LogFAQs > #979307066

DarkDoc posted...

Oh come on, you don't get to hide behind science. There's absolutely nothing scientific about saying "the whole of the country of Wales is now 20mph". That just makes real scientists look bad.

Good job that wouldn't be my example of saying traffic is a science then isn't it? That's also not an accurate description of what Wales is doing, they're making it the default speed limit on restricted roads AKA built up areas. These are the exact places where you don't want people tearing down the roads. Now, I'd rather see these limits set through architecture rather than legislation as the science says that speed limit signs aren't all that effective at actually reducing speeds, but trying at all to make things safer for non-car users is a good start.

I just looked it up. McDonald's has more than 1,450 restaurants across the UK. 938 of these are drive through, ie 65%. A further proportion will be out of town. A further proportion are motorway service stations.

I can think of a handful of city centre branches that have closed in the last 5-10 years (Manchester and Liverpool among them).

I can think of 5 off the top of my head. 2 of them are drive throughs in retail parks that are difficult to access without cars in the first place, another 2 are drive throughs off of some major roads in and out of town that are much easier to access on food and the final one is on foot only in the town centre.

But then, given that the number of schools is finite, and that the number of good schools is small, you end up with everybody wanting to live in the same place. ie not possible. You can't please all the people all the time, and even though you don't want to, you have to tell some people "sorry, you can't live here, try somewhere shit instead".

The number is finite, but not fixed. You can build new schools and you can improve lacking schools. Will there be some schools clearly ahead of the pack? Yes, almost certainly. However, the goal should be to get the "lower" tier schools up to a good standard too.

Exactly. Or equivalently, as I said before, there are too many people.

Yes, there are some. But I simply refuse to believe that there are 8 million people who are so severely disabled that there is nothing they could possibly do. That's simply nonsense, regardless of what the internet tells you.

Officially I think there are something like 3m brits on long term disability and the number is increasing, quicker for men than women. You are the one claiming 8m. It is concerning and as a nation we should indeed look at how many of those we can help back to work. One thing that would help would be improving our healthcare considering many of these are as a result of health issues that people weren't born with. We definitely need to improve our mental healthcare facilities as well as the culture towards those facing mental health issues.

True. This sounds like your field rather than mine, but most likely for reasons of practicality and/or cost.

Definitely the case in the USA, but if you look at somewhere like Chester or Runcorn, the train station is pretty far outside thr town centre. And obviously the same can be said for most airports, to the point where you wonder why the hell Reus airport even has Barcelona in its name (it's over 100 km away).

Yeah, I'd say I have an unhealthy obsession with public transport!

Airports at least have practical reasons as to why they can't be in the middle of a city we're ignoring London City... but there's absolutely no reason for a train station to be anywhere but in the middle of population centres. It's some of the most valuable land in any town, especially if it's also a station where people transfer like Birmingham New St or Reading. In Europe, this land is used for shops, services, venues and public transit links. In far too much of North America, this land is used for parking, which effectively generates zero income.

Strangely, a lot of American airports at least understand this concept. I really liked Atlanta airport, it was easy to get around and there were tons of good shops and eateries. They're let down by the state of American public transport, but it's a good start.