28 April 2003
Digging for the fantasy figures
There is a disappointing lack of fantasy in most parts of the current Norwich Area Transportation Strategy review document.
One would normally look to this kind of thing for all sorts of bizarre pronouncements, but sadly it seems to be quite sensible in the main, though a bit short on urgency and solid solutions.
But the fantasy is there if you know where to look for it.
It is not in the statistics for vehicle use in Norwich which, despite talk of expanding car journeys, reveal that the number of vehicles crossing the inner ring road during the day have fallen quite substantially since 1989 – down from 105,264 to 89,225. For the outer ring road the figures are slightly up on 1995, but slightly down on 1998 and 2001.
But this doesn’t quite tie in with the Future Travel Patterns section, which states that “businesses and individuals are travelling more often”. No doubt they are travelling somewhere else.
And right here is where we find the fantasy, subtly contained in the forecast figures for the projected growth in the number of trips in Norwich.
Compared to the figures for 1996, there will apparently be a 98pc increase in walking by 2006. This hops to an amazing 99pc by 2011, which presumably means that while there was a huge step forward for mankind in the first 10 years, there will for some reason be only a one per cent increase in the following five years.
Strange, Holmes. But what about cyclists? Even stranger. The figure in each case here is 99pc, which presumably means that cycling will have almost doubled in 10 years, but won’t increase at all in the next five years.
Something odd going on here. What are they keeping from us?
Perhaps it’s not so much what they’re keeping from us as what they’re trying to sell us. Interesting that the figure for cycling is 99pc and not 100pc or 101pc. That’s what I call precision forecasting. Can it be coincidence that the figure for cars (despite the fall noticed earlier) is predicted highest at 113pc and 120pc?
I don’t know who produced these figures, but it is disappointing in the arena of fantasy to see such a sad lack of imagination. They are all far too close together. Let me see now, I predict that in the next 10 years there will be 58pc more walking, 33pc more cycling and 25pc more motoring.
There will also be a 150pc increase in the number of percentages plucked out of the air by planners and a two per cent likelihood of any of them being anywhere near the truth.
I think you’ll find that’s pretty much spot on.
So that’s where they went . . .
Regular readers of this page are both observant and concerned citizens. One anonymous gentleman from Lowestoft , for instance, is worried about the small number of sensible cyclists on the road.
He writes: “True, there are youngsters on mountain bikes using pedestrianised areas as slalom practice grounds – which is highly entertaining to people laden with shopping or endeavouring to control a buggy and two other children simultaneously – but where are those we could call, for lack of a better term, normal cyclists who tend, among other things, to be law-abiding?”
The answer is a little surprising, he suggests. It is to be found in “those little rectangular blue Cyclists Dismount signs that you find in the most unlikely places”.
These are purely advisory signs, but many cyclists follow their advice. Unfortunately, my correspondent points out that there is no such thing as a Cyclists Remount sign.
This inevitably means that most law-abiding cyclists get off their bikes and never get on again. Another mystery solved.
Shutting the barn door after the house is gone
I have lost count of the number of readers who have been concerned about the frequent absence of Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 104, from this page. I think it was one, or maybe two.
But there are good reasons.
One is Mr Houseago’s concern that a new, younger leader is needed to counter the insidious campaign of great crested newts to distort and degrade civilisation as we know it.
He feels that the newts have become so adept at disguising themselves that he can no longer cope.
This decision followed a distressing incident when he attacked a small owl near Wimbotsham.
But the main reason is his fear that the newts will somehow expose another embarrassing mistake, which occurred when he attempted a barn conversion, which he had been told was a fashionable thing to do.
The work took some months, and visiting friends became more and more mystified as it progressed.
No one said anything, however, until Len ‘Kissme’ Hardy dropped by. In his usual forthright style, he broached what he saw as a major flaw in the project.
“I think what you have here is a major misunderstanding of a rather basic detail,” he said.
“And what would that be?” inquired Mr Houseago.
“The idea is that you convert a barn into a house. You appear to have converted your house into a barn.”
Mr Houseago is not available for comment.
Waitrees mystery
My occasional comments on the misuse of English never fail to provoke a response from readers.
Shop notices are a frequent ground of complaint: one chip shop in Yarmouth , for instance, worried one reader with its “Wanted Waitrees” in the window.
What exactly this means is open to debate. Does it mean customers, or is it a type of potato? We may never know.
What we do know, however, is that in the language of shopkeepers there is no such thing as a potato.
There are usually lots of them, in which case they are potato’s, or in the rare case when there is just one, it is a potatoe.
Another reader argues that this is perfectly permissible, because it is in a different language: greengrocer’s English. I rather like this idea. If there were an A-level in it, results could improve dramatically.
Fun? Try reading the story
The campaign to convert the Easter period from a Christian festival into another boring shopping opportunity continued apace this year.
But used as we all are to this kind of thing, I must admit I was taken aback by the invitation from a local shop to partake in “all the fun of Good Friday” at their emporium.
I wonder what fun they could have been referring to: would it be the betrayal, the angry mob, the torture or the agonising death?
All four, perhaps.