Gridlock Nation

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In Trinidad, talk­ing about books felt ob­scene, as if I was talk­ing about caviar when peo­ple were starv­ing. I in­ter­viewed the whores and went wad­ing in­to the Beetham, in­to hos­pices where there was no mor­phine, and stood amongst boys who were liv­ing and some dead by the gun. While we may not be in a position to build a flying car, there is a vast range of possibilities that remain both within the reach of today’s science and are completely untried… It is at least possible that one reason the rate of progress in our transport industries is closer to that in health and education than computing is that the former remains centrally controlled, while the latter enjoys the freedom and entrepreneurialism of the market. The idea that somehow switching the construction of roads to private contractors, with much greater freedom to lay down tarmac wherever they feel like it, is the solution to our transport problems is thus rather absurd. I was considering summarising points where I think you are wrong and Kwarteng and Dupont are right, but I think because of the extent of your poor views it’s more appropriate to generalise.

Kwarteng and Dupont get quite excited about potential, and fantastical, new ways of getting about, and of mitigating against congestion. It examines the potential of dazzling innovations across the world, from the private sector space revolution to Google s new driverless cars. That's why we are a grid­lock na­tion and when there is move­ment, it's one step for­ward, and two steps back. Strict liability for all vehicles, and full corporate liability when vehicles are driven for profit. I am not one for politi­cians, but the Padarath in­ci­dent made me see that Trinidad is bur­geon­ing and there is now room for all sorts, in­clud­ing the fringe lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty.One of the things you take for granted in this country is the frankly awful state of public transport, Gridlock Nation takes a step back and looks at the problem and suggests some thought interesting alternatives. It examines the potential of dazzling innovations across the world, from the private sector space revolution to Google's new driverless cars. I’m not convinced that totalitarian states do have an obsession with a ‘local economy’ – on the contrary, I would have thought that collectivisation, on vast scales, characterises these regimes.

By then, I had seen too many hous­es–some with mar­ble floors and im­port­ed Ital­ian kitchens, oth­ers on stilts, but no books. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. Policy-makers have preferred to focus on public transport, with substantial investment going into the rail network in particular.Britain’s roads remain congested, while huge sums of money are being poured into the railways to get them into a workable state. I’m equally unconvinced that the problems involved in getting hold of one suit can be used to imply that all our goods should, will or must be transported ever greater distances. The most that can be said for self-driven cars is that they would eliminate the kind of tailgating-induced traffic jams that are currently prevalent on our motorways -congestion, of course, would still exist. I drove the road for several years in the early days and got so sick of it that I relocated to a sunny USA suburb.

Yes, there are cu­ri­ous arty peo­ple who see the pan and dou­bles, and shark and bake, but al­so the pas­sion of read­ing and writ­ing.

You will notice that none of these ‘alternatives’ does anything to impede the use of the private motor vehicle. For the last hundred years, the planners at the centre of our transport system have told us what roads, railways or airports we can use. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged.

For all our attention to the minutiae of Congress, we know little about the dimensions and causes of gridlock. Back in 1995, he managed to win University Challenge ‘supposedly singlehandedly’ (Private Eye 1282) while a King’s Scholar at Trinity College Cambridge. God knows I am a forgiving reader, happy to be swept along if the writing is in any way decent, but this book would test the patience of the most easy going saint. However, I’m guessing what he has in mind is more the sociopathic,Thatcherite “take the cash, externalize costs, and dump the sh*t on some other sucker” market, rather than a genuinely regulated, if-you-break-it-you-pay-for-it model. But measuring output without respect to the agenda of salient issues risks misstating the true level of gridlock.This last year in Lon­don has been scary for me as an is­land woman away from the fa­mil­iar­i­ty of who we are. This is all very well, but not everything that is transported vast distances makes economic, let alone environmental, sense.