Viewing 17 posts - 41 through 57 (of 57 total)
  • Has anyone given up their car/driving ?
  • IanMunro
    Free Member

    Blimey cp, £1000 a year is pretty good to cover fuel, insurance, tax, mot, and depreciation.
    What it it?

    cp
    Full Member

    pug 205 diesel 🙂

    av. 45mpg on a bad day (i.e. just round town), 60+mpg on a motorway run 🙂 servicing i do myself, and it get’s fixed on the cheap when it needs it. will run on recycled vege oil too in the summer (not tried it in the winter!!)

    goes like a tank, and happily carries 2 people, 2 bikes and enough kit for a weekend inside!

    Harryburgundy
    Free Member

    Gave up car ownership about a year ago. Can be a bit of a pain now and again but it was/is somehow liberating knowing I don’t have to worry about MOT/Tax/ Repairs let alone filling the thing up with petrol.

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    Gary_M
    Free Member

    I don’t understand this huge amount of food people are consuming because they commute by bike. How many miles is your commute that makes you need so many extra calories. My commute is 20 miles each way and the only extra thing I eat when I do it is 2 home made fruit and nut bars, which costs about 20p. Apart from that its just normal consumption.

    I can kind of understand it if you’ve just started communting by bike and you think you need the extra fuel. Everyone is different I suppose but it’s certainly not that way for me.

    Are you ‘hungry commuters’ eating a decent breakfast?

    darrell
    Free Member

    we have a family car that the missus uses to get to work. we live in the arse-end of nowhere at the end of a fjord in Norway so she cant get to work by public transport. it costs about 100.00 quid a month for fuel. and cars in Norway cost x2 or x3 the price in the UK and can have up to approx 100% tax on them when bought new. our car is a 2003 1.4 golf estate and cost us about 12,000 pound one year ago. EEK. I’m a bit luckily in that there is a little island hopper ferry that i can catch from our village to nearby my job. But when the missus starts to sprog out (next year is the plan) we may need to get another car.

    juan
    Free Member

    Gary in soton I use to live right by the uni so decent breakfast on the morning cooked meal for lunch and usually salad or greens for dinner

    Was taking regular exercise, judo once a week, climbing once or twice a week and mtb once or twice a week.

    I was around 62.6-62.8 kg.

    I started commuting 20 minutes each way. At the beginning I was hungry almost all the time. I give you I had to lighten my breakfast in order not to puck on the bike. But still fruit juice, a tea and some toast. So I had to eat more to stop being hungry. I started with healthy stuff. After a few weeks I had lost 2.5 kg so I had to eat less healthy more fatty food to try to gain some weight back…

    Don’t ask me why the only way I found to stop loosing weight was:
    to move 2 milles closer and eat a full bag off sweets and some brownies/cookies on the top of the meals.

    Gary_M
    Free Member

    You’re honestly that hungry after riding for 20 minutes?

    juan
    Free Member

    yes but then I don’t pootle…

    cp
    Full Member

    it doesnt take much to get me hungry too. i consume a lot of food just idle, and loads when i’m exercising – it’s the only way i can actually maintain weight!

    Gary_M
    Free Member

    So how many miles is it juan?

    juan
    Free Member

    No idea let me google

    juan
    Free Member

    Around 5 milles. With almost no flats

    rustydub
    Free Member

    I went from having 2 cars and a motorbike to 1 car almost 2 years ago now.
    I had to surrender my driving licence on medical grounds, the result was my company car went back (luckily I lost no money on that) and sold my motorbike (bought it from new, intended keeping it, but ended up loosing lots due to the economic downturn and the general lack of people willing to spend big money). My wife needs her car for her work so selling that was never an option.
    I was left then cycling everywhere, not a problem as it helped me recover from my illness. I also used to get lifts with my wife iff desperate.
    I really did think I would be happy never driving again, so many benefits of cycling 100+ miles in a week, and I feel that I have never been fitter.
    However, I could see my current job comming to an end, so re-applied for my driving licence last year, finally recieved it about a month ago. Working on the Idea that I might find alternative work easier with a driving licence.
    Put off driving until this week when I thought that the longer I put it off, the harder it would be to drive again. Did 20ish miles no problem.
    Yesterday we went and put a deposit on a nice T4 vw camper, planning on paying for it with my redundancy money due the end of this month.
    Having a bike rack fitted on it 😀
    So yes i have given up my car/ driving and yes I can live without a car.
    But life can be better with one, it does give you more options.

    BigDummy
    Free Member

    OMITN – a great hack for towing a second bike in this bloke’s flickr stream:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/29934139@N03/3283137895/in/photostream/

    🙂

    MrSalmon
    Free Member

    Never owned one. I rent them occasionally and have been thinking vaguely about the Whizzgo scheme, but I do have riding friends with cars I can scab off! Like others though it’s a no-brainer for me as I don’t have kids and live reasonably centrally.

    I second what somebody said earlier about losing the car and just hiring being a sensible choice for more people than would consider it.

    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    OMITN – a great hack for towing a second bike

    Interesting idea, but sadly not ideal. The first thing you posted is better, as it keeps the wheels off the ground. It’s really frowned on to use tyres on the track that have been used outdoors (bring in flints and filth).

    Ideally, what I need is something that can carry the bike without having to detach either of the wheels – not sure I want a track bike which has the front wheel bolted and unbolted all the time.

    Evidently, I have to get on with this Xtracycle conversion and then put together a trailer just for transporting bikes. Wonder what the badlands of east Manchester will make of all that….

    NWAlpsJeyerakaBoz
    Free Member

    ‘total cost of car use is at least 40p a mile’

    I dont see how you can put a figure on how much per mile, there are so many variables to affect the figure.

    I worked out for my 1.25 Fiesta, over a 5 year period, works out to be roughly 20p per mile. But then i didnt buy the car new…

Viewing 17 posts - 41 through 57 (of 57 total)

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