I retweeted someone’s tweet about there being too many cars on the road the other day, and got flamed in a big way for it. It seems that, even if the roads are utterly heaving with traffic, I am curtailing freedom to suggest that the government should invest in public transport infrastructure in order to reduce car use.

Anyway, that’s just my preamble. Please bear with me.

I am not exactly a Zen sort of guy at the best of times, but tonight (and quite a few times recently), I was brought to despair by the sheer number of cars on the roads in Cardiff. I use my bicycle to get to work, and I either walk or ride for everything I possibly can. My kids ALL walk to their respective schools, and Mrs SR refuses to use a car unless it’s absolutely necessary. Tuesday evenings right now, however, is one of those times. Unfortunately, we have three kids doing three different activities in three different places. So car it is.

And tonight it was hell.

From my house to my son’s football and my daughter’s ballet (they’re in the same direction), it was, without exaggeration, bumper-to-bumper cars in both directions. I had an overwhelming sense of being boxed in by an insane situation, and I wanted to scream. And it’s getting worse, I swear.

At what effing point do people wake up and realise that we’re rolling over our own effing homes? WE LIVE ON THESE STREETS! Why do we voluntarily clog them up with these effing 1500 kg lumps of steel, pumping CO2 into the air? Then to come home, and hardly be able to drive for the all the cars that are now parked on both sides of every street, narrowing the road and covering most of the pavements!!! It’s bloody INSANE!!! On a personal and family level, we try to do what we can by keeping our cars off the road and driving as little as possible, but I just feel like we are all losing to the car. They’re everywhere, and nobody seems to notice how crazy it all is!

Why, oh why can’t we just look at places with good transport infrastructure and imitate them?

Exhibit A:

The map below shows my route, and the red line how long the queue of traffic was. Where I have drawn a yellow “U”, is where a Cardiff Bus was trying to get around the curve at the mini roundabout – only he couldn’t, because he needed more room and the cars wouldn’t stop to let him make his turn, which meant that the queue behind him went as far as the eye could see.

Don’t know but I’ll read that over lunch tomorrow cos it’s too long for 1250 am.

I’m with you on not using a car unless necessary, but I doubt a cycling forum represents the general public there. The<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”> reactions I get from people who learn I walk 3 miles to work are telling. People with no mobility or fitness issues who just don’t seem to see walking or cycling as real options for transport.</span>

I’d love to get rid of the car entirely but public transport isn’t a practical replacement for longer distances. Trains are fine if I want to go to London for the day but useless if I want to take my bike anywhere interesting.

Maybe it’s not too many cars, but too many bloated cars.

The likes of a Suzuki Carryvan comes in a 6 seater version and takes less space than a mini. It’s extremely space efficient.

The Japanese Kei car size is more appropriate for UK cities which evolved before the car.

Perhaps if parking spaces were designed for smaller cars and only a few expensive large carparks were available for the fat cars it would change things a bit.

Good manners when driving helps too.

Definitely too many cars. Boils down to selfish convenience. They are the ultimate in go anywhere any time convenience. But we are very adept at completely overlooking the detrimental effects of excessive car use like air pollution, noise, obesity and lack of excercise, climate change, and the deaths and injuries from accidents. I’m not sure there’s a solution. I’m a driver by the way and try to limit the number of journeys I make but often wonder how we got to this situation.

If we make it as a species for another hundred years or so, people will look back in confusion at the era of the car. They bring out the absolute worst in people.

We’re selfish and short sighted though, so I don’t see it changing too quickly.

I do agree with your rant, but we’ve created a society where housing / work / amenities are not always close together and in many households both adults need to work to pay for said housing. Car usage and ownership are a consequence of those things.

The government could start to tackle all of those issues, but they’re not because each would take a generation to shift and the government works on a 1-5 year timescale, even less at the moment. Enraging the car gammons is not likely to be a vote winner. See also the personal care crisis that has been kicked down the road.

It’s bloody INSANE!!!

Yup…the problem is it’s also normal, and therefore (in general) people accept it and don’t question it.

I hate driving these days, it’s just tiresome and avoid it as much as possible, and the less you drive, the more you hate it when you do have to.

Because public transport is expensive and shit in a lot of places. Daughters looking at uni places at the moment and we look at train prices to and from each uni, some of them are eye watering. Buses around here are again expensive and shit, if the four of us go out then it is most definitely cheaper to drive.

The world is set up around vehicle use and would be impossible to change unless we all want to change what jobs we do, what food we eat, where we live etc etc

What’s bad traffic anyhow? Can’t say I have been in a traffic jam for months.

