Oh, well. Clearly your peugeot anecdote completely overwhelms any data Honda collected in it’s experiments.

That would be like me inviting you to go and breath in what comes out of a Chinese battery recyling plant’s smokestack, since batteries can be “safely” recycled.

I’ve lived in places with great public transport systems (relatively speaking), but they were rubbish in reality

That doesn’t make sense. You lived somewhere with great public transport but it wasn’t great? You didn’t live somewhere with great public transport then 🙂 London has what I would consider great PT. Yeah the tube is busy and smelly and whatever, but it does its job – imagine getting around if everyone had to drive to work? There’s no way on earth you could get all those people to all those jobs any other way.

When I worked in Helsinki, in a suburb, none of the team drove to work. They all got PT from various parts of the city, even though most of them also owned cars.

you’d prefer I had a journey to work lasting over two hours, probably closer to three on the bus

No, I’d rather you used a bus or tram and it was a good service. People advocating public transport are quite aware of how shit it is – we’re not telling you to use what’s there when it’s unfeasible. We want proper investment in a decent comprehensive service.

Not a Chinese smoke stack within 8000km of here, Olly. Lots of filthy Honda exhausts packed with:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates of average passenger car emissions in the United States for April 2000[5] Component Emission Rate Annual pollution emitted
Hydrocarbons 2.80 grams/mile (1.75 g/km) 77.1 pounds (35.0 kg)
Carbon monoxide 20.9 grams/mile (13.06 g/km) 575 pounds (261 kg)
NOx 1.39 grams/mile (0.87 g/km) 38.2 pounds (17.3 kg)
Carbon dioxide – greenhouse gas 415 grams/mile (258 g/km) 11,450 pounds (5,190 kg)

London’s PT can’t hold a candle to Montreal’s.

Now I am aware that this might sound like a random city choice, but…

A single adult Société de transport de Montréal (STM) pass costs around $80 CDN per month, and can get you anywhere on the island by metro, as far as Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue in the West, Laval in the North, and Longueil in the South. It includes buses and commuter trains, and makes the freedom to travel for even the poorest an unsurpassed experience in any city (with “good” PT) I have ever visited. That includes Toronto, Mexico City, Rome, Berlin, Paris, just to name a few.

There is a philosophy in Montreal that travel belongs to everyone, and should not only be inexpensive, but should seriously reduce traffic. I just got back from there this week, and it never ceases to amaze me how empty the streets are of cars even a peak travel times.

Good price in Canada
https://www.tfgm.com/tickets-and-passes/tram-season-ticket-annual-adult
£930/year for me or £77.50 a month
http://systemonetravel.co.uk/travelcard-finder/?age=adult
£125/month(4 weeks) for all trams and busses in Greater Manchester

Discounts also available for kids, elderly (some free) and other concessions

Worth noting that Montreal has about a tenth the population of the London area. But that just goes to show what can be done if you invest.

Honda exhausts packed with:

estimates of average p

One of these things is not like the other.

Googling random factoids that don’t relate to each other do not an argument make. See if you can refute the idea that the technology on the front of the Honda removes more pollutants than the back end puts out. Note that isn’t the same as saying the back end puts out none, which your Peugeot journos failed to grasp.

Then Google how transport accounts for a minority of pollution. Then Google the amount of pollution produced by the manufacture of all the parts of an electric car and the pollution produced when you “recycle” batteries.
Then stitch all those related facts together into a cogent argument.

Then stitch all those related facts together into a cogent argument.

Cars are bad, private transport is wasteful regardless of the fuel used.

t never ceases to amaze me how empty the streets are of cars even a peak travel times.

You jest, yes? Compared to London maybe. And the two? bridges in all of Vancouver.

Montreal heavily subsidises it’s transit, which does serve a lot of riders. It also got massive subsidies to buikd it. It helps that they have an excellent underground pedestrian network. They have done a brilliant job of making transit serve as many people as possible but it isnt a system many places could afford. Quebecers pay a lot of taxes.

Cars are bad, private transport is wasteful regardless of the fuel used.

6/10. Non sequitur, no sources cited. Must do better.

Then Google how transport accounts for a minority of pollution.

What pollution and where?

Read theOPs article but not all of the subsequent posts but i’m entirely inclined to agree with Monbiot.
Surely it’s a no brainer to sob what ever we can to find and encourage new and better ways to travel and even to maybe just accept that we’ve had the mad gold rush on private transport for our own leisure and lifestyle needs but it surely can’t go on like this without reaching a saturation point can it?

