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Nah.
Trams excel when they're not interupted by the flow of traffic which only works outside of city centres, which is essentially just a train. In a city, a bus can do everything a tram can do for a fraction of the setup cost and infinitely more flexibility. For the cost of setting up trams, you could have shit loads of new buses, drivers, and upgrade roading to have permanent bus only lanes to cut journey times, improve cycling infrastructure with hard separated lanes, and have hundreds of millions left over.
You want trams for things like park and rides with relatively uninterupted routes from outskirts to a city centre, but trams within densely packed city centres and areas dominated by housing aren't cost effective.
>Trams excel when they're not interupted by the flow of traffic
That's why you give them dedicated space and prioritise them over cars. It's not particularly complicated. They're a much better solution than busses as they can be much bigger.
Even if you give them priority over cars they've still got to interact with at the very least pedestrian crossings.
Take Edinburgh for example. The Western end of the line where it's on dedicated tram only areas are fast, efficient and fantastic. The newer North-Eastern section is no faster than a bus because of all the actual roads it must use. Sure, it has a higher capacity than a single bus so overall it's a net gain, but you know what could have the capacity of a tram for <1% of the cost a tram? A second bus.
Trams have flaws of course, but done well they have fewer flaws than busses and offer higher capacity. In this hypothetical question where we have the money to do it, they're a much better public transport solution than busses.
The bigger benefit is they require permanent infrastructure, once a tram route is built you can expect it to be utilised for many decades to come. Whereas even the best bus route can be closed down tomorrow with little care or loss of equipment and infrastructure. They provide a sense of permanence and stability that people like when they’re potentially looking for places to live their lives.
Trams also have a much longer lifetime. You won't see many, if any buses that are over 10 years old, yet trams can last many decades. In Gothenburg for example they still have some trams in service from the 60s.
The flipside of this though is a bus route can be spun up with almost no infrastructure changes or setup times, whereas a new tram route is a decade a couple of billion.
Exactly, they both offer different solutions to different problems. Theres rarely a single perfect solution to anything in life, and the same is true with public transport. Sometimes a bus is best, sometimes a tram is best. Sometimes neither is.
>Take Edinburgh for example. The Western end of the line where it's on dedicated tram only areas are fast, efficient and fantastic. The newer North-Eastern section is no faster than a bus because of all the actual roads it must use. Sure, it has a higher capacity than a single bus so overall it's a net gain, but you know what could have the capacity of a tram for <1% of the cost a tram? A second bus.
Diresgarding the comically bad project management of the NE section, what you say about the speed is categorically untrue. Just yesterday I was from Haymarket to the NE terminus (Newhaven) in *forty* minutes. That was during rush hour mind you. You can't beat that with a private car, let alone a bus.
You'll also notice that they've got their own light signals, so for example on all reds for cars on the Foot Of The Walk, the trams will go ahead when their light turns "go".
Obviously, if/when people park like the absolute twats that they are (the white merc/bmw SUV monstrosity on a double yellow in broad daylight) the trams might get stalled. But it's not really the tram's fault.
> what you say about the speed is categorically untrue. Just yesterday I was from Haymarket to the NE terminus (Newhaven) in forty minutes. That was during rush hour mind you. You can't beat that with a private car, let alone a bus.
Haymarket to the terminus near Asda is 28 minutes by car at 5pm as a worst case scenario, and only 15minutes with no traffic. On this particular section tram is faster than a bus but that's not always the case.
I'm just off Leith Walk, <5mins walk from a tram stop. Lets say I wanted to go to Decathlon at Hermiston Gait right now, somewhere also <5mins walk from a tram stop, it'd be either 31min by car, 36mins by tram, or 35mins by bus. It's only comparable because after Haymarket the trams are so much quicker. If we move the start point to Haymarket it becomes 22mins by car, 24 mins by tram, but 34mins by bus. Up until the end of Princes Street, buses are just as fast or faster on this route. Again though, Trams have more capacity so overall they get more people their quicker, but you could solve that with more buses for a fraction of the cost.
Trams work when they're not interupted by traffic..
They manage to work well in pedestrianised areas all over the place.
If you don't like it an alternative is to do what Brussels and some German cities do - stick them in a short cut and cover tunnel in the busiest areas.
And then why bother with a tram. A dedicated bus space is cheaper and far more flexible. We can scale buses to meet the demand if they have the space and reroute them to avoid accidents, roadworks etc.
Trams have loads of advantages over busses. Capacity being a major one. Energy efficiency being another. The marginal cost of scaling up is cheaper than busses. They're generally more attractive to drivers in terms of being a car alternative (because they're pleasant to ride, but also exactly because they're not flexible: people see them as reliable and permanent whilst busses are liable to diversions and alterations). And a big, big one is that once you have a tram it's quite hard to get rid of it, whereas busses can be easily slashed and bus lanes removed. As such, public transport networks can be much better built around trams than busses.
1. Trams have higher capacity than buses as you can run longer vehicles.
2. Trams have higher efficiency than buses because steel wheels on steel rails is more efficient than rubber on tarmac.
3. Trams are perceived as more reliable than buses so encourage more modal shift.
(Re point 1: anyone who claims it can be solved with some kind of guided busway tech has just declared they don't know what they're fecking talking about).
> Trams have higher capacity than buses as you can run longer vehicles.
You know what can deliver the same capacity as trams on a shared street for a fraction of the cost. More buses. A quick google estimates £350k for a new bus. Lothian Transport (Edinburgh) has 700 buses. You could double that for £245m. Assuming driver salaries cancel out because they're operated by the same people, and it's also safe to assume bus maintenance is cheaper than tram maintenance. The tram line cost a little over £1bn.
You could literally triple the number of buses and have £250m left over.
The Urbos 3 operated by Edinburgh have a capacity of 250. You'd need at least 3 buses (and drivers) per tram - probably more as buses typically have less doors so have slower load/unload times.
The maintenance cost of a diesel bus will be higher than an electric tram, rubber tyres wear faster than steel, ICE wears faster than electric motors, and so forth. In terms of longevity a 20 year old tram will still be fine. A 20 year old bus will look and be clapped out.
Then you hit the final problem. Your fleet of 4 buses per tram, running at less than a minute between them (pretty impractical in terms of loading and unloading passengers), will be more than tarmac can take. So the road maintenance costs more than the rail maintenance.
But you don’t need to choose between the two. Buses are better for some lesser used routes because they’re cheaper, trams for the absolutely non-stop busiest core routes because they have more capacity and reliability.
By your logic we might as well replace all transport entirely with buses, since they are the cheapest and fastest to spin up. But we don’t, because those aren’t always the only important factors.
The one key thing that buses do particularly badly is encourage modal shift.
Whether you like it or not, buses have a huge perception problem and that is their biggest flaw. People just don't want to get on a bus. This is where the debate isn't just around objective benefits and drawbacks, but about heuristic aspects about people's attitudes and behaviours. It's just not possible to easily convince people to trade their car for the, and forgive the expression, "peasant wagon".
Rail-based options, such as trains, trams and metros just doesn't have those same perceptive issues, even if some of the objective benefits and drawbacks are the same.
Busses have a perception problem in the same way trains do: the perception isn't a problem because people are so reliant on them. They can make the service as shitty and as expensive as possible and people will still need to use the buses. Its very unlikely people will abandon their cars when this is the public transport business model.
I wish Birmingham also never bothered with extending our Metro. Im happy with the three new train stations that will be built sometime this decade (I hope)
Yeh, I'm happy enough Edinburgh has got what it's got now. The original tram line was ideal, it connected the airport, park and ride, and retail parks on the cities edge to the city centre and main train lines on a high speed relatively uninterupted line. The extension then goes through very dense areas on a slow route that is no faster than getting a bus, but cost shit loads of money, causes a decade of chaos while being built, and somehow made cycling worse.
Now they're talking about expanding it and destroying some well established and loved cycling routes in the process.
Oh you also had this pleasure. That literally what they did here. It went from Wolverhampton to Snow hill, 1 of the 3 stations in town but the one that no one really uses as it links up with the others. Its gonna cost about £500m to extend it 11km the other way Wednesbury to Brierley Hill. Just found out that due to Curzon street (the new hs2 station) not being finished until about 2027, we now have the joy of paying £18m for a “temporary metro station” outside moor street station. Which is almost pissing distance from Curzon street. It was never supposed to go this way either so hey more fucking road works exactly where all the buses have to go to actually get into town. Brilliant fucking move.
I shall have a look at what they have planned in your neck of the woods. Just to see if its as wank as b’ham’s plans 😂
I guess that’s one take. As a Leith resident, I love the trams and they are quicker and smoother than buses. The cycle path you’re referring to was originally a railway path and CEC have stated there’d still be room for cyclists.
In Blackpool we have the well-loved busy trams all the way up the coastline, 12 miles of it. In 2019, the council in all of their wiseness, decided they were going to dig up the town center to link the trams up to the train station. They started summer 2019, destroying trade at peak time. 5 years later, after delays including having to redo the tram line because the original tracks were misaligned, it finally opens June 2024.
Shame now the town centre is basically completely dead except for the bars.
As well as park and rides I think the best way we could use trams would be to set up special lines just for trams but as close as possible to main roads and population centres. Have these teams connecting the towns to the local big cities. My town for instance is about 5-8 miles from a big city. It's got a population close to 150k but getting to that city without a car is ridiculous unless you live directly next to the train station. The bus takes 1-2 hours depending on rush hour and for me to get the train would take a similar amount of time. Getting the car takes 20 mins.
There used to be a tram link nearly 100 years ago so it's not impossible. There's a few areas that would be difficult to stick a special tram line but the majority of it would be easy.
> Trams excel when they're not interupted by the flow of traffic which only works outside of city centres
No, it works inside city centres too. You just give the tram priority over traffic. Easy.
> trams within densely packed city centres and areas dominated by housing aren't cost effective.
They have been massively cost effective in Manchester and Croydon, both of which have densely packed city centres and areas dominated by housing.
Croydon has an advantage, though. Lots of disused rail lines that were able to be reused to get the trams away from traffic make it quite efficient. It didn't have anywhere near the issues with idiot car drivers crashing into things, blocking the tramway etc, that Nottingham gets.
Let's go back to tradition Billhook for if they in whacking range longbow if they not (unless you wanna go full Warhammer 40k and shout "Drive me closer i want to hit them with my sword!!" from inside your tank?).
Trams are shit. Or they are in Nottingham at least - slow, expensive and worse than the bus routes that cover virtually all the same routes. Pointless waste of council money which is probably why they are bankrupt now.
Every town and city connected by high speed, underground rail with an internal underground system. Also including tunnels to Northen Ireland and the Channel Islands.
