Running empty double-decker buses is a great problem round here with their exhaust belching vast clouds of fumes every time they set off. These should be replaced with smaller cleaner buses perhaps on the same lines as the Turkish Dolmuses? It won’t happen of course, bus companies now being privatised won’t make the investment.
Another problem with exhaust pollution is of course the many traffic jams throughout our cities caused by a combination of too many vehicles and inefficient traffic flow. Over-restrictive speed limits don’t help either forcing a vehicle to travel in third gear thus increasing pollution and increasing fuel use. 20mph around schools maybe, but around here we have some where there’s hardly any residents living by the roads.
We have 20 mph limits all around here, brought in by the “” 20s plenty" brigade, OK as you say around schools ect, but we have them in cul-de- sacs , even the buses don’t keep to them
I can see this becoming another tax harvest from the motoring crop.
Masquerading under the guise of “green measures”.
How much of the revenue raised by environmental taxes has been spent on the environment?
That’s a good point. Around here there are bus lanes that are only active during peak times. Thereafter anyone can use them but do they? Do they 'eck because we also have bus lanes that operate 24/7 and are subject to fines if you dare even inch into one even in the middle of the night when there’s no buses. Another method of screwing the motorist with fines. Consequently, rather than having two lanes of traffic (say) thus easing the flow, everyone is in single file creating jams for miles back.
It’s so demoralising isn’t it :!: I don’t want an electric car because I don’t believe the batteries are reliable and it will be long time before any ‘charging’ points are available around here and when they are they will be vandalised PDQ.
I prefer a diesel over a petrol on reliability and starting criteria.
I can remember when the government of the day was urging us to buy diesel cars and reduced the fuel duty to make diesel fuel cheaper than petrol. Wish to God these muppets would make their minds up
I agree. What is worse, when the batteries fail or become less able to hold their charge, the replacement costs are said to be sky high.
I too prefer diesel for the reasons you state. In addition, the engines are much simpler = less to go wrong.
I don’t remember diesel being cheaper than petrol although, due to the fact that it requires less refining, it should be.
And that’s the real problem with all of this ‘eco’ rubbish: they change their minds more frequently than I change my underpants. (Well, that’s not strictly true, of course. I promise!)
Thing with electric cars is, in most cases, you have to lease the batteries, adding to the cost
Diesel used to be cheaper many years ago, before the diesel car as we know it today was born, diesels used to be quite agricultural, noisy, smelly, slow things, now the diesel cars engines are hard to distinguish from petrol equivalents, but because of the on going search to reduce pollution, diesels have to be fitted with dpfs, egr valves, which are problematic, mainly because the salespeople didn’t find out from the customers, how it would be used, short around town trips don’t suit the dpf equipped diesel. Vw tiguan 2.0l engines, ( diesel) are having the fix done ( from the diesel gate scandal) and are having problems with poor running, because the dpf regeneration happens more often than it used to , and it’s affecting them
I wonder whether they’ll eventually see sense and agree to remove these problematic restrictions from diesel engines. I’d be surprised if some countries, like China, even have them.
