It’s time to wrap up the year with some comments on the state of driving and transport in the UK. It’s been another year where the Government has been throwing billions of pounds at building railways despite the fact that they are old, inflexible and inefficient technology. But at least some of HS2 has been cancelled.

A singular example of how inflexible the rail network is was the closure of King’s Cross and Paddington stations this week due to engineering works. The closure of London Paddington meant no mainline trains serving Heathrow Airport. There has also been disruption of rail services due to overhead power cables being damaged by storms and of course by strikes of rail workers.

Just one example of why roads are better is that I have been spending a lot of time on trips to central London hospitals in the past year. But as the local station has no step-free access and I need to use a wheel-chair, rail travel is totally impractical. So I have been using Uber at lot. Generally it’s a very efficient service although one driver failed to pick up after an hour and another gave me a bad cold.

One problem is that they tend to drive electric cars now and to ensure a long range they turn the heating off. Not at all comfortable! I am still driving myself for most journeys though and have a wheel-chair that folds up and stores in the car boot.

Sadiq Khan has continued his attack on motorists but has seemingly relented over his decision to block non-compliant Chelsea tractors being sent to Ukraine. But it will require a change to the scrappage scheme regulations to permit this.

Local councils are some of the worst culprits for undermining the use of private cars with such measures as LTNs and impractical and unnecessary 20 mph speed limits. Central Government has indicated they will try to put a halt to this stupidity but it needs vigorous representation at the local level to make some councils see sense. You can all contribute to that!

Personally I am all in favour of discouraging larger/heavier vehicles on our roads. They are damaging the roads and hence the increase in potholes. They are simply unnecessary for most people, particularly in central London. I have owned some large cars in my lifetime (the biggest was an enormous Mark 9 Jaguar) but a mid-size or smaller vehicle is now adequate for most purposes. I have therefore downsized to a Jaguar XE in the last year – with a 2.0 litre petrol engine which gives adequate performance and is efficient.

I judged it was not yet time to switch to an electric vehicle due to excessive capital cost, high insurance cost and poor charging infrastructure. That seems to be the judgement many people are making.  In November 2023, only 15.6% of all new car registrations were electric vehicles but the numbers are rising.

IC vehicles with small efficient petrol engines emit very low levels of air pollution and make economic sense so the Government should backtrack on the banning of their sales. If not there will be a big demand for second-hand IC vehicles.

It just remains to wish my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Just remember to drive safely at this dangerous time of the year with snow being forecast at the time of writing.  

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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