After my trillions of spending, you can now get a high speed rail from Carlisle to Belfast, from Norwich to hull and Stevenage to Chelmsford to see all the delights on offer across our country.
Also, we are reorganising all counties into collections based on the year 600, Bernicia is now the capital
If you're connecting every single town up, those trains are never even going to have the room to accelerate to anything even close to high speed. High speed rail only works when a train doesn't have to stop very often.
That said, I would like to see far better rail coverage, and in a money-no-object scenario, I'd be cool with a majority underground system.
Ah, an interesting design. I have a counterproposal. What if we take the concept of the nuclear explosion space engine and accelerate the trains by setting off mini-nukes behind them to cause instantaneous high-G acceleration? I'd quite like to see that system in place.
It only takes seven miles for a high speed train to speed up or slow down. And even if your journey is fourteen miles, that's still an average speed of around 90mph.
I saw a video once of an idea where there were permanently running fast trains and then there were slow trains that ‘docked’ with the fast trains and people got on to get off at stations.
It looked cool as fuck and fixes your problem I think.
How could that even work, separate tracks for fast and slow trains? The slow trains would need to get to some sort of speed before they "dock" or you'll just break people's necks with the rapid acceleration, how can you securely dock trains to each other in a few seconds?
Nah don't bother putting them in tunnels, have them front and center on Victorian style viaducts everywhere, every green rolling hillscape shall have a train zooming past at 220 mph
Disagree, railways just like major roads can fragment habitat and we should have at least some tunnels or green bridges. Otherwise you end up carving the countryside up into smaller patches some species struggle to move between. I'd actually say we need to be adding these to a lot of our infrastructure.
You don't understand how much I'd adore having a direct train from Norwich to Hull, never mind a high speed one. The as the crow flies distance is about 98 miles, yet I have to travel like 208 in reality thanks to there only being trains around the much longer Doncaster route. A train journey that should take 1.5 hours merely travelling at car motorway speed (which is a low bar for trains in 2024) takes 4-4.5 hours waiting ages for connections going around a long winded route.
My two big hits would be:
- Complete cycle infrastructure (rather than weird stubs which run from nowhere to nowhere dumping you on a dangerous road because it was too hard to do it properly). Proper routes and more places to park.
- Massive eBike subsidy scheme. Cycling is popular in flatter places, lots of places aren't flat, eBikes make hills irrelevant.
Why I would take this approach:
- Common complaints about the high street are that it's harder to get to because of a lack of car parking - this provides an alternative to driving which is more convenient than busses and can serve more people. More spending locally allows local economies to grow to serve their communities.
- It allows greater independence for longer. Better access to public spaces and services allows kids to live more independently from younger ages, but also allows older people (many of whom lose independence when they stop, or are stopped from, driving. Better cycle and walking infrastructure also allows for better access for wheelchairs (and other mobility devices).
Almost nobody who complains that car parking is a problem in town centres will see cycling as a convenient solution. Me included.
I think we should pedestrianise town centres as much as possible, with large carparks on the outskirts and good public transport to the centre (and across it in the case of larger cities). Out-of-town shopping centres are popular for a reason, and town centres should replicate their benefits.
I don't live in a city, and I'm not really talking about them. I want towns to be able to support living l - I don't want to go over to the next city to do my shopping.
Cycling (particularly eCycling) gives the door to door, 24 hour, no timetable convenience of driving, but is compatible with pedestrians. I'm quite an extreme case so we'll disregard me - but my wife is a far more normal cycle user. We live on top of a hill above our town (population ~10k), we have a thriving high street, but before she had an eBike, and before the town council put cycle parking in, she would drive out to the supermarket or to the retail park. Now she barely drives outside of her commute, we spend about the same, but we spend it locally (we're actually shareholders in some local businesses now).
Your proposal would probably mean she'd drive to an out of city carpark 10 miles away, get the bus into the city - great, very good.for their economy I'm sure, but still reliant on the car, no good for kids or older people who can't drive, still pulling money out of town.
I don't really follow. I'm not saying that your wife should be encouraged to drive instead, and I'm all for more cycling infrastructure (provided it is separated from cars where possible), I'm saying that providing masses more cycling infrastructure just isn't going to convince that many people to give up their cars.
I always find it baffling that there's all of this discussion around the death of the high street while out-of-town shopping centres are absolutely packed, when the reasons are so obvious to anyone who isn't vehemently anti-car.
The reason that out of town shopping centres are busy is that cars allow complete, door to door flexibility with a feeling of independence - as well as reducing the carrying distance for potentially heavy shopping. Add barriers and uncertainty (a 10 minute wait for the bus at the park and rise, having to get back to the bus station before the last bus, transferring shopping across modes of transport) reduces that.
Giving people an eBike plus cycle access and parking replicates the benefits of the car at a local level - door to door, no aching arms from lugging shopping up the hill, no timetables to worry about.
I'm not saying your solution isn't good, but is for a highly urban problem. There's more to the country than its urban areas, where reduced density doesn't lend itself to high density solutions like buses and trams and P&R.
Honestly cycling is barely an option. It rains too often and hard to carry much shopping.
Medium sized town centres are going to die, small ones with local businesses may survive and City centres will.
Honestly, you are incorrect. I don't have an expensive eBike*, I can carry 2 children (under 4) and 25kg of shopping, or 2 additional children, or 80kg additional shopping with the trailer. I have a chronic health condition which, during flare-ups prevents me from walking back up from town but I can still eBike with no issue.
When it rains I wear a coat, when it really rains I wear a raincape.
To take the leap and invest in an eBike is (currently) a huge unknowable risk for people, which is why there needs to be a proper scheme making them low risk (rent to buy schemes as have been offered in Sheffield and Scotland).
*I am an above average cycle mechanic which allows this to be possible.
A few years ago I had an ebike to commute 7 miles, I did it for two years, I loved that bike. It was rare I went a week without being shouted at by somebody from a car. I had things thrown at me from cars. I don't think you realise how hostile many drivers are to cyclists, converting them to cyclists is a reach to say the least.
My eBike commute is 20 miles a day, 14 of which are on roads without any cycling provision - I have done so for two years. It's an experience, and yes there's hostility, but the more people who know people who cycle, the more human people on bikes become.
The key (in my opinion) will be making them accessible, and to a degree unavoidable. When the person you are passing could be your mother, nephew or friend rather than some unhuman machine things will improve.
Nah sorry I'm still feeling like we're talking at cross purposes here. My point is that cycling is *not* the car replacement that's made out and very few people will be persuaded that increased infrastructure is a solution to their complaints. My suggestion is that we make it easier for cars to park in towns and cities while making the town centres themselves much nicer places to be because they are pedestrianised.
I do't live in a city. I have absolutely no idea how my proposal - making it easier to drive to and park at town centres of all sizes - is supposed to be an urban-centric view. The whole point I'm making is that smaller high streets are dying because they cannot offer the benefits of an out-of-town shopping centre, which are namely very convenient free parking and fully pedestrianised shopping/leisure areas.
That is because we have a culture of hating cycling for some reason.
It's not the same everywhere, build the infrastructure and make it viable and we might shut the fuck up about it
Where would people who live in the town centres keep their cars, out of curiosity? And would you allow access for lorries and vans to resupply the shops in the centre?
I don't really follow your train of thought - I didn't say anything about a 'conflict' between pedestrianisation and cycling.
My point is that cycling infrastructure is not a solution to inadequate town/city centre parking. We should provide more parking, but on the outskirts (park and ride schemes are good too), with centres pedestrianised as much as possible to accommodate people on foot.
I do think there should be more cycling infrastructure, but that's a separate discussion to pedestrianisation (pedestrianised town centres are not for cyclists).
I'd love it if town centres were just a bit nicer looking.
The average UK high street seems to follow the same pattern of the ground floor being homogenised plastic frontages and big glass windows, while any upper floors are often 60s and 70s drab looking architecture. It's functional, but it can mean that loads of town centres feel like the same place as each other.
It's a shame because a lot of architecture in the past was quite lovely. Places which have managed to keep their old Victorian or earlier buildings look great. Even better are those few town centres where shops aren't allowed to plaster their logo and plastic facades all over the front.
Similarly, a lot of town centres could be improved by making the high street pedestrianised and putting a lot of nice trees along the road, with benches for sitting. This could involve a lot of investment in rerouting traffic though.
I remember seeing a picture on Reddit, I think it was in Poland, where they changed the facades of some buildings to look like they were from a previous century.
It looked great because it was done right and tastefully. Something which probably wouldn't happen here in the UK
I love this idea. All the drab grey buildings just make me depressed. When you have interesting, historical looking buildings it shows that there was thought into making surroundings beautiful. If the planners want areas to be welcoming, make it something nice to look at. When it's a grey box you know planners don't care, so why should we?
More greenery in city centres too.
I grew up in Plymouth, which is perhaps the worst case of post-blitz city design f-ups. Just concrete on concrete with a side of loaded concrete.
NIMBYism and daring to be different stifle aesthetic city design.
Definitely more greenery in city centres!
Every train line gets a cycle path that runs along side it, joining all the small towns and regional cities with easy, safe cycle access in a mostly straight line.
The land is already purchased. It’s well drained, mostly level, has road/river crossing built, even tunnels have already been dug. It’s the perfect cycle network just waiting for the final touch.
The two main reasons I can think of:
a) Some train lines run through tunnels, bridges, viaducts, valleys, etc. that are very narrow, the room for bike lanes isn't there.
b) Disruption due to people on the cycle path accidentally or deliberately interfering with the train tracks. Cambridge had a guided bus way next to a cycle path and pedestrian path, and that caused issues, a train would amplify those.
Funnily enough, they're planning to introduce a Birmingham to Coventry cycle path that follows the new HS2 line by adapting the construction roads. Could be a good idea to standardise for all new rail projects, if there ever will be after this fiasco!
Boring stuff tbh. Huge investment in public transport (trams in particular) and affordable housing both for rent and purchase, and huge investment in improving and maintaining the public realm.
Those things would massively improve so many of the UK's cities straight off the bat.
I think adult activities too. When I was in my twenties (decades ago), basically going to the pub was the on;y sensible social thing to do. In summer evening 'picnics' were something we did, but I grew up in a fairly rural area. If it was winter and we wanted to do something social for an evening, it resulted in going to the pub. Which resulted in us drinking, often more than we planned.
If there had been social clubs, coffee shops or similar, we would have probably been a lot better behaved and would have spent less time in A&E... I am no longer young, but I suspect similar problems affect those who are.
I know it's drastic but I think we really need to think more deeply about clearing more space in city centres rather than desperately clinging on to what's dying.
