toby1234abc:
Watch out for Liberal Democrat London mayoral candidate, she wants freight on the river and ban lorries at peak hours to protect cyclists .
Her name is Caroline Pidgeon .
she gets my Vote 
boredwivdrivin:
Problem with canals is the same as trains . unless you very lucky you still need lorries to take stuff from factory for loading and a lorry to take from canal/railway for delivery .
Also very slow, and you canât get from the north of the country to London with a boat over 7â wide.
toby1234abc:
Watch out for Liberal Democrat London mayoral candidate, she wants freight on the river and ban lorries at peak hours to protect cyclists .
Her name is Caroline Pidgeon .
Why canât they just put all cyclists in the Thames and problem solved! They can then scrap the pointless cycle superhighways that arenât used and make roads normal sized again!
So glad I donât do London again, was bad enough before without all the stupid rules and crap to protect our vulnerables!
toby1234abc:
Watch out for Liberal Democrat London mayoral candidate, she wants freight on the river and ban lorries at peak hours to protect cyclists .
Her name is Caroline Pidgeon .
They could have floating markets like they do in Bangkok.
London is the cesspool of humanity, ban all lorries ,let them starve and get their own cheap tat ordered on line that comes off a shipping container from Taiwan, by wheel barrow or horse and cart, who cares, their roads are built in the 17 th century ,not for 44 ton artics .
toby1234abc:
London is the cesspool of humanity, ban all lorries ,let them starve
That sounds like a good plan B. 
Although a day time truck ban would be less drastic and stop them all leaving the place and just setting up home further out. 
I think it should be made an offence for cyclists for not using available cycle lanes, passing HGVâs on the inside unless they are in a cycle lane, and possibly for wearing lycra.
Not London I know but does anyone know if the barges still ship gravel to Gloucester from that pit next to the M50? I think it was in the Uckinghall area, you could see the loading shovel from the M50, feeding the field conveyor which ran to a wharf.
I think there was a similar facility in London using Thames dredgers. United Marine Aggregates I believe?
That was by the south side of Blackwall tunnel no idea if they still do though
Now called Tarmac Marine Dredging and they still run to Charlton with sea dredged aggregates, also aggregates are shipped from near Gravesend to Battersea in a couple of small coasters and the old Euromix place by Deptford bridge still has sand and stone shipped from near Colchester by barges.
I canât stand all these people who are so anxious to show off their Green brainwaves.
However, you can only get one pint into a pint jug, but if you are ignoring the the fact that the handle is hollow and which could accommodate an extra cupfull then that is something else. Just like it being criminal to leave an energy resource like coal trapped in the ground for political, or environmental issues which supposedly cannot at present be economically overcome, then it is also criminal to ignore any other means of transportation available. Certain goods in bulk are eminently suitable for transport other than by road; even if they have to reach their ultimate destination by road. The country has an extensive network of waterways which are almost unused commercially, we cannot go on continuing to ignore their potential for moving non urgent freight.
Like the pint pot, just the same as we cannot go on accepting what will amount to millions of immigants, or building houses until every inch of the British Isles is covered in concrete, we cannot go on widening our motorways to ever more lanes or building new ones for ever. There has to come a time when we say STOP that is enough. We need to look for alternatives solutions now. In fact we should have done this 30 years ago when it would have been a lot easier and cheaper, but as always the politicians cannot see further than the next election.
cav551:
The country has an extensive network of waterways which are almost unused commercially, we cannot go on continuing to ignore their potential for moving non urgent freight.
As a narrowboat owner I have a fairly good knowledge of canals. Here are the problems with your suggestion.
Firstly, it is a very slow means of transport. We will be doing a 105 mile trip at Easter, this will take a week. Even if we put in the type of hours a truck driver works, it would still take 3-4 days. There are already long delays at locks in peak periods with only 30,000 boats on the network, many of which never move out of their marinas. Taking a quarter of trucks off of the roads and replacing them with 100,000 canal boats would make this significantly more of a problem.
Secondly, although the canal network is nationwide, it is not possible to get from the north to the south of the country in anything wider than 6â 10" because of the width of the locks in the Midlands. This is significantly less than two palletsâ width.
Thirdly, the canals are nowhere near as deep as they were in the days of commercial carriage as they have, for many decades, only been dredged to sufficient depth to carry leisure boats. My boat weighs around 9 tonnes and regularly âbottoms outâ and needs to be poled off.
The simple fact is that canals took a massive hit as soon as railways came along, and were in decline ever after. They were finally killed off as a means of moving freight during the Winter of (I think) 1962, when the whole network froze for two months and nothing could move. They were a brilliant idea back in the day, but their day has long gone as a commercial entity.
cav551:
I canât stand all these people who are so anxious to show off their Green brainwaves.However, you can only get one pint into a pint jug, but if you are ignoring the the fact that the handle is hollow and which could accommodate an extra cupfull then that is something else. Just like it being criminal to leave an energy resource like coal trapped in the ground for political, or environmental issues which supposedly cannot at present be economically overcome, then it is also criminal to ignore any other means of transportation available. Certain goods in bulk are eminently suitable for transport other than by road; even if they have to reach their ultimate destination by road. The country has an extensive network of waterways which are almost unused commercially, we cannot go on continuing to ignore their potential for moving non urgent freight.
