‘This is not a war on motorists’ is the cry heard from Ashford deep in the heart of the “Garden of England”.
This is not an uncommon situation. A council wants to put up car parking charges by 10p, as in this case, and suddenly it is the end of civilisation as we know it. In Thanet, some modest plans for new parking signs, made to help visitors, have been criticised, yet on the same listings page was a description of a fatal collision that had occurred recently. Even fatalities generate few headlines except in special circumstances.
ULEZ, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs), Congestion charging, Bus and Cycle lanes, fuel tax rises, and pedestrianisation all generate outrage, fierce debates, and outbreaks of criminality that must be seen to be believed.
Criticisms on road updates
Ordinary citizens who believe themselves to be upright and law-abiding, it seems, will readily wield a paintbrush or circular saw to deface, topple or otherwise destroy highway infrastructure that they believe infringes on their liberties as motorists. Sidcup man convicted over explosive attack on Ulez camera shows the extent to which this belief in motoring freedom can reach.
Motorists, it seems, have multiple enemies. Cyclists often generate anger. Who would have thought that the humble pedal cycle would generate road rage, but they do. Cyclists are “lycra louts” when riding between stationary traffic queues, or “road hogs” when riding across the road, rather than in line. Cyclists are not unique in generating motorists’ anger; pedestrians are also in the line of fire.
The Highway Code – Rules for pedestrians (1 to 35) has altered the hierarchy at junctions, but to see some motorists at work, you would not know it, as they still believe it is quite all right to make pedestrians jump back when approaching a junction.
Cyclists, pedestrians, motor cyclists,and horse riders have suffered injury or even death at the hands of motorists, who still think that saving a few minutes is a higher priority than being safe on the road. The wages of speed is death, for the non-car user.
Same old story
The roots of this conflict date back to the 19th century. Early on the history of automotive travel, motorists chafed against what they saw as restrictions on freedom to travel and pettifogging bureaucracy.
The Red Flag Act(s), which originated in lobbying by the railway companies, horse-powered stagecoaches, and the Turnpike trusts to hobble promising developments of Early Steam Powered Vehicular Transport was repealed in 1896, the same year that the Light Railway Act was passed to encourage the building of cheaply constructed rural railways. The Red Flag Act made sense when dealing with lumbering traction engines, but not motor cars.
Tales of motoring risks
Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows accurately describes rural Britain away from the cities in Edwardian Britain, where the highways were in gradual decline after the passing of Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam, who transformed the rutted byways of Britain into highways capable of rapid horse-driven travel, which cut journey times to an unprecedented degree.
It was unfortunate, therefore, that the apogee of travel by the stagecoach coincided with the rise of the intercity railway, such as the Liverpool and Manchester, and Great Western.
The early motorcars were expensive and required some understanding of motor engineering, which is why racing cars still carried a travelling mechanic long after the introduction of the Ford Model T, the first production every person’s car.
There was therefore a class-based reaction to the forces of law and order, which tended to recruit from the working class. The fat bumbling police constable was a popular characterisation of the time, and his enemy, Toad of Toad Hall, epitomised the devil-may-care motorist of the period. In some ways, Jeremy Clarkson is a latter-day Toad in outlook, but perhaps less genial.
Early motorists were very unpopular in rural areas, because the unmetalled roads threw up great clouds of dust and stones as the early motor cars travelled across the country, and it was not unknown for villagers to throw stones at cars as they sped past in a cloud of dust.
The rise of congestion
The seeds of change were already apparent in the Edwardian age with the invention of tarmac by Edgar Hooley in 1902, reliable pneumatic tyres, and the Model T Ford in 1908. Mass production enabled mass motoring and started to snuff out light railways and electric tramways as forms of transport, along the way.
This trend continued as both the 1963 Beeching Report and the 1985 Transport Act closed many rural and semi-urban railway and bus services, in a series of attempts by politicians to make public transport pay, resulting in increased car use and congestion.
The revival of railway travel from the late 1990s only came about because successive governments increased the subsidies to the privatised railway companies to a degree not afforded to British rail, because congestion was becoming a problem, and there was some modal shift from long distance car journeys to intercity trains.
The highway engineers’ Transport Modelling – Predict and Provide congestion solution only succeeded in increasing continual induced demand as vehicles increased in numbers to fill the available road space.
