Worth a read if you live or work in Hackney
Outrageous, we had all this in Waltham Forest 2 years ago. The consultation is just to keep pace with what is considered to be a politically correct procedure before pushing through a revenue streaming policy to help pay for the fat cat salaries and fat cat salaries is what London Boroughs pay their CEOâs and others. How the feck can those responsible for running a London Borough be on a higher salary than the Prime Minister and other Cabinet Ministers responsible for running the Country?
The 59 Club is looking very progressive having abandoned Hackney in favour of Newham many years ago.
Not surprising. After 10 years of Tory austerity every aspect of running this country is financially crippled. Councils, NHS trusts, Police, fire, armed forces etc are all fucked.
There are multiple councils on the verge of bankruptcy so they are having to find more and more ways to create revenue streams.
No surprised in the least.
Even my local binman is worth more in wages than the current selection of morons the UK voted forâŚ
I wonder how many of those âoutragedâ actually also voted for Conservatives all these years
Not me and donât forget to leave your binmen a little something other than your usual rubbish come Christmas
Iâm prepared to believe it is not about revenue raising. Creating a new scheme, and administering it, probably costs more than will be generated by the few motor bikes which are parked in Hackney.
We have to accept our toys are not environmental angels, in terms of passenger miles they are up there with cars. And like it or not, we need to cut down on CO2 emissions, particulate emissions and noise pollution.
The really evil ones are taxis. Look at how inefficient they are - and they take most of the road space. I would love to some restrictions on the current unlimited taxi growth.
(taken from Which transport is the fairest of them all? )
Charging motorcycles for parking is not a new scheme just an extension of an existing scheme that parts millions of car drivers from their hard earned. All the admin and infrastructure is already in place.
Then you insult us with lies, damn lies and statistics. What is the point in calculating Megajoules per passenger kilometer travelled? Its blindingly obvious that a 40 ton lorry with 1 driver is not going to look as green as a solo cyclist!
I would still be curious to see the cost benefit analysis. How many PTWs in Hackney? How much is the projected revenue? How much will it cost to extend the existing system?
I would be very surprised if this is a revenue device.
I donât think thereâs any more Taxis in London than there was thirty years ago.
Maybe not black cabs, but there are 45,000 new Uber cars - and most of them seem to be in front of me.
I agree, there are far too many private hire vehicles.
I canât see how they are more polluting than ordinary cars though unless itâs based on mileage.
I read somewhere that taxis are empty of passengers 50% of the time; âdeadlegâ in their terminology. Putting aside how awful the old tech diesel engines in black cabs are, even a holier-than-thou Prius when taxiing is producing twice as much badness as a privately owned one would.
They tried this in Chelsea years ago. It used to be free parking but they brought in three levels of bike parking âafter a consultationâ Most of the free bike bays were converted to a paid Bike Permit Required and as a sop they fitted bloody awful ground anchors, or you could pay full whack to park in any Residents Bay. After a couple of years they made the Bike Permit free because nobody used those bays. Itâs just another gouging of peoples wallets.
& most councils on the âverge of bankruptcyâ are labour controlled
Wrong! 9 of the 11 councils nearest bankruptcy are Tory:
Also, isnât the issue that council services have been starved of government funding so itâs irrelevant who controls the councilâŚ?
From a quick Google analysis from the National Audit Office(donât have time to do a thesis on it)
Government funding for local authorities has fallen by an estimated 49.1% in real terms from 2010â11 to 2017â18. This equates to a 28.6% real-terms reduction in âspending powerâ3
Agreed. We have this in Waltham Forest already, and worse. Waltham Forest doesnât even have bike bays anywhere, and chose not to make any when it introduced charging. It claimed the charges were introduced to address antisocial behaviour, and to stop bikes taking up precious parking space. The first reason wouldnât make any difference to anybody engaged in antisocial behaviour, and the second reason, given that WF has an explicitly anti-car policy, doesnât make sense either. Yet it canât possibly be a revenue scheme as there arenât that many bikes parked in the street. So it can only be political/ideological. The real reason is likely one, some or all of these:
A. WF have wound up car drivers with so much with restrictions and anti-car infrastucture that some car drivers are on the verge of switching to scooters/motorcycles, and WF want to head that off. (Unlikely? Look at European cities.)
B. Car drivers are pissed off to the verge of non-compliance, and so WF are punishing bikers âequallyâ to placate them. (Though itâs not really equal because bikes arenât cars.)
C. WF need an excuse under the GDPR to store motorcycle licence plate numbers so that it can monitor individuals through its own ANPR etc.
D. The cycle activists that WF uses as consultants really, really hate motorcycles. (See A above, and possibly personal prejudice as well.) And these same activists have persuaded WF to work with Hackney on its new infrastructure and developments. Itâs no coincidence that Hackney is now introducing charges.
E. Letâs be honest, Labour councils arenât going to lose many votes off motorcyclists. Older bikers do tend to be Tories, and younger scooter riders are less politically engaged.
I look forward to the results of the âconsultationâ but Iâm afraid itâs pretty much a done deal.
That had never occurred to me but nothing would surprise me about data collection these days.