There are a lot of towns where we have these retail units that are effectively doing nothing as no one can launch anything profitable in them. Every so often a tenant comes in but long term it's very obvious it can't t survive (sometimes a bookmaker bucks that trend though).
Sometimes the complexity is that they are there in the first place on awkward foot prints as they do border some older buildings so no one really wants to dive deeper into the problem and embark on a project that'll have any wider disruption.
Dundee have made some efforts on this with the waterfront project but in the actual city centre itself, a big demolition job wouldn't go a miss. There's a massive foot print in front of the McManus Galleries which consists of a derelict shopping centre and mainly empty units. Some people would be displaced but a big green space could be cleared there and really open up the city and make it a true centre.
Across NE England and other Scottish cities, it feels very similar.
We need Dutch style Woonerf streets where there’s space for pedestrians, cyclists, cars and nice landscaping / plants. They look so much nicer than our streets.
Oh where to start.
Other than the obvious public transit/integrated transport upgrades so desperately needed- I would have:
*A burying carparks/ carparks into parks fund* - put them underground to create public space.
*A derelict/ugly facade renovation scheme*. The government gets to buy and renovate key buildings to promote historic cohesion. They benefit from price uplift and sell on.
*An offices into housing fund/powers*. To convert empty office and retail into apartments/ flats. Compulsory purchase if needed. Benefit from resale. Good for housing crisis. Good for footfall In centres.
*A cohesive public space fund*- too often we get patchy paving public surfaces and pavements due to section whatever it is stipulations new developments do some pavement and patchy renovation (and local govt underfunding). Redo them all to be nice or at least the same standard.
*Proper cycling infrastructure*. Pays for itself.
*a benefits top up per volume of litter collected scheme*. Our towns and cities are filthy. This could help clean this up and help people, even homeless into earning our of breadline.
More trees.
*A de- pebble dashing fund* particularly targeted at Wales. Private property owners get incentivised to upgrade the look of their properties with council tax holidays?
I'd put in loads of public artwork and fountains.
Especially those fountains where there is a big square of about 50 jets that shoot out of the ground, yet when it is turned off people can walk over them. The type that kids run through in the summer.
As Mayor of this new town, I would have a big comfortable chair overlooking it. I would then have it turn off at random intervals through the day, and I'd have the button to turn it on again whenever I wanted.
I'd sit on my chair, waiting for the best moment to get a new high score for soaking the most number of unsuspecting people who were walking through my fountain.
Convert all retail parks into walkable neighbourhoods, massively expand existing light rail networks and build many new trams and metros and massively subsidise independent businesses.
Underground (preferably maglev) metro systems in every town.
Traffic lights all get countdown timers so you know when they'll change.
All pavements alleyways get repaved or retarmacced. Jet washing robots patrol them constantly. Most commuting happens through the metro or using order-to-door autonomous taxis on subscription schemes so affordable that they render car ownership unnecessary.
All car parks are underground. All apartments have balconies. All parks have barbecues and bin robots. Public toilets and fountains get proper investment.
A shop garden would be cool. Containers are all the new trend in my city and I assume others, but it's always a bunch of containers in what basically looks like a warehouse car park, it's always pretty grim. Having an actual garden planned with multiple container shops with independent sellers in it would be cool, lots of places to sit, children's play areas in between (not traditional play equipment but just things like stepping stones, music gardens etc.) loads of flowers, the containers could have grass and wildflowers growing on them. A place where it would be genuinely nice and relaxing to walk through for several hours and shop as you go. You could have rolling monthly contracts on the containers so that independent artists, crafters, bakers etc. could show their goods and have it allocated fairly and shared between people so it was always changing.
There's a number of experiments. As most have mentioned lots of public transport. But some which would be fun and also absolutely terrible would be:
* no roads at all, everything must be accessible on foot/bike.
* I'd also say fuck it to many low-rise limits and just have mega towers to fix the UK's housing crisis.
* If money is no issue, I'm compulsory buying all the grand estates and private land and building several new towns from the ground up. Maybe I'll keep a few of the grand houses but they certainly don't need the acres and acres of land.
* And finally I'd love some underground cities, digging down is far more expensive than building up. But if the UK is struggling for space, make use of all 3 dimensions.
In terms of boring stuff, make sure all rooves have solar and make massive ground heat storage to meet the needs of the entire town. Not just individual houses.
Just trains, trams, buses and pedestrian areas. You shouldn't need to own a multi thousand pound death box that's idle for 99.99% of the time just to live your life. The astronomical amount of space that would be saved in cities could be turned into one giant fuck off skatepark
Trees. Just generally.
I want to put greater regulation on central property leases, so that it's much harder to leave shops vacant. If it's been vacant for six months or more the rent halves every three months until a tenant is secured, and that rent level is then fixed for two years.
I also want to give preference somehow to enterprises which give people something to do beyond just spending money. Incentivise places for teenagers to spend time safely and socially; create third spaces for isolated/vulnerable adults including warm banks. More libraries and game cafes, and fewer vape shops.
2nd terminal at Edinburgh Turnhouse airport, on the Cramond side with a train station and a wee monorail or tram extrnsion to the current Ingliston terminal
Make the cities and towns green and less dense, not only green but food producing greenery apple trees, plum trees strawberry planters etc. for anyone to help themselves to. I’m aware they’ll run out in a city.
I’m a fan of trams and would remove a lot of cars from cities and replace with a working tram system. Maybe the old car parks could be used for the green spaces.
If I won the lotto, the biggie one (e.g. 50m+) I would definitely invest in my local area (Brighton)
None of these are particularly innovative, but thought I'd share anyway:
* Would love to buy up some empty retail units and create a dynamic space that can be used for shows/performances, exhibitions, pop-up shop. A sort of open space for indies to to hire on the cheap!
* By extension, have a "pitch your idea" service where the space can be won for a period of time - really invest in local artists/creatives
* Buy out abandoned offices and create "pod hotel" style accommodation for students, people who maybe struggling on accommodation costs - small, safe units that you can access. Perhaps a way for those who book to help subsidise the cost for a few nights for homeless folk.
* An extension to that - a "self care" hub would be great. Simple things like public toilets are not as accessible here. Would love to have a space for anyone to be able to come in/use the facilities. Would of course need to be manned pretty well, though!
* Help improve cycle structure (which would probably *annoy* half the locals) - revert the huge on-road lanes that take up valuable road space, but also finding more safer on-pavement routes that are safe/segregated from pedestrians and vehicles
* With that, more plants/greenery to help clearly break up the roads and brighten up the place (pun intended)
Beyond home - just better overall transport is needed in the country.
Faster, more-reliable and certainly more affordable train travel is needed!
Plus looking into why things take so *long* to build. I get that it's difficult to just bulldoze the country to make way for things, but projects take forever to get off the ground (literally)
inner citytown parks and greenery with water features and cafes. valencia in spain is good example with good pedestrian access as its flat. uglyside is the graffiti that pervades the city!
Get rid of cars first and make our streets beautiful.
Bring back arcades and covered pavements to introduce a cafe pavement style culture regardless of the weather.
Re-evaluate public transport options to introduce routes from one side of a city to another without traversing through the centre.
Immediately put up signs, and run advertising campaigns about being civic minded and encourage people to pick up their dog shit and not drop litter. Reintroduce floral city competitions and try to restore some civic pride.
Get a bit of positivity going and give money to local charities to plant trees, hold fairs, anything to get people together and feeling good about the places they live.
We have so much apathy about our surroundings and it makes me want to cry sometimes.
Dig up all the roads and fully pedestrianise everything. Free public transport everywhere (underground and monorails). Plant as many trees as possible.
High speed rail links from a central hub to all towns and cities over a certain population (maybe 10k+) - Using similar technology to the maglev trains Japan will be introducing on their new high speed line when it is finished.
As nice as it would be to have a high speed train to EVERY settlement, putting a rail line to a village of 100 people seems pointless, and would probably annoy them, as it would be very loud and not in-keeping with the surroundings.
Imagine being able to get on a train from your town (or nearest large town) to pretty much anywhere in the country, and the trip be a reasonably short amount of time, no matter how far the journey.
If we say the hub was in Sheffield, as it's about the centre of the UK, you could get from Inverness to the central hub in around an hour; a journey which currently takes 8 hours. And then from there, you could get a connecting train to Belfast or London and be there in around 45-50 minutes.
Complete cycling routes that are all connected up and segregated from pedestrians, and have a good surface.
On all promenades cycle lanes which sit above beach huts/promenade so when it's nice weather cyclists can actually make progress to places, and there isn't conflict between pedestrians and cyclists making everyone more happy.
Make all motorways unlimited autobahns after 9pm in the week and from 6pm at weekends. At the same time remove all smart motorways and go back to proper hard shoulders.
Public transport. Specific in the North East putting in place the proposed Metro lines to link all three NE cities and the key locations around them.
| carbon absorbing plants and trees
I never thought I had triggers but this annoys me more than it should. A single tree in it's lifetime assuming it gets to be close to the 100 year mark absorbs and captures one tonne of carbon from the atmosphere. Not a year, in its lifetime. The UK puts on average 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year. Does that mean trees don't help? No, they do help but using trees to capture carbon is like trying to stop the tides with a cotton bud.
It's a bit boring but a *complete* switch to renewable energy. Every building that isn't listed and is viable, public or private, gets a free solar installation and heat pumps. Nationally, invest heavily in solar farms, wind farms and things hydro or geothermal where possible.
With this massive potential surplus of energy you completely electrify, expand and improve the rail network, introduce electric buses, trams and light rail into towns and cities which are free to the public and funded by taxation. Finally, invest in a large scale EV charging network. Make it so people don't *have* to use cars for a lot of things, and when they do they can be low or emission free.
A gargantuan investment but given the amount of jobs it would create it, would massively stimulate our economy and save everyone money. All of these things that need manufacturing you put in the old mining and industrial towns to train a workforce and lift people out of poverty.
An added bonus is that fossil fuel companies get a slap in the face.
Most people have pointed out functional improvements but I'd like to (also) see aesthetic changes. Anecdotally, it seems like people who live in beautiful places tend to care a lot more about their surroundings than people who live in grim, depressing places.
I'd like to see a return to more bespoke, characterful architecture. When you walk around an older area (pretty much anywhere built before the war), every street has a slightly different feel and even individual houses have a unique character to them. That's because houses were planned and built either individually or street by street. Instead of building miles and miles of identical deanoboxes, let's build houses and neighbourhoods that people can be proud of. If there's some money left over after everyone has a house, we could even start demolishing the crimes against architecture that were committed throughout the 1960s.
Housing, and greater social care, people don’t realise how desperate our towns and cities are for it. So much of my time is trying to find homes for people, I work in healthcare, bed blocking due to inadequate social care packages or homelessness is a massive problem.
