You’ve forgot cost.

It’s still way cheaper for me to run a car than any public transport options available to me.

1. its 29 miles each way with the Dartford crossing half-way.

If i lived <15 miles from work and it was a nice (fairly flat) route i’d ride 3 days a week in the summer.

6. Try to ride every day. Sometimes need to drive in to bring change of clothes, etc. Hate driving, so not at all attached to it.

Work from home, use the car two or three times a week if we absolutely have to (ie need to get heavy or bulky boxes to the post office), include a big shop or a trip up to my mam’s (30 miles away) if we have the car out up that way, otherwise we walk or cycle everywhere else. We sometimes don’t use the car all week, other times we end up ‘having’ (for want of a cargo bike!) to take it out a few times in a week.

I like the car we have, it’s great, but I don’t want to live in it or anything.

1.

I hate cycling 🚴‍♀️

1
Impossible to due my job without Transit van full of stuff.

I was a 1, but not by choice. The cycle to work was an hour+ each way on a shitty trunk road and I valued my life too much to do that.

Since moving to Sweden I am a 6. We have a car (for weekend trips if we do them), but I cycle to work every day. In a year, I have only not cycled for 5 days. On those days, I took the bus.

6…. Mostly.

Depends on where and when I’m working and whether I need to take tools.

Haven’t touched the van for work (nor privately) for the last two weeks and probably won’t use it until I drive down to Italy mid-April.

I’ve one customer I need to drive to as they’re 54km away, but we generally car share. Mostly I’m in and around Munich and most jobs can be reached easily by bike or public transport. Will usually take the bike depending on weather and time of day.

I don’t commute but even when I did it’s been many years since I used the car – always train or bike into London.

Nursery run though – it’s 20-odd minutes walk away or about 4 mins in the car. With one kid I’d try to walk/pushchair it or use the bike and trailer when I could. With two kids by the time I’ve got them both ready I just want to throw them in the car and get them there. At least that’s all on electric not petrol. Will reevaluate when the days get a bit longer.

What’s “transit”? Public transport?

Unfortunately i live in a rural area with absolutely no public transport and work is 29 miles away.

I tried it for a year riding the 58 miles a day and ended up with depression and chronic fatigue from overdoing it as a result, know only coming to an end of it after 16 months! You get to a point where the enjoyment of riding goes out of the window and it becomes a chore, plus i got knocked off twice.

Is the OP a survey monkey in disguise??

1.

12 miles each way on a morning would mean getting up earlier getting home later and seeing less of the kids as a result. Had a huge barney with someone on a now dead forum a few years back as he couldn’t understand that I’d rather be at home with family than extending my working day. If I worked closer to home I’d ride for definite but until that happens I’m in the car.

Attached to my specific car (Civic) – yes in that I love driving it. Best car I’ve owned.

However I’m not that attached to driving a car for a commute and if it was possible I’d ride or take public transport to work (have done in the past when it suited). So 6.

At the moment it’s just not possible (well, 3 or 4 hours to ride depending if lethal road routes or off road, and 2 hours by train – for a 30 mile journey!).

Wouldn’t sell the car though. I need transport to rural ride locations that are too far to ride to and too difficult to get to by public transport. This also means sticking to fossil fuel at the moment as a leccy car isn’t going to be practical for long trips (not if it means stopping every 100 miles or so to charge up for an hour and not having charging points in remote rural locations).

Ideal commute involves mostly off road, options to mix up the route and have a play on the way, with secure bike store and shower facilities at office.

Or better, work from home, trails nearby. I’m doing that couple times a week at least, but get a bit fixated on work and don’t get out for an hour or so in the day when I should do really.

We are moving house – current 42 mile commute (round trip) is tolerable and I have a fairly car-free route, but adds three hours to my working day, meaning I miss out on seeing the children before they go to bed.

New house is five miles from work – I’m hoping to cycle on multiple days per week, but will have to factor in nursery and school drop offs.

1.
Would love to cycle but not practical due to a few hundred kilos of kit and covering the whole country.
Admittedly a lot of my work is in London but the kit is too bulky for public transport or cycle.

I could pretend to commute in a green way by leaving the van at the yard but I’d have to then drive further back on myself to the motorway. So pointless.

I would give up the car for commuting and cycle everyday other than for bad weather if the roads around me weren’t as sketchy as they are. I know my gf would do this too for the hotter months.

6.

I already cycle, and if I was changing jobs I would see having to commute by car as a significant negative on whether I would want to take up that job.

Currently I drive about one weekend a month – if MrsDoris didn’t commute by car I think we’d go more for a car club style thing.

Thankfully I telecommute as my current customer is in Vevey and I’m in the outskirts of Sunderland, other wise it would be 1 + Plane(s) + train(s) + walk, which I did for the last 2 years in Frankfurt.

I had a local customer a few years ago and that was mainly 4. Much faster than having to drive through Newcastle.

Drive all winter (to the station for my commute), ride in the spring, summer, autumn when I am able/when weather is okay.

