GRIDLOCKED ROADS

The first thing to appreciate when looking at this problem, is the fact that over 70 per cent of the traffic involved, is in some way commercial.  Even the chore of fetching and carrying children to school adds to traffic.  It can be that the second or third family car is specifically required for that purpose.  But the use of a car to get to work is more clearly a commercial use.           

It is when we take a look at the big lorries, we see not only the major form of commercial traffic, but the most obviously unnecessary.  Apart from lorries being forced into use as a result of our railways being unfit for purpose, we also have the necessity of speed, superseding efficiency. 

In commerce today speed is all important, as a result of the need for money to fast flow.  Interest has to be paid on all business transactions. Any delay on payment due to time spent in transit, is money lost.  It would be impossible to calculate the amount of money lost by a gridlock or any hold up of traffic. 

Take a look at just one item to see the gross extravagance of commercial freight on the roads.  In Devon we buy in Tesco, bottles of drinking water, imported from Scotland, and from the continent etc.  And from Devon we export bottles of drinking water all over Britain.  Notice, for example, on a busy motorway, huge lorries loaded with timber, passing each other in opposite directions.  If we had rational logistics determining the volume of commercial traffic, those gridlocks could vanish. 

But we could do far, far better than that by introducing reason to the advertising industry.  We spend billions and billions of pounds on advertising in order to create a desire for what is not needed or wanted.  The purpose is to create a demand in order to create work; to create employment and to make production financially viable, whilst using credit as currency and to pay interest on every penny that is ever spent, when using credit as our means of exchange.  Calling “credit” “money”, makes money unfit for purpose. Sound and sensible economics are impossible.  Result gridlocked roads and worse. Interest is paid annually or monthly or by the clock as well as the calendar. Interest is time added to money and makes time expensive.

Using expensive time in commerce has created the rat race and made leisure very expensive.