[Closed] Petrol Prices

£70 to fill up a car and move 1.5 tons 100s of miles at 80mph with no physical effort?? Absolute bargain 😉

Now that diesel is nudging 1.30 a litre I have decided I need to cycle or train itin to work despite it being 23miles away.

We are lucky in that we live within walking distance of enough shops to get anything we need plus 10 mins on a bus from a major city center. This means with a bit of effort we only "need" the car to go on visits to inlaws in Wales etc.

So even though the price of oil is still way off its highs in dollar terms it isn't in pound terms.

June 2008 US$/UKP FX ~1.98

June 2008 oil @ ~£74/barrel
Jan 2011 oil @ ~£58/barrel

if my [crap] maths are correct it's still over 20% cheaper in £ than it was in mid 2008

Fuel remains far too cheap. Private motoring is subsidised by the general taxpayer. Total costs of motoring are far greater than the money spent on roads

All those who complain# about their ridiculous commutes - that is a matter of choices that you have made.

Fuel will become more and more expensive as it runs out. Get used to it

Public transport is actually usually much cheaper than the real cost of using a car. To vist my parets by bus and train costs under 20 is I use the bike for some sections cost £10

Its 90 miles which would be at least £25 in a car.

Its 90 miles which would be at least £25 in a car.

Can you break that down for me please.

Poor people have to get to work too peyote.

I agree. I've yet to find an example where they didn't have a choice of mode and/or origin though. Not going to pretend it's an easy choice, but whenever people say they "need" a car. They often (not always, before the usual replies ensue!) only need it because they perceive it to be the better choice to maintain their current standard of living.

For the last half century or so it has become a percieved right to:-

1.Have the job you want where you want it
2.Live where you want

The use of the car has made it possible to choose to live and work in significantly different locations. The relatively cheap cost of motoring has made this economically viable for a large proportion of the population with only the very poorest being [b]forced [/b]to take jobs that they can reach by foot/public transport. This a situation our great grandfather's would never have dreamt of. Curiously we have all got quite time poor in the process.

I sense we are about to begin a sea change in population work habits. Families will have to start to make tough choices. If your partner has a good job close to your home you may have to choose to take a job you would not choose otherwise (different skills, too low pay, backwards career step) so that you can work locally. Alternatively you may have to uproot the family to move closer to your job if you can't get one at a more appropriate distance.

To say you have no choice but to commute great distances is bollox but it may mean making compromises that YOU don't want to make or you consider beneath you. You don't HAVE to live in a rural location and do a suburban or city based job; there are always low paid jobs closer to home (working in the local corner shop?). Home working can be an option. You don't have to have the size of house you currently have and need the high income you get from the far flung job to afford.

If in 50 years society has regigged itself so more people are living and working in the same location with an improved sense of comunity spirit that comes with that I don't think it will have all been a bad thing.

I have a car, I'll freely admit that I don't need to own one though. Last year I managed to go from 15 May to 25 August on one tank of diesel.
I work with (and have people that work for me) who drive shorter distances than I cycle in to work, and complain about how much it costs and look completely outraged when I suggest that they might want to try cycling instead.

I have 17-year-old students who drive less than 2 miles to college. While they continue to do that, I'll continue to think petrol's too cheap.

June 2008 US$/UKP FX ~1.98

June 2008 oil @ ~£74/barrel
Jan 2011 oil @ ~£58/barrel

if my [crap] maths are correct it's still over 20% cheaper in £ than it was in mid 2008

and duty and VAT makes most of the difference, hence the price is the almost the same. Now console yourself to the fact that oil will probably get back to c£74/barrel in the not to distant future. So that'll be 25p on top of the price you pay now.

You think we do big commutes?

Look over the pond, ammericans spend the same on fuel for cars as us, but:

do less mpg (typicaly half what we get)
commute further (typicaly twice as far)
pay less (about 1/4 our prices)

Which gives the interesting impression that we've reached some kind of level where we refuse to pay any more for petrol and adjust our long term habits to compensate.

So you could double the price of fuel, and given time peoples expendature would level out at current levels again, but with a greater proportion of the cost as tax, and less miles driven (or higher mpg).

I can't remember the program but there was something on BBC4 last night and it was talking about motorways, one comment was most of the population of warrington commutes, that there are villages in the UK where no one works they all commute. where food miles have ramped up, where people drive to shops many miles away.

