There was one proposal in Sir Rod Eddington's report to the Treasury with which, when I first read it, I wholeheartedly agreed. He insists that "the transport sector, including aviation, should meet its full environmental costs". Quite right too: every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned. Reading on, I realised that this is not exactly what he had in mind.
Though it's a good image to keep in mind as a way of thinking about the real impacts of climate change.
And for those who like their stats turned into memorable images...
The M25 has 790 miles of lanes. If these are used by cars carrying the average load of 1.6 occupants, at 60mph the road's total capacity is just - wait for it - 19,000 people. Coaches travelling at the same speed, each carrying 30 passengers, raise the M25's capacity to 260,000. Every coach swallows up a mile of car traffic.
But here's another interesting thing, Monbiot extols ...
A far better scheme has been proposed by a visionary economist called Alan Storkey. Storkey's key innovation is to move coach stations out of city centres, to the junctions of motorways. One of the reasons long coach journeys are so slow in the UK is that - in order to create a system that allows passengers to transfer from one coach to another - they must enter the towns along the way, travelling into the centre and out again. In the rush hour you might as well walk.
What I'm interested in is that Alan Storkey, unless there are two of them, is the husband of Elaine both of whom are evangelical Christians ...
And that aside. it is a remarkably good idea. I so agree with the proposition that coaches as they are set up now are a depressing proposition whereas this proposal makes huge sense.
I'm all for putting more vehicles on our roads. As long as they're coaches | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited: Filed in: environment, costs, global_warming, climate, air_travel, transportation
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