Admin edit: This post has been moved from a different thread, so is out of chronological order! We actually have jchiltz to thank for starting this thread - please read his post, underneath, first. 
Cutting congestion does not have one single answer but cutting car use is part of it. To do that requires lots of changes too. If you watch people coming out of the supermarkets and getting into their cars there is a vast majority who haven't just done a monthly shop for a family. They are mainly one or two shopping bags. People have stopped doing a single main shop and topping it up with local purchases - they just go and buy a few things for the next few days frequently in their cars. This is partly because we don't think about our car use enough and partly because local shops have disappeared or are/ perceived to be more expensive.
Work travel has also changed. People used to move closer to their work but now moving house is much more expensive and there are often 2 jobs to think about. Work places have also moved away from residential areas (or vice versa) so it's increasingly hard to live close to work. We have very little town/ city centre housing - unlike the rest of the continent (although I hate using continental examples).
These trends need to change. We need to be moving towards a situation where we can shop and work more locally to our living places. We need to build communities again where we have no need to travel just to enjoy a bit of green space or drive to get a loaf of bread (where's your closest bakery?) or take hours out of our leisure time to get to work. A community where going to the local pub means meeting up with people you know, friends and meeting people from different generations and social classes who you'll see down the shops or over the garden fence. It might sound like a dream but it's a good dream and isn't it closer to what we all want than how we are living now: isolated in our cars, scared to go out at night (although crime is at its lowest level), confined to a disparate group of friends meeting up in a characterless town centre drinking chain too far from home to stagger, remote from nature's glories and mysteries, drained of thought by the invisible chains binding us to the TV. Isn't this what Stafford Forum is all about - finding a new way of pulling together a community in Stafford again - all us lost souls at our keyboards wanting to know about local things, get to know local people, do local things?
Sorry - gone off on one again havn't I.
Cutting congestion does not have one single answer but cutting car use is part of it. To do that requires lots of changes too. If you watch people coming out of the supermarkets and getting into their cars there is a vast majority who haven't just done a monthly shop for a family. They are mainly one or two shopping bags. People have stopped doing a single main shop and topping it up with local purchases - they just go and buy a few things for the next few days frequently in their cars. This is partly because we don't think about our car use enough and partly because local shops have disappeared or are/ perceived to be more expensive.
Work travel has also changed. People used to move closer to their work but now moving house is much more expensive and there are often 2 jobs to think about. Work places have also moved away from residential areas (or vice versa) so it's increasingly hard to live close to work. We have very little town/ city centre housing - unlike the rest of the continent (although I hate using continental examples).
These trends need to change. We need to be moving towards a situation where we can shop and work more locally to our living places. We need to build communities again where we have no need to travel just to enjoy a bit of green space or drive to get a loaf of bread (where's your closest bakery?) or take hours out of our leisure time to get to work. A community where going to the local pub means meeting up with people you know, friends and meeting people from different generations and social classes who you'll see down the shops or over the garden fence. It might sound like a dream but it's a good dream and isn't it closer to what we all want than how we are living now: isolated in our cars, scared to go out at night (although crime is at its lowest level), confined to a disparate group of friends meeting up in a characterless town centre drinking chain too far from home to stagger, remote from nature's glories and mysteries, drained of thought by the invisible chains binding us to the TV. Isn't this what Stafford Forum is all about - finding a new way of pulling together a community in Stafford again - all us lost souls at our keyboards wanting to know about local things, get to know local people, do local things?
Sorry - gone off on one again havn't I.
lets hold hands!
