Worra loadofnonsense.
Why is London at the bottom? The congestion charge has eased traffic in town a bit, so is great. It's expensive to park, but fine if you can afford it - and fine if you're driving through. There aren't many no-go areas although some one way systems are a bit irritating.
Cambridge on the other hand you cannot even drive into. Oxford is worse.
Dundee I will agree is a dream - but that's because the locals cannot afford cars.
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One of the few lists where Bradford is above Leeds!
The Leeds 'loop' road is a disaster if you want to find somewhere. If you want to leave the city centre and get to the motorway etc it's great - obviously an incentive to get people not to go near the place!
I challenge a first timer to get to the Royal Armouries from the west and back to where they started without getting lost - ever since it opened I've been trying to find the quickest route, but I still come back a different way each time.
My other regular haunt is Cardiff and I never have any problems there.
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Oxford is worse.
Agreed.
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Oxford and cambridge are the worse by a long way.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Why is London at the bottom?
In one article I found about it says, "based on criteria such as petrol prices, the number of car parks, the cost of parking, the number of speed cameras on main roads and the level of car crime..."
The article says parking in London is on average £11 for 2 hours, which to me is absolutely comical. And it says it has the most speed cameras on major routes.
I'm surprised Brighton ranks so highly, parking used to be pretty bad when I used to live there 15 years ago. Have they built loads of new multi-storeys or something?
Sheffield is about right, always full of roadworks. I dont think Nottingham traffic is that bad, probably scores badly due to all the SPECS cameras.
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Slough is not that bad at all. There are lots of traffic lights and 40mph cameras, but you can make acceptable progress and generally don't have to drive all the way along the A4 if you enter/exit at sensible points. There is plenty of parking, e.g., in the world's largest Tesco, not to mention in the shopping centres, and there are also plenty of routes in/out, i.e. several exits onto the M4, plus A-roads leading in several directions to A/M40, Windsor, Maidenhead, Uxbridge, etc.
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I'm surprised Newcastle is so high up. EVERY time I go there, the one way system has changed.
The authorities have also just closed in the region of 1,400 parking spaces in the centre while they remodel Eldon Square AGAIN !
I'm surprised Sheffield is only mid-table. I never have any problem driving around there though having lived there for almost ten years know most of the rat-runs to avoid the roadworks and bottlenecks.
London, you can't really compare it with anywhere else. Too many different driving test standards from around the world all thrown together in one, small, melting pot.
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In which case it's nothing to do with car friendliness. Of course Dundee will come top if it's based on petrol prices (close to the North Sea) and parking charges (mostly free).
No doubt parking charges in Oxford and Cambridge are lower than in London, but.... you can't actually get at the car parks!
I don't mind driving in London one bit. Tiresome queues are irritating, and parking is extortionate but otherwise it's not a bad overall experience.
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Mapmaker,
since when has being close to the North Sea had any reflection on petrol prices? I've just travelled the length of the UK and found NO variation in price. 93.9 at the supermarkets (Asda, Falmouth & Dunfermline), 97.9 at the brand names (Texaco, Helston; BP, Kincardine) - I refuse to use motorway service stations so don't know their prices.
And as for free parking in Dundee please tell me where as I go there regularly.
ps If you are near Dundee on your forthcoming holiday try driving on the Kingsway at 5:30pm and tell me again the locals can't afford cars....
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Mapmaker since when has being close to the North Sea had any reflection on petrol prices? I've just travelled the length of the UK and found NO variation in price.
Cheapest petrol has long been found in Watford area, due to competition.
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Newcastle number 11?! Incredible.
Bus lanes, congestion charging on the way and less and less car parks by the year.
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Newcastle number 11?! Incredible. Bus lanes congestion charging on the way and less and less car parks by the year.
Agreed, Newcastle is an abortion of a city to drive around, I'd love them to explain the purpose of the new No Car Lanes going past Central station, they've caused traffic chaos to both car drivers and peasant wagons alike. One of my friends works in Newcastle (in fact I'm going to pick her up in an hour god help me) and she says that one of her co-workers found that her bus journey home took over 20 minutes longer then normal when the lanes were introduced this summer.
The only approach that seems to work when driving around the place is to "point and go", this certainly applies at night when you've got hoardes of people staggering amongst the nose to tail traffic and being sick everywhere. Oddly even that is still preferable to driving there during daylight hours.
Blue
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I've parked for free in the Hill Town in Dundee.
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But was your car still there when you went back for it?
Plenty of free parking in Fintry as well. And the police cars travel in pairs (allegedly).
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I'm not sure how they chose the towns in question. Seems to me that there are plenty of towns of similar size to those that are there, not in the survey.
For example, Darlington is bigger than York I believe. Of all the towns I've been around, Darlington must rank among the best -- no one-way systems to worry about, little congestion (negotiable even at rush-hour), and a compact town centre -- not bad for a 100,000 population town.
I agree about Newcastle, what a nightmare, although Leeds and Nottingham are rightly at the bottom, I refuse to go through the middle of Leeds, it's that bad. Better than Middlesbrough? Don't make me laugh.
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Well I have driven in both Dundee(top) and Cardiff(bottom) recently and survived. Both were equally easy to get through IMHO.
Derby is a real pain as is Leeds (try finding the way to the Royal Armouries from M1 at present).
I take it all with a pinch of salt.
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My vote for unfriendliest is Cambridge , I used to visit helicopter jr at university with a hired Transit and the only way to get to his college to load and unload his gear was a tortuous route around the town and on a narrow pedestrianised road with kamikaze pedestrians , cyclists thinking they had priority and buses with drivers who hate everybody .
