Not that they are trying to take my or anyones car away, just that someone who lives close enough to Guildford (in the crowded south east, not the wild wastelands) for it to be his nearest court, and yet he needed to drive (or drive, then catch the park and ride) to acheive what the court in their wisdom has deemed to be not a suitable method of transport, as they would not provide expenses.
That poster would have been even more put out if they did not own a car, or if they shared one with their partner.
For me to attend my nearest court for 9am (Reading) would be an hour by public transport, including half an hour of walking. Fine for me. Not so good for a large part of the population.
Seems to me a lot is already being done to try and get people out of their cars, but on the sly. No big vote-losing schemes like making fuel £10 per litre, but rather the endless tweaks and faffing that genuinely make driving an absolute ballache, in cities at least (But still not as bad as cycling in the rain or sharing expensive, unreliable public transport with the great unwashed).
Congestion Charge, CAZ, one-way, road narrowing, closed roads, speed cameras, lack of parking etc etc… you’d think it’d be enough to put off all but the people who actually have to be on the roads, trades, couriers, cabbies etc, but it doesn’t really. People just accept it’s going to take longer. Better to be sat almost stationary in their own warm car than the alternatives.
Yeah but none of it is actually working at actually coaxing people out of car use is it.
It's kind of got to be a "Carrot and Stick" approach, what you have at the minute is more like a few light financial swipes with a fern rather than a proper make-cars-unaffordable "Stick" and then there's very little in the way of public transport or active travel infrastructure "Carrots" on offer.
Net result? People still choose the tin box and just whinge a bit more...
If you make diving properly expensive to reflect the environmental, social and public health costs, people will start to seek alternatives. If you make alternatives more affordable people will start to take them up.
What happened to school buses? Are they still a thing at all?
Yep, well sort of, but it's not free like in the good old days; we pay an effing fortune for our eldest to be able to use a service laid on by the local Bus Co' that picks her up a 5 mins walk from our door at about 7:30am the bus is specifically for her school (other schools nearby also have busses laid on). So we pay for a young person's bus pass. There's a fringe benefit in that she has unlimited use of busses in the area to get to town and meet friends etc, the downside being the variable routes and timetable planning of our local busses especially where she has friends in some of the outlying villages/suburbs. She can get from our house into the centre of town in ~25mins on a good day, it typically takes her about 45mins to get to school. But just about anywhere else is upwards of an hour and a half and 2 busses minimum.
On Balance it would probably be cheaper to drive her everywhere but then that's hardly an environmentally responsible thing to do, and isn't exactly helping her to build some self-reliance and independence is it.
Reading is actually a really good example for car brained idiocy.
According to google maps from my house to where most of the towerblock offices are on Kings Road (and the courts etc) it's
Bus 45min
Car 20min
Bike 23min
Now the bus is realistically upto an hour as you've got to either wait for one, or schedule yourself to get into town on one 10-15min before you need to be there. I do use it when cycling isn't an option (e.g. I've got the train back into Reading but haven't left my bike in the station).
Car, well you've got to park at Queens Road and walk the last bit, so it's not 20 minutes at all.
Bike, anyone vaguely fit can beat the estimate and it's door to door.
Yet every morning the A33 is gridlocked with people driving into town!
They really needed to bring in a congestion charge/clean air zone to stop people just blindly driving in without thinking of the alternatives.
They really needed to bring in a congestion charge/clean air zone to stop people just blindly driving in without thinking of the alternatives.
Various cities have that already - the challenge is that it is based on Government saying "your Air Quality is below minimum standards, sort it out" and the relevant Local Authority then has to do something about it. It's a way of Government devolving all the responsibility (and also all the criticism, fallout etc) to local councils.
However - the CAZ has to be based on the minimum required to get AQ back to minimum standards so most concentrate on HGV/LGV, vans and buses (not private cars). You're not allowed to just charge everyone. Some local authorities calculated that they could simply reach minimum AQ based on electrifying their bus fleet or removing a taxi rank (hence no more taxis idling engines) which is really just a sticking plaster solution. It's also a highly confusing situation for drivers - come CAZ do charge private cars, most don't so drivers risk being caught out which doesn't exactly encourage buy in and endorsement from drivers.
Once again, Government have done the minimum possible and tried to wash their hands of any actual work themselves.
One thing the government could do, which I'm sure it won't do, is to start looking at companies carbon footprint holistically - i.e. factoring in all the pollution caused by forcing people back into offices and driving. This would certainly reduce car usage.
It seems so far the thread is a bit mixed between people who live in a big city with a developed public transport network and think cars are pointless (and so should be taxed further to pay for their public transport) vs. those who rely on cars and have no other reasonable options.