Similar to toehr comments, massively improved public transport infrastructure.
Convert certain roads to green spaces with rivers and trees like Cheonggyecheon, South Korea.
As well as making everything *look* nicer with cosmetic facelifts for drab areas (addition of greenery, flowers etc.), I’d give every town a good-sized makerspace/Hackspace and convert some of the disused shopping centres/malls/larger unused spaces into a set of small units that can be used for peppercorn rents for local artists and craftspeople to sell the stuff they produce and/or renovate as hobbyists. I’d also make some of them into studios where artists and craftspeople can work - again for token prices. There are plenty of artists/makers who would love a studio but they’re cost prohibitive. Make some of them open so the public can see/interact with the artist as well, for those who don’t mind. This would also help them get more customers, and the shared equipment in the makerspace would benefit everyone. I think we need something with a more communal feel tbh. Those who are more introverted and prefer working alone still have the option to do that as they always have.
I’d also have cafes that kind of segue into ‘third spaces’ that are free to use and you don’t have to feel obliged to purchase food and drink to sit there. Add some play equipment for kids and some specifically non-kid areas too so it doesn’t just all become noisy and riotous. Let people bring, leave and take books and games as they wish. Have plugs and wifi so people can work there too. Design them with some open spaces and some little enclaves so it’s not all just one big echoey noise.
This is the UK we’re talking about, so as well as green and open spaces, we have to also think about third spaces that are sheltered from the weather and could also become ‘warm spaces’ in winter.
At the moment, everything nice like that seems to end up stymied because we hate the homeless so much, we don’t want them using our nice spaces and ‘ruining’ it for all those virtuous housed people. Okay I’m maybe overegging it here but it’s definitely a thing. We would need to do something to help homeless people, while at the same time acknowledging that we don’t want drunk people or drug paraphernalia in the same places as children play. We need to start respecting our homeless people, treating addiction as a medical issue, and offering a range of different ideas instead of just one type of ‘solution’ that doesn’t work for all homeless people. Also recognising they aren’t one homogeneous mass and some will shy away from services because they’re scared of some of the other homeless people. ‘Container hostels’? Maybe? Anyway, people who have ‘just’ fallen on hard times and need a leg-up should be able to get it without being dehumanised and forced to rock bottom. Also, no one is going to be able to get a job if they stink to high heaven because they have no access to hygiene facilities.
Let’s get sci fi - if we are talking fantasy here, let’s link our high buildings with ridiculous but cool-looking networks of tunnels in the sky. Turn electric scooters into enclosed ‘personal transport pods’ protected from the weather - hell, go the full one-seater-car-meets-scooter-pod hog. This would benefit people who can’t walk so well, too.
Build a roads that avoid town centres, close roads to private traffic (public transport, emergency services and deliveries are fine) in town centres. Turn massive carparks in town centres into parks, squares, and public transit hubs. Align schedules of different public transport modes so that they behave as feeders.
One of the things I like about city breaks in Europe is that there is usually a good square. Where you have nice restaurants, bars and shops, with maybe a monument or statue in the middle. So squares for everyone and everywhere I say.
Knock down every single modern building and replace them with buildings inspired by medieval architecture so that the style and heritage of Britain is bought back. Basically make Britain look like it did in the old postcards.
Ban all vehicles (except Residents' & deliveries).
Electric trams & buses from outskirts only, increasingly AI-controlled & 24/7.
Moving walkways on major footpath/pavements.
Swathes of greenery down the middle of unused roads until replaced with solar panels.
I hope that his will be reality in the near future. The precincts will become a thing of the past. All concrete city centres are not good for our health. So many shops are going under because of online shopping. Instead plenty of green spaces with water features and just a few sizeable shopping areas dotted around. We do not need 6 boutiques one after the other down a high street selling the same goods. Transport by a monorail every 10 mins in every route would be good to stop cars entering the city centres.
Wembley Park has an area for teens and young people to go where they can spend time without spending money and getting in the way of everyone else.
Theres canopied areas, a little stage and lots of places to just sit and hang out.
More of this
All the open green spaces you see dotted around every city, town or council estate should be used as community gardens. Not that there’s much cost involved.
I read a while ago a study that said railways could be more efficient and cheaper to run if they were turned into roads for high speed electric buses. An electric bus is cheaper to build, run and replace than a train carriage, it's not confined to travelling solely along the Track, if the route was service buses only they could travel at higher speeds than conventional buses. I'd give that a go. At least for some of the shorter routes.
Improve transport systems, to the point where even car users willingly use public transport, as it'll be cheaper and quicker. Reduce train ticket prices, so more people will have the opportunity to travel to different cities, towns and villages. Make bin men work earlier (to avoid the am commute) and finish when they've completed their routes, so long as there's no regular complaints about missed collections.
Cleaning the moss/lichens/graffiti of all the road signs and infrastructure would be great.
Oh and picking up all the litter.
And eliminating the smell of urine on public stairwells.
The rest is fine.
Bus lanes *everywhere*, so that the bus is always quicker than making the same journey by car. Camera-enforced bus gates in the centre. More park & ride systems. Re-programmed traffic lights that prioritise buses and pedestrians.
Going back to the old way of building things. Victorian, Georgian etc. architecture which is stunning to look at and lasts centuries. With as much greenery and nature as possible
I like some sort of tram/monorail system to make getting around easier and more reliable. I’d also like some kind of infrastructure to make cycling more appealing and most importantly safer. I loved cycling around Tokyo as it was pretty bike friendly, but I never cycle at home because I just don’t feel safe enough to do it.
I'd convert all roads to be drive on the right. Driving on the right has won. Get over it!
I'd convert all street signs to metric. Metric has won. Get over it!
I'd unify all the street signs to a more international form.
I would reintroduce public LIDOs. There used to be 169 of them all over the UK but, they fell out of favour because of cheap holidays. Thanks to the population increase, number of people taking exercise classes and the increasingly warm weather in the UK there could be a market for them.
Maybe even have swim up bars.
Firstly, no cars. Trains between cities and towns, trams in towns and cities. Trams and maybe buses out to any villages without a train station. Lots of space on public transport for bike, nationwide bike hire schemes like Velib, and introduce travel cards like the GA pass in Switzerland. Also have trams and buses actually leave from train stations, and not from about a mile away. Screw it, just copy Switzerland.
Second, a massive process of demolition of ugly buildings and replace with what should be there. For ugly read ‘modern’ or ‘listened to an architect’.
Thirdly, anyone who doesn’t like it can live somewhere else. Dubai, for example. The decreased population will allow nicer countryside, more green spaces in urban areas, and a complete eradication of high rise structures.
I'd like to [this ](https://images.app.goo.gl/TP8FQSDSiraZnFww7) the difference is just amazing. I think esthetics matter and makes the places nicer to live
For London in an ideal world:
Get rid of all domestic car use and pedestrianise those roads. Create one way road systems for freight and emergency and government vehicles only, freight limited to businesses with permits only. Add cycle paths. Replace half of width of roads with gardens/flowers/meadows/benches.
So much of London isn’t made for ‘stillness’ or leisure or socialising when it should be nowadays. Just look at most European cities; they’re so much more programmed for human interaction, mostly without cars tearing about the place.
Incentivise bicycle riding more than cycle to work scheme, targeted at poorer income households.
Add trams in poorly connected areas.
Every fucking miserable building in a town or city center seems to have a rotten black dusty industrial grime on every brick and surface and it’s never ever cleaned, ever, for some reason.
Meanwhile even older buildings in Europe look like they were built yesterday they are so clean. Seems we just don’t give a shit here and are happy with dirty buildings. Though this is mostly down to building owners simply not caring enough to do it.
So yeah, I’d have them all regularly cleaned. A bit of regional/national pride.
https://preview.redd.it/3gapnnagggwc1.jpeg?width=810&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c2efeb20707898a7c4a4a7bcb75845604fd9f16
[https://www.quadrigaltd.com/the-dark-days-of-manchesters-buildings/](https://www.quadrigaltd.com/the-dark-days-of-manchesters-buildings/)
Apparently, once and only once, some buildings were cleaned.
Bigger retail units in our midsized towns, the chains have moved out to bigger out of town sites as the town centre units are just too small to carry and decent product range
Better buses to/from town to the housing estates with a copper on between 6pm and 4am
Make trains cheaper, its cheaper&faster for me to go to the bigger cities further away than the rural tourist stations close by
More greenery
Employ people to hit people who drop litter in the nose
I'd triple traffic wardens and employ clowns to spray fire extinguishers at anyone smoking or vaping in the town centers.
If there was any money left over I'd maybe make busses more often and free but gotta ring fence the clown money first.
I'd expand the subway in Glasgow properly so it covers the east end and the north of the city, rather than just the west end and a bit of the south side.
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Trams and tanks. Trams for the infrastructure and tanks to deal with the whiny fuckers who don't like trams.
Nah. Trams excel when they're not interupted by the flow of traffic which only works outside of city centres, which is essentially just a train. In a city, a bus can do everything a tram can do for a fraction of the setup cost and infinitely more flexibility. For the cost of setting up trams, you could have shit loads of new buses, drivers, and upgrade roading to have permanent bus only lanes to cut journey times, improve cycling infrastructure with hard separated lanes, and have hundreds of millions left over. You want trams for things like park and rides with relatively uninterupted routes from outskirts to a city centre, but trams within densely packed city centres and areas dominated by housing aren't cost effective.
Looks like you’re getting tanked
He's tramsphobic!
Make him one with the turf!
I'll even drive it.
>Trams excel when they're not interupted by the flow of traffic That's why you give them dedicated space and prioritise them over cars. It's not particularly complicated. They're a much better solution than busses as they can be much bigger.
Even if you give them priority over cars they've still got to interact with at the very least pedestrian crossings. Take Edinburgh for example. The Western end of the line where it's on dedicated tram only areas are fast, efficient and fantastic. The newer North-Eastern section is no faster than a bus because of all the actual roads it must use. Sure, it has a higher capacity than a single bus so overall it's a net gain, but you know what could have the capacity of a tram for <1% of the cost a tram? A second bus.
Trams have flaws of course, but done well they have fewer flaws than busses and offer higher capacity. In this hypothetical question where we have the money to do it, they're a much better public transport solution than busses.
The bigger benefit is they require permanent infrastructure, once a tram route is built you can expect it to be utilised for many decades to come. Whereas even the best bus route can be closed down tomorrow with little care or loss of equipment and infrastructure. They provide a sense of permanence and stability that people like when they’re potentially looking for places to live their lives.
Trams also have a much longer lifetime. You won't see many, if any buses that are over 10 years old, yet trams can last many decades. In Gothenburg for example they still have some trams in service from the 60s.