I live in an old victorian town which when is now literally bumper to bumper with cars lining the roads. People do have some garages but these are either not used as they are too small for modern cars or just a hassle to enter and exit. I myself and guilty of running 2 cars… one of which is very rarely used but stupidly required as i need to have one for work (comes with a car allowance) but the wife only works a couple of miles away yet has only cycled about twice in 20 years FFS!!
I cycle most days though to work when not on site which involves a ride to the station then a train 20 miles then a cycle the other end and i quite enjoy it…and for all of the train issues i very rarely get held up. I also try to cycle to the shops or just walk (we do have 3 local supermarkets) and even drag one of those old lady shopping trolleys (much to the mirth of anyone i see) to negate the ridiculous drive round to the shops routine.

I work for a firm run by 2 guys who’s wives and sons both work there (6 people, 2 house holds) and yes, they all drive in in separate cars!! Rational being they have different agendas so it’s more convenient… and there’s the problem, we just are not willing to be inconvenienced these days. The 2 young lads at work point blank refuse to get a bus or train as they won’t be mixed with the general public and god forbid have to sit next to someone else. Thing is that we have limited space for parking now and it’s a constant source of complaining from the staff yet most live no more than 5 or 6 miles from the office! Both my employers recently moved house so they could get 4 cars nicely parked off road… and the irony is that the 2 dads often drive in in there daughters small run around as opposed to their huge BmW,s or porsche,s because they can’t be arsed getting the cars off the drive so they can get theirs out of the garage…. it’s bonkers! But they see it as their god given right as they “work hard and pay their taxes”.
The final bloody straw for me last year was when they told me they were rescinding my work from home (2days a week) as it was a maverick situation and the other 20 or so employees don’t get this. Again here’s the problem… i’m now forced to come into work (25miles) by hook or crook 5 days a week to sit at a computer when i got just as much (actually more) done from home! Now they have run out of office space and are moving with no option for cycle or rail links so i’m off as soon as i can. But this bums on seats mentality in some work places is just madness if the work can be done from home!! Our lead engineer drives 2 hours each way every day… soon to be further when the office moves.
Somethings got to give.

you can refute the idea that the technology on the front of the Honda removes more pollutants than the back end puts out.

I do absolutely refute it. It’s a pack of lies.

I found the original quote which is in itself bollocks

‘n some high smog areas, the Z-LEV’s tailpipe emissions can be cleaner than the surrounding air,’ says Honda

becuase it doesn’t consider the main pollutants put out by an internal combustion engine, the gases, as pollutants at all. It just looks at things that can be removed by a filter and says that if they are pollutants they will be removed. It ignores what’s going to happen at the end of the filters life, probably burned. What teh claim is really saying is:

“if you light a bonfire and run the smoke and fumes through a honda air filter it will remover the particulate pollutants, however the petrol engine will add a mass of unburnt hydrocarbons, NNOX, CO2 and other chemicals that will make already poisonous air aven more poisonous.”

I found the quote in a Quentin Wilson book – a bollocks spouting petrolhead if ever there was one.

I do absolutely refute it. It’s a pack of lies.

And it’s kind of incidental to the problem anyway. If cars’ engines ran on negative thoughts and emitted nothing but the smell of freshly baked cookies they’d still be a problem in terms of the amount of road space they use, the particles from tyres and brake pads, the sedentary lifestyles that they enable, the amount of space needed to park them, the fact that they crowd out cycling and public transport by blocking up roads so the alternatives are slower/more dangerous and the damage they cause from collisions.

The same goes for the claim that “only a minority of pollution comes from transport”. So what? It’s still there, and a short journey to buy a pint of milk can be easily converted to walking or cycling. That doesn’t mean that we can’t also look at increasing power generation from renewables, or improve gas central heating efficiency.

The comment about councillors trying to use public transport and failing is probably true everywhere in the UK except inner London. There, public transport is the default sensible option. Friends who live there only use their cars when they come back ‘home’ to visit family or friends. Otherwise, the car sits unused for weeks at a time.

Absolutely, bails.

I refuse to buy another new car until I can get something close to a tesla (hopefully Dyson will do this for us) for £30K

And the OP is correct Rudolph Diesel Born 1858 invented the engine we are still putting into new cars in 2019, if it wasn’t for him we would be buying steam cars today.

At least Hitler’s U-boats embraced the E-power

Also I am pleased car sales are down and Honda is closing – it serves the industry right for being greedy and lazy.