It seems so far the thread is a bit mixed between people who live in a big city with a developed public transport network and think cars are pointless (and so should be taxed further to pay for their public transport) vs. those who rely on cars and have no other reasonable options.
Don't make it a false dichotomy*. Making it a us Vs them argument just demonstrates the same car centric thinking.
Living in a rural area is not a guarantee that you drive.
Living in towns doesn't mean you're car free.
Creating (or allowing them to form) regions where car ownership is the only option is just a great big FU to anyone
- under 18
- too old to drive
- disabled
- unable to afford a car
e.g. my grandparents have reached the point where I really don't think they should be driving. They live out in the sticks on the edge of the Lake District in a small hamlet a couple of miles from the nearest bus route. Car centric infrastructure (i.e. the fact that it's so cheap and easy for all their neighbors to just go everywhere by car meaning there is no demand for public transport) is what will ultimately lead to them becoming isolated. Car's don't equal freedom.
The inverse is true in towns. Rural and suburban car use means those people expect to be able to drive into cities. This means cities have to provide them with large dual carriageways and other infrastructure which makes those cities inhospitable places to walk or ride around, further compounding the problem even if those people did live car free out of choice (or more often, necessity).
*at best you could make it a 4 way argument:
Rural driving and refusing to aknwolage that they're part of the problem
Rural non-driving and would like useable public transport
Urban driving and refusing to give it up
Urban non-driving and pissed off with the issues car infrastructure and their use creates in towns.
Rural driving and refusing to aknwolage that they’re part of the problem
The vast majority of problems with rural driving are not down to the people who live there because, by it's very nature, it's very low population density and if you're in a village, you walk everywhere anyway, only using the car for bigger trips or for (eg) towing etc on a farm.
The main problem is the visitors to the quiet unspoiled village - who inevitably drive there and then clog the place up with shit parking.
Rural mileage accounts for a very small percentage of driving in spite of it being longer distances overall.
There was a similar argument about the Tour de France and how polluting that was with its vast caravan of vehicles but it ignores the fact that far and away the most pollution comes from the millions of spectators driving to the event in the first place!
The main problem is the visitors to the quiet unspoiled village – who inevitably drive there and then clog the place up with shit parking.
Seem my above point about rural/suburban commuter traffic causing issues in cities.
The good thing about public transport though is it runs in both directions.
It'll shift slowly anyway, as a far smaller of early-20s can drive now than used to be able
It’ll shift slowly anyway, as a far smaller of early-20s can drive now than used to be able
Is that true, are there stats on that? Every house seems to have a car per person now, and I think it's predicted that the number of vehicles on the road will increase 50% by 2050.
Followup because I was on my way home and couldn't find a reference and the name was escaping me.
If you want examples of why rural and suburban car ownership is a disaster just Google Robert Moses. He's an extreme example of how "white flight" (i.e. the rural and suburban affluent who had made a conscious decision to live there and commute back into the cities) lead to the decimation of urban poor communities. In Moses case it was downright racist but but the effect is the same whatever the motivation.
Well in their latest round of vote buying the SNP/Green administration has launched free bus passes for under 22's and will be scrapping peak time train fares in the next few months. Of course this means the Young Team will be spending all day riding buses pissed out their face on Mad Dog but that's exactly the sort of scum that votes for those sort of policies. Meanwhile decent folk need to go out an earn a living to pay for all this.
@Edukator I know it's a case of grass being greener but I'd still rather have French public transport prices and level of service than the shite we pay through the nose for here.
Free passes for public transport are just stupid, far better to have just low or very fares, especially now contactless payment is the norm.
The vast majority of problems with rural driving are not down to the people who live there because, by it’s very nature, it’s very low population density and if you’re in a village, you walk everywhere anyway, only using the car for bigger trips or for (eg) towing etc on a farm.
You have a very warped view of living in a rural location. We don’t walk anywhere as we don’t have any local shops as they started to close in the 1950’s. Cars towing stuff on the farm is a new one.
The reality is a car is essential to life in rural areas, isn’t a status symbol and people have no choice but to drive as public transport is non existent.
Crap parking is a problem however but that one is universal.
Reading is actually a really good example for car brained idiocy.
You posted that after me, how did you know I was talking about Reading?
Edit:
They really needed to bring in a congestion charge/clean air zone to stop people just blindly driving in without thinking of the alternatives.
As a resident and owner of a dirty diesel shitbox, I completely agree!
