Parking charges will stop people using their cars! D'Uh.

In today's Evening Standard (London) there's an article about councils putting up charges for parking to help meet the shortfall in revenue that the current swingeing cuts will cause. One vox pop contributor says: "driving costs more and more, and it'll put most of us off doing it." It isn't really clear whether she thinks this is a bad thing, though the general tenor of the article is anti, but yes, if you put the price of something up, usage will typically fall - it's called elasticity. If car use falls, car ownership will fall too, public transport ridership will tend to increase and so will cycling. This will ease the environmental problems caused by cars, as well as meaning they'll take up less space between them. Basic.

What we want from our transport and communication system(s) is the reduction of the problem of people not being near the resource they need to access. People should have a big fat broadband pipe in their home, with an easy to use terminal connected to it. Amongst the services they should be able to easily access from this is the use of an appropriate vehicle to move things and people to a certain place by a certain time. More private cars is not the solution.