I find this thread interesting, I have read the article and most of the four pages of circular arguments that followed, there are some quite entrenched views from either perspective, but honestly I don’t think anyone can really argue against the idea that cars have gone from being an extravagant toy for a few wealthy individuals, to a tool providing more freedom for the masses, to an environmental and social problem…

Personally I don’t think we need to completely remove private car ownership, just make it less ‘normal’ the 80% of us that live in a major urban centres do need to reassess our ownership and use of cars as well as our willingness to fund and support more sustainable alternatives.

Anyone still arguing for a continuation of widespread private car ownership and use is essentially arguing for a decline in quality of life for the majority (IMO).

The thing that struck me was this graph on pg 2:

My parents were born in the early 1950s, so over the course of their lives car ownership has gone from a 15% minority thing to an 80% majority thing…

So it’s happened inside the life span of a single generation… Is there any real reason why that trend can’t that trend be reversed in a similar timescale?

I love these threads. As soon as anyone suggests reducing private car use a whole stack of people leap in with how they couldn’t possibly do anything without a car and all this unrealistic lentil powered green nonsense couldn’t possibly apply outside London.

Nobody is saying that every journey can be made without a car but a hell of a lot more could be. Yes, there needs to be higher quality, more frequent public transport outside London, it needs to cheaper to use (and car travel needs to become more expensive so that the marginal cost for each trip by car is higher than the public transport alternative).

When i was a kid my Dad commuted 24 miles from Chelmsford to Ilford by car and I remember it being a car share – 3 or 4 of them took turns to drive in. I’m sure a few people will chip in and say they do this but it’s extremely rare now.

No one is saying everyone has to ride a bike for every journey, but a hell of a lot more trips could be made by bike if there was safe infrastructure for people to ride on comfortably. And not just in the city.

The UK average commute length is 10miles – most are far shorter.
70% of UK car journeys are under 5 miles.
Anyone can ride those sort of distances in a reasonable time and an e-bike means hills are no longer a barrier. Yes, there are a few wet days, but not nearly as many as you think when you start commuting by bike.

Transport is the largest contributor to UK carbon emissions and private car travel the largest part of Transport emissions. Car journeys under 10 miles make up 37% of car carbon emissions.

I do absolutely refute it. It’s a pack of lies.

I found the original quote which is in itself bollocks

For a guy who insists on having factoids to support everything anyone says that disagrees with whatever internet enabled opinion you hold, you spout a lot lot of unsupported opinions

You’ve googled the wrong thing and I know this because you talk about filters. Wrong tech, wrong Wikipedia website.

You confuse trivia with knowledge and understanding.
So I will leave this here for you:

Your next responses will be bollocks,lies, etc etc. When what you mean is I don’t wish to believe it because it disagrees with my firmly held beliefs backed up by random web searches. So right back at you.

only a minority of pollution comes from transport”. So what? It’s still there, and a short journey to buy a pint of milk can be easily converted to walking or cycling.

If you live in city, have easy access to to a shop and are normally abled, true but try to step outside your own experience and consider how others live.
It also matters because transport is the low hanging fruit but everything else is the bigger problem we must address if we are to reverse the damge we are doing.

Transport is the single biggest contributor in the UK but not elsewhere and in the UK it is the single biggest contributor but still accounts for just under 1/4 of the total. Again low-hanging fruit to avoid the really difficult conversations we must have

If you live in city, have easy access to to a shop and are normally abled, true but try to step outside your own experience and consider how others live.

It’s almost as if everyone has ignored that, has never suggested using a different approach in different areas, or that a significant number of people live in urban areas so that does apply to them. We should not dissuade people in urban areas to reduce their driving because people live in the country. We can do many things to make using private cars in cities less attractive and make the alternatives more usable and cheaper.

Or to turn it around why should I suffer air pollution, congestion, poor cycling infrastructure and a lack of open spaces because you have to drive to buy milk. step outside your own experiences and consider how others live.
Then consider who we survived all those years ago without the majority owning cars.

The comment about councillors trying to use public transport and failing is probably true everywhere in the UK except inner London.

Okay but where do you think most people live?

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/urban-population-percent-of-total-wb-data.html
Well closing in on 83% in urban areas, think we should be doing something about car use in those areas? How about if what we were talking about here is what we could and should so rather than what exists today.

The UK average commute length is 10miles – most are far shorter.
70% of UK car journeys are under 5 miles.
Anyone can ride those sort of distances in a reasonable time

Well that isn’t true.