Is that true, are there stats on that? Every house seems to have a car per person now
I have read it many times, although it's a steady not dramatic decline. Seems like there are thousands of flats going up all over the place in most towns and cities, and I think many of them don't have that much parking so it's probably the young people living in those that don't have cars.
most concentrate on HGV/LGV, vans and buses
So those that need to use their vehicle... Trust me, if when working in the UK I had contacts outside of London I took them... Rather that than dealing with traffic and the congestion.
Sitting in a traffic adds nothing to my quality of life.
I’m sure many people would use cars less if they had a reliable, fast and cheap form of transport
I am not so sure. I thought years ago that it would be a good experiment to make all public transport completely free for say 3 months and see who switches to use it. If the take up is very low (which I am guessing it would be) then you have the answer.
But making it free only addresses one of the complaints about PT.
But public transport is neither reliable or fast. If it offered an advantage over using the car, then people would use it.
3 months isn't a long enough time frame either. We're habitual creatures and rarely change our routines. Very few people would make the change initially. If it was attractive enough though, it would grow over time.
But public transport is neither reliable or fast. If it offered an advantage over using the car, then people would use it.
Bit chicken and egg really innit?
But public transport is neither reliable or fast. If it offered an advantage over using the car, then people would use it.
Even when it does and for some journeys I do its both quicker and cheaper by a combination of train and bike than by car its difficult to persuade people to do it. See comments on this thread about mixing with the great unwashed etc.
Its needs a carrot and stick approach and also to be looked at holistically - You cannot separate time and convenience for individuals from overall population effects and harm from from pollution and effects of lack of exercise - and also town planning, road design etc etc. The issue needs to be looked at as a whole. focusing on one aspect leads to false conclusions
Also the elephant in the room remains - the massive subsidy from general taxation to motorists and also that urban journeys - in most cities its a minority of urban journeys by car but cars get the majority of transport spend and car drivers have the majority of political power
But public transport is neither reliable or fast. If it offered an advantage over using the car, then people would use it.
For most people it is never going to offer an advantage in the primary area of concern - time.
Not much you can do about that as can't have an infinite number of buses and if you did they would still be slower than a car because they have to stop many times and they don't pick you up from your door and deliver you to exactly where you are going.
Looking at this from an advantage point of view is completely wrong. People will need to be forced out of their cars. The 3 month experiment was just to prove that even when offered a completely free (lesser) alternative I don't think many would use it so little point in improving it.
Also there is no "one size fits all" solution. Urban, suburban and rural areas need different focus.
Another issue is the arms race in the size and weight of cars. What was seen as a large family car 25 years ago is smaller and lighter than what is seen as a small car nowadays. IMO we need a class of vehicles that is small and light - something like the japanese K car. The solution to cars getting too big for parking spaces is not bigger parking spaces, its smaller cars
Another issue is the arms race in the size and weight of cars.
That *might* start to happen with the shift to EV. Problem at the moment is an already large SUV, on shifting from ICE to E becomes even larger and heavier as it has to accommodate the batteries to move its vast bulk.
The logical answer is to go for smaller, lighter cars which require less power to move them and therefore have greater range.
Part of the size of cars now though is safety systems and powered everything - windows, mirrors, boot lid, seats - it's all more electric motors, more bulk, more weight...
On the subject of vehicles, I want to see more of this kind of thing:
XBus rather than bloated SUVs
the xbus is just the electric version of the bedford rascal, which isn't sold in the UK any more as no-one wants a slow, cramped, noisy, inefficient and unsafe vehicle to go about their daily lives. Plenty of kei-car-based vans in japan and the far east still
Bit chicken and egg really innit?
Well that's a conservative viewpoint - that public transport has to be popular and profitable to be worth investing in. But that idea creates that chicken/egg situation.
However you could invest in public transport anyway, and break that cycle.
That *might* start to happen with the shift to EV.
It won't. Most of the energy spent moving a car is against air resistance. If you reduced the battery in an EV by 75% it wouldn't weigh 75% less and you wouldn't get 4x the range.
But that's the whole point of this thread. You have to get rid of the mentality where everyone simply gets in their car all the time. Smaller cars will do nothing to change that.
Lock of strategic oversight, lack of joined-up thinking and a piecemeal approach to privatisation, conflicting priorities between business, transport, environment and public health all fighting for insufficient funds means frankly it ain’t going to happen. It’s going to take a 10-20 year plan with baked-in investment rather than funding driven by parliamentary cycles and the whim of ministers doing favours for their mates - regrettably I can’t see any of this happening in my lifetime.
That *might* start to happen with the shift to EV. Problem at the moment is an already large SUV, on shifting from ICE to E becomes even larger and heavier as it has to accommodate the batteries to move its vast bulk.