I did 1,800 miles in the car last year in total.

deadkenny
and 2 hours by train – for a 30 mile journey!

Though thinking about it, it can often take 1.5hrs by car with traffic, 2 worst. Though train route is a right faff with walks, changes and a bus. Not sure if I can get a bike on the train in the morning either, but there are no showers at the office anyway.

When I was office based and commuted, I was a 3 or 4, commuting about 10 miles each way. Once a week or so I’d come back over the downs, adding another 5 miles or so. This was great. I did find that after 3 days on the trot, and often working 8-6 plus the commute, I was pretty tired. I was also pretty bloody fit.

Now I’m on the road all the time, so drive everyday. I try to park somewhere central and walk to appointments in a town, rather than move the car between them, but that’s it. Fitness hasn’t suffered too badly as I finish early enough to spend time exploring new places when I’m away, but my driving miles have increased significantly.

Otherwise, I couldn’t live without the car, and still have the outdoor lifestyle I enjoy. On days off, I’m normally either out with the canoe or the bike, or visiting nature reserves or similar, and though a small amount of this is doable from home (well, not the canoeing), I like to travel to new places too. I like to think I walk or ride for most short “popping out” tasks, but I’d probably be exaggerating the “most” from “some”.

Safety is not an excuse not to cycle. Despite STW being a very efficient forum for reporting every single accident and incident and minor infraction cyclists experience on British roads it just serves to distort that actual picture that cycling on British roads is safer now than ever and getting safer. Of course it very much depends on the roads you’d cycle on if you were to commute on your bike and each individual has to make that risk assessment themselves or change to an alternative route that might be safer. But ultimately British roads are safe for cyclists. 113 cyclists were killed on British roads last year (slightly up by a few from the year before)…however in 1934 over 1,500 cyclists were killed and there were far fewer cars on the roads back then. We’ve probably hit that bottom plateau and wont see any headway into that circa 113 annual deaths…a good portion of that are cyclists not taking basic safety precautions themselves and putting themselves in unnecessary danger, so not all the fault of drivers. Just yesterday I saw a cyclist nearly get knocked off as he steamed into a situation where there were a number of cars all jostling for position all fighting for the same reducing space, and the cyclist just went steaming in there at speed without checking if he’d been seen, was nearly knocked off, but for the evasive manoeuvring of a couple of cars, who were then greeted with a loud verbal dressing down from the cyclist with much expletives accompanied by the usual hand gestures. Clearly that’s one cyclist that would greatly benefit from some sort of risk assessment training.

I’d happily cycle more, but struggle to do it daily at the mo due to dropping kids off in the morning and other things that mean I need the speed of being able to use the car…but I tend to manage two to three days over the summer. I could manage more over the more inclement months if I were not such a soft fair weather cyclist, so no excuses there – must try harder. But certainly where I live and work a good percentage of my work colleagues probably live within easy cycling distance from work so plenty of scope to get more people out of their cars.

Mostly 6.

I work from home now but when i commuted I would ride in every day most of the year. On the occasional times that I got up feeling knackered or the weather looked a little testing I’d take the train. That was probably about 10-15 times a year.

Haven’t driven to work for about 20 years. But that is mostly because I live on the outskirts of a major city with good transport links which gives me lots of options.

1) of necessity, but if (when!) I get a job closer to home, it’ll be as close to 6) as I can get.

I’ve never learned to drive, so after uni I bought a house where I could walk, cycle or take public transport to things and only applied for jobs which I could get to by walking, cycling or on public transport.

Not sure where on the OP’s scale that falls.

Can I choose…

7. Ride Motorbike unless weather is truly s**t, then use car.

No, 7 is van use. 8 is public transport 😉

Thanks for the replies everyone. During high profile transportation projects, you often hear comments such as nobody will get out of their car. We were debating at work how many people are actually die hard drivers and how many would be willing to switch if they had the option, even a day or two. So say you wanted to reduce vehicles along a corridor by 10%, could those die hards keep driving and say so many of the others shift. That’s where I was going with this.

I had 6 months work in central Liverpool, some 15 miles away. My next door neighbour worked in the next block to me. We used to set off at the same time, him in his car and me on my bike. I frequently got to work before he did. I frequently got home before some guys in their car passed me on the way home. I got to learn the timings on all the traffic lights, and could always gain a precious few seconds to be up and riding before the cars came at me. I also learned a few decent rat runs. This was over winter when I was in full winter gear. I was bloody fit by the time March came.

Mind you I was also knackered, and usually found an excuse to have at least one day either working from home, or going out by car on visits. Would I cycle into Liverpool now? No chance; not for the traffic, but the roads are not safe. One stretch has had road works on it for 3 years, and the rest are so potholed that weaving to miss them is a big danger.

I’d give up the car for work if I could. down to 3/5 days in the office now and do try to part ride in the summer at least once a week for some of those days. the full trip is too much to ride. 100% homeworking isn’t an option either.

I work with someone who drives 2 miles to work everyday, and then to the supermarket less than half a mile away every lunchtime, despite it being quicker to walk.