A 20 mile daily distance is way beyond most people. If you have never ridden a bike for 20 years and then try to start commuting 10 miles each way, it’s going to be very difficult. For some people, it’s never going to be possible. Especially with the existing infrastructure.

Also, it’s not just the journey that takes time, you need to change and ideally shower. All takes time.

I wish we had a proper cycle infrastructure and more people would use bikes but it’s not going to happen.

They’ve build a massive housing estate close to me. Not a single shop. Have grand plans to have a ‘High Street’ to hang out and have a latte in, but apparently not for mundane things like buying food, or a paper. So people drive everywhere, funnily enough.

Well that isn’t true. A 20 mile daily distance is way beyond most people. If you have never ridden a bike for 20 years and then try to start commuting 10 miles each way, it’s going to be very difficult. Also, it’s not just the journey that takes time, you need to change and ideally shower.

And just as predicted. *Average* is 10 miles – theres a minority who do stupid distances – read the next fact. 70% of trips are under 5miles.

You don’t need to change or shower after riding 5 miles at a relaxed pace and it’ll take you under half an hour. Maybe a quick wipe with a flannel on the hottest days of the year but even if you are riding futher and are a smelly sweaty individual a shower and change is only 10 minutes (and you no longer need to do it at home so theres a time saving there)

Add ebikes into the mix and you’re not going to need to change over a much longer distance or even when it’s really hot.

I wish we had a proper cycle infrastructure and more people would use bikes but it’s not going to happen.

Why not? the budget for HS2 is 56Bn. The Autumn budget had £5bn a year for road upgrades for each of the next 5 year. In Feb 18 the Gov announced cities could bid for a share of 7m for cycling schemes. The return on investment for cycling infrastructure is massively higher than for road or rail https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/23/it%E2%80%99s-too-expensive-to-provide-for-cycling

70% of UK car journeys are under 5 miles. I work in Chiswick and cycle just under 5 miles each way into work. I’ve done it for nearly 25 years and when I started there there were 3 of us who cycled now about 10 do. But there are still 2 people who work for me who are inordinately proud that one drives a mile and the other a mile and a half each way, and rent parking in Chiswick to allow them to do it. Strangely both of them complain about not being paid enough.
But as I said before within 7-10 years there’ll be road charging in the UK. It’s happening in Australia on about those timescales, and in Canada too as fuel tax revenue falls with the take up of EV cars then that revenue has to be replaced. It will be coming to the UK, and the rest of Europe in about that timescale. So people will be forced to re-evaluate their personal transportation methods.

We can do many things to make using private cars in cities less attractive and make the alternatives more usable and cheaper.

Absolutely true. No argument there. Except we have to have the much more difficult discussions about what the alternatives are, whether they are any cleaner, or more viable in the long run.

Or to turn it around why should I suffer air pollution, congestion, poor cycling infrastructure and a lack of open spaces

What makes you think getting rid of cars will help any of that? We now know that diesel emmissions are far worse polluters of far more dangerous things than other forms of ICE and there will be more of them. EVs are not viable long term because contrary to edukator there isn’t a scaleable viable way to recycle the lithium from the batteries, we can recover the metal, partly by burning the plastic around it. So we have to keep mining it, which is horrible for the environment and unsustainable.

Why should the entire population of the south east quadrant of the world suffer so London can have EVs?
Equally, where was your (multiple?) Bikes made? To what environmental standards? How did they get to you? On a ship powered by unicorn farts?

Those are the larger, far more difficult conversations we must have instead of being distracted by the whole cars are evil thing. It’s a fig leaf for the fact that we have neither the collective will or the ability to address what is really going to kill us.

How did people get around before we had cars? Well if you were disabled you probably didn’t live long enough to worry. Thank God we have to think about those people now.

Well closing in on 83% in urban areas

Which is different from inner London. Most urban areas don’t have a tube system for a start.

What makes you think getting rid of cars will help any of that?

Because cars are the dominant source of poor urban air quality.

Add ebikes into the mix and you’re not going to need to change over a much longer distance or even when it’s really hot.

Where do you out the kid you are taking to school, the toddler you are taking to daycare, Tge bulky equipment you need for your job, the diapers you need to buy and the foodstuffs to make dinner on your bike/ebike? Biking as a primary form of transportation just isn’t going to cut it for all but a select few (who tend to work in certain reasonably well paid jobs in areas with good resources).

