How much would you be willing to shell out per liter before you seriously thought ‘enough’ – and had to find alternative transport?

£2

Since I’ve never owned a car, I’ll say about £1982.

Never, I brew my own petrol.

£10

I’ve stopped driving (campervan for sale…) just use wifes car and cycle everywhere i need to go.

surely its a gradual thing? At £5 a litre I’d probably use public transport for, say, going to see my mates, but not for surf or bike trips as the car is too convenient. at £20/litre I’d probably not use it at all

Considering I can’t get to work other than driving, at the point I would be ‘better off’ on the dole.

I’ve stopped driving (campervan for sale…) just use wifes car and cycle everywhere i need to go.

haha – so your missus pays for your driving? I should try that one.

I’ve bought a moped, a monkey and a copy of ‘Foxy Primate’.

Getting the results into the tank is proving to be the problem.
Any ides?

I use me bike mainly. But to play devil’s advocate I do see people around here still driving short distances to get to the local shops for odds and sods or the takeaway. Once I start to see fewer journeys and people walking/biking more then it is obviously still too cheap.

i’ll buy a 50cc scooter first with 100mpg…

Well, seeing as it seems to have been dropping steadily for the last few months I’d say arround 80p?

I don’t think petrol tax is neciceraly the way foreward though, I’d be more likely to ditch the car if the road tax was £300 rather than the 4p/litre tax rise next year which for me equates to about the same thing (42mpg petrol, 20000miles/year, £200 tax).

Once I start to see fewer journeys and people walking/biking more then it is obviously still too cheap.

People don’t see it that way though. Sure it’s £60 to fill it up but then journeys just happen, there’s no payment at source. Not like a train or bus journey where it costs each time. Therefore people are almost conditioned to a once-per-month payment of £60 (or whatever) and then they can use it as much as they like, they just don’t think about the individual cost of that journey.

Seem to remember Sustrans asking this question in a survey a few years ago. If my memory serves me correctly it was £4 per litre before the majority of people would start to change their behaviour.

It’s a bit like an addiction really, no matter how poor you are you’ll always find money for tobacco if you smoke, if you’ve got a car you’ll always find money for fuel…

when it costs £20p a mile to run a diesel I might think about saying enough.

Thats £2.50 a litre.

It costs me no more to run my diesel per mile now than it did my petrol car at the tunr of the century

i’ll buy a 50cc scooter first with 100mpg…

Mines a 125cc- no idea what the MPG is but it’s £8 to fill it up and it’ll last me 5 days if i travel the 30miles to and from the city every day.
Now that makes public transport look ridiculous!

Of course i could just cycle for free, but im not superman 😆

I already ration car use. Went without all summer so am kind of out of the habit – walked to the supermarket last weekend on remote control, didn’t event think to take the car. One tank of petrol per month, although it may get more use once the snow comes and they stop the buses around my way.

i’ll buy a 50cc scooter first with 100mpg…

This.

thisisnotaspoon – Member
Well, seeing as it seems to have been dropping steadily for the last few months I’d say arround 80p?

Has it? Not round my way, it hasn’t.
It stabilised for a while at 137.9p for diesel but has started creeping up again in the past 2 weeks or so. The recent increase is obviously due to the massive increase in demand bought about by the unseasonably cold winter & onset of freezing conditions……..erm, oh. Hang on a moment…

Would have to do some more sums, but I am starting to look for a job nearer to home. The aim is to find something within 10 miles and cycle, although halving my journey would make a significant saving (about 50%!) and would allow me to plough more money into paying off the mortgage!

Has it? Not round my way, it hasn’t.

Well I’m paying 130.5 at a shell garage (Guisborough) for petrol at the moment, and apparently it’s even cheeper in Wokingham. It was 134.9 for ASDA Petrol in June.

As for the original question, it would have to double to cost me as much in petrol as it does in train fares to get from Saltburn to Wokingham.

Plus I can fill the car with as many bikes/bags/stuff as I like where the trian liits me to what I can cary.

i’m lucky that my job comes with a free train pass so i use that to get about on, or cycle to work. great where i live as i’m blessed with a large train network but if i was back living in the Lakes, i’d find it hard to not have a car and just cycle but i’d be sure to give it a try.

i’m car-less now but my old POLO was pretty good on fuel 😕 however my V70 used to cost me like, £80 to fill it up and i only got about 400miles out of a tank 😯 . miss it but kinda glad it got written off when it did as i guess it would be a bugger to sell on now.