This is the situation we have allowed to happen over the last few decades, cheap fuel and motorways have meant commuting is a viable option for a lot of people. Sit down look at what you earn and what you pay for your commute, how much of a paycut could you take and be better off.

TJ in an ideal world public transport would be an option. In the real world, it is full of people who use public transport! Something that needs to change, normal people need to feel that getting mugged etc won't happen. time tables are often crap, the perceived price is high. I put £20 Diesel in the car to go for a drive when i want to where i won't to go, i have to pay £5 for a bus ticket which doesn't go from where i live to where i want to go. If the costs of cars were transferred to the point of use rather than fixed overheads i do think it would be progress. No insurance, no VED, just put it all on the price of fuel.

I'll carry on riding where i can, and car for the rest of the time.

sobriety - Member

"Its 90 miles which would be at least £25 in a car".

Can you break that down for me please.

Pertol, tax, servicing, depreciation. etc etc etc. P{eople dont realise how much their cvar actually cost them

http://www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/advice/advice_rcosts_petrol_table.jsp

mrmo - you see I live in the real world and actually use public transport so I actually know what its like.

Fast frequent cheap reliable comfortable

That's a table, not a breakdown of your personal costs. I'd just like to see how you actually worked it out, as I reckon my car is probably cheaper 😉 and depreciation is only a problem if you intend to sell the car, rather than just running it into the ground.

Using public transport, using a sensibly sized car, using the inside lane.....yeah there's quite a few things many motorists feel are beneath them

Fast frequent cheap reliable comfortable

Depends on where you live, we get a train every hour and 4 buses a day, that's it really. I tried using the train on a few occasions only to be told it's full so I have to wait another hour!

Fuel is still cheap though without question.

sobriety - Member
depreciation is only a problem if you intend to sell the car, rather than just running it into the ground.

No - since you had to buy that car in the first place - depreciation is the cost of buying it spread over the remaining life of it.

Anyway, TJ's assertion that public transport is "Fast frequent cheap reliable comfortable" is just silly. It is in some places, it's not in many others. There are many reasons why (underinvestment in rail infrastructure being a goodie...) but that doesn't change the fact now.

Oh, petrol is too cheap IMO but I'll also admit that the problem is getting people to make the jump to public transport is difficult because right now it's so awful in many places and people aren't yet ready en-masse to take up cycling. When it does hit critical mass then the volume will help improve it. It's the transition that's going to be difficult for people.

All those who complain# about their ridiculous commutes - that is a matter of choices that you have made.

I didn't choose to get redundant from my previous job and then spend 6 months looking for an alternative. Ideally I would have taken a job much closer to home, but couldn't find one.
Sure I could have probably got one in a meat packing plant or cleaning toilets but that kinda defeats the point of doing a degree and gaining 10 years experience in a particular industry.
If I decided that I should 'weather the storm' and get a job closer to home, then I believe that this would disadvantage me when trying to get back into the work I want to do.

Visiting your parents by public transport is a bit different from having to do the 9-5 by public transport.

I have looked into public transport to work and it would take me over 2.5hrs per day to get to work and 2hrs 50 mins at least to get home.
My drive takes about 1hr 15 mins.

EDIT - oh and on a thread a while back I worked out that my car costs me about 18p/mile (because of the amount of miles I do). So 90 miles costs me about £16.

sobriety - thats a well researched table of the costs of a car as done my a motoring group. I think its about as objective as you are likely to get. You might get down to 20p a mile using bangernomics. Still cheaper to get the train - and you can read the paper, drink coffee, look out of the window and daydream from a train

Depreciation is always a cost - even if you run the car into the ground you still pay depreciation - buy it for £1000 and sell it for nothing a few years lather - £1000 that it has cost you

Its 90 miles which would be at least £25 in a car

Unless of course you have a car allowance or company car, as 10's of thousands do, then it's nowhere near those figures

old cars that - effectively - don't depreciate are much cheaper than that too

TJ

[i]Fast frequent cheap reliable comfortable [/i] may be true in Edinburgh, not so much round here.

As you know we live in a major conurbation and Debs uses public transport nearly all the time. Often I end up driving out to pick her up cos the bus hasn't turned up and the next one isn't due for an hour.