The problem is to fit enough batteries in to get ~300+ miles range you need a big platform to fit them all in under the floor. The only car that seems to have bucked this trend is the Model S, which is still absolutely massive, but at least isn't 7ft tall.
Electric is the future of cars, but car's realistically aren't a viable future in general.
but car’s realistically aren’t a viable future in general.
And how quickly that comes is largely down to policies within a country, so a log time to go yet...
zEV mandates may actually kill off small city cars as it's incredibly hard to make a city car sized EV profitable. It's not a coincidence the the EV market is currently dominated by luxo barges. Something like a Renault twizzy probably bucks that trend but e cargo bikes and e scooters are probably a much better holistic solution for the use case of a twizzy.
The only car that seems to have bucked this trend is the Model S, which is still absolutely massive, but at least isn’t 7ft tall.
BMW i4/8, Mercedes EQS/E, Hyundai Ioniq/Ioniq 6, MG, there are low EVs out there, as well as small ones (e-Up, Smart). People need to accept that you don't need 300 miles of range. And they will, they'll have to.
But that's all a diversion. EVs aren't a solution to transport which is what this thread is about. The fact they keep coming up is probably just confirming the problem.
It's not cars or size of cars or their propulsion method that's the issue - the problem in this country is the venom and bile projected against the perfect form of sustainable transport - cycling.
I used to 3000miles a year commuting but I got fed up with close passes and constant resentment.
Driver's being 'blinded by the sun' killing cyclists and walking away from court, right wing papers and their anti cycling agenda, councils being forced to remove lockdown cycle lanes.
**** it - lack of infrastructure and cycling culture from the top I had enough so drive to work now and happily sit in traffic listening to R4.
it’s incredibly hard to make a city car sized EV profitable
it is right now, but over time that'll change as economies of scale build up. electric car sales are growing but worldwide they're a tiny portion (2% maybe?) of overall cars made.
regarding range - I think peolpe will accept lower range cars when
a) they're cheap enough to be the second car in the household
or
b) charging is fast enough not to make a difference.
we're getting closer to each of those over time, the fastest charging cars can now at 10 miles of range per minute, I think once you're adding 30 miles per minute you are close enough to the speed of filling an ICE to not matter - then all the upset people who care about flats not having charging can be quiet too.
b) charging is fast enough not to make a difference.
This is already solved, at least for modern, decent spec cars - my Etron charges at 150kW, which is 375 miles per hour or just over 6 miles per minute. That's quick enough that a 15 min stop gives 95 miles extra range - more than quick enough to keep you moving on a long journey while fitting in with normal breaks you'd take anyway on a long drive.
The challenge is being able to reliably plug into a vacant fast charger when arriving. It's no good being able to charge at the rates above it it's only after a 30 min queue. So it's charger availability that's the challenge.
Once the network becomes widespread enough to stop worrying about this then the need for a 300 mile+ range will disappear for most people.
But back to the original point of the thread .... yes as a country we're stuck on cars and need to move away from them so that they're one transport option out of many - a bit like in central london where the car isn't a preferred way to get around - tubes, buses being very prevalent with occasional taxi rides filling in the gap where a car is needed occasionally. Imagine if the rest of the UK could work like that.
This is already solved, at least for modern, decent spec cars – my Etron charges at 150kW, which is 375 miles per hour or just over 6 miles per minute. That’s quick enough that a 15 min stop gives 95 miles extra range – more than quick enough to keep you moving on a long journey while fitting in with normal breaks you’d take anyway on a long drive.
The challenge is being able to reliably plug into a vacant fast charger when arriving. It’s no good being able to charge at the rates above it it’s only after a 30 min queue. So it’s charger availability that’s the challenge.
Once the network becomes widespread enough to stop worrying about this then the need for a 300 mile+ range will disappear for most people.
see I think the problem is the other way round. if you can add 30 miles/minute then chargers will be treated much more like pumps - it doesn't matter if there's a small queue as cars will flow through at a fast rate anyway.
imo 15 mins -> 90 miles is still a reasonable compromise - it means stopping for ~25 mins every 2 hours, which is much more than I'd chose to do. You might be willing to take that compromise for the other benefits of an electric car, but for longer journeys a 200 mile range that can be topped back up in 10 mins would be a game changer
When ICEs were invented people probably said 'meh, petrol's really hard to get and they don't go any faster than horses, so they're rubbish'. But anyway, however good EVs become they are not the solution to reducing car dependency. If you want to talk EVs there's a thread for that.
the problem in this country is the venom and bile projected against the perfect form of sustainable transport – cycling.
