Forum menu
Z11, they having been farming sheep for millenia, cars have been around for a hundred or so years and in the mass market for a few decades.
Remove cars people will adapt. end of. You may not like the adapation but you will cope.
Mrmo - yep, no problem, if we really want people to go back to victorian standards of living, education and health, then thats great.
Do you recall Hannah Hauxwell?
Do you really want to impose that sort of lifestyle on people in the UK in the 21st century?
You may not like it but if we don't sort out personal transport then that is where we are going.
I dont think anyone here is under any illusion that we have to reduce energy consumption, we take that as a given. Whats under disussion is the time scales i guess. TJ, forgive me but you did say ramp up the cost of petrol/diesel to £5 a litre over 10 years. I dont believe 10 years is enough to implement an alternative. Look at the proposed high speed train service, HS2. As a concept began around 2009, if it gets the go ahead, its proposed to open around 2018.
You mentioned about cars that are capable of 100mpg, with rising fuel costs i suspect manufacture would be quick to respond, maybe a car capable of 200mpg? or 300mpg? Rasing the fuel cost wouldn't have stopped people from using their car less, just made them ditch there un-economical car for new car. You'd be back to generating the same tax from fuel as before, but then have to deal with the scrapping of the un-economical vehicles.
Trains - rail network is at capacity - trains are pretty much rammed at commuter times so you need more trains which means more track and routes.
Actually the way to increase train capacity isn't by building new tracks its by adding more cars to each train. There's a surprising amount of infrastructure upgrade going on at the moment in London at least as its becoming quite obvious that 10 and 12 car trains are coming soon on commuter lines as the platform lengthening works are currently underway. Together with upgraded signalling then capacity increases - its not like building roads you know...
HS2 by 2018?? hahaha! 2025 realistically.
Take the total resources in the world and divide by 9000000000. That's what we should have each.
Small scale subsistence farming, with first world healthcare, for all?
People living in truly rural area's have NO option but personal transport.
Agreed, so rather than shrugging our shoulders we should be looking to subsidise public transport now so these lifestyles are viable for the next 100 years too.
or would rural sheep farmers children be taken into care to ensure they can get an education in your socialist utopia?
My sister grew up in rural Australia, perhaps 15 miles from the school and up a **** off mountain. There was a school bus which picked her up from the end of the lane. I don't think she was ever taken into care 😉
Or we could put our effort into developing and expanding cleaner more efficient forms of personal transport that don't rely on hydrocarbons, instead of trying to turn back the clock to the stone age and restrict peoples liberty and freedom of choice.
move forward, not back.
restrict peoples liberty and freedom of choice
I don't really think that increasing fuel costs to a more sustainable amount is going to do that though, all it is going to do is cause a readjustment in people's lifestyles away from one which is become less appropriate.
My sister and her family live 7 miles away from the nearest small town. They run stupid low mpg cars and complain frequently about the costs of fuel and having to drive everywhere. They are outraged when I tell them to stop moaning and either buy more economical cars or live in town
Most of the rest of Europe seems to have managed to retain subsidised transport
Yes, that's right. However the rest of Europe is a different place. Different population distribution, different patterns of economic activity, different economic and political history.. Doesn't really make sense to compare. Simple geogrpahy in many cases makes a difference.
My sister and her family live 7 miles away from the nearest small town. They run stupid low mpg cars and complain frequently about the costs of fuel and having to drive everywhere
And for another side of the story - my mate when I was in school lived in the village, his parents drove an ancient Fiat 125 that was given to them. His dad was a builder and had to drive to get work when he could. They were living hand-to-mouth. Fuel prices must've really hit them hard.
There is no "Right" Answer just a series of compromises to choose between.
as an environmental measure constantly bumping fuel up above inflation is a reasonably good way of costing excessive use out of peoples reach, you could look at it as a very efficient form of polution tax you will be taxed very highly for every Litre of petrol/Diesel you burn, so think carefully before you burn it...
But lets be honest this isn't motivated by Dave and Nicks Love of polar bears and ice caps, it's all about the money, Tax revenues, it's in their interest to put it just inside your ecconomic reach to own and drive a car to and from work, to the shops, everywhere it puts money in the tresury, doen't win votes though and reduces peoples ability to do other economically useful things like spend on the highstreet, pay their bills or save...
Maybe the solution is not to make petrol expensive but cars Really expensive if you can't afford a vehicle to burn fuel in, you won't buy any fuel, perhaps throw some unreasonable taxes on the puchase of a new or used car for personaly use, a bit like stamp duty... that means the Government can generate revenue passively, they don't do anything to generate it... Yeah I like that one... again though probably not a vote winner is it?