I have to own/use a car and for it to be available for work purposes whilst I am at work (it's written into my contract) so no real choice if I want to stay a community nurse. Given that there's no other nursing jobs availalble in my speciality for miles around I'm a bit stuck.

Fast frequent cheap reliable comfortable

Not so sure I agree with that!

And yes I and another co worker use the train regularly. If I am honest mine is bearable but it doesnt fulfil those 5 criteria, hers is late pretty much every day and has just gone up by £300!!

TJ that may be the case in your real world, but in the real world where i live, where due to certain decisions buses are run by different companies so you can't use transferable tickets, where you need multiple bus passes, buses that run hourly during the day when only the retired and some shift workers can use them. Where outlying villages get weekly buses, where you get the chavs swearing, arguing, fighting, it just isn't the place i want to be. As for trains, they are not convenient, yes you can buy mega advanced tickets for tupence if you book on a wednesday between 9:35 and 10.51 three months before you wish to travel.

I am not anti buses, i have an interview tomorrow, i know parking at the other end is crap, but i also know the bus stop is a couple of minutes from my house at this end and the bus stops at the destination . In this one case It is more convenient to use the bus, doesn't get round the cost issue on a turn up basis, which is alot for not very far. c£1/mile. But if i were to get the job then the price comes down to £1.50 a day as it makes sense to buy a bus pass. But i would probably ride and save even more. This one case is by far the exception not the rule.

If i want to get around town i will walk or ride, if i need to move between conurbations then i drive. Until issues such as luggage, of privacy, of price and crucially of convenience can be addressed public transport is fighting a loosing battle.

Look over the pond, ammericans spend the same on fuel for cars as us

Different set of circumstances altogether there. The reason they drive so far is that historically land has been cheap, so they have built very spread out cities. Partly this is because people like to have space but it's also partly because it's cheaper to build lots of one or two storey houses cheaply than it is to build tower blocks or town houses (we are talking a long time ago now). So the population is very spread out and the only financially viable way of shipping people around is to let them drive. And because there are now many of them there are a lot of miles driven.

Believe me, they ARE concerned about the cost of petrol.

I have 17-year-old students who drive less than 2 miles to college. While they continue to do that, I'll continue to think petrol's too cheap.

Ah yes, but the thing with driving two mile trips is that whilst PER MILE it is very wasteful and expensive, because it's only two miles overall it's not. At 15p/mile it's only £3.00 a week, less than a pint.

Unfortunately the argument that its still too cheap because people drive 2 miles to the shop doesn't really work. The fact that they are only going 2 miles means that whatever the cost it wont cost that much because even if they do it every day it wont cost that much because they will only be doing about 28 miles a week. Once petrol becomes so expensive that people wont drive the 2 miles to the shop it will be so expensive that nobody else will be able to leave the town they live in. People are just too fat and lazy.

Just remembered, I used to live in a village called Cottenham, about 6 miles north of Cambridge and work at a place called Bar Hill near Cambridge just off the A14. It was just over 7 miles to drive to work and took under 20 mins.

I looked at the bus option, but it meant getting the bus into Cambridge which i think took 40 mins. I then had to wait 20 mins or so for a bus to Bar Hill and then the journey to Bar Hill took another 25 mins or so, so it was easily getting on for an hour and a half journey time instead of 20 mins.....
I tried commuting, but the short stretch of the A14 I had to endure was too dangerous. I did it once and never again.

I grew up in London and didn't need a car while I was there. Public transport was great and I could never understand why everyone used to moan about it so much.
Now I don't live in London anymore I understand why it's so cak.

Pertol, tax, servicing, depreciation. etc etc etc. P{eople dont realise how much their cvar actually cost them

http://www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/advice/advice_rcosts_petrol_table.jsp

Ah now I am all for public transport but that table doesn't really apply to my situation for example, of having a small car thats worth a few hundred quid that does 47mpg and very little to insure and service each year. The cost of me getting a train for my 300 mile trip at £53 is waay higher than the costs of driving it, especially when there are two of us - thats £100 on the train between us or about £30 in the car.

Its insane how much trains cost - should be the cheapest choice, tis a disaster.

I wonder how much cost the range rover sport type of beell end driver to fill up and how far that gets them, not that they will care.

