This and particularly this bit

By encouraging people to drive everywhere, we have created a nation of obese, unfit and unhealthy people

got me wondering how much does driving everywhere actually add to the obesity epidemic [tm] (Ignoring that councillor dobson for the moment, who sounds like a bit of a tool) It definitely sounds like a factor but anyone suggested how much? If we depended on public transport people would presumably live closer to work and out of town shopping probably wouldn’t be such a big thing but would they still walk/cycle or would they catch the bus/tram/conveyor belt* instead? Surely over eating and lack of getting of your arse in your free time are larger parts of the obesity thing, rather than just your method of travel….?

OTOH I reckon I’d be a few pounds heavier if I didn’t cycle to work but it would still be easier for me to catch a train than drive to work so that’s me choosing the active option rather than a car/public transport thing.

Thoughts anyone?

*what improvements might we have seen in public transport if car was not seen as the pinnacle of transport around here?

what is free time? i ride as much as i do because i ride to and from work. Plenty of people i know have gym memberships, but once you get home after work can’t be arsed to go out again.

You need to make excercise part of daily life not something you go to.

read somewhere that consumed calories is actually lower than 50-100 years ago, but work is far more sedentary.

Very few buses go from the front door of where you are to the front door of where you want to go. There’s a bit of walking involved. Only a bit but a lot of people will do virtually nothing so walking a mile will be a big change for them.

a detail, buses work best in areas with high density housing, If you look at a lot of continental towns with flats/apartments, compare with suburbia in the UK. Public transport works far better for the former rather than the later.

The Daily Mail provides the historical context

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2176971/1950s-housewives-kept-slim-burning-calories-housework.html

Agree with mrmo, surely it isn’t the method of getting to work that is the problem it is more that when we get there all we do is sit around surfing the web. There is a lot less hidden exercise involved in daily life than there used to be.

Very few buses go from the front door of where you are to the front door of where you want to go. There’s a bit of walking involved. Only a bit but a lot of people will do virtually nothing so walking a mile will be a big change for them.

We had a launch do for an Air Ambulance last week. I was trying to keep the car park as clear as possible for the guests. One lady arrived who worked on site, and refused to park literally 30m further than normal as it was too far to walk. In total she would have had to walk around 130m to her work place. I was a bit lost for words. It wasn’t even like she had anything to carry.

Very few buses go from the front door of where you are to the front door of where you want to go.

but if cars weren’t so prolific we’d have better public transport, something would fill that transport gap don’t you think? There would still be a bit of walking involved but less than you would have to do today i reckon.

One lady arrived who worked on site, and refused to park literally 30m further than normal as it was too far to walk

sounds more on the money, the “I have a car which means I get to drive from door to door” sense of entitlement, bad in more than just the exercise stakes.

You need to make excercise part of daily life not something you go to.

amen.

Plenty of roadies around where I live but not to many seem to do the commute to work thing, they all seem to have flash cars, buses are a no go as there’s only two per week which I think is so the old people can get some shopping.

You need to make excercise part of daily life not something you go to.

This is the important bit. I know quite a few people who work within an easy cycle, yet insist on driving there, and also pay for an expensive gym membership. Madness!

I reckon I’d be a few pounds heavier if I didn’t cycle to work but it would still be easier for me to catch a train than drive to work so that’s me choosing the active option rather than a car/public transport thing.

As bails says, you choosing to take the train would still be an “active option” compared to the car, as presumably you’d need to walk to/from the train station and probably up and down some stairs at the stations.

Okay you wouldn’t benefit as much as going by bike, but you’d still burn more calories than stumbling five yards to the car, sitting on your bum, then stumbling another ten yards to the office.

In total she would have had to walk around 130m to her work place. I was a bit lost for words. It wasn’t even like she had anything to carry.

At my office I’d say 99.9% of folk use the lift, even young able-bodied folk who are only going up one floor.

Mind you, it is quite amusing watching them all wheeze down the stairs when the fire alarm goes off. 😀

There is a direct correlation between my weight/waistline and the purchase of a car (steady increase a little bit each year). Then when we went down to being a one car family there is a gradual decline in weight/waist – because on dry days I walk to work (about 1.5 miles), and if it is raining I take the bus but that still involves at least 300 m of walking I didn’t get when I drove. At the weekend or evening I am more likely to walk somewhere with the kids than bundle them in the back of the car.

That is without trying to loose weight or be more active – it was simply about the economics of a second car!

Interestingly I have a genetically identical reference experiment running elsewhere in the country. Whilst certainly not scientific, he was slightly later buying a first car and delayed the resulting weight gain, but he is still a 2 car owner and not seen any weight loss!

I lose about a kilo cycling to work and back for a week (6 miles each way) for the last 3 weeks. Which is wierd as doing 2×30 or 1×60 miles at the weekend I’d maintained a steady weight for years.

I don’t think anything will get people out of cars though;

– Petrol is already expensive, car’s cost as much as a house deposit
– Roads (in the South East at least) are horribly congested. I spent 18 months in Teesside before coming back to Berkshire and I just can’t get used to sitting nose to tail for miles on end!