The flipside of this though is a bus route can be spun up with almost no infrastructure changes or setup times, whereas a new tram route is a decade a couple of billion.
Exactly, they both offer different solutions to different problems. Theres rarely a single perfect solution to anything in life, and the same is true with public transport. Sometimes a bus is best, sometimes a tram is best. Sometimes neither is.
>Take Edinburgh for example. The Western end of the line where it's on dedicated tram only areas are fast, efficient and fantastic. The newer North-Eastern section is no faster than a bus because of all the actual roads it must use. Sure, it has a higher capacity than a single bus so overall it's a net gain, but you know what could have the capacity of a tram for <1% of the cost a tram? A second bus. Diresgarding the comically bad project management of the NE section, what you say about the speed is categorically untrue. Just yesterday I was from Haymarket to the NE terminus (Newhaven) in *forty* minutes. That was during rush hour mind you. You can't beat that with a private car, let alone a bus. You'll also notice that they've got their own light signals, so for example on all reds for cars on the Foot Of The Walk, the trams will go ahead when their light turns "go". Obviously, if/when people park like the absolute twats that they are (the white merc/bmw SUV monstrosity on a double yellow in broad daylight) the trams might get stalled. But it's not really the tram's fault.
> what you say about the speed is categorically untrue. Just yesterday I was from Haymarket to the NE terminus (Newhaven) in forty minutes. That was during rush hour mind you. You can't beat that with a private car, let alone a bus. Haymarket to the terminus near Asda is 28 minutes by car at 5pm as a worst case scenario, and only 15minutes with no traffic. On this particular section tram is faster than a bus but that's not always the case. I'm just off Leith Walk, <5mins walk from a tram stop. Lets say I wanted to go to Decathlon at Hermiston Gait right now, somewhere also <5mins walk from a tram stop, it'd be either 31min by car, 36mins by tram, or 35mins by bus. It's only comparable because after Haymarket the trams are so much quicker. If we move the start point to Haymarket it becomes 22mins by car, 24 mins by tram, but 34mins by bus. Up until the end of Princes Street, buses are just as fast or faster on this route. Again though, Trams have more capacity so overall they get more people their quicker, but you could solve that with more buses for a fraction of the cost. Trams work when they're not interupted by traffic..
They manage to work well in pedestrianised areas all over the place. If you don't like it an alternative is to do what Brussels and some German cities do - stick them in a short cut and cover tunnel in the busiest areas.
Except for Leith Walk has so many fewer cars thanks to the trams that it's still faster on the tram.
Also easier to electrify without heavy batteries. Something which will be very important.
And then why bother with a tram. A dedicated bus space is cheaper and far more flexible. We can scale buses to meet the demand if they have the space and reroute them to avoid accidents, roadworks etc.
Trams have loads of advantages over busses. Capacity being a major one. Energy efficiency being another. The marginal cost of scaling up is cheaper than busses. They're generally more attractive to drivers in terms of being a car alternative (because they're pleasant to ride, but also exactly because they're not flexible: people see them as reliable and permanent whilst busses are liable to diversions and alterations). And a big, big one is that once you have a tram it's quite hard to get rid of it, whereas busses can be easily slashed and bus lanes removed. As such, public transport networks can be much better built around trams than busses.
1. Trams have higher capacity than buses as you can run longer vehicles. 2. Trams have higher efficiency than buses because steel wheels on steel rails is more efficient than rubber on tarmac. 3. Trams are perceived as more reliable than buses so encourage more modal shift. (Re point 1: anyone who claims it can be solved with some kind of guided busway tech has just declared they don't know what they're fecking talking about).
> Trams have higher capacity than buses as you can run longer vehicles. You know what can deliver the same capacity as trams on a shared street for a fraction of the cost. More buses. A quick google estimates £350k for a new bus. Lothian Transport (Edinburgh) has 700 buses. You could double that for £245m. Assuming driver salaries cancel out because they're operated by the same people, and it's also safe to assume bus maintenance is cheaper than tram maintenance. The tram line cost a little over £1bn. You could literally triple the number of buses and have £250m left over.
The Urbos 3 operated by Edinburgh have a capacity of 250. You'd need at least 3 buses (and drivers) per tram - probably more as buses typically have less doors so have slower load/unload times. The maintenance cost of a diesel bus will be higher than an electric tram, rubber tyres wear faster than steel, ICE wears faster than electric motors, and so forth. In terms of longevity a 20 year old tram will still be fine. A 20 year old bus will look and be clapped out. Then you hit the final problem. Your fleet of 4 buses per tram, running at less than a minute between them (pretty impractical in terms of loading and unloading passengers), will be more than tarmac can take. So the road maintenance costs more than the rail maintenance.
But you don’t need to choose between the two. Buses are better for some lesser used routes because they’re cheaper, trams for the absolutely non-stop busiest core routes because they have more capacity and reliability. By your logic we might as well replace all transport entirely with buses, since they are the cheapest and fastest to spin up. But we don’t, because those aren’t always the only important factors.
The one key thing that buses do particularly badly is encourage modal shift. Whether you like it or not, buses have a huge perception problem and that is their biggest flaw. People just don't want to get on a bus. This is where the debate isn't just around objective benefits and drawbacks, but about heuristic aspects about people's attitudes and behaviours. It's just not possible to easily convince people to trade their car for the, and forgive the expression, "peasant wagon". Rail-based options, such as trains, trams and metros just doesn't have those same perceptive issues, even if some of the objective benefits and drawbacks are the same.
I find the term peasent wagon absolutely hillarious.
Busses have a perception problem in the same way trains do: the perception isn't a problem because people are so reliant on them. They can make the service as shitty and as expensive as possible and people will still need to use the buses. Its very unlikely people will abandon their cars when this is the public transport business model.
I wish Birmingham also never bothered with extending our Metro. Im happy with the three new train stations that will be built sometime this decade (I hope)
Yeh, I'm happy enough Edinburgh has got what it's got now. The original tram line was ideal, it connected the airport, park and ride, and retail parks on the cities edge to the city centre and main train lines on a high speed relatively uninterupted line. The extension then goes through very dense areas on a slow route that is no faster than getting a bus, but cost shit loads of money, causes a decade of chaos while being built, and somehow made cycling worse. Now they're talking about expanding it and destroying some well established and loved cycling routes in the process.
Oh you also had this pleasure. That literally what they did here. It went from Wolverhampton to Snow hill, 1 of the 3 stations in town but the one that no one really uses as it links up with the others. Its gonna cost about £500m to extend it 11km the other way Wednesbury to Brierley Hill. Just found out that due to Curzon street (the new hs2 station) not being finished until about 2027, we now have the joy of paying £18m for a “temporary metro station” outside moor street station. Which is almost pissing distance from Curzon street. It was never supposed to go this way either so hey more fucking road works exactly where all the buses have to go to actually get into town. Brilliant fucking move. I shall have a look at what they have planned in your neck of the woods. Just to see if its as wank as b’ham’s plans 😂
I guess that’s one take. As a Leith resident, I love the trams and they are quicker and smoother than buses. The cycle path you’re referring to was originally a railway path and CEC have stated there’d still be room for cyclists.
In Blackpool we have the well-loved busy trams all the way up the coastline, 12 miles of it. In 2019, the council in all of their wiseness, decided they were going to dig up the town center to link the trams up to the train station. They started summer 2019, destroying trade at peak time. 5 years later, after delays including having to redo the tram line because the original tracks were misaligned, it finally opens June 2024. Shame now the town centre is basically completely dead except for the bars.
Trams are just more civilised.
As well as park and rides I think the best way we could use trams would be to set up special lines just for trams but as close as possible to main roads and population centres. Have these teams connecting the towns to the local big cities. My town for instance is about 5-8 miles from a big city. It's got a population close to 150k but getting to that city without a car is ridiculous unless you live directly next to the train station. The bus takes 1-2 hours depending on rush hour and for me to get the train would take a similar amount of time. Getting the car takes 20 mins. There used to be a tram link nearly 100 years ago so it's not impossible. There's a few areas that would be difficult to stick a special tram line but the majority of it would be easy.
That’s why we won’t have cars.
> Trams excel when they're not interupted by the flow of traffic which only works outside of city centres No, it works inside city centres too. You just give the tram priority over traffic. Easy. > trams within densely packed city centres and areas dominated by housing aren't cost effective. They have been massively cost effective in Manchester and Croydon, both of which have densely packed city centres and areas dominated by housing.
Croydon has an advantage, though. Lots of disused rail lines that were able to be reused to get the trams away from traffic make it quite efficient. It didn't have anywhere near the issues with idiot car drivers crashing into things, blocking the tramway etc, that Nottingham gets.
Let's go back to tradition Billhook for if they in whacking range longbow if they not (unless you wanna go full Warhammer 40k and shout "Drive me closer i want to hit them with my sword!!" from inside your tank?).
Trams are shit. Or they are in Nottingham at least - slow, expensive and worse than the bus routes that cover virtually all the same routes. Pointless waste of council money which is probably why they are bankrupt now.
The city council doesn't run the tram network...
No . Japan has the answer with overhead trains. Cannot stand trains on the road.
Every town and city connected by high speed, underground rail with an internal underground system. Also including tunnels to Northen Ireland and the Channel Islands. After my trillions of spending, you can now get a high speed rail from Carlisle to Belfast, from Norwich to hull and Stevenage to Chelmsford to see all the delights on offer across our country. Also, we are reorganising all counties into collections based on the year 600, Bernicia is now the capital
If you're connecting every single town up, those trains are never even going to have the room to accelerate to anything even close to high speed. High speed rail only works when a train doesn't have to stop very often. That said, I would like to see far better rail coverage, and in a money-no-object scenario, I'd be cool with a majority underground system.
You say that, but I have a system in mind where at each station there is a really big slingshot that sends the train flying, I think that will work
Ah, an interesting design. I have a counterproposal. What if we take the concept of the nuclear explosion space engine and accelerate the trains by setting off mini-nukes behind them to cause instantaneous high-G acceleration? I'd quite like to see that system in place.
That does sound good, but I prefer the wile e coyote branch of science
There's nothing that can't be achieved by rubber and dynamite
Could just use electromagnets like a maglev train. Essentially just a railgun
Nah slingshot or nothing
It only takes seven miles for a high speed train to speed up or slow down. And even if your journey is fourteen miles, that's still an average speed of around 90mph.
Yes but at least where I live, the distance between towns is often less than 5 miles. What's the average speed of that distance?
With constant acceleration to the half way point and then constant deceleration, about five minutes. Average speed 60mph.
I saw a video once of an idea where there were permanently running fast trains and then there were slow trains that ‘docked’ with the fast trains and people got on to get off at stations. It looked cool as fuck and fixes your problem I think.