Completely agree. I wish I could cycle to work but it’s too far away – wanted to move closer to allow this but my wife wanted to be closer to her family for the kids which is sort of fair enough I guess. I hate cars and driving. A big money and stress pit. Looked into cycling to the station and getting the train in but even for a short trip season ticket prices are insane and I can’t take a proper bike on as my stop is on the London Euston line.

To be fair SR you were travelling in the wrong direction during rush hour on one of Cardiffs buisiest commuter routes . That journey has been a total pain for the last 30 years or more.

What would be really nice is if you could use your bike for jotting around and it would still be there if you nipped into a shop to get something.

I would use my bike more to get around if it was not a major security mission every time you wanted to let it out of your sight.

Doesn’t even matter if its a crap bike, it will still get nicked.

Before cars, people lived convenient for work, and kids wouldn’t have 3 activities in 3 places on the same night. (Not having a pop, we are the same)

The car has enabled these lifestyle choices. Yes, fewer cars and better public transport would be great, but until people think “I’m want to live 2 miles from work in an urban environment so I can walk/cycle everywhere and compromise/create our leisure activities to suit” it won’t change.

Banning any new housing not on brownfield sites would be a start. There’s enough earmarked brownfield space to meet our housing needs.

There’s an over reliance on cars for certain. But cars don’t drive themselves. My personal problem is more how many people we seem to think the planet can sustain. This isn’t a jab at you SaxonR, just my own take on it.

It’s the modern world. I now commute 5 minutes by bike my neighbour works in the same place drives. Town is quite with comparatively little traffic but it is increasing.
I put a camera in pointing at my garage both neighbours drive past it. I was surprised that a lot of their trips are sub 15mins out and back some regular ones were 7minutes. I can’t even fathom what they are doing a d why walking wouldn’t be as quick.

I’d love them to introduce a charge for overnight parking on the road. Getting from my house to the main road is like doing a ski slalom most days!

The selfishness drives me crazy. FOr example, my neighbour has built an extension on their parking area, so now they leave three cars and a van on the road all the time. **** infuriating tbh. One’s usually left on the green space outside my house so that’s always churned up and looking shitty as well.
I don’t see why they should get free use of the road as a car park.

I put a camera in pointing at my garage both neighbours drive past it. I was surprised that a lot of their trips are sub 15mins out and back some regular ones were 7minutes. I can’t even fathom what they are doing a d why walking wouldn’t be as quick.

Some of our neighbours drive to shop to get milk, paper, pick up takeaway etc.

Closest shop and a very nice fish and chip shop are precisely 4 minutes walk. Sainsbury’s local is 10minutes walk. Some folk are mega, mega lazy.

We have an OS map on a wall from circa 1963.

The M6 ends at Stafford.

I look at it and can see that I could reach so many places based on the railways shown on the map. They criss cross the entire area.

Dr Beeching was employed by bent Tory Transport Minster Ernest Marples – a bloke with “interests” in a road construction company.

Other: We looked a renting near Wolverhampton.

Somewhere in internetland there was a “Vision for cycling” type document, for Wolverhampton.

The gist was to push those to the east of the city towards bike commutes as they were “close to market” (verbatim, IIRC).

I took this as meaning “poor”, so they could more easily be “persuaded” to bike as it was “cheap”, whilst the more affluent west wouldn’t be as likely give up there boxy safe space, status symbol, important peoples carrier wagons.

However, simply by only allowing boarding school education we could solve road congestion overnight. Cos when the little princes and princesses aren’t being driven to their knowledge factories, the roads are, by comparison, empty.

So, in summary: Jacob Rees Mogg FTW.

There is not too many cars on the road at all, I think there are over three times the road miles vs’ end to end length of cars on the road so plenty of space, just everyone wants to be in the same spaces at once.

What would be really nice is if you could use your bike for jotting around and it would still be there if you nipped into a shop to get something.

I would use my bike more to get around if it was not a major security mission every time you wanted to let it out of your sight.

Doesn’t even matter if its a crap bike, it will still get nicked.

Depends where you live and how long you leave it. I shop at Lidls up the road and leave my singlespeed and trailer outside with a cheapo D-lock, no problem. Local newsagent I sometimes pop into on the way to work or home, leave my Tripster outside unlocked. etc…

I was riding across the m’way bridge last night actually, it’s pretty close to my house and there is constant white noise from the cars. For some reason I imagined cars being eliminated/replaced.. and how beautifully quiet it would be. When the planet explodes and our wonderfully inventive species is killed off. Probably.

