Beautiful Roads

[whole diary]

[Lee]

The Rt Hon John Marples Hayes MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) sets out a "barnstorming" vision for the future of UK^▸ (United Kingdom) roads - https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/beautiful-roads

[stuving]

You may be as baffled as I was - what was the audience for this speech?

Well, it was the CPRE^▸ (Campaign to Protect Rural England) and the Campaign for Better Transport, which does kind of explain the content.

CPRE-CBT^‡(resolve) Lecture on 'Making roads beautiful' with the Rt Hon John Hayes MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) to take place on 4 February 2015

3:30-5pm, followed by a drinks reception
Bircham Dyson Bell, 50 Broadway, London SW1H 0BL

We are pleased to announce that the Minister of State for Transport, the Rt Hon John Hayes MP, will give a lecture on 4 February, jointly organised with the Campaign for Better Transport.
The lecture will explore how good design and beauty can be incorporated into road development. Sir Andrew Motion, CPRE President and former Poet Laureate, will respond, and there will be an opportunity following the lecture to pose questions to the Minister on details of the Government^s proposed Road Investment Strategy, which includes ^15 billion spending on building new roads.
The event is kindly hosted by Bircham Dyson Bell at their London office.

I wonder what the Poet Laureate was moved to say in response ...

[grahame]

Yet interesting ...

I want to see the same kind of transformation of how we perceive road travel as we have seen with parts of the railway.

A generation ago the main London railway termini were dark, dirty and depressing shadows of their former selves.

The demolition of the Euston Arch at the end of the 1950s was emblematic of a wider destruction of the romance and style of rail travel. By the 1970s the idea of spending more time than absolutely necessary at a railway station would have been seen as absurd. Indeed, a British Rail cheese sandwich became a national joke.

Now St Pancras and Kings Cross have become popular destinations in their own right. Railway stations which are places to shop, to wine and dine. We have reclaimed the vision of Sir John Betjeman, whose statue rightly adorns the reborn St Pancras.

Now isn't an admiration of how a part of the railway has been reborn, expressed in public by a road minister, somewhat encouraging for other rail developments?  I'm struck by some of the German and Dutch stations I've visited (some, I stress, not all!) ...

[Rhydgaled]

I'm sorry Mr Hayes, but improving the visual environment is no excuse for trashing the climate with providing for yet more increase car use.

In the Feb 2014 Modern Railways, there are a number of graphs from the Government's "National Transport Model", used to forcast stuff. The graphs show 'England All Roads' figures. Vehicle miles on the road network is predicted to increase, with most of the scenarios on the CO2 graph showing an increase in emmissions (which, apparently, and supprisingly, have been falling since arround 2007) from 2020 onwards. Rather than providing more road capacity to allow this growth to happen, my view is the government's policy should be to encourage use of public transport instead and prevent the growth. Mr Hayes may claim: "modern concepts of sustainable travel no longer have to be anti-car", but I completely disagree. Even electric cars cannot possibly be as efficient as electric buses and trains, can they?

It^s a massive task. But I want to see the same kind of transformation of how we perceive road travel as we have seen with parts of the railway.

Replace 'road travel' with 'bus travel' and that is something that could almost have come from me. It is perhaps the best way to explain my dissapointment with the TrawsCymru network.

[Cynthia]

I wonder what the Poet Laureate was moved to say in response ...
[/quote]

Better ask Carol Ann Duffy!

[stuving]

I wonder what the Poet Laureate was moved to say in response ...

Better ask Carol Ann Duffy!
[/quote]

Well, I guess from that mistake it's pretty obvious that I'm not a great poetry-lover.

From what little I know of the two of them, if it had been Carol Ann Duffy I suspect the response might have been more ... interesting than the ex-laureate's.

[Red Squirrel]

Down the quiet road, away, away, towards
the dying time,
love went, brave soldier, the song dwindling...

From An Unseen, by Carol Ann Duffy

[Cynthia]

Poetry is, a bit like beauty, in the ear of the beholder.

But back to the main thread - Beautiful roads?  I can't help but think of modern routes, (however well they're landscaped) perhaps like the Newbury by-pass, as being great, suppurating wounds. Along these travel toxic 'metal box' bugs, causing septicaemia of, and in the environment, driven by selfish people like me who are too lazy to work out how to get from A to B via a more sustainable form of transport. 

[trainer]

Poetry is, a bit like beauty, in the ear of the beholder.

But back to the main thread - Beautiful roads?  I can't help but think of modern routes, (however well they're landscaped) perhaps like the Newbury by-pass, as being great, suppurating wounds. Along these travel toxic 'metal box' bugs, causing septicaemia of, and in the environment, driven by selfish people like me who are too lazy to work out how to get from A to B via a more sustainable form of transport. 

In its way, your post is poetic, Cynthia: some strong images within an extended metaphor.   

[Cynthia]

Poetry is, a bit like beauty, in the ear of the beholder.

But back to the main thread - Beautiful roads?  I can't help but think of modern routes, (however well they're landscaped) perhaps like the Newbury by-pass, as being great, suppurating wounds. Along these travel toxic 'metal box' bugs, causing septicaemia of, and in the environment, driven by selfish people like me who are too lazy to work out how to get from A to B via a more sustainable form of transport. 

In its way, your post is poetic, Cynthia: some strong images within an extended metaphor.   

Thank you, trainer, I hope one of the images includes one of me hanging my head in shame, as I do at frequent intervals.  I should be prepared to set a better example to my growing grandchildren.




Edit note: Quote marks fixed, for clarity. CfN.