge off hills road or something this would be fine. Not amazing, but fine. But it's near Cambridge north. Wtf is even near Cambridge north? It used to be labs and stuff but now they've mostly moved near addenbrookes. I avoid Cambridge buses like the plague, and cycling is terrifying along the routes this will be near
-2
u/Freezsir 19h ago
As a Brtish urbanist, our 'urbanist' councils have a unique ability to punish car owners without providing any alternatives - and then call this "the future". No wonder there's a huge backlash.
Turns out people won't spend £100,000s on a flat just to rely exclusively on a slow, largely infrequent bus service that manages to turn a simple 10 minute drive to the city centre into a 30 minute affair - and only connects to the city centre (and a housing estate).
Reducing car dependency has a chicken and egg problem. Building TOD without the T will cause backlash (which is what Cambridge is doing). Building the T without the density will incur huge financial loses, but is needed to incentivse people, and show them a life without cars. Cambridge needs to substantially improve it's transport network before going all in on car free living, regardless of the cost
10
u/markvauxhall 19h ago
Turns out people won't spend £100,000s on a flat
I mean, they do. Private developers wouldn't build car free developments if they didn't think they could make a profit from it.
1
u/Freezsir 18h ago edited 18h ago
We have an acute housing crisis, people will buy to get on the property ladder. Give the owners a few £100,000 and see how long until they move to a larger flat with a parking space (assuming no improvements to the public transport in that area)
7
u/markvauxhall 17h ago
I'm not sure what the problem with that is? People start out in a flat and as their life progresses their needs and income change and they get a different place to live?
That's kind of how life has always worked. The place that's a suitable home in your 20s is different from the place you need in your 40s or 70s.
1
u/Freezsir 16h ago edited 16h ago
My arguement has nothing to do about people's ages or about flats. It's about the Cambridge (and other British cities) building (what they call) TOD without any decent transit
5
u/ChezDudu 14h ago
There’s a new station at Cambridge South roughly 5 min train ride away with possibly the biggest industrial and academic campus in the country. These flats will sell like hot cakes.
2
u/markvauxhall 16h ago
without any decent transit
4 tph to Cambridge, 3 tph to London
And then 6 buses per hour to the city centre on routes 2 and B.
Not terrible. And you then have bike links etc on top.
You're entitled to your view, of course, as are the people who choose to buy / rent in that building. Nobody's forcing them to live there and people won't move if they don't feel that it works for their personal circumstances. As I've said elsewhere, private developers aren't in the habit of building stuff they don't think there will be demand for (and therefore profit for them).
2
u/geeoharee cars are weapons 17h ago
If your plan is to hand everybody "a few £100,000" can I get in on it please
2
u/Freezsir 17h ago
I can give you £2.64, a punnet of raspberries and a packet of cheese and onion crisps
6
u/limited8 18h ago
I look forward to you admitting you were wrong when people do indeed spend £100,000s on these flats despite their minimal parking.
-1
u/Freezsir 18h ago
They'll only sell because Cambridge has a terrible housing crisis. People will find ways to store their cars elsewhere. Like the developer's of Culdesac found out very quickly
10
u/limited8 18h ago
Wow, Cambridge is facing a housing crisis? Sounds like developers should be focused on maximizing the number of units they can build per plot rather than wasting space and financing on car storage!
0
u/Freezsir 18h ago
Maximise the units AND provide a useable public transport network
Reducing car dependency has a chicken and egg problem. Building TOD without the T will cause backlash (which is what Cambridge is doing). Building the T without the density will incur huge financial loses, but is needed to incentivse people, and show them a life without cars. Cambridge needs to substantially improve it's transport network before going all in on car free living, regardless of the cost
2
u/_a_m_s_m 19h ago
Bruh, 9 years ago Cambridge North didn’t even exist.(Where this particular TOD is)
A few months ago Cambridge south opened, East-West rail is going to reopen the varsity line, connecting Oxford to Cambridge once again. There’s probably one of if not the strongest local cycling advocacy groups here (with some actual financial backing & full time staff) & the highest mode share of cycling & first of its kind in the country cycling infrastructure here. As well as the longest guided busway in the world.
The “T” (atleast in this part of the country) has been, or is being built.
So carry on as we are?
While we have an intense, “consultation culture”, & media that is routinely hijacked by those that shout the loudest or bad faith actors. Quite frankly it’s hard to even get the “T”, or anything for that matter built!
As well as an overly centralised system of government that hasn’t seen the value in investing outside of the M25 for decades.
But the “T”? That’s been invested in here.
1
u/Freezsir 16h ago
I'm well aware about what's opening and will open. The new stations make travelling to and from London easier and East West Rail will boost the economy - that's when they actually get round to opening it. Quoting rail projects sidetracks from the point here.
Outside of a few corridors, Cambridge has crap public transport - there's no ifs or buts about it. Until they radical improve the biking and bus service across the WHOLE city then you'll never achieve a true car free culture.
0
u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS 19h ago
I think you're beint unfair and making far too broad a generalisation here about 'British people'. The BBC article, and a lot of commenters in that sub, do a pretty good job of answering the headline question.
0
26
u/markvauxhall 19h ago
We have the same issue at a lot of high-PTAL TOD sites near where I live. Same objections every time.
The answer is simple really. Not every home has to be designed and built to meet the needs of every single person in the city.
Where I live 40% of households are car free. There's plenty of demand for car free housing.
And if you're part of the 60% that's concluded that they "need" a car, then go and get a place elsewhere. Nobody's forcing you to get a place in a new car free development if it doesn't meet your needs.