Government investment in alternatives to hydrocarbon fueled Cars is pretty invisible, by alternatives I mean anything from new forms of propultion to better public transport to improved communications technology - anything which reduces the cost and/or polution of a vehicle on the road, or allows people to work and live without the need for putting a vehicle on the road. I suppose the Boris bikes fall under the second heading, does anyone know (per bike), just how many fewer taxi journeys there are now as a result of these? I'm not sure the impact has been epic has it?
Essentially every measure and justification you can consider seems to have equally ecconomically or environmentaly negative outcomes and these days the ecconomic trumps the environmental in most debates... ultimately the status quo chuggs along as if ruffles the least feathers...
Network problems causing double post...
People always say that we can't go backwards, we have to go forwards. But what if we're walking to a cliff? Do we keep going forwards, off the cliff, or do we make a turn, then keep walking forward? I don't think the large scale abandoning of cars would be a backwards step. I think it would be an amazing step forward in a different direction. I don't drive, and never have, so maybe it's easier for me to imagine, especially as I'm still in my mid twenties. I can imagine a world were most journeys are taken by bike, and train for longer ones. I can imagine a world where people chose to live close to friends and family, to their work, where vast retail zones no longer exist. I think too much of the debate here is simply a failure of imagination. Like JTD said, seeing without motor-centric eyes is liberating, terrifying and exciting.
Kim Stanley Robinson's book Pacific Edge [i]presents a California in which ecologically sane, manageable practices have become the norm and the scars of the past are slowly being healed.[/i]
Its a bit folksy but has some quite good ideas in it, and nowhere near as odd as Walden Two...
restrict peoples liberty and freedom of choice.
That cuts both ways - people's liberty and freedom of choice are restricted by the dominance of the car.
Exactly - look at Meyer Hillmann's writing on the way that motor vehicles remove options and quality of life for everyone - even those who do the motoring (even though most of them don't appear to realise it).
I made it to 34 without learning to drive, relying on public transport to get around. It is surprising what you an achieve without a car, but every year things seem to go in the wrong direction, you need somewhere to live no car means you are restricted as to where you can actually link home, work, life together, and being a tenant i am at the mercy of others actions.
Do i wish i didn't have to drive yes, do i think it is possible to do without a car altogether? at the moment the way my life is no.
I can imagine a world where people chose to live close to friends and family, to their work
You don't need to imagine it, just look in the history books. Those were the times when people lived and died in the same town and never got to experience life anywhere else.
I'm not pro-car, don't get me wrong, but many of us would be giving up a hell of a lot to live in the world you describe. We have more than our ancestors did. This is usually a good thing.
The challenge is to have more without wrecking everything - not just do without.
But that's where trains come in. I'm not saying no one should move anywhere ever, just that there might be nicer ways than the motor car.
Or we could put our effort into developing and expanding cleaner more efficient forms of personal transport that don't rely on hydrocarbons, instead of trying to turn back the clock to the stone age and restrict peoples liberty and freedom of choice.
Don't think they had buses in the stone age...
Your solution simply doesn't address the other side of the issue, that personal transport makes it possible to live 50 miles from your workplace. That's not a great situation. We should be asking WHY it takes 3 times longer for certain journeys at certain times and trying to do something about it. I'm in total agreement that ramping petrol to £5 a litre is not the way to achieve this btw.
Trains can help, but as above there's the cost factor.
Remember, when these things were built there was a far greater difference between the rich and the poor. So the rich elite could employ scum for peanuts to do all the backbreaking work, and most people could only afford one trip a year, and then make their money back charging other rich people lots of money.
I made it to 34 without learning to drive, relying on public transport to get around.
I'm 34 and don't drive.
When finishing uni and getting married, we made the decision to live near to our families. We couldn't afford a car, so we didn't have one, so we only applied for jobs that were reachable by public transport.
We do have a car now, but if fuel hit £10 a litre tomorrow it could happily sit on the drive and not get used.
Friends who made the decision to move to the new town just down the road, because it's "only a ten minute drive away" and you get more house for your money are now trapped as a two car family who have to drive everywhere.
TBH if the last 3 Tory Governments hadn't spent all their time selling off all our public infrastructure companies to the French, Spanish and Germans we might have a more integrated transport system more attuned to our requirements without the tedious vertical dis-integration that currently exists.
If I worked in the town I now live, I'd be earning half what I do now. We can't really afford to move or take 50% salary cut.
It's quite hard to make sacrifices, sometimes.
But those factors are always shifting molgrips. Maybe you would have rejected your current home if travel was more expensive. Indeed perhaps more suitable jobs would be on offer there if equally skilled people could not cheaply commute to your town.
We can't really afford to move or take 50% salary cut.
When you work out the [url= http://karlmccracken.sweat365.com/2011/11/17/the-true-cost-of-commuting/ ]true cost of commuting[/url], can you afford not to move?
the train isn't *that* fuel efficient either though. Train efficiency according to here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation#Passenger
varies wildly - but taking a medium figure (say 0.4mj/passenger km) - that's about the same as a chevvy volt (in full electric mode) with 2 passengers in.