So, we're all agreed that driving is too cheap and public transport is too expensive?

can we have an increase in taxation on private motoring, please? Followed by returning [i]public[/i] transport to the public?

bijim - so your cost are 1/3 of what the AA have calculated a small car costs 🙄

Your petrol alone will be more than £30 for that journey. You nver service it. you have zero depreciation, you don't insure and tax it?

Don't forget - TJ lives in Edinburgh - where public transport probably is relatively cheap, efficient and clean - largely because its been paid for by the rest of us,

Interesting that TJ also points out that the cost of the taxpayer of the car infrastructure... hows that tram scheme coming along TJ? Six hundred million quid at latest count isn't it?

Bit different when you grow up in rural Northumberland, get to eighteen years old, find there's no local jobs anymore and no local public transport bar the post bus...

Wonder if you've thought about the effect on all these Scottish trail centre's of reduced car use - yep, knock on effects for the rural economy of increased fuel prices are horrific... so, back to your townie utopia funded by the rest of us TJ

Its insane how much trains cost - should be the cheapest choice, tis a disaster.

Because there is limited supply. Trains are full, so they are clearly not too expensive from a commercial point of view.

Followed by returning public transport to the public

Yes, that's a starting point. Transport should not be a commercial enterprise, it is an essential amenity. Why the flippin heck should the profits of train travel be put into people's pockets and not re-invested into a system that so badly needs expansion (see above)?

Re cost of car ownership - it's silly to take the total depreciation, servicing and whatnot and divide it by the mileage to get the cost per mile. Once you've made a decision to own a car for whatever reason, that's what costs you the most - purchase price, depreciation (IF you want to factor it in), tax, insurance, and servicing (provided you don't do huge miles bringing the service intervals more frequent than yearly) are all a consequence of that decision. Then if you decide to drive to the shops, that's a far lower cost per mile since the rest of the costs are written off against a different cost centre, to use the business analogy.

[i]can we have an increase in taxation on private motoring, please?[/i]

What needs to happen is to scrap "road tax" (yes, I know it's called VED, I'm making a point...) and replace it with a pay-as-you-drive scheme. It'll never happen - too many worries about Big Brother tracking you, uproar from the politically well connected motoring lobby, outrage from the Daily Wail contingent etc but it'd really cut the number of people who "need" to drive. By making it a pay as you go, the costs suddenly become crystal clear unlike a once-per-year payment online to renew the tax disc.

It might also prompt proper car-sharing schemes, better public transport, a revival of the High street as people walk there instead of driving to out-of-town places, a better spread of traffic across the day (charge more at rush-hour to force flexible working for example).

Or am I just living in some sort of utopian ideal?

Zulu Eleven, your comment of about two hours ago to my last post is correct but also wrong-headed. Surely you can see it is farcical to suggest the only tax should be income tax?

Re cost of car ownership - it's silly to take the total depreciation, servicing and whatnot and divide it by the mileage to get the cost per mile

What needs to happen is to scrap "road tax" (yes, I know it's called VED, I'm making a point...) and replace it with a pay-as-you-drive scheme.

Agreed x 2

When going into town as a family (2 adults, 2 kids), it costs us a fortune to take the bus so we generally drive. The only car costs that change are petrol and parking, as we're paying the insurance, tax, depreciation, etc. anyway.

@TJ I'm with you on people driving too much e.t.c but the AA cost of motoring table is by having a car in the most expensive way, it can be much cheaper.

bijim - so your cost are 1/3 of what the AA have calculated a small car costs

Your petrol alone will be more than £30 for that journey. You nver service it. you have zero depreciation, you don't insure and tax it?

Well yeah 29 litres of petrol is a bit more than £30 but a lot less than £50 anyway. Car can't depreciate much more but we will drive it into the ground anyway so its a cheap little gem, can't be bothered working out what the tax, servicing and insurance is per mile over a year is but its tiny, its a really cheap car to run. Point is, it is waaay cheaper than getting the train, especially more when both of us are going somewhere. Megabus would be cheaper than car but not so good for taking bikes and my ten foot legs.

IIRC, a full car is better than train anyway, CO2-wise?

Here's my snippet from the thread about running costs of a car:

----------------------------------------
30k miles/yr. Assume £1.20/litre and I average 55mpg = around about £3k in fuel or £0.10/mile.