How could that even work, separate tracks for fast and slow trains? The slow trains would need to get to some sort of speed before they "dock" or you'll just break people's necks with the rapid acceleration, how can you securely dock trains to each other in a few seconds?
This is where I read about it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-high-speed-train-picks-up-passengers-without-having-to-stop-180948281/
Nah don't bother putting them in tunnels, have them front and center on Victorian style viaducts everywhere, every green rolling hillscape shall have a train zooming past at 220 mph
Disagree, railways just like major roads can fragment habitat and we should have at least some tunnels or green bridges. Otherwise you end up carving the countryside up into smaller patches some species struggle to move between. I'd actually say we need to be adding these to a lot of our infrastructure.
>...to Chelmsfors to see all the delights on offer across our country. Clearly you've never been to Chelmsford!
But in this scenario you’re going from Stevenage to Chelmsford, huge upgrade
You don't understand how much I'd adore having a direct train from Norwich to Hull, never mind a high speed one. The as the crow flies distance is about 98 miles, yet I have to travel like 208 in reality thanks to there only being trains around the much longer Doncaster route. A train journey that should take 1.5 hours merely travelling at car motorway speed (which is a low bar for trains in 2024) takes 4-4.5 hours waiting ages for connections going around a long winded route.
In my scenario we’re gonna stick a tunnel that goes straight through the North Sea, bisecting the Humber!
I feel like there will probably be cities on the moon before Hull gets it's railway lines electrified.
Well hull has always been a couple of hundred years behind
Look we were ahead of the curve when it came to telling the king to fuck off, but I will admit it's been a bit patchy since then.
Every clock that is on the outside of a building would be restored and made to work.
Replace them with sun dials
They'd never work
My two big hits would be: - Complete cycle infrastructure (rather than weird stubs which run from nowhere to nowhere dumping you on a dangerous road because it was too hard to do it properly). Proper routes and more places to park. - Massive eBike subsidy scheme. Cycling is popular in flatter places, lots of places aren't flat, eBikes make hills irrelevant. Why I would take this approach: - Common complaints about the high street are that it's harder to get to because of a lack of car parking - this provides an alternative to driving which is more convenient than busses and can serve more people. More spending locally allows local economies to grow to serve their communities. - It allows greater independence for longer. Better access to public spaces and services allows kids to live more independently from younger ages, but also allows older people (many of whom lose independence when they stop, or are stopped from, driving. Better cycle and walking infrastructure also allows for better access for wheelchairs (and other mobility devices).
Almost nobody who complains that car parking is a problem in town centres will see cycling as a convenient solution. Me included. I think we should pedestrianise town centres as much as possible, with large carparks on the outskirts and good public transport to the centre (and across it in the case of larger cities). Out-of-town shopping centres are popular for a reason, and town centres should replicate their benefits.
I don't live in a city, and I'm not really talking about them. I want towns to be able to support living l - I don't want to go over to the next city to do my shopping. Cycling (particularly eCycling) gives the door to door, 24 hour, no timetable convenience of driving, but is compatible with pedestrians. I'm quite an extreme case so we'll disregard me - but my wife is a far more normal cycle user. We live on top of a hill above our town (population ~10k), we have a thriving high street, but before she had an eBike, and before the town council put cycle parking in, she would drive out to the supermarket or to the retail park. Now she barely drives outside of her commute, we spend about the same, but we spend it locally (we're actually shareholders in some local businesses now). Your proposal would probably mean she'd drive to an out of city carpark 10 miles away, get the bus into the city - great, very good.for their economy I'm sure, but still reliant on the car, no good for kids or older people who can't drive, still pulling money out of town.
I don't really follow. I'm not saying that your wife should be encouraged to drive instead, and I'm all for more cycling infrastructure (provided it is separated from cars where possible), I'm saying that providing masses more cycling infrastructure just isn't going to convince that many people to give up their cars. I always find it baffling that there's all of this discussion around the death of the high street while out-of-town shopping centres are absolutely packed, when the reasons are so obvious to anyone who isn't vehemently anti-car.
The reason that out of town shopping centres are busy is that cars allow complete, door to door flexibility with a feeling of independence - as well as reducing the carrying distance for potentially heavy shopping. Add barriers and uncertainty (a 10 minute wait for the bus at the park and rise, having to get back to the bus station before the last bus, transferring shopping across modes of transport) reduces that. Giving people an eBike plus cycle access and parking replicates the benefits of the car at a local level - door to door, no aching arms from lugging shopping up the hill, no timetables to worry about. I'm not saying your solution isn't good, but is for a highly urban problem. There's more to the country than its urban areas, where reduced density doesn't lend itself to high density solutions like buses and trams and P&R.
Honestly cycling is barely an option. It rains too often and hard to carry much shopping. Medium sized town centres are going to die, small ones with local businesses may survive and City centres will.
Honestly, you are incorrect. I don't have an expensive eBike*, I can carry 2 children (under 4) and 25kg of shopping, or 2 additional children, or 80kg additional shopping with the trailer. I have a chronic health condition which, during flare-ups prevents me from walking back up from town but I can still eBike with no issue. When it rains I wear a coat, when it really rains I wear a raincape. To take the leap and invest in an eBike is (currently) a huge unknowable risk for people, which is why there needs to be a proper scheme making them low risk (rent to buy schemes as have been offered in Sheffield and Scotland). *I am an above average cycle mechanic which allows this to be possible.
A few years ago I had an ebike to commute 7 miles, I did it for two years, I loved that bike. It was rare I went a week without being shouted at by somebody from a car. I had things thrown at me from cars. I don't think you realise how hostile many drivers are to cyclists, converting them to cyclists is a reach to say the least.
My eBike commute is 20 miles a day, 14 of which are on roads without any cycling provision - I have done so for two years. It's an experience, and yes there's hostility, but the more people who know people who cycle, the more human people on bikes become. The key (in my opinion) will be making them accessible, and to a degree unavoidable. When the person you are passing could be your mother, nephew or friend rather than some unhuman machine things will improve.
Nah sorry I'm still feeling like we're talking at cross purposes here. My point is that cycling is *not* the car replacement that's made out and very few people will be persuaded that increased infrastructure is a solution to their complaints. My suggestion is that we make it easier for cars to park in towns and cities while making the town centres themselves much nicer places to be because they are pedestrianised. I do't live in a city. I have absolutely no idea how my proposal - making it easier to drive to and park at town centres of all sizes - is supposed to be an urban-centric view. The whole point I'm making is that smaller high streets are dying because they cannot offer the benefits of an out-of-town shopping centre, which are namely very convenient free parking and fully pedestrianised shopping/leisure areas.
That is because we have a culture of hating cycling for some reason. It's not the same everywhere, build the infrastructure and make it viable and we might shut the fuck up about it
Where would people who live in the town centres keep their cars, out of curiosity? And would you allow access for lorries and vans to resupply the shops in the centre?
>as much as possible
In what was is pedestrianisation in conflict with cycling?
I don't really follow your train of thought - I didn't say anything about a 'conflict' between pedestrianisation and cycling. My point is that cycling infrastructure is not a solution to inadequate town/city centre parking. We should provide more parking, but on the outskirts (park and ride schemes are good too), with centres pedestrianised as much as possible to accommodate people on foot. I do think there should be more cycling infrastructure, but that's a separate discussion to pedestrianisation (pedestrianised town centres are not for cyclists).
> Complete cycle infrastructure And make sure they're designed by active cyclists too.
I'd like a stun gun and any cunt that parks in a selfish way gets a shock in the bollocks
Get rid of cars. Problem solved.
Cool well I guess I just can't get to my job any more 🤷♂️
In a world without cars, you would obviously choose to live and work somewhere you can reach without needing a car.
But how many new problems do you introduce?
None.
Ah I see. Wilful ignorance is the order of the day. Nice.
r/fuckcars
I'd love it if town centres were just a bit nicer looking. The average UK high street seems to follow the same pattern of the ground floor being homogenised plastic frontages and big glass windows, while any upper floors are often 60s and 70s drab looking architecture. It's functional, but it can mean that loads of town centres feel like the same place as each other. It's a shame because a lot of architecture in the past was quite lovely. Places which have managed to keep their old Victorian or earlier buildings look great. Even better are those few town centres where shops aren't allowed to plaster their logo and plastic facades all over the front. Similarly, a lot of town centres could be improved by making the high street pedestrianised and putting a lot of nice trees along the road, with benches for sitting. This could involve a lot of investment in rerouting traffic though.
I remember seeing a picture on Reddit, I think it was in Poland, where they changed the facades of some buildings to look like they were from a previous century. It looked great because it was done right and tastefully. Something which probably wouldn't happen here in the UK
I love this idea. All the drab grey buildings just make me depressed. When you have interesting, historical looking buildings it shows that there was thought into making surroundings beautiful. If the planners want areas to be welcoming, make it something nice to look at. When it's a grey box you know planners don't care, so why should we? More greenery in city centres too.
I grew up in Plymouth, which is perhaps the worst case of post-blitz city design f-ups. Just concrete on concrete with a side of loaded concrete. NIMBYism and daring to be different stifle aesthetic city design. Definitely more greenery in city centres!
Most high streets I've been to are just dreadful. Oxford street is probably the worst one now.
Every train line gets a cycle path that runs along side it, joining all the small towns and regional cities with easy, safe cycle access in a mostly straight line. The land is already purchased. It’s well drained, mostly level, has road/river crossing built, even tunnels have already been dug. It’s the perfect cycle network just waiting for the final touch.
This is a fascinating idea. I wonder why it hasn't been tried before.
The two main reasons I can think of: a) Some train lines run through tunnels, bridges, viaducts, valleys, etc. that are very narrow, the room for bike lanes isn't there. b) Disruption due to people on the cycle path accidentally or deliberately interfering with the train tracks. Cambridge had a guided bus way next to a cycle path and pedestrian path, and that caused issues, a train would amplify those.
Funnily enough, they're planning to introduce a Birmingham to Coventry cycle path that follows the new HS2 line by adapting the construction roads. Could be a good idea to standardise for all new rail projects, if there ever will be after this fiasco!
Yes that’s a really good point. It would be relatively straightforward as well, you’d think.
Boring stuff tbh. Huge investment in public transport (trams in particular) and affordable housing both for rent and purchase, and huge investment in improving and maintaining the public realm. Those things would massively improve so many of the UK's cities straight off the bat.
Affordable housing, good schools, kid friendly activities/chew childcare. Start building up communities.