With that in mind, more economical cars may be the future (say smaller 2 seaters to reduce weight/increase efficiency) - don't seem far behind trains
I can't afford to move becuase I don't have enough equity in my house. Trust me, it's off the cards for a good few years.
The choice of house was made due to other factors.
My job is not in one location. Most of the work is in the South East so I could move there but that is DEFINITELY far too expensive. It would mean we would both have to work like slaves and hardly see our kids like many people seem to do.
But this is not a lifestyle whinge - I'd give our lifestyle a B - I am just trying to point out that things are not always as simple as the 'just move closer' brigade point out.
It's about priorities and sacrifices. I have not yet found a way to get what I want without doing some driving. I would love to be in the position of working from home but that's hard to achieve.
Mike: Me and Mrs Grips could afford to do a 16 mile a day commute fairly easily and still live where we do. You are telling me that we should now be able to afford a £750,000 house?
Don't talk shite!
That article makes the utterly flawed assumption that people only have cars for commuting purposes. And they put depreciation as a running cost - which I do not agree with. Plus it assumes that if you weren't driving home you'd be working the extra hours which is again rubbish. Few people are able to work overtime at will, ime and get paid pro-rata for it.
5lab: but it's not just fuel efficiency we're talking about here. There's all the social problems cars generate, the thousands dead, the congestion, the fractured communities, the out of town shopping centres and closed village shops, the road rage and stress, space wasted for car parks.
With that in mind, more economical cars may be the future (say smaller 2 seaters to reduce weight/increase efficiency) - don't seem far behind trains
It depends how you look at it. From a governmental/ planning point of view, the argument that trains aren't much more carbon efficient than cars has merit. But from a personal point of view, the train's running regardless of whether you're on it or not, so your carbon emissions for that journey are close to zero.
It's also worth noting that there's huge potential for improving train efficiency.
When you work out the true cost of commuting, can you afford not to move?
I just did.
According to the methodology they employ on that website, it appears that it would be cheaper for me to ditch the bicycle and drive to work 😀
5lab: but it's not just fuel efficiency we're talking about here. There's all the social problems cars generate, the thousands dead, the congestion, the fractured communities, the out of town shopping centres and closed village shops, the road rage and stress, space wasted for car parks.
but if you removed all private transport, a lot of those problems would escalate. People would be forced to move out of rural communities as there's no work there (towns with train stations would be fine, those without would be screwed). That would fracture communities.
I don't see why closed village shops are a bad thing compared to out of town shopping centers. Out of town centers offer a range of choice that village shops would never be able to cope with, I'd prefer to keep that.
Time lost to congestion is nothing compared to time lost waiting for trains, if it was the only way of getting around
There's all the social problems cars generate
They do solve some too though. Like how we find work...
There's a nice trail leading up the valley opposite the A470 as it comes down from the Storey Arms to Brecon. It's called the Miners' path, because people from Brecon used to walk over to Merthyr to work in the mines. Something like 12 miles. I bet their quality of life was improved massively by not having cars. How badly do you think they needed the work that they'd walk for three hours, work down a mine all day and then walk three hours home?
Not really relevant today but I am struggling to think of more ways to make the point that sometimes you need to travel to work, and sometimes there's no public transport available. And that there isn't always GOING to be public transport.
I think people underestimate the sheer scale of social revolution that would be required to achieve these things.
I am struggling to think of more ways to make the point that sometimes you need to travel to work,
No one needs to commute - its always a choice. those who don't have a fixed base obviously do need to travel to work but commuting - always a choice.
I fully understand the scale of the social revolution - the scary thing it is coming and there is nothing that can be done bar adapt to it. preferably in a planned and controlled manner IMO but this thread shows both the resistance and the sheer denial going on.
Its within living memory it was not like this.
...No one needs to commute...
i'm buggered if i'm sleeping at the lab.
sorry - commute long distances that need a car
Sorry TJ but you are wide of the mark there. Most people do need to commute, it's a question of how much is justifiable to the individual. The real issue is that people have started to feel that 1-2 hour commutes are normal. It may have been normal for those miners but I'd hope we've moved on from that. I vaguely remember a Japanese man in a documentary whose commute was 8 hours daily!
Why do people need to commute? long distances that need a car?
boss: you've got to work in the leeds office for 6 months.
employee: but, it's a long way, and not exactly easy by train/bus
boss: and?
choice - " sorry boss - no can do"
Worker: I refuse to work in Leeds 😉
i tried that - i got made redundant.
I agree thats a difficult one and sometimes the choices are hard .
Government: we will tax your business relative to the commuting distances of the staff.
Boss: Maybe I'll employ someone from Leeds 🙂