Because cars are the dominant source of poor urban air quality.

A) they aren’t
B) if you replace them with something else, which you will have to unless you are willing to have the much harder conversations referenced above, you will end up in the same place but with different things taking up the space..

Every “solution” to air quality and pollution we are willing to consider merely moves it somewhere else.

Biking as a primary form of transportation just isn’t going to cut it for all but a select few (who tend to work in certain reasonably well paid jobs in areas with good resources).

The select few who don’t need to transport children to two different locations? You’re undermining your own argument.

I used a trailer, btw.

A) they aren’t

Yes they are.

Every “solution” to air quality and pollution we are willing to consider merely moves it somewhere else.

No it doesn’t.

Which is different from inner London. Most urban areas don’t have a tube system for a start.

Not a tube specifically but…. (Any one can fill in gaps I’ve missed)
Glasgow – Underground plus rail
Edinburgh – Tram
Newcastle – Light rail (over and underground)
Manchester – Tram and Rail
Liverpool – Underground trians

That is just my experience in the UK, down in Oz lots of good mass transit systems in all cities moving loads of people without touching cars at all.

I think it was Athens that electrified their bus network, there are heaps of systems in place

if you replace them with something else, which you will have to unless you are willing to have the much harder conversations referenced above, you will end up in the same place but with different things taking up the space..

Happy to have the hard conversations. as for space

Where do you out the kid you are taking to school, the toddler you are taking to daycare, Tge bulky equipment you need for your job, the diapers you need to buy and the foodstuffs to make dinner on your bike/ebike? Biking as a primary form of transportation just isn’t going to cut it for all but a select few (who tend to work in certain reasonably well paid jobs in areas with good resources).

More whataboutery

Just look at the girls face in that GSD video – it makes me well up every time i see it. I have no use for a GSD at all but my god would i love one. How much fun do they look?

Which is different from inner London. Most urban areas don’t have a tube system for a start.

Right, so we’re back to “we shouldn’t improve public transport because it’s not very good at present”? We know that public transport isn’t very good, e.g., no tube system outside London (and Glasgow and Newcastle), that’s the whole point, it should be better. People take the most natural, easy choice when they decide how to get around. Like I said, for my friends in London it’s public transport because it’s relatively cheap (in time and money), reliable, easy to use, goes where they want to go. For me, and most other people, it’s the private car, because in comparison to the rubbish alternatives it’s relatively cheap (in time and money), reliable, easy to use, goes where I want to go.

If you live in city, have easy access to to a shop and are normally abled, true but try to step outside your own experience and consider how others live.

I said “A short journey to get a pint of milk”, which kind of implies it’s y’know a short journey. You can live in deepest darkest North Wales and still have a village shop less than a mile away. Spar isn’t the preserve of the metropolitan elite for crying out loud!

In terms of disability, why on earth is “someone might live in the Highlands, 40 miles from the nearest shop and be disabled” an argument against improving public transport and building safe cycle routes?

As Simons-nicolai_uk said, it’s not about banning all cars or making every single person travel every single journey by bike or foot. It’s about getting some people to change some journeys.

Where do you out the kid you are taking to school, the toddler you are taking to daycare, Tge bulky equipment you need for your job, the diapers you need to buy and the foodstuffs to make dinner on your bike/ebike? Biking as a primary form of transportation just isn’t going to cut it for all but a select few

When the right infrastructure is there, you can use a bakfiets or cargobike if you need it.

But no, I wouldn’t expect a skip delivery driver to load 6 skips in one of those. Nor would I expect a building supplies delivery driver to carry 20 tonnes of gravel on one. But for SOME people, it could be a replacement vehicle for SOME journeys.

Also, just to go back to my earlier post, I think we’ve reached that point. https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/cars-are-killing-us-within-10-years-we-must-phase-them-out/#post-10523398

We are one week into a three month experiment to live without a car. I do plan to hire a car occasionally for visiting family or going to festivals (maybe), but we just don’t need one for daily living as we live in a city.

Not having a car will mean that we have to make changes, but so far that means doing smaller, more frequent and local shopping. In the longer term it will mean less visits to trail centres or spur of the moment outings. On the plus side my level of activity has increased in the last week, life has slowed down a bit, and I have explored more of my local area than I have in the last five years. I fully expect to give up the car permanently at the end of the three months.

You can live in deepest darkest North Wales and still have a village shop less than a mile away.

This bit is a joke right? Please tell me it’s a joke.