Britain fell in and out of love with roads during the 1990s as direct-action protests created additional costs, and the bad publicity created by security guards manhandling protestors out of trees and burrows spooked the politicians into cutting back on the Thatcherite “Roads to prosperity” vision of the future.
One need only look at the endless conflict with the Stonehenge bypass and the enormous, estimated cost of the Lower Thames Crossing to see how unsustainable more road building has become. Unfortunately, there are a few holdouts like
National Highways who describe the Lower Thames Crossing as being a “reliable new route”.
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The post-modern fantasy
Highway engineers still talk about improving throughput and reducing congestion. This never-ending fantasy of smoothly running freeways has shaped the thinking of millions of people post-war.
This fantasy is embellished by the advertising industry that sells cars as objects of freedom, family values, comfort, and above all else social status. From 1908 to 1972 the number of road vehicles rose from around 42,000 to 13.5m. Since then the numbers have risen to 42.5m and what’s more average car size has increased by 55%.
The highway estate has risen from an estimated 203,400 miles in length in 1972, to 247,200 miles in Road lengths in Great Britain: 2025. An increase of about 22%.
However, vehicle numbers have risen by 314%, so the seeds of conflict can be seen. Not only are there more road vehicles, but they are also wider, heavier, and longer. The demand for SUVs, driven by car manufacturers increasing production of these vehicles at the expense of smaller cars, has exacerbated the problem.
Electric cars, which are being promoted as a carbon reduction alternative, are at the moment somewhat heavier than the equivalent IC engined vehicles, though this may reduce in time as the technology improves.
The major effects of increasing road usage
Roads to Prosperity often ignored the vast land occupation that road building and development took. The railway network often blended in with the scenery, whereas the motorway equivalent dominated the scene.
Urban Britain spread like a sandstorm, obliterating fields, pastures and woods. Every housing estate needs road access and parking facilities. The estates need to be connected to the highway system, and the highway system itself needs augmentation to manage increased traffic flows. Campaign groups often cite lack of amenities, the loss of nature, or congestion, but they often fail to point out that increasing the amount of tarmac adds to local ambient temperatures as the tarmac absorbs heat from the sun and then releases that heat at night.
The growth of retail parks, drive-thru hospitality outlets and increased parking everywhere is also increasing remorselessly. Even those who escaped to the country and are the praetorian guards of NIMBYism fail to recognise their intrusion by car into lands that were once quiet villages, woods and pastures like theirs. We seem to complain about increasing roads in our backyard, but ignore the damage done elsewhere
The future of motoring
The history of culture wars with motoring is one of the pitched battles over safety. Nobody, except the extreme Clarksonian fringe, thinks that banning lead in petrol, requiring seatbelt use, enforcing speed limits, insisting on motorcycle helmets and mandating safer vehicles are bad things, but they all took extensive campaigning to overcome the tendency to believe that “I am a good driver; that regulations are not needed, and indeed are an infringement on my personal freedom”.
But the new frontiers of the car culture wars are the use of cars in urban areas, on how to adequately and fairly tax motor vehicles, now that electric vehicles are here to stay, and that fossil fuel excise duties will decline and need replacing. Should we pay to drive? Would that be fairer on those whose road footprint is light or almost nonexistent?
I have thought about what will happen when a majority of vehicles are electric: will petrol stations still exist and for how long? Will the government have to insist on a minimum number of fossil fuel outlets being provided in every town?
Other modes of transport
Of course, electric vehicles will not stop congestion; they will just make it cleaner. This will still mean that Congestion Area Zones will still be required. Variable Road Pricing may hold the key to congestion, but perhaps more effort should be made to encourage Active travel (Walking, cycling, etc.) and bus travel.
The resistance to bus lanes and gates, and cycleways, is well known, as is the imposition of Low-traffic Neighbourhoods. The complaint is often made that all these things impede the motorist and are therefore bad.
Politicians seeking to gather votes scout around gingerly into these fields, as they know saying anything positive about any of them will generate clickbait journalism.
In the 140 years since the first motor vehicle puttered along the roads of Germany, we have come a long way technologically; however, this transformation has not been matched in social attitudes. Toad of Toad Hall still raises dust in the minds of those who believe in a world that looks more like the Indianapolis 500 than the world of quiet byways and leisurely pursuits.