There is not too many cars on the road at all

I’ve read some stupid words on here in my time.. but lordy (!), that is a classic. 😆

However, simply by only allowing boarding school education we could solve road congestion overnight. Cos when the little princes and princesses aren’t being driven to their knowledge factories, the roads are, by comparison, empty.

Might that be because the folk that drive them around are on holiday somewhere?

“Man in car complains about traffic” could be a Daily Mash story 😀

The selfishness drives me crazy. FOr example, my neighbour has built an extension on their parking area, so now they leave three cars and a van on the road all the time. **** infuriating tbh.

That could be an issue for your local planning authority. Round my way the planners are getting very hot on having adequate off road parking, I don’t think they would let you build over a parking area.

It really did strike me how drastically different the roads are during summer holidays. I bike 3.5k to work and in the holidays rarely have to pass a single car. Soon as schools started again there’s 3 queues I without fail have to filter past. I honestly don’t know where everyone has gone? Surely most still have to go to work during summer?

I could get on board with the boarding school idea (but I don’t have/want kids)

tldr;
“Too many cars are stopping me using my car”.

Haven’t used a car for a journey less than four or five miles for years. Long felt that journeys should be charged by the mile, with large penalties for short journeys that could be easily walked or ridden. Maybe Geraldine will think about walking the quarter mile to the shop to buy milk instead of getting in the car to do it if she knows it’ll cost her a tenner.

Roll the money into fleets of electric buses. Bin diesel trains for electric replacements. Car sharing.

Won’t happen. Car ownership is divine right in UK.

It depends entirely on where you live.

The contrast:

My sister lives in central London where public transport is fantastic. Last month she sold her car as she just doesn’t use it. It’s a 3-year-old VW Golf. In those 3 years, she had put 7,000 miles on the clock. All those miles were from weekends away and day trips out at weekends. On a day to day basis, it never turned a wheel for weeks at a time. She has now joined a car-share scheme for the rare occasions she needs a car.

I live in the hills in East Lancashire. Public transport is basically non-existent. I was recently working in Burnley – a total of 14 miles away and a town, so hardly somewhere obscure or remote. I’d commute on the bike a couple of times a week, or drive. My car had to go in for an MOT and service so I had a look to see if I could travel that 14 miles by public transport. I couldn’t.

Well… I could if I was prepared to travel a ridiculously convoluted route involving multiple changes and taking literally hours. The times involved would have meant I could not possibly get to work for a 9 o clock start.

If you live anywhere outside our major cities, then you genuinely need a car because the public transport network simply doesn’t exist

Definitely too many cars, but the answer isn’t just to rely on people volunteering to use alternate modes of transport, it has to be making them use them. For example, at a simple level cars could be given a banding, and on Mondays cars in band A are not allowed on the road. Tuesday band B, and so on. Obviously it will need to be more refined, and there will need to be a way to deal with those who can afford to buy a car in each band, but it cannot be beyond the wit of man (I will not say our Government!) to come up with a system. The French managed something similar in Paris when pollution got too bad, I believe.

When I was young I would cycle or get the bus to my activities (Judo and Badminton were 3 miles away, skatepark around 5).
My mum didn’t drive and my dad usually finished work around 7. Less cars on the road back then too, is that a coincidence…

I commute to Glasgow via public transport every working day. I leave my house at 6.30am and get into my lab around 8am – 8.15am. I travel into the city on the local bus service. It’s slow, expensive and oh my, you do encounter some characters on it. Once I’m in the city, I travel from the centre out to the west end either by the subway if it’s pishing down or on a Nextbike. Return journey is much the same, although the ‘character encounters’ are more frequent.

What I see every morning, is traffic snarling up and coming to an almost standstill on the motorway about 3 miles from the city centre. In the winter, this can extend out to about 7 miles. In the mornings, when I look up from the book I’m reading or amazon prime episode I’m watching, while sitting on my nearly empty bus, I can look into the cars and without exaggeration, I’d say that less than 1 in 20 have more than one person in them.

People think my commute is a horror show, (which it actually kind of is as I’m currently watching downloaded episodes of Preacher in the mornings on my Amazon Fire), but I would go mad if I was sitting on my trying to drive a car through that nightmare.

I always make a point of thanking the bus driver every time I get off. I can’t see why anyone would want to drive into or around a city.

Any form of road charging is simply hitting the poorer car owners worst. If you want the roads to be the preserve of the Audi-owning middle classes, carry right on, but it sounds a bit gammony/brexity to me.

Points already made;

Since WW2 we’ve allowed our society to develop into separate work and living spaces. Shopping is often put of town.

Our kids have more opportunities for activities but these are, again, often not near where we live.

A one-size-fits-all solution can’t take into account both urban and rural needs.