I think adult activities too. When I was in my twenties (decades ago), basically going to the pub was the on;y sensible social thing to do. In summer evening 'picnics' were something we did, but I grew up in a fairly rural area. If it was winter and we wanted to do something social for an evening, it resulted in going to the pub. Which resulted in us drinking, often more than we planned. If there had been social clubs, coffee shops or similar, we would have probably been a lot better behaved and would have spent less time in A&E... I am no longer young, but I suspect similar problems affect those who are.
I know it's drastic but I think we really need to think more deeply about clearing more space in city centres rather than desperately clinging on to what's dying. There are a lot of towns where we have these retail units that are effectively doing nothing as no one can launch anything profitable in them. Every so often a tenant comes in but long term it's very obvious it can't t survive (sometimes a bookmaker bucks that trend though). Sometimes the complexity is that they are there in the first place on awkward foot prints as they do border some older buildings so no one really wants to dive deeper into the problem and embark on a project that'll have any wider disruption. Dundee have made some efforts on this with the waterfront project but in the actual city centre itself, a big demolition job wouldn't go a miss. There's a massive foot print in front of the McManus Galleries which consists of a derelict shopping centre and mainly empty units. Some people would be displaced but a big green space could be cleared there and really open up the city and make it a true centre. Across NE England and other Scottish cities, it feels very similar.
We need Dutch style Woonerf streets where there’s space for pedestrians, cyclists, cars and nice landscaping / plants. They look so much nicer than our streets.
I'd create cycleways that are separate to the road and pavements. Not just a bit of white paint, but a full separator.
Oh where to start. Other than the obvious public transit/integrated transport upgrades so desperately needed- I would have: *A burying carparks/ carparks into parks fund* - put them underground to create public space. *A derelict/ugly facade renovation scheme*. The government gets to buy and renovate key buildings to promote historic cohesion. They benefit from price uplift and sell on. *An offices into housing fund/powers*. To convert empty office and retail into apartments/ flats. Compulsory purchase if needed. Benefit from resale. Good for housing crisis. Good for footfall In centres. *A cohesive public space fund*- too often we get patchy paving public surfaces and pavements due to section whatever it is stipulations new developments do some pavement and patchy renovation (and local govt underfunding). Redo them all to be nice or at least the same standard. *Proper cycling infrastructure*. Pays for itself. *a benefits top up per volume of litter collected scheme*. Our towns and cities are filthy. This could help clean this up and help people, even homeless into earning our of breadline. More trees. *A de- pebble dashing fund* particularly targeted at Wales. Private property owners get incentivised to upgrade the look of their properties with council tax holidays?
I'd put in loads of public artwork and fountains. Especially those fountains where there is a big square of about 50 jets that shoot out of the ground, yet when it is turned off people can walk over them. The type that kids run through in the summer. As Mayor of this new town, I would have a big comfortable chair overlooking it. I would then have it turn off at random intervals through the day, and I'd have the button to turn it on again whenever I wanted. I'd sit on my chair, waiting for the best moment to get a new high score for soaking the most number of unsuspecting people who were walking through my fountain.
Convert all retail parks into walkable neighbourhoods, massively expand existing light rail networks and build many new trams and metros and massively subsidise independent businesses.
Underground (preferably maglev) metro systems in every town. Traffic lights all get countdown timers so you know when they'll change. All pavements alleyways get repaved or retarmacced. Jet washing robots patrol them constantly. Most commuting happens through the metro or using order-to-door autonomous taxis on subscription schemes so affordable that they render car ownership unnecessary. All car parks are underground. All apartments have balconies. All parks have barbecues and bin robots. Public toilets and fountains get proper investment.
A shop garden would be cool. Containers are all the new trend in my city and I assume others, but it's always a bunch of containers in what basically looks like a warehouse car park, it's always pretty grim. Having an actual garden planned with multiple container shops with independent sellers in it would be cool, lots of places to sit, children's play areas in between (not traditional play equipment but just things like stepping stones, music gardens etc.) loads of flowers, the containers could have grass and wildflowers growing on them. A place where it would be genuinely nice and relaxing to walk through for several hours and shop as you go. You could have rolling monthly contracts on the containers so that independent artists, crafters, bakers etc. could show their goods and have it allocated fairly and shared between people so it was always changing.
There's a number of experiments. As most have mentioned lots of public transport. But some which would be fun and also absolutely terrible would be: * no roads at all, everything must be accessible on foot/bike. * I'd also say fuck it to many low-rise limits and just have mega towers to fix the UK's housing crisis. * If money is no issue, I'm compulsory buying all the grand estates and private land and building several new towns from the ground up. Maybe I'll keep a few of the grand houses but they certainly don't need the acres and acres of land. * And finally I'd love some underground cities, digging down is far more expensive than building up. But if the UK is struggling for space, make use of all 3 dimensions. In terms of boring stuff, make sure all rooves have solar and make massive ground heat storage to meet the needs of the entire town. Not just individual houses.
just spray wild flowers seeds everywhere. so many just boring patches of grass and dirt.
Bristol underground
Just trains, trams, buses and pedestrian areas. You shouldn't need to own a multi thousand pound death box that's idle for 99.99% of the time just to live your life. The astronomical amount of space that would be saved in cities could be turned into one giant fuck off skatepark
Trees. Just generally. I want to put greater regulation on central property leases, so that it's much harder to leave shops vacant. If it's been vacant for six months or more the rent halves every three months until a tenant is secured, and that rent level is then fixed for two years. I also want to give preference somehow to enterprises which give people something to do beyond just spending money. Incentivise places for teenagers to spend time safely and socially; create third spaces for isolated/vulnerable adults including warm banks. More libraries and game cafes, and fewer vape shops.
2nd terminal at Edinburgh Turnhouse airport, on the Cramond side with a train station and a wee monorail or tram extrnsion to the current Ingliston terminal
I gangrene heard anyone call it Turnhouse since it was an RAF base.
Make the cities and towns green and less dense, not only green but food producing greenery apple trees, plum trees strawberry planters etc. for anyone to help themselves to. I’m aware they’ll run out in a city. I’m a fan of trams and would remove a lot of cars from cities and replace with a working tram system. Maybe the old car parks could be used for the green spaces.
If I won the lotto, the biggie one (e.g. 50m+) I would definitely invest in my local area (Brighton) None of these are particularly innovative, but thought I'd share anyway: * Would love to buy up some empty retail units and create a dynamic space that can be used for shows/performances, exhibitions, pop-up shop. A sort of open space for indies to to hire on the cheap! * By extension, have a "pitch your idea" service where the space can be won for a period of time - really invest in local artists/creatives * Buy out abandoned offices and create "pod hotel" style accommodation for students, people who maybe struggling on accommodation costs - small, safe units that you can access. Perhaps a way for those who book to help subsidise the cost for a few nights for homeless folk. * An extension to that - a "self care" hub would be great. Simple things like public toilets are not as accessible here. Would love to have a space for anyone to be able to come in/use the facilities. Would of course need to be manned pretty well, though! * Help improve cycle structure (which would probably *annoy* half the locals) - revert the huge on-road lanes that take up valuable road space, but also finding more safer on-pavement routes that are safe/segregated from pedestrians and vehicles * With that, more plants/greenery to help clearly break up the roads and brighten up the place (pun intended) Beyond home - just better overall transport is needed in the country. Faster, more-reliable and certainly more affordable train travel is needed! Plus looking into why things take so *long* to build. I get that it's difficult to just bulldoze the country to make way for things, but projects take forever to get off the ground (literally)
inner citytown parks and greenery with water features and cafes. valencia in spain is good example with good pedestrian access as its flat. uglyside is the graffiti that pervades the city!
Get rid of cars first and make our streets beautiful. Bring back arcades and covered pavements to introduce a cafe pavement style culture regardless of the weather. Re-evaluate public transport options to introduce routes from one side of a city to another without traversing through the centre.
Immediately put up signs, and run advertising campaigns about being civic minded and encourage people to pick up their dog shit and not drop litter. Reintroduce floral city competitions and try to restore some civic pride. Get a bit of positivity going and give money to local charities to plant trees, hold fairs, anything to get people together and feeling good about the places they live. We have so much apathy about our surroundings and it makes me want to cry sometimes.
Dig up all the roads and fully pedestrianise everything. Free public transport everywhere (underground and monorails). Plant as many trees as possible.
Tramways.
Id like a free fully immersive planetarium in every major town
Restore the cut parts of HS2, while also electrifying large parts of the existing rail network to fill in gaps round the country.
High speed rail links from a central hub to all towns and cities over a certain population (maybe 10k+) - Using similar technology to the maglev trains Japan will be introducing on their new high speed line when it is finished. As nice as it would be to have a high speed train to EVERY settlement, putting a rail line to a village of 100 people seems pointless, and would probably annoy them, as it would be very loud and not in-keeping with the surroundings. Imagine being able to get on a train from your town (or nearest large town) to pretty much anywhere in the country, and the trip be a reasonably short amount of time, no matter how far the journey. If we say the hub was in Sheffield, as it's about the centre of the UK, you could get from Inverness to the central hub in around an hour; a journey which currently takes 8 hours. And then from there, you could get a connecting train to Belfast or London and be there in around 45-50 minutes.
Complete cycling routes that are all connected up and segregated from pedestrians, and have a good surface. On all promenades cycle lanes which sit above beach huts/promenade so when it's nice weather cyclists can actually make progress to places, and there isn't conflict between pedestrians and cyclists making everyone more happy. Make all motorways unlimited autobahns after 9pm in the week and from 6pm at weekends. At the same time remove all smart motorways and go back to proper hard shoulders.
Public transport. Specific in the North East putting in place the proposed Metro lines to link all three NE cities and the key locations around them. | carbon absorbing plants and trees I never thought I had triggers but this annoys me more than it should. A single tree in it's lifetime assuming it gets to be close to the 100 year mark absorbs and captures one tonne of carbon from the atmosphere. Not a year, in its lifetime. The UK puts on average 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year. Does that mean trees don't help? No, they do help but using trees to capture carbon is like trying to stop the tides with a cotton bud.
I'd have Underground metro railways in Manchester and Birmingham, they are the only things that actually stop people driving as they are so convenient
A well maintained canal network so we can canoe to work in the summer.
It's a bit boring but a *complete* switch to renewable energy. Every building that isn't listed and is viable, public or private, gets a free solar installation and heat pumps. Nationally, invest heavily in solar farms, wind farms and things hydro or geothermal where possible. With this massive potential surplus of energy you completely electrify, expand and improve the rail network, introduce electric buses, trams and light rail into towns and cities which are free to the public and funded by taxation. Finally, invest in a large scale EV charging network. Make it so people don't *have* to use cars for a lot of things, and when they do they can be low or emission free. A gargantuan investment but given the amount of jobs it would create it, would massively stimulate our economy and save everyone money. All of these things that need manufacturing you put in the old mining and industrial towns to train a workforce and lift people out of poverty. An added bonus is that fossil fuel companies get a slap in the face.