Like the pint pot, just the same as we cannot go on accepting what will amount to millions of immigants, or building houses until every inch of the British Isles is covered in concrete, we cannot go on widening our motorways to ever more lanes or building new ones for ever. There has to come a time when we say STOP that is enough. We need to look for alternatives solutions now. In fact we should have done this 30 years ago when it would have been a lot easier and cheaper, but as always the politicians cannot see further than the next election.
Realistically the analogy of using the Thames for transport is like trying to use a single limited cable using a few hundred volts instead of the national grid.IE mostly pointless other than moving something between destinations served by the River over a short distance at a low speed.
While putting in more lanes on the motorways while decreasing speeds is a contradiction in itself.IE use lane 1 except for over taking which means the extra lanes are only there to facilitate more overtaking and higher speeds not to add capacity.
As for covering the British Isles with concrete.Itâs more a case of concreting over the south east to maintain much of the rest as an under developed wilderness.
As Harry says you can forget the canal system as a way of moving anything but people on their hols but the rivers and the coasts could be used better if the infrastructure was there, it used to be but a lot of small harbours have closed to commercial traffic, as too small or ships too big. And the British small ship operator got priced out of the job by the cheaper wages and running costs of the east europeans!
Now where have I heard that somewhere else as well â â
quote ⌠As for covering the British Isles with concrete.Itâs more a case of concreting over the south east to maintain much of the rest as an under developed wilderness.
Glad someone had some sense, itâs lovely living and workin in a âunder developed wildernessâ, suggest you move 500 mile north C/F and then you might relax a bit and get a better attitude ! Drove from Troon to do a job for a ship coming into Cairnryan today and on the way back got stuck behind a load of trucks of the ferry probably all going to the south east, bloody suverners causing our usually quiet and peaceful roads to be full 
raymundo:
quote ⌠As for covering the British Isles with concrete.Itâs more a case of concreting over the south east to maintain much of the rest as an under developed wilderness.Glad someone had some sense, itâs lovely living and workin in a âunder developed wildernessâ, suggest you move 500 mile north C/F and then you might relax a bit and get a better attitude ! Drove from Troon to do a job for a ship coming into Cairnryan today and on the way back got stuck behind a load of trucks of the ferry probably all going to the south east, bloody suverners causing our usually quiet and peaceful roads to be full
Great weâll send Londonâs over spill intended for us up to you to build some new towns and suburbs for them then the trucks wonât need to go to the South East.
It would be better to have cycle license and a number plate system if you wanted to ride a bike in London, then you wouldnât have cyclists constantly going through red lights and not constantly undertaking a HGV while itâs trying to turn left, itâs even worse when they have headphones on. I saw another thread on this forum that trucks will soon have the same cabs that you see on dustbin lorries so that would solve some of the problem
weeto:
I think it should be made an offence for cyclists for not using available cycle lanes, passing HGVâs on the inside unless they are in a cycle lane, and possibly for wearing lycra.
You would force children on bikes to ride here?
If cyclists ignore cycle lanes itâs because theyâre rubbish, or the cyclist is turning right, or the cyclist is following the official guidance Iâm sure youâre aware of that stipulates riders doing above 18 mph should use the road. Of course no professional driver would be ignorant of Rule 63 of the Highway Code?
That cyclists are suicidal is a boring cliche that often appears on these forums. Do you seriously think cyclists ride around perfectly happily then see a construction lorry and suddenly become suicidal? Pffft. Such offensive lies are an insult to the victims of the drunk, drugged, distracted or unlicensed HGV drivers who have killed cyclists.
The lorry driver who killed Eilidh Cairns had faulty eyesight (the police didnât even bother to discover this until the same driver killed another woman.)
The lorry driver who killed cyclist Brian Dorling turned across his path.
The lorry driver who killed cyclist Svetlana Tereschenko was in an unsafe lorry, failing to indicate and chatting on a mobile. The police decided to charge him withâŚnothing.
The lorry driver who killed cyclist Deep Lee failed to notice her and smashed into her from behind.
The lorry driver that killed cyclist Andrew McNicoll failed to notice him and side swiped him.
The lorry driver that killed cyclist Daniel Cox was in a truck which did not have the correct mirrors and whose driver had pulled into the ASL on a red light and was indicating in the opposite direction to which he turned.
The lorry driver that killed Alan Neve was uninsured, unlicensed and had jumped a red light.
So stop banging on about âsuicidal cyclistsâ. Itâs offensive â â â â â â â â .
Harry Monk:
boredwivdrivin:
Problem with canals is the same as trains . unless you very lucky you still need lorries to take stuff from factory for loading and a lorry to take from canal/railway for delivery .Also very slow, and you canât get from the north of the country to London with a boat over 7â wide.
manchester is quite far really 
Youâre slipping, Roaduser; You forgot the infamous Dennis Putz. I know he got jailed (probably out and driving again) but how did his employer get off with employing a banned driver?
Agree regarding those cycle lanes. Pointless bit of paint, itâd be better left as a road with shared space signs.