Car addiction
Which
is Britain's least car-dependent city ? And which is the worst
town for cyclists and pedestrians ? A report by the
Campaign for Better Transport
gives us the news, good and bad. A total of nineteen cities were judged
by three criteria : accessibility and planning; quality and uptake of
public transport; walking and cycling.
The big winner
is NOTTINGHAM.
Congratulations !
They have a
top-quality bus service, a nine-mile
tram network used by 10 million people a year, thirty miles of
well-planned cycle tracks and a healthy dislike of out-of-town shopping
centres. This helps them to avoid the traffic jams created by the
school rat-run. The City Council is planning to charge a work-place
parking levy which will charge companies £300 a year to park a
car outside a company office; the proceeds will be invested in public
transport.
Liverpool and
Manchester scored respectably low
scores of car-dependency of 15th and 16th. London was second best at
18th.
And the booby
prize goes to Milton Keynes; the survey said that
the town was designed only for car-users. The bus services are
dreadful. And although the council has provided 160 miles of cycle
paths, they lead only to places where nobody wants to go.