I already cycle to work but I’m starting to think the Civic type-r was an ambitious purchase. I love the car, but christ it can drink fuel!

For me it would have to make the use of public transport and taxis seem cheap enough that I would also put up with the extra hassle of having to use them. I’ve no idea. We currently fill up so infrequently that I’d have thought it would need to be 3 times what it is now before it became a genuine concern. I’m not really feeling the direct effects of fuel prices through car use. Heating the 4 bed victorian house is starting to get painful though…

I share a car with my partner, neither of us drive to work and we do around 4000 miles a year.

It’s still cheaper to drive my 2.8l V6 Golf than go by train, so I’d say Petrol has got a way to go yet before I give up the car.. Plus there’s no train stop at any trail centre I’ve been to yet!

About £1 per litre.
I’ve been commuting mainly by bike for 18 months now.

I still use my car when I have to but the thing can be sat on the drive for 4-5 days without being moved no problem.

I’d like to get rid altogether but that’s proving harder than anticipated.

No choice for me commute by car and the alternative is a 3 change rail trip that takes around two hours each way. It would have to get to around triple what it is before I thought long and hard about getting a role nearer home.

I have been lucky enough to have my office relocated 11 miles from my house. This menas I can now ride 11 miles of disused railway line all the way the front door of the new office! I just need lights!

Tbh £1 did it for me…

Don’t really know to be fair as there is no viable alternative where I live, granted there’s a train station 1/2 mile from my front door but it costs too much to get anywhere and unless I want to ride from a train station to a trail there’s no chance of using it.

Getting to Wales would be a lengthy, time consumign & very restrictive process.

So probably not, and the fact I gt my fuel for work paid for it doesn’t really matter

Train is the quickest way for me to commute: 5 min walk to the station, 30 min journey then 10 min walk at the other end. Total: 45 mins
That’s £7.90 return 😯 (OK, so it’s peak time).

Driving can take anywhere between 35 mins and 2hrs depending on traffic, time of day etc. It’s 20 miles each way so 40 miles (part city, part motorway) in a 1.9L TD is going to be about 1 gallon at best so 4.5L at 139.9/litre = £6.30 return.

Biking (15 miles cos it’s a different route to driving) takes an hour and is free. Although biking seems to have just cost me a new set of wheels and tyres at £200!

Anyone get a copy of ‘Bike’ magazine in the late summer (that’s the motorcycle one)? They had a big feature about petrol price and supply. According to those in the know it’ll be sometime in 2015 that demand will outstrip available supply and that’s when we’ll see the serious price hikes.

I view costs in terms of what my gross income would need to be to cover them, e.g. a £50 tank of fuel needs me to earn (gross) £100.

On this basis, my fuels costs take up around 10% of my gross salary. That feels plenty – 15% would start to pinch. 20% would be way to much.

I have a feeling, however, that people will cut back elsewhere before they materially alter their driving habits. What crazylegs said is true:

journeys just happen, there’s no payment at source.

Thing is don’t trains / buses etc… use diesel too? So as the fuel increases for personal use it will also increase for public transport and thus pretty much staying roughly the same ratio?

when it costs £20p a mile to run a diesel I might think about saying enough.

Thats £2.50 a litre.
That’s around 15 litres/mile – fkme what do you drive, a battleship?

It’d have to be about £5 a litre before it would be cheaper for me to use public transport to get to work. About £2 a litre would push me onto a bike full time, with some gritted teeth.

at the moment i am trying to avoid using the car any more than i have to, ramping upto commuting by bike 5 days a week, currently on 3-4 a week.

changed the car from a larger diesel to a smaller petrol, which won’t save fuel costs, but is cheaper to insure and lower tax, and should be cheaper to service.

Thinking about going to afan at the weekend but then the thought of how much it is going to cost is disuading me somewhat.

Another 50p or so and I will look at the train again. That or use a bike for half the journey. I’d like to cycle the whole journey but I’m not sure a 70 mile round trip each way is a good idea.

How much is it now?

Plus there’s no train stop at any trail centre I’ve been to yet!

afan: get the train to port talbot, and then follow the cycle path all the way to afans doorstep, about a 20 minute ride.
cwm carn: train to newport then change for crosskeys. then its about 15 minutes by bike if i remember.