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Pop up cycle lanes - the letter-writers are coming!

Was it Boardman or Froome who said the end of lockdown will set the transport agenda for the next 20 years? I could do with some help out in the polarised, rabid world of the local newspaper comment sections - what’s happening in your locality?

The football fans expend a lot of their energy on the detail of a subject of which they know relatively little. “Oh no!” they cry into their beer, “why’s he [the manager] playing Smith in midfield, Jones would much better. What’s he thinking??”

And so it is with the letter-writers and commenters across the bit of the south coast that I’ve taken to patrolling, since I stopped most travel to work. All of them self-appointed experts in the field of traffic management - councils, mere fools, apparently promoting bad things e.g. closing car parks just to collect the revenue from all the cars that “have to” park illegally.

I wonder if anyone reads any of this stuff?

Predictable whinges include They will ruin the town centre, how will people get to work, what about the two special schools on that route with their minibuses: please don’t try playing that card, it’s pretty distasteful.

Children need to be dropped-off at school, pollution will be (even) worse with all those stopped cars, I’ve paid my taxes, or an unabashed “I’m more important than you”.

I’m enjoying myself overall, managing to come up with some witty respostes, even concise ones at times; there is a core of stock ideas and phrases I fall back on, many of them honed on here.

I liked the RLJ video - we could do with a montage of that, set to music, maybe, a useful Exhibit A. Exhibit B - a gallery of pavement parked cars - you know like when they montage 100s of pictures to make a face?

On the the theme of concise, generic reposte: ‘In other news, archaeologists excavating England’s Jurassic Coast report dinosaurs “could write”.’ To the guy who’s just going to let his dirty old diesel run in all the extra traffic, “what did you do in the war, daddy?”
“I’ve already written my letter to the Editor” - me : “to save everyone the bother, it says ‘Sir - the answer is me driving my car - what’s the question?’”
“Cyclists are terrible” : I cite the Dorset No Excuses daily trawl of speeding, drugged-up, uninsured drivers served-up fresh daily in the Bournemouth Echo.

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