Pretty much how you’d build any train station in a city. Just look at any London train station. Article entirely meant to get ‘petrol heads’ riled up.
Cue the article comments about a war on motorists. Mostly from people who don’t even live there.
I’ve been through Cambridge on the train, and there’s always a shitload of bicycles. Presumably it’s mostly students about who use them locally, because there’s no way you’d actually get more than a handful on the trains themselves.
Presumably they’ve also got security, because if they tried that where I live, some lad with bolt cutters and a balaclava would help himself to the lot and swap it for heroin.
I lived there. It’s not just students. Loads of people commute by bike - it’s the quickest way by a mile. It’s only really recently that the council have done more than pay lip service to cycling, though; until then the local pop cycled in spite of the infrastructure rather than because of it. They have the UK’s biggest cycle park at the main station but it’s basically a shopping centre for thieves (bike theft is really bad all round Cambridge) so I think they’ve brought in a key-only area that you have to pay to use. Same at Cambridge North.
There are train stations where I would much prefer a huge car park, because they’re on the “outer perimeter” of a city region where denser movement options become viable. But this sounds like a newly developed area designed under the sensible European 15-minute-city principles; where 3 parking spaces is the region taken up by a single small shop. So to me, all the complaints here sound very much like car-brain.
This just makes me realise how bike crazy the Netherlands is, Amsterdam recently built underground bicycle parking that can hold 20,000 bicycles.
This bike parking was built underneath a canal.
Some local residents have not been onboard with the lack of car spaces at the new station.
If you need a car to reach the station it’s questionable to claim you’re local.
But what about those folks who use a car to commute from their garage to their car?
Fuck disabled people I guess
Like blind people? Or those who cannot afford a mobility van because a 10 year old used one is priced at $35k? Perhaps you mean those who suffer from seizures?
Let’s focus our limited budget into personal vehicle infrastructure that certainly wouldn’t force these suffering people to drive. It works, bro. Trust me.
Different people have different needs. Some people can’t get around by car unless someone else is driving, myself included. Other people can drive, but can barely walk. If they have nowhere to park, that hurts some disabled people. It’s not like not having somewhere to park magically converts the entire area into an idyllic car-free utopia with trams running every which way.
You cannot dive and yet in the very first picture of the station in the OP’s article is a passenger loading and unloading zone at the gates. How could this train station’s design prioritization unduly harm your own disability since they picked a design where you could be dropped off at the entrance? I’m actually curious here because I can drive and I would be harmed (no parking for me) yet I’m willing to let it go in favor of things like front-gate drop-off zones for public and private loading.
You’re absolutely right that different people do have different needs but priority must be given on every project. Not including disabled parking is a choice that does not unduly harm disabled people. Including disabled parking can harm disabled people. Let me explain.
Prioritizing private car infrastructure necessarily means de-prioritizing non-car infrastructure, like these loading zones. Maybe they can shrink the loading zone a bit and get a parking spot or two in, but would that be enough for those who can drive? Maybe they can put the parking in the back, but that’s not every disabled friendly either. A parking structure could address some of that, but where’s that money coming from? Remember, there’s a limited budget and limited land availability. What’s being taken away for that disabled parking?
Prioritization of parking appears harmless on the surface but manifests in unusual ways, which is precisely why I chose “San Bruno Man With Seizure Disorder Found Guilty In Double Fatal Car Crash” as a case-in-point. The disabled man in question, Rodney Corsiglia, felt forced to drive despite multiple doctor interventions and the DMV revoking his license.
Dr. Austin told Corsiglia he should not be driving because his seizures were not controlled and he did not have full awareness of them. Corsiglia had difficulty accepting the recommendation and wanted to drive because he lived alone, felt he needed a car for transportation, and had a new truck even though he did not have a driver’s license.
– People v. Corsiglia, A145944 (Cal. Ct. App. Mar. 7, 2017)
Being a local in the area, I fully understand Corsiglia’s argument and he has a point. There are no protected bike lanes, the sidewalks are a mess, there’s exactly one bus every hour that’s daytime only to the train station across the street from where the collision occurred. There’s no way he can reasonably function without a car, which is good because the train station where he murdered two people does have disabled parking. And that’s the issue: San Bruno prioritizes disabled drivers while excluding every other disabled member. It’s a decision the city, county, and state can and often makes. It’s also a decision that killed.
Pushing the “what about the disabled people” is exactly how cars get prioritized above people’s needs, disabled and abled alike. It’s counter-intuitive but pushing disabled parking and induces parking demand which, even in totally unreasonable circumstances, pushes disabled people to drive even when they shouldn’t need to.
Car-dependent infrastructure is antithetical to wheelchair and blind accessibility anyway. They’re much better off in a safer environment free of multi-ton death machines driving 45mph.
I’m from the united states Midwest and have Heard people claim to be local to cities while living 20miles away from city limits.
You guys are wild when it comes to distances. I was recently in LA and everyone insisted a 20 minutes car commute classified as “close”. On another occasion, a lady literally told me “You said it was far away. It’s only 50 miles”.
I rode a bicycle 120 miles a few years back just because I felt like it one day. I’m probably not the best just for what’s considered “reasonable”
That said, it really is the joke/meme “Americans think 100 years is a long time, Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance”
Personally, I feel like if I’m more than 3 miles away, I’m not local. I may be “from the area” but I’m not “a local”
Most people I know wouldn’t consider 50 miles to be “close” though in terms of “can I pop over for a quick trip or do I need to plan my day around it”
As for car rides, like… If I’m driving I don’t mind so much because I’m occupied by trying not to die, but as a passenger anything over 5 minutes is not a “quick trip”
To be fair, a 10km distance here in Canada can mean you’re part of the suburbs of a city. I’m in the suburbs of Montréal, but if someone asks me online where I’m from, I’m not gonna say my 10 000 people little town, I’ll say Montréal.
It’s what, 7 miles? I think that’s fair enough to say local I think?
20 minute car commute in LA is, what, 3 city blocks?
First of all: lol. In all seriousness, though, most 20 minutes Ubers I took were around 6-10 km, which would take me over an hour of walking.
The people complaining about not having a car park would complain even more if Network Rail built one and then didn’t subsidise the parking charges.
Hard agree. Why do people always expect someone else to foot the bill for their parking needs?
Your car takes up space when parked. Somebody is paying for that space, so you need to do so when you park there. It’s not that difficult.
Way to go!
Better headline: New £200m train station will serve 1.8m yearly passengers, converts wasteful long-term car parking with valuable new homes and businesses, and uses more efficient transportation facilities like drop-off zones and over 1000 bicycle parking spaces.
Even better headline: new £200m train station is already projected to be too small for the expected footfall but Network Rail wouldn’t revise their figures before they built it.
So, like every train station I have ever seen in Japan?
Are other countries not allowed to do something good if Japan did it first?
No, I point that out because I also lived in Hawaii for 6 years and when they finally built their light rail system on Oahu, they built hundreds of parking spaces around the station. They provided no bicycle parking and no commercial storefront space. Convenience stores, super markets, doctor’s offices, dental clinics, and maybe a small police outpost are all handy things to have next to the station. Last time I checked an online map, the parking spaces are hardly ever used. Who takes a car to a train station and leaves it so they can ride the train?