It will take decades of new policies to resolve this. And we don’t do that sort of planning with 5 year governments.

Having any more than 2 children and then complaining about this countries resource usage is a bit hypocritical.

The answer isn’t necessarily better transport infrastructure, it could be drasticaly reduced by better communication infrastructure, and more crucially, an acceptance by employers that it’s ok for people to work from home if they are able.

I share an office with about 10 other people. 6 of those spend all day sat behind a desk looking at a computer.

The other 4 ( and me) are required  to physically attend sites but usually arrange those journeys to be at off peak times to “avoid the traffic”  so we all work from the office during those times

So, first thing in the morning and last thing in the working day , there are 11 cars commuting to our office for no other reason than ” that’s where our desks are”

I don’t have a desktop computer or a landline desk phone. I don’t need physical access to any files or resources that I couldn’t get at home. I have better broadband at home than we have at work.

If we took all of these people out of the rush hour and left the roads and trains to people who do actually need to travel  for work then I’m sure that the world would be a very different place.

an acceptance by employers that it’s ok for people to work form home if they are able.

This very much, I am lucky to work for a company where 90% of staff work remotely. But still some managers are obsessed with putting bums on seats in our Cambridge office even though everyone else in those peoples teams is sat at home working.

Before cars, people lived convenient for work, and kids wouldn’t have 3 activities in 3 places on the same night. (Not having a pop, we are the same)

The car has enabled these lifestyle choices. Yes, fewer cars and better public transport would be great, but until people think “I’m want to live 2 miles from work in an urban environment so I can walk/cycle everywhere and compromise/create our leisure activities to suit” it won’t change.

Banning any new housing not on brownfield sites would be a start. There’s enough earmarked brownfield space to meet our housing needs.

I’m not really talking about ‘before cars’ so much as in the ‘good old days’ but I don’t think this is a 1-way direction of cars just enabling.

Most of my childhood activities were either not organised or involved me getting there and back by bike or running. (largely down to if there was anywhere safe to lock a bike) … to get to secondary school I got a bus, primary I walked with my little brother… shopping I’d go to a corner shop or something.

I used to run to organised activity and meet mates who got there the same way.

All of these seem now to be highly discouraged … bordering on child abuse to let your kid walk/ride to primary school alone (school refuse to accept kid anyway)…

Whenever I’m confused about how America feels about guns, I look at how we feel about cars.

We know that they’re bad for the drivers. We know that they’re dangerous to people outside them. We know that they degrade the local environment. We know that they’re bad for quality of life. We know that they’re damaging the global environment. We scream about freedom if anyone suggests alternatives.

I am curtailing freedom to suggest that the government should invest in public transport infrastructure in order to reduce car use

Don’t be silly, governments don’t invest in public transport, they subsidise it. Spending public money to enable car dependency is investment.

Any form of road charging is simply hitting the poorer car owners worst. If you want the roads to be the preserve of the Audi-owning middle classes, carry right on, but it sounds a bit gammony/brexity to me.

The poorest are currently being compelled to spend their money on car ownership, because the alternatives are too dangerous or expensive.

Cars are fine. People are the problem. Reduce the population by half and we’re good.

The poorest are currently being compelled to spend their money on car ownership, because the alternatives are too dangerous or expensive.

That’s part of the circular argument that will take decades of change to resolve.

IMHO there is no tipping point, people were still driving around parts of London at an average speed slower than walking pre-congestion charge. People still drive in NYC which is worse, often pedestrians are travelling faster than traffic.

Cardiff is getting very close to gridlock, a few weeks ago I passed a Van broken down in lane 2 of the A470 just as it merges with traffic coming off the M4 at Coryton. A Police car was just arriving as I passed, no more than a few minutes had passed. It was the middle of the day, not rush hour, but in those few minutes traffic on the M4 was backed up for a junction and a half East Bound.

We’ve got the usual old City problems, it’s grown around cars, we’ve got lots of car parks, but few train stations. The Taff Trail is great for cycling if where you’re going it near it, but the rest of our cycle network is limited to a few ignored red lanes at the edge of roads.

SaxonRider only lives a few miles from me, so I know his pain. We’re in the process of looking for a new house, but we’ve got a teenage Son, he doesn’t want to move schools a year before GCSEs and I don’t blame him, and I don’t want to have to drive him cross-town on top of our Daughter. I’m too scared to let him cycle, the route would be lethal that time of morning, and public transport is a nightmare. Works okay, well if you can face being packed in like cattle, if you want to go from any of the suburbs to the city, but if you want to travel a relatively short distance of 6 miles from suburb to suburb it’s nay impossible.