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Local Travel Plan 3

March 6, 2010 in Climate Change, Cycling, Politics, Swindon, Thoughts | No comments

A few notes before I start this post, and hope it doesn’t turn into a rant.

  1. I’m really sorry that I’m turning into a transport geek/bore.
  2. I think the LTPs are a good thing.
  3. I know one of our council transport people a little and she’s brilliant, hard working, and very good at what she does.
  4. Swindon actually seems to be doing pretty well against it’s LTP2 targets.  This is worthy of praise.
  5. I KNOW this is a complex issue and I’ll never understand it fully.  What I’d like to see though, it some real, forward thinking leadership from the people in charge.
  6. I’ve not read ALL the information about LTP2 and LTP3, so I may have missed some vital stuff, for which I partly apologise, and for which I partly blame the inadequate management summaries! ;-)

I make no apologies for this post being long.  It exists for two reasons:

  1. To make me read and understand some of the LTP documents and record my thoughts.
  2. To record my thoughts on the LTP3 consultation.

OK, here we go then.

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Simple things

July 9, 2009 in General | No comments

Sometimes, the simple things in life are the most pleasing.  Here’s what I’ve liked in the last couple of days:

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Rush hour

May 7, 2009 in Cycling | 5 comments

I confess, I’ve been using the car a bit lately.  There are a few circumstances under which this happens and they’re less to do with weather than you might think.

In fact, the main time I use the car is when I need to transport my laptop backwards and forward between work and home.  But there are other cases too where using the car is, I’m afraid to say, more convenient and quicker.

At least one of those reasons is not a reason at all.  I suspect two of them are.

Anyway, enough of my self-induced guilt trip.  Today I had the car, and I was forced to drive through West Swindon in rush hour and I realise that I’ve stepped over a line. A line where my cycle commute is so ingrained that it feels more natural than driving to and from work.  Being in a traffic jam feels truly alien, incrediby frustrating and just generally horrid.

The difference is subtle.  I’ve always known in my head that cycling is better, but today there was something more emotional and heartfelt, something more emotional about driving.

It’s taken a surprisingly long time to achieve this – probably mostly because I’ve avoided rush hour on most occasions I’ve commuted by car.

Today, I felt liberated from the car.

Now, how to convince others to join me?

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