I paid £7.5k for it 4 years ago and it's now worth about £3k so that's £1125/yr or £0.0375/mile

Tax, MOT & Insurance costs ~£570/yr or £0.019/mile

Tyres and servicing (assuming nothing major goes pop) is about £500/yr or £0.0167/mile.

Hmmmm. Have I missed something there?? That only works out to £0.17/mile.
--------------------------------------

Obviously fuel has gone up since then (10p/litre in <3 weeks) and it was pointed out to me that my tyres & servicing should be nearer £850 but even so that added less than 1p/mile to the total.

So call it 18.5p/mile currently.

Oh and that includes breakdown cover as it is included in my insurance.

Here's the original thread: http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/what-are-the-running-costs-of-a-car

What car do you get 55mpg in?

stumpy - because some costs are per year the more miles you do per year the lower the cost per mile. Teh AA numbers are for a car bought new so oeprciation is more for them

(assuming nothing major goes pop) is a part of it as well - more cost there possibly and I still wonder if your insurance ved and servicing figure is a bit low. Do you really get 55 mpg?

As I said above yo can get down to around 20 p a mile as you have - but most folk pay a lot more than that.

What car do you get 55mpg in?

TJ have you ever accepted a lift from anyone?

My old man gets 60-something from his Passat diesel, its insanely good.

I have carefully been working out my cost per mile, (including tax, insurance, breakdown, tyres, servicing (diy), depreciation) for my vehicles for the last 7 years. The price per mile has not changed in that time except for when I was running very cheap fuel (veg oil @ ~50p a litre)

7 years ago I had a petrol car that did 25-35mpg and required more often servicing and more expensive to tax/insure. My current diesel car does 47-55mpg and requires less servicing, cheaper tax/insurance. The only time I wince at the cost of a journey is if I take my superbike out and watch the tyres disappear before my eyes and the fuel burn like my petrol car of 7 years ago.

I expect to replace my current car with something that does 60mpg+ and don't expect the cost per mile overall to increase by much. I commute 90 miles per day, usually on a 65mpg motorbike.

What are your costs then solamander? I take it you do a lot of miles

All those who complain# about their ridiculous commutes - that is a matter of choices that you have made

TJ, I have to disagree with you here.

From my experience I haven't been able to do this until now. For 12 years or so I ended up working 20-odd miles from home.

I live in a nice village right next to Glasgow but there are no jobs for someone like me around here. I looked at public transport but the links are either terrible or non-existant.

Now, even when we were paying 60 something and 70 something pence per litre for petrol I still hated it as I'd rather keep that cash in the family pot. But to not work is not an option so commute it is.

I could have moved but we like where we live and the kids are settled etc. Plus, the first job lasted 4 years then the company moved down south, second just wasn't for me so I moved on, 3rd company were charlatans and ended up going belly up.
Now I work in a job I like and it's in the city centre meaning I can get a bus direct. Brilliant! It's £10 per week for a ticket - fantastic. But it all came down to a bit of luck.

In the past 12 years I always looked out for jobs close to home but they just were not there and trust me I looked.

I think it's down to government and planners how we ended up like this. Shopping 'malls' killed the high street, business parks built in an area out of towns and city etc etc. A lot of people don't have muxch of a choice.

I don't know how to fix it but I know it will take a long long time...

My costs are fairly low, in fact I reckon I make money out of it

Car allowance of £6k + getting something like 23-24p/mile for the first 10000 business miles

Just bought a 3yo car + 3 years warranty over 3 years on a 5% loan
I don't do a great deal of personal miles ~2500 pa

I think I'll come out with a profit 🙂

zedsdead - I could have moved

Hence it is a matter of choices made

I think it's down to government and planners how we ended up like this.

Certainly its a major part

Those cost per mile comparisons always get trotted out, have been for the last 30-odd years. Firstly, they take a new car and factor in depreciation. Not everyone buys new. Secondly, they don't take pleasure into account. I love my car, every time I see it I smile. I wanted one for years and finally got one. How much is that worth per mile? Public transport is horrible. It's expensive, at best inconvenient and deeply unpleasant. You can't put a price on convenience or freedom or fun. We did the 'general public are subsidising motorists' thing a couple of weeks ago and those who put that assertion forward were invited to provide specific figures. The could not. Having said all that, I think we could quite easily reduce the number of car journeys, but we will not do so.