At my office I’d say 99.9% of folk use the lift, even young able-bodied folk who are only going up one floor.

In our office they gave mars bars as a reward for people taking the “safe” option and using the lifts! I’ve never seen anyone trip on the stairs but it must have been deemed an unaceptable risk by someone!

One lady arrived who worked on site, and refused to park literally 30m further than normal as it was too far to walk

Which in my mind is insane, if i drive to the supermarket i am the person who parks in the furthest corner because i don’t want some **** swinging there door open into the side of my car.

I think it’s a combination of easier and cheaper access to sugar and a more sedentry working life.

I’ve certainly noticed I have a lot less energy than I used to have when I was doing more active work and that equates to eating more and doing less, i.e. putting on weight.

I don’t like that, so I exercise.

Most of my car miles are mountainbike trips.

If it wasn’t for the car I can’t see how the mountainbike wouldn’t have been invented.

Trains and buses appear to be full of fat people.

– Petrol is already expensive, car’s cost as much as a house deposit

Cars are historically cheap, fuel is cheap. It may not feel like it sometimes, but that is the reality of it. We have just constructed an environment where cars, whilst not vital, make life so much easier. Out of town shopping, business parks etc.

Some pretty stupid decisions made with public transport though. A bus from my place to work in the city center would drop me off at just before 8 or just after 9 and take over an hour to get in. So I can arrive an hour early (having got out of bed far too early), or arrive late. As can anyone else on the same route who works in the city center, ie: lots of people.

So me and pretty much everyone else don’t use the bus.

Also once tried to figure out how use buses to get somewhere across different “zones”. Fighting with their useless web pages, holding several layers of map on ‘mental acetate’ in my mind, and lots of google maps to try and find where cryptically named bus stops actually were, and I never did find out if it could be done.

Stuff like sensible times and a website that allows here -> there queries would get people on buses.

no I am fat because the food industry sells me the wrong products and it is to do with sugars and stuff and NOT ME

This move more thing is all wrong etc if it was that simple…. 😉

TBH the human race is lazy, very lazy, extremely lazy. Ready meals, cars, whatever if there is a quicker easier way to do this we will do this.
My neighbour once drove to the nursery with her kids when I returned from dropping mine off she was parking in her drive with the kids as that was the nearest parking space to the nursery- less than 100 m away…this is how lazy we are

Recommended exercise is a walk of 30 minutes a few times a week.
We have to eat only 5 fruit and veg per day and almost no one achieves both of these simple aims

In our office they gave mars bars as a reward for people taking the “safe” option and using the lifts!

I have owned cars for 15 years, I am not fat
I have lived in areas with rubbish public transport , I am not fat
If I was though it would probably be easier to look for somebody to blame than do something about it.

Plenty of people i know have gym memberships, but once you get home after work can’t be arsed to go out again.

Ahh… the gym..

Petrol is already expensive, car’s cost as much as a house deposit

I just bought a car (Passat) with 12-months MOT for £500. Even the air-con works properly.

– Petrol is already expensive,

Not really. Beer in town costs about £30 / Gallon (and it brewed in the same town)

Petrol is a bit over £6 / Gallon, and it come all the way from the Middle East.

car’s cost as much as a house deposit

An expensive car is as much as a deposit on a very inexpensive house.

A lot of people here will have multiple bikes, and one of those bikes cost a lot more than a cheap but decent car.

i ride as much as i do because i ride to and from work. Plenty of people i know have gym memberships, but once you get home after work can’t be arsed to go out again.

You need to make excercise part of daily life not something you go to.
Agree with this 100%! Cycling to work has given me the fitness to do and enjoy epics at the weekend. If it wasn’t for commuting I probably would never have had the motivation to get properly fit.

read somewhere that consumed calories is actually lower than 50-100 years ago, but work is far more sedentary.

This can’t be right though surely. 50-100 years ago you couldn’t buy 3L bottles of Fanta, or a “meal” in Burger King that contained all the calories you needed for an entire day but didn’t fill you up.

IMO in 99% of cases where people are overweight it’s down to greed/overeating. Exercise/activity increases the amount of calories you need every day, but if you go over that amount you’re still gonna get fat!

What people forget about the cost of fuel, is that whilst it has risen in the last few years, so has the average fuel economy of cars. So it’s really not costing any more in real terms than it was 15 years ago.

I know quite a few people who work within an easy cycle, yet insist on driving there, and also pay for an expensive gym membership. Madness!

The problem is – gyms, exercise DVDs, personal trainers and zumba classes have marketing budgets. ‘Walking’ doesn’t. Its by far the most effective (and interesting) way to stay healthy but the idea of walking around is drowned out by campaigns to make excecise appear to be something that is difficult, complicated and requires drive and commitment, equipment and a change of clothes (and usually a direct debit). Us keen recreational cyclists (as opposed to what should be a more common breed of transportational cyclist on a cheap bike) are as much a part of that problem as anything else. Most of our number here will cycle as something to do, not as a way of getting somewhere.

car’s cost as much as a house deposit

autotrader has 171 cars <£1000 with in 10miles of work 🙂

klumpy yeah some train/bus times seem pretty weird, almost designed to put you off, maybe if they did a service that got everyone to work on time it would get swamped so they do too early and too late to even it out? I use this around manchester, works well for trains dunno how well the bus bit works or other parts of the country.