To get out of town was an even more difficult route all round the town. Parking in the centre of town was well nigh impossible.
I find Brighton is a nightmare for parking also.
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what basis is this??? POOLE has about 30 fixed camera sites and about 50 known mobile sites...not very friendly imo
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sometimes a little bit too much opinion....but its only because i care !!!
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Right...I'm confused.
Is number 1 the most friendly or the most unfriendly?
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I am confused too. Who wants to drive to some of these places? I have never been to Hull, and its not a failing I aim to rectify before I die.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Is number 1 the most friendly or the most unfriendly?
The most friendly.
Found the full article via a google.
tinyurl.com/2tpa2m
I'll amend HJ's post to avoid further confusion. - DD
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Oops! That link is for 2006. Still, it confirms No.1 in the list is the most friendly.
Anyone care to find a link that relates to HJ's list, because I can't.
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Don't quite understand the point of this...obviously older towns heaving with listed buildings and narrow pre car sized roads are not going to be amenable to mass car use....
Surely some of the ones with well organised park and ride eg Oxford be seen as car friendly to an extent...why do people think it is practical that you can drive right to a city centre destination en masse....we'd end up with US style cities with buildings surrounded by seas of tarmac and not very pretty multi storeys.
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Blimey...even I can find my way around Reading!
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Not sure why Milton Keynes is only ranked so-so. Surely the road system in that place was designed to be car friendly - and I've always found it a dream to drive round - even though I am not struck by anthing else about the place.
Is it the other factors knocking it down the list?
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Agree with Mile-Muncher. MK I have found soul less but easy to drive around. Grid system like the USA. Oxford is a nightmare and should be far nearer the bottom. Small place, however if not on the list, I'd like to nominate Runcorn for the worst One Way system ever conceived. I'm usually calm behind the wheel - getting stuck there and I was nearly chewing the steering wheel...!
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Sorry, forgot to add, Liverpool I've always found a doddle. What the issue is there I don't understand.
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Only 6 places separate Milton Keynes from Northampton?
The former is built around the car, the latter has the usual provincial problem where good quality feeder/ditributor roads are not - and cannot - be matched by the ability of an older town to absorb the resultant arriving traffic.
Problem in Oxford is essentially the same; but with the park and ride there's no excuse to drive in.
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Problem in Oxford is essentially the same; but with the park and ride there's no excuse to drive in.
But if you want to commute from one side of town to the other rather than commute in to do some shopping, it's an absolute nightmare.
After dropping off a friend at St Clements, I had to return a hire car to Botley Rd. Due to the restrictions imposed on The High Steet, I couldn't take a direct route to St Aldates after going over Magdalen Bridge, and then cut across Oxpens to get on the Botley Rd. Instead, I had to go up the Iffley Rd, cut across donnington Bridge, and travel along the Abingdon Rd to St Aldates to get onto the Oxpens Rd.
I'm guessing it added another 3 or 4 miles on my journey, and however many minutes stuck at numerous traffic lights.
And meanwhile the buses parked up in the city centre were no doubt polluting Oxford to high heaven by leaving their engines running.
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Not sure when you guys last drove around central MK, but recently it has taken a severe turn for the worse - traffic lights seem to have increased in number and to have been programmed to delay traffic for the maximum possible time. It has to be deliberate - more traffic lights, worse traffic flow.
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Hmmm, the three major (south) Welsh cities, Cardiff (doddle), Swansea and Newport dont fare well, yet none of them are particularly bad compared to some of the English cities I frequent.
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Grayshott, just off the A3 is a driver's dream. Pull up outside the post office [sic!] or the butcher or the baker or the village square. Free parking next to the pub, opposite the baker or behind the chippy. Getting nostalgic now that I've moved out to Wimbledon!
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Call me a cynic but I'm sure the bus lanes in Newcastle are part of the grand plan. As soon as they appeared the congestion got worse - and 12 months later Newcastle are 'investigating' road pricing/congestion charges.
Does anyone who drives through the town remember the good old days before they messed around with the lights on the Gateshead side of the Tyne bridge? - that caused instant congestion overnight!
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I think it's undoubtedly part of a grander plan, encouraging public transport use may be all very well for people who live on top of a Metro station, I'm about 5 miles from the nearest one!
But then, this is all reasons why if I want to shop, I do it in Sunderland or drive up to the Metro Centre. I can barely remember the last time I shopped in Newcastle, which is a shame as the City Centre is really the only nice thing about the place.
Blue
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Guildford is presumably off the scale at about 359 - much of the population is 80 in the shade, coping (or not) with most of the streets with a gradient of about 1 in 4. I know it well, but would imagine that for a stranger that only answer to finding your way around it is - don't try.
The Irish have it right - if you want to go from Guildford to anywhere else, don't start from Guildford.
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I am suprised Huddersfield scored so high - in recent years the number of traffic lights, road-narrowing islands, hatched lines and new speed limits have doubled or tripled congestion and cross-town journey times.
Local drivers were convinced the powers that were in charge shared Ken Livingtone's hatred of cars.
And don't get me started about the potholes, badly re-instated trenches and scameras.
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Durham should be in there too - the roundabout beside Milburngate is the worst roundabout the world has ever seen.
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Middlesbrough has a one way system which means if you miss your turning you have to around again. And it's a l o n g way and it's chokka with traffic.
I try to drive into towns either very early or at about 12. My theory is that some of the shoppers are going home by then, the mad rush is over and there'll be parking spaces.
JH
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What a load of rubbish, how can Swansea and Newport be so bad and Dudley and Brighton (the home of parking tickets) be so good. Who comes up with this stuff, why dont they get a proper job !
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