As for me, I avoid driving wherever possible and actually use my cherished mountain bikes to commute on. However I resent the fact that rising fuel costs have made successive governments feel comfortable about hiking the cost of public transport - I believe the latter should be an incentive, not daylight robbery.

The costs of moving are too much for me. I don't earn a massive amount. Plus it would have meant uprooting 3 or 4 times. No thanks...

Karinofnine - Member

Public transport is horrible. It's expensive, at best inconvenient and deeply unpleasant.

Rubbish - I use it - modern vehicles clean and tidy, convenient and easy - while being cheaper than a car. When did you last use it?

. We did the 'general public are subsidising motorists' thing a couple of weeks ago and those who put that assertion forward were invited to provide specific figures. The could not.

I gave you links to a series of figures from different sources - but you didn't want to hear so you didn't listen.

7 years ago I had a petrol car that did 25-35mpg and required more often servicing and more expensive to tax/insure. My current diesel car does 47-55mpg

That's not quite a fair comparison with the motoring world as a whole since 7 years ago you could also have had a diesel that did 47/55mpg.

TJ, we can't all live right near our jobs.

TJ - I do agree with you about public transport. The buses I use are great! They get into town quickly, they're modern and clean and cheap. No way could I drive for less than £10 per week. The parking would cost nearly that per day!

I think a monthly ticket is £32!!! That's fantastic value for money! And there's one every 10 minutes. Cant knock that.

However, it's only because it's the city centre. All my other jobs I had public transport was not an option. Again, down to government not investing in a good public transport network etc...

but you didn't want to hear so you didn't listen.

THAT ATTITUDE IS GETTING REALLY FRIGGING OLD!

molgrips, it's a 1.9 TDi Ibiza 130 sport. I average around 55mpg in it and I have a geek spreadsheet that confirms this along with a graph to track the price of fuel.

TJ, do I really get 55mpg? No, sometimes it's higher. Not sure how well this image will come out, but 63.8 mpg on the way home tonight. That's sticking to 60mph while negotiating short stretches or road with frequent roundabouts, then up to 70 once clear of them. Also included about a 10 min queue at black cat roundabout on A1.

[IMG] [/IMG]

As for extra costs when things go wrong - yeah true, but the only things that have gone wrong so far are 1 wheel bearing @ 38k miles (£120) and a failed boost pipe (£45) both fitted. Even my front discs AND pads lasted 119k miles...

EDIT: should also confirm that image is total for that journey, not just instantaneous.

Ta stumpy

I take it you'll be on trains & buses up to Strathpeffer this weekend TJ?

Not going uplink - although I did look at the train option. Its not bad actually

As I have repeatedly said I use taxis and hire cars when public transport will not do for me.

I wouldn't fancy coming back from up there on a Sunday evening

I tried some months ago to get back to Durham from Inverness on a Sunday afternoon
Got back as far as Edinburgh & then was left with an overnight wait to complete the journey
I think it took around 16 hrs in all

I love my car, every time I see it I smile. I wanted one for years and finally got one. How much is that worth per mile? Public transport is horrible. It's expensive, at best inconvenient and deeply unpleasant.

Agreed on all counts.

Rubbish - I use it - modern vehicles clean and tidy, convenient and easy - while being cheaper than a car. When did you last use it?

TJ, I used it this morning, as I do every weekday.

I take the train to Central London, and get a seat precisely none of the time. If I were to then take the Tube across London (I don't, I cycle), I'd never get a seat, I'd be herded in like cattle, and it would be a slow, bumpy, smelly affair, with stupid levels of both heat and humidity. It really is deeply unpleasant.

But for 5 days of 7 I'm a good little greenie. At the weekend, however, I either cycle or drive. And I'll not apologise for driving my car when I want to, nor for my choice of a car, come to that. It's very large, it's a 4x4, and I get 30mpg at best. I'm sure you'd hate it. I could drive something else, but I don't want to.

As you've said, it's all about choices. I choose to work in an insanely difficult environment because I like the challenge and because, bluntly, I get paid very well to do so. With that choice made, don't you think that in return I'm allowed the choice of what car I drive?

I agree with zedsdead about business parks. Offices all over the place rather than in once central place make arranging public transport very difficult as for many it means a bus into town to get a bus out of town again.