Anyway my point was if cars didn’t exist surely public transport would become so good door to door that we’d still get fatty bum bums. And as junkyard says humans do seem to be lazy, (I ride to work so I use lifts all day) So barring another world war or technological breakdown and everyone is back down the pit/onto the farms and other manual work, is obesity inevitable?

I think it would make a difference. In London I see people walking all over the place. 20 mins at each end, 1h20 of walking every day makes a big difference compared to sitting down all the time.

The problem with public transport in the UK is that it’s run as a business instead of a public service. So in low density population areas it’s not viable, so it gets cut back.

Cheers Thatch.

if cars didn’t exist surely public transport would become so good door to door

when cars didn’t exist (in any practical quantity for the purpose of mass commuting) buses and trains didn’t leave from outside your front door. People just lived where they worked. Factories and houses were built as part of the same development.

When Ms Maccruiskeen’s dad got his first job after leaving the navy the foreman pointed to the houses being built across the road from the factory and pointed to one plot and said – thats your house there Bill. And 60 years later it still is.

Very few buses go from the front door of where you are to the front door of where you want to go.

but if cars weren’t so prolific we’d have better public transport, something would fill that transport gap don’t you think? There would still be a bit of walking involved but less than you would have to do today i reckon.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying that as a criticism of public transport, just pointing out that even sitting on a bus usually involves more work than sitting in a car, hence public transport=active transport (relative to private car journeys). It’s a good thing, IMO, not a criticism.

But I agree, more demand would mean better public transport. But that demand will never grow in the current environment. The private car is the safest, quickest, cheapest, easiest option for the vast majority of people on the vast majority of their journeys.

When Ms Maccruiskeen’s dad got his first job after leaving the navy the foreman pointed to the houses being built across the road from the factory and pointed to one plot and said – thats your house there Bill. And 60 years later it still is.

Sounds terrible.

The thing is, people’s expectations have changed in 60 years. Now a lot of people want to move around, do different jobs, and live in different places. I think this is a good thing.

because much of our transport infrastucture has been built around cars, it actively discourages walking.

Going across town is easier by car than walking in many places….walking routes are indirect and longwinded, you have to wait for permission from motorists to cross. Many parents are afraid to let their children walk to school even when they live close as “the traffic is too dangerous”, so they drive them. The default position for much of society has become take the car because it is percieved as convenient, even for short trips which could be done just as fast or faster by bike or on foot.

To get away from this you have to design communities and urban spaces for people rather than for vehicles, ensuring the direct easy and safe route to school, or into town or to the hospital or supermarket is by foot or by bike, and the long winded convoluted route is by car.

The problem with public transport in the UK is that it’s run as a business instead of a public service. So in low density population areas it’s not viable, so it gets cut back.

When I am made Emperor all public transport will be state-owned, non-profit, ubiquitous, and completely free at point of use.

Citizen, why take the car when bus is free and doesn’t take 20 minutes to park?

Citizen, why take the car when bus is free and doesn’t take 20 minutes to park?

If it takes you 20mins to park a car I would suggest you should stick to public transport.

I can think of nothing worse than a public transport system organised by the bureaucrats, I’m guessing great service between their streets and their offices 🙂

Sounds terrible.

depends on th ejob and the house tbh

Do you really think people would choose to commute the distances they do if they could just cross the road to get to work [ all other thing being equal]

Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying that as a criticism of public transport,

oh yeah I know, thing is there are places that are useless for public transport, my sister lives in cornwall, she used to have something like a 50min walk to the nearest stop and pretty sure the bus timetables round there are printed on calendars, in large print.

I’m always amazed at how much of an assumption of laziness there is. I cycle to work two days a week and drive the other three. I have free parking in the multi storey over the road from the office. My boss is currently on holiday and our secretary asked whether I was using her parking space in the basement while she’s away. Does she really think I’m so lazy that I can’t walk across the road?

And don’t get me started on the annual free BBQ that I never get to find out about in time to get a ticket because the only place they advertise it is in the lifts…

I think it would make a difference. In London I see people walking all over the place. 20 mins at each end, 1h20 of walking every day makes a big difference compared to sitting down all the time.

Which is a large contributor as to why central London consistently comes bottom or near bottom in surveys of U.K. obesity rates. It has amongst the lowest levels of car ownership,(Source: RAC) people tend to use the tube or bus and that involves a lot of walking.

Yes, higher incomes, the younger population etc all make an impact but the way Londoners get around is easily as, if not more important.

If it takes you 20mins to park a car I would suggest you should stick to public transport.

Ever been to Edinburgh mike? 😀

Not 20 minutes actually doing the parking manoeuvre, mind.
I mean 20 minutes crawling around looking for a free space within a mile of where you want to be.