It's far from perfect for a load of reasons that I'm sure you're aware of. Expecting everyone to cycle is not realistic, not least because a great many people are travelling further than even I as a fit cyclist (haha) would be prepared to on a daily basis. One reason that car ownership is entrenched is that people have relied on that to set their lives up - for example, a couple working 20 miles in opposite directions to their home - and thereby creating a much harder problem to solve.
Just doing some reading - in the Netherlands, 65% of commutes to work were by car (Statista), whereas it's 71% in the UK (gov.uk). That's not so different.
The Dutch "now drive over 200bn km per year" according to Wiki but I'm not sure when that was. In the UK it was 240bn km per year in 2022 according to the RAC. Adjusted for driving population (50m UK, 10m NL) that sounds like the Dutch are driving more per person than we are.
Now, these are poor statistics really and I'm not going to do a full investigation into them, but whilst we know the Dutch cycle a lot, if they aren't driving less then it's not necessarily the utopia people might think. I mean, I'm about to go to the shops now and I won't be cycling, but I won't be driving either. Given the faff involved in getting my bike out and honking up the hill it's just not worth it. I'm going to take a little detour through the woods. If I had a flat open cycleway and a Dutch bike and no pleasant detour I might just cycle.
The large number of cycle journeys in NL might be bolstered by people riding to train stations whereas in the UK people might simply walk to the station, as they do in London.
One reason that car ownership is entrenched is that people have relied on that to set their lives up – for example, a couple working 20 miles in opposite directions to their home – and thereby creating a much harder problem to solve.
Yep - move to the leafy suburbs for a 'nice' life but lock yourselves into car dependency and its effects.
Initially of course it wouldn't have been seen as any sort of problem - in fact it would have been a very desirable thing to show your wealth and independence. The problem with cars is that they're brilliant when you have one and terrible when everyone has one!
Adjusted for driving population (50m UK, 10m NL) that sounds like the Dutch are driving more per person than we are.
I've heard these stats before and would be interested in knowing more about them. Is it because of longer European journeys, for example driving for holidays instead of flying?
Having spent time there, a huge amount of people cycle on a daily basis and there's noticeably less traffic/congestion/parking. In the cities, upwards of 50% of people cycle daily. Most children, of all ages, cycle to school. Quality of life is vastly improved. Those who can't drive have independence, and those that do have consistently voted it one of the best countries in the world to drive in. Many of the Dutch do live out of town however, which probably accounts for a lot of the driving.
we’re getting closer to each of those over time, the fastest charging cars can now at 10 miles of range per minute, I think once you’re adding 30 miles per minute you are close enough to the speed of filling an ICE to not matter – then all the upset people who care about flats not having charging can be quiet too.
This is already solved, at least for modern, decent spec cars – my Etron charges at 150kW, which is 375 miles per hour or just over 6 miles per minute. That’s quick enough that a 15 min stop gives 95 miles extra range – more than quick enough to keep you moving on a long journey while fitting in with normal breaks you’d take anyway on a long drive.
It's not so much miles per minute, as percentage charge per minute.
Like your mobile phone can charge in ~2 hours, or you can plug it into a 12v fast charger and it'll do it in 40min, but it gets hot and you'll kill the battery after 2 years which isn't acceptable when it's a ton of battery and not £40 to have Timpson's replace it.
So a huge Panzer Tank like the Etron can add miles at a phenomenal rate, but try the same trick in a Leaf and it would catch fire (or have a dead battery in 5 years, like most of them seemed to).
Unless the battery tech changes there will always be that full charge in ~90mintues limit.
Unless the battery tech changes there will always be that full charge in ~90mintues limit.
the fastest charge rate seems to be ~15-80% charge, if you have a 250 mile range car and can add 200 miles of that in 5 mins, charging becomes an absolute non-issue. it doesn't really matter if the last 20% will take another hour
How to miss teh point of the thread - start discussing EVs (still clearly cars!)
Yep – move to the leafy suburbs for a ‘nice’ life but lock yourselves into car dependency and its effects.
You make it sound like an affectation, but there is not always room in city centres for all the people to live. In Cardiff, a lot of traffic is people driving from the Valleys to work in Cardiff. Often they can't afford to live in Cardiff. I knew a couple who lived and worked here but after the relationship failed they had to move to nearby towns because they couldn't afford to rent here on there own.
These aren't justifications for the status quo though. What we need is planning to avoid this issue. If you're going to concentrate businesses in one place you need transport infrastructure, and it's that that has been done badly. It's done by means of roads, and NOT public transport. They've been building new roads and bypasses all over the Valleys since the 80s, but only now have they started looking at the train lines.