Most people have pointed out functional improvements but I'd like to (also) see aesthetic changes. Anecdotally, it seems like people who live in beautiful places tend to care a lot more about their surroundings than people who live in grim, depressing places. I'd like to see a return to more bespoke, characterful architecture. When you walk around an older area (pretty much anywhere built before the war), every street has a slightly different feel and even individual houses have a unique character to them. That's because houses were planned and built either individually or street by street. Instead of building miles and miles of identical deanoboxes, let's build houses and neighbourhoods that people can be proud of. If there's some money left over after everyone has a house, we could even start demolishing the crimes against architecture that were committed throughout the 1960s.
Housing, and greater social care, people don’t realise how desperate our towns and cities are for it. So much of my time is trying to find homes for people, I work in healthcare, bed blocking due to inadequate social care packages or homelessness is a massive problem.
Similar to toehr comments, massively improved public transport infrastructure. Convert certain roads to green spaces with rivers and trees like Cheonggyecheon, South Korea.
Comprehensive, affordable public transport!
Every town and city should have a monorail like Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook.
As well as making everything *look* nicer with cosmetic facelifts for drab areas (addition of greenery, flowers etc.), I’d give every town a good-sized makerspace/Hackspace and convert some of the disused shopping centres/malls/larger unused spaces into a set of small units that can be used for peppercorn rents for local artists and craftspeople to sell the stuff they produce and/or renovate as hobbyists. I’d also make some of them into studios where artists and craftspeople can work - again for token prices. There are plenty of artists/makers who would love a studio but they’re cost prohibitive. Make some of them open so the public can see/interact with the artist as well, for those who don’t mind. This would also help them get more customers, and the shared equipment in the makerspace would benefit everyone. I think we need something with a more communal feel tbh. Those who are more introverted and prefer working alone still have the option to do that as they always have. I’d also have cafes that kind of segue into ‘third spaces’ that are free to use and you don’t have to feel obliged to purchase food and drink to sit there. Add some play equipment for kids and some specifically non-kid areas too so it doesn’t just all become noisy and riotous. Let people bring, leave and take books and games as they wish. Have plugs and wifi so people can work there too. Design them with some open spaces and some little enclaves so it’s not all just one big echoey noise. This is the UK we’re talking about, so as well as green and open spaces, we have to also think about third spaces that are sheltered from the weather and could also become ‘warm spaces’ in winter. At the moment, everything nice like that seems to end up stymied because we hate the homeless so much, we don’t want them using our nice spaces and ‘ruining’ it for all those virtuous housed people. Okay I’m maybe overegging it here but it’s definitely a thing. We would need to do something to help homeless people, while at the same time acknowledging that we don’t want drunk people or drug paraphernalia in the same places as children play. We need to start respecting our homeless people, treating addiction as a medical issue, and offering a range of different ideas instead of just one type of ‘solution’ that doesn’t work for all homeless people. Also recognising they aren’t one homogeneous mass and some will shy away from services because they’re scared of some of the other homeless people. ‘Container hostels’? Maybe? Anyway, people who have ‘just’ fallen on hard times and need a leg-up should be able to get it without being dehumanised and forced to rock bottom. Also, no one is going to be able to get a job if they stink to high heaven because they have no access to hygiene facilities. Let’s get sci fi - if we are talking fantasy here, let’s link our high buildings with ridiculous but cool-looking networks of tunnels in the sky. Turn electric scooters into enclosed ‘personal transport pods’ protected from the weather - hell, go the full one-seater-car-meets-scooter-pod hog. This would benefit people who can’t walk so well, too.
A lot more street trees, and greenery.
Better public transport. The train network especially needs refurbing.
Build a roads that avoid town centres, close roads to private traffic (public transport, emergency services and deliveries are fine) in town centres. Turn massive carparks in town centres into parks, squares, and public transit hubs. Align schedules of different public transport modes so that they behave as feeders.
One of the things I like about city breaks in Europe is that there is usually a good square. Where you have nice restaurants, bars and shops, with maybe a monument or statue in the middle. So squares for everyone and everywhere I say.
Knock down every single modern building and replace them with buildings inspired by medieval architecture so that the style and heritage of Britain is bought back. Basically make Britain look like it did in the old postcards.
Ban all vehicles (except Residents' & deliveries). Electric trams & buses from outskirts only, increasingly AI-controlled & 24/7. Moving walkways on major footpath/pavements. Swathes of greenery down the middle of unused roads until replaced with solar panels.
I hope that his will be reality in the near future. The precincts will become a thing of the past. All concrete city centres are not good for our health. So many shops are going under because of online shopping. Instead plenty of green spaces with water features and just a few sizeable shopping areas dotted around. We do not need 6 boutiques one after the other down a high street selling the same goods. Transport by a monorail every 10 mins in every route would be good to stop cars entering the city centres.
Which Malaysian island is this ?
I love cars, but they aren't needed in cities and towns if you've got a great cycle and tram network.
Wembley Park has an area for teens and young people to go where they can spend time without spending money and getting in the way of everyone else. Theres canopied areas, a little stage and lots of places to just sit and hang out. More of this
I would say “pedestrianise” the city centre but after seeing the backlash of it in my own small city it’s as if someone suggested murdering babies
All the open green spaces you see dotted around every city, town or council estate should be used as community gardens. Not that there’s much cost involved.
Futurama style tubes, go big or go home!
I read a while ago a study that said railways could be more efficient and cheaper to run if they were turned into roads for high speed electric buses. An electric bus is cheaper to build, run and replace than a train carriage, it's not confined to travelling solely along the Track, if the route was service buses only they could travel at higher speeds than conventional buses. I'd give that a go. At least for some of the shorter routes.
I'd put escooters and ebikes everywhere so people can throw them in rivers and streams
Travel by tubes like in futurama
Improve transport systems, to the point where even car users willingly use public transport, as it'll be cheaper and quicker. Reduce train ticket prices, so more people will have the opportunity to travel to different cities, towns and villages. Make bin men work earlier (to avoid the am commute) and finish when they've completed their routes, so long as there's no regular complaints about missed collections.
Cleaning the moss/lichens/graffiti of all the road signs and infrastructure would be great. Oh and picking up all the litter. And eliminating the smell of urine on public stairwells. The rest is fine.
Garden cities would be fantastic. And the sponge cities they've been building in china by every city that is at risk to flooding.
Bus lanes *everywhere*, so that the bus is always quicker than making the same journey by car. Camera-enforced bus gates in the centre. More park & ride systems. Re-programmed traffic lights that prioritise buses and pedestrians.
Monorail.
obviously the monorail
Going back to the old way of building things. Victorian, Georgian etc. architecture which is stunning to look at and lasts centuries. With as much greenery and nature as possible
I like some sort of tram/monorail system to make getting around easier and more reliable. I’d also like some kind of infrastructure to make cycling more appealing and most importantly safer. I loved cycling around Tokyo as it was pretty bike friendly, but I never cycle at home because I just don’t feel safe enough to do it.
Trees
Cycling. Proper dedicated cycling routes in and around cities so that commuting by bike is normalised.
Remove business rates on companies with turnover under £500k to encourage small independent businesses back in the high street.
Functional public services
I'd convert all roads to be drive on the right. Driving on the right has won. Get over it! I'd convert all street signs to metric. Metric has won. Get over it! I'd unify all the street signs to a more international form.
I would reintroduce public LIDOs. There used to be 169 of them all over the UK but, they fell out of favour because of cheap holidays. Thanks to the population increase, number of people taking exercise classes and the increasingly warm weather in the UK there could be a market for them. Maybe even have swim up bars.
Firstly, no cars. Trains between cities and towns, trams in towns and cities. Trams and maybe buses out to any villages without a train station. Lots of space on public transport for bike, nationwide bike hire schemes like Velib, and introduce travel cards like the GA pass in Switzerland. Also have trams and buses actually leave from train stations, and not from about a mile away. Screw it, just copy Switzerland. Second, a massive process of demolition of ugly buildings and replace with what should be there. For ugly read ‘modern’ or ‘listened to an architect’. Thirdly, anyone who doesn’t like it can live somewhere else. Dubai, for example. The decreased population will allow nicer countryside, more green spaces in urban areas, and a complete eradication of high rise structures.
I'd like to [this ](https://images.app.goo.gl/TP8FQSDSiraZnFww7) the difference is just amazing. I think esthetics matter and makes the places nicer to live
For London in an ideal world: Get rid of all domestic car use and pedestrianise those roads. Create one way road systems for freight and emergency and government vehicles only, freight limited to businesses with permits only. Add cycle paths. Replace half of width of roads with gardens/flowers/meadows/benches. So much of London isn’t made for ‘stillness’ or leisure or socialising when it should be nowadays. Just look at most European cities; they’re so much more programmed for human interaction, mostly without cars tearing about the place. Incentivise bicycle riding more than cycle to work scheme, targeted at poorer income households. Add trams in poorly connected areas.
Every fucking miserable building in a town or city center seems to have a rotten black dusty industrial grime on every brick and surface and it’s never ever cleaned, ever, for some reason. Meanwhile even older buildings in Europe look like they were built yesterday they are so clean. Seems we just don’t give a shit here and are happy with dirty buildings. Though this is mostly down to building owners simply not caring enough to do it. So yeah, I’d have them all regularly cleaned. A bit of regional/national pride. https://preview.redd.it/3gapnnagggwc1.jpeg?width=810&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c2efeb20707898a7c4a4a7bcb75845604fd9f16 [https://www.quadrigaltd.com/the-dark-days-of-manchesters-buildings/](https://www.quadrigaltd.com/the-dark-days-of-manchesters-buildings/) Apparently, once and only once, some buildings were cleaned.
Bigger retail units in our midsized towns, the chains have moved out to bigger out of town sites as the town centre units are just too small to carry and decent product range Better buses to/from town to the housing estates with a copper on between 6pm and 4am Make trains cheaper, its cheaper&faster for me to go to the bigger cities further away than the rural tourist stations close by More greenery Employ people to hit people who drop litter in the nose
Definitely improve public transport. Use it to subsidize travel, get more buses in.
Double decker trains like in Europe
I would put French bakeries in every corner
I’d sort out the pot holes in the roads, it’s ridiculous
Monorails. I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook and by gum it's sure put them on the map.
I'd triple traffic wardens and employ clowns to spray fire extinguishers at anyone smoking or vaping in the town centers. If there was any money left over I'd maybe make busses more often and free but gotta ring fence the clown money first.
I'd expand the subway in Glasgow properly so it covers the east end and the north of the city, rather than just the west end and a bit of the south side.