Interesting online talk yesterday evening by Professor Lesley Lewis on "The Downs–Thompson Paradox & its Impact on Bristol, Bath & Other Cities".  There are several paradoxes there - including the one that says that if you increase road capacity for private cars, all you do is provide for more cars and nothing actually speeds up.

Prof. Lewis emphasised how car-centric Bristol is with the average number of bus journeys made by residents being 50 per year (25 return trips) and compared to Strasbourg where numbers used to be similar, but with improved public transport (trams) they are up to over 300 journeys.  And certainly from our visit to Strasbourg a couple of months ago, good to see busy trams and - where we were - no noticeable road congestion.   Really busy city centre too.

Timing and speeding up transit time was emphasised as one of the keys to getting significant modal shift to buses; in Bristol, though, buses get stuck in traffic, aren't very frequent, and average speed is brought right down by loading / ticket checking time. 

Lots of good stuff in the talk - though hard to follow due to the various technical issues with the session.   Were any other member on there?