FFS TJ,

You can't extrapolate the public transport system of an affluent little city out to the rest of the country.

nickf - of course you can make that choice

What I want is for folk to be clear it is a choice not a necessity and that the car drivers pay their fair share.

Basically stop bleating about the cost. Its as cheap as it ever has been if not cheaper compared to earnings. If you don't like the cost then don't do it - simple as

Beans you forget, TJ lives in his own happy little faux-Scotchish utopia where all is well.

Dangerousbeans - the point is that being dirty expensive and inefficient is not an inherent characteristic of public transport - it does not have to be like that.

Teh pure snobbery of some folk is laughable -= they don't want to go on public transport 'cos of having to rub shoulders with the public

I know it doesn't have to be but quite often it is.

Some of our buses are old, very old.... as in there's quite a few K reg ones about and you really know about when you're on them or following them.

Also, as Debs as just pointed out I have to take her to work on a morning, early shift starts at 7.00 and there's no bus that can get her there for that time.

Teh pure snobbery of some folk is laughable -= they don't want to go on public transport 'cos of having to rub shoulders with the public

Or maybe they want to get to where they want to go without spending a vast fortune for a vile experience. Who knows, maybe they can't use public transport because there simply isn't any.

(The above was penned by a cycle commuter who also uses a bike in town at weekends. I also use a lumping great turbocharged 4WD estate car at weekends, and occasionaly I just go for a drive in my Mercedes. 🙂 )

being dirty expensive and inefficient is not an inherent characteristic of public transport

When funded to the tune of half a billion pounds by general taxation!

Look at it this way - Edinburgh's Tram system has cost nearly three years worth of Edinburgh's total council tax revenues (225 million per year) - median council tax is about £1200 per household - so, if TJ were to pay for his own share of that clean, efficient public transport system, it would have actually cost him about £3.5k!

Sheesh, you could have bought a car for that TJ 😉

You can't put a price on convenience or freedom or fun.

And then you go all crazy when someone is eating a steak FFS. Cars have a lot to answer for. However we are all responsible for it. Yes I own a car, yes I own a motorcyle (actually about 56 right now) and no I don't NEED my car. I just wanted it and find it very convenient. But I am not kidding myself. I do have a choice, it's just that I don't want the alternative.

I love trains but foreign ones are way better than ours.
I hate local buses. They're cramped, cold, uncomfortable and unreliable. Long distance are ok, but not as good as train.
Local public transport sucks.
I'm in Scotland.

dangerousbeans - Member
Also, as Debs as just pointed out I have to take her to work on a morning, early shift starts at 7.00 and there's no bus that can get her there for that time.

[i]Car allowance of £6k + getting something like 23-24p/mile for the first 10000 business miles [/i]

Uplink - are you claiming the difference between what your employer pays you and the HMRC max (40ppm) through your tax-code?

I'm a raving, lefty, liberal, greenie who hates cars and loves bikes. But...

I gave up on getting the bus to work. It sits in the same queue of traffic as the cars, is unreliable, expensive and often over crowded. I can walk the 2.5 mile journey - sometimes more quickly that getting the bus, but always more consistently.

I want public transport to be great, but it's not.

Having said that, I've never driven and never will and have always managed to find work/training within walking-, cycling- or public transport-distance of home. We've always chosen to live within walking distance of our family and have built a life around being car-light, if not car-free.

We have a car at the moment, but have been without one before, including with very young children. We occasionally borrowed a car, and hired one for holidays a couple of times. Otherwise, we got by without.

Not driving does curtail my bike riding. I get to group rides at the local forest by riding there and back (it's only an extra 50 road miles after all). I don't do many event, but when I do I either use trains or cadge a lift (not many trains to Kielder...).

I don't find public transport unpleasant in itself. Only time I have a problem with it is when it takes much too long.

Most people don't have a clue what MPG thier car does (and therefore generally over estimate), they may think they do but very few people can actually be bothered to work out the accurate MPG as opposed to the figure the trip computer(a device that is probably designed to overestimate the MPG and make the manufacturer look good) tells them.

In my Multipla, the indicated MPG is based on US Gallons....

I'm beginning new job (or actually training for it) on Monday. 22 miles on a motorway each way. I won't cycle, obviously, driving will have to do. I might be able to take a coach instead but only time will tell. I wish I could.