US Stop signs get subvertised

New US style Stop signs have been put up in Sheffield and some have been subvertised already. Why we need US style signs at all is a mystery but I suppose if wasn't for the master race we'd all be living under Saddam Hussain by now. The least we can do is perhaps show our gratitude so that when visitors from the Motherland come over they feel a bit more at home. Wouldn't want them getting confused with the ol' British circular Stop sign would we.

Anyway, whatever the reason for yet another top down imposition of US culture, someone has got their act together and made these handy stickers. While not wanting to take away from this cool idea I do think it's worth thinking about why so many people do use cars. The plain and simple fact is that our transport infrastructure has been totally set up for car use and with the resurrection of the government's roads building program will be even more so too in the future.

In another part of Sheffield I recently saw a billboard for Midland Mainline, the train company that runs between Sheffield and London. This billboard was advertising train fares to London for only £20. Having used this train service I know this claim is very misleading. You can't just turn up at the station with £20 and expect to go to London. If you want a return fare it's £40 which is more than the average car would use in petrol for the journey there and back. If you had more than one person in your car then the saving would be considerable. But worse than that is all the special rules that apply to get a train ticket at this 'special' price.

First you have to book your train ticket in advance. This itself is a pain as it means you have make an extra journey to the station just to buy your ticket. But that's not the worse bit. Once booked you have to go at the exact time and day it says on the ticket. If you want to leave earlier or later you can't unless you pay extra. How much extra? I found out on one trip from London where a girl nearby found she had bordered a train just one hour earlier than the one she was supposed to be on. The officious ticket conductor told her she either had to get off at the next stop or pay an extra £20 - the price of the ticket in other words. Finally these so called 'cheap' fares can't even be used on all trains. On one journey from London I was told that if I wanted to get a fast train back from London at the time I wanted to leave the fare would go up to £70!! So I ended up on a slow one that took hours and stopped all over the place.

The problem is the same with the buses. In Sheffield it costs over £1 just to go a couple of miles. This is a massive change since the 80's when the same bus ride would cost 4p. Subsidised transport worked, there were considerably fewer cars on the road.

Cycling can be pretty good for short journeys - certainly faster than any other form of transport when you take parking into consideration. But Sheffield is particularly crap for bike lanes too. Apart from a few token lines painted on the ground there are few real cycle lanes. I've met many people who would bike it but don't feel safe on the overcrowded, polluted streets that are jammed up with frustrated drivers of cars, buses and lorries.

So it's not surprising that, despite the environmental damage done by cars, so many people still use them. The alternatives we have at the moment are crap.

I like the spirit of the 'Stop driving' stickers but I hope this doesn't lead too much to activists laying the blame primarily with the motorists. If our transport infrastructure was different there is no doubt that a lot less people would use their cars - experience of Sheffield in the eighties proves it. And it doesn't take a genius to imagine a perfectly functional transport system with no cars at all.