So what about us folks out in the countryside

I live rural too but the point is not stop all car journeys but reduce them. Even so it’s not the rural hours I general that are a big issue. very few of my journey could I do without a car but I could do part of some of my journeys with our a car. I.e the parts across town or into town centre etc It doesn’t take much of a drop in journeys to make a big difference to traffic levels and delays.

And shopping, I can’t get three cases of Stella and all my shopping in a rucksack, nearest supermarket is a mile away which I know isn’t far but it’s not practical to do that on a bike.

Did you just say a mile? One single, solitary mile? That’s 5 minutes on a bike at a sedate pace.

You’d pick up a small trailer for £20 on eBay that would easily carry your three cases of Stella. And before the storage argument resumes, let’s not forget that a majority of households find the space to store several cars. These are not difficult problems to resolve. The only barrier to the practicality is our own imagination.

But also this:

I assume you will continue to drive if cycling is not practical. “Encouraging more people to cycle” does not mean “everyone should stop driving”.

It’s not about preventing people from driving. It’s about enabling people to travel in different ways, which in itself automatically reduces the number of motor vehicles, to everyone’s benefit.

I work a couple of miles from home, but my son’s nursery is about 3miles the other direction. I’d happily do nursery runs by bike, but the practicalities of having a bike, suitable for carrying him and me,and our bags, accessible at the front door is a hurdle too far. The front garden isn’t big enough for a bike box.

Trailer? They fold down and the wheels pop off easily. They usually have plenty of storage space for bags, too.

You should hear the complaints: “ it’s too far”; “it’s too expensive [from people in BMWs]”; “I have a bad knee”; “it’ll take too long”; “it might rain” …
Every single person had a little sob story about why they had to park right next to the venue. A guy in a 4WD even lied, said he’d just turn round but didn’t come back.

We won’t just have difficulty getting people to take fewer journeys by car, it’s hard enough getting them to accept they might have to walk a few metres

In the town where I live, people seem to have no issue with sitting in a long queue to get into a multi-storey car park right next to the shopping centre, while other near by car parks are half empty.

Unfortunately, since the 1970’s/1980’s the country committed itself to the car culture, with infrastructure etc, such as the US did in the 50’s and 60’s, and always to the detriment of pretty much everything else. People think that changing over to electric cars would solve problems, but cars and all the infrastructure that comes with it do not exist in a vacuum, they are literally a way of life for huge amounts of the worlds population.

I was reading an article on electric car use(damned if I can find it now) about how politicians like the simple narrative that electric cars are “non-polluting”, but completely ignoring that the metals and minerals that make not only the batteries, but the whole cars, have to be mined usually from developing countries. Worldwide mining creates about half of the worlds pollution according to the UN.

It is a change of mindset that’s required, which is going to be difficult as there is to much economic interest in oil.
Any excuse to show this,and this again, about cycling in London.

@butcher +1 to that. We should be using the most appropriate transport for a given task not just jumping in the car to do everything.

The main problem is inertia: people just don’t want to change. After the TdF came through Skipton there was talk of “legacy” and various cycling schemes started up. The sports development officer on the council is a keen cyclist – he was one of the first Brits to race and complete the Tour Divide – so it’s not like there’s a brick wall with no way of gaining attention. I commented that there were very few places to securely lock your bike in town and the few that did exist weren’t exactly ideally situated. His comment was that we can’t get people/shop keepers to accept them.

The local supermarkets (Morrison’s and Tesco) have very limited bike parking. After all why provide for a mode of transport that doesn’t let people buy and take home lots of stuff?

We live in a rural location, it’s about 3km to the shops down in the village. Sometimes I’ll walk, sometimes I’ll bike, sometimes I’ll take the car. We used to have two cars but now have just the one – it just takes a bit of planning ahead about our usage, not exactly difficult (or so you would have thought).

There will always be journeys that can’t be done in an environmentally friendly way. But that’s what people need to get their heads around, questioning is this trip (or any other activity) worth its contribution towards greenhouse emissions?

If you live in the countryside and commute into a town for work, question why do you live in the countryside when there’s probably people having to do the opposite commute because the people living in the countryside with good town jobs push up the prices.

People need to stop seeing themselves as special cases.

Not to pick on this one individually, but as an example;

nearest supermarket is a mile away which I know isn’t far but it’s not practical to do that on a bike.

Our nearest supermarket is a Lidl and about a mile and a half away, maybe two depending on the route there’s a budgens petrol station closer but £££. One of my new years resolutions was not to go supermarket shopping by car and to take the bike and trailer instead (cheap BOB copy).

It wouldn’t do 3 crates of stella, but I suspect that is a bit like the “I cant have an electric car as I want to tow a boat to Aberdeen once a year” arguments. Either that or you need to look at your drinking habits!

On the otherside it’s not helped by over zealous people demanding we all work within 5 miles of our house. You turn people off from any changes.

get rid of stamp-duty for a start – discourages the movement of people and also encourages people to expand their homes rather than pay a load of tax moving, and therefore removes the supply of smaller homes.

This illustrates what I was saying:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-48905485

Recently I’ve used my electric unicycle a couple of times to whizz down to the vets to pick up the medication for my cats TB, rathr than take the car.

much more fun for a start and no real effort expended.

I could have cycled but would have got sweatier as it was a hot day.

Think these electric vehicles like e-scooters do have a lot more potential to stop people driving cars for short journeys than bikes do.

The Dutch solution to the rural to urban commute into Eindhoven – cycle path to the bus stop and then bus to destination.

And yes some of those are bikes standing there with just a wheel lock, not attached to anything solid. Can you imagine those bikes left every day unstolen / undamaged in this country?

I can’t get three cases of Stella and all my shopping in a rucksack

Not sure transport is your biggest problem here

😀

Can you imagine those bikes left every day unstolen / undamaged in this country?

Is it because the Dutch are all honest and decent? Or because everyone’s already got a shitty old town bike so there’s no market for them?

There will always be journeys that can’t be done in an environmentally friendly way. But that’s what people need to get their heads around, questioning is this trip (or any other activity) worth it

^ pretty much this, it’s about getting people to change from using the car as the default option, to deciding to use the car when it is the most appropriate or only practical option.

Need to nip to the shops for some extra veggies for dinner? Walk or Bike
Need to visit 3 different places in 3 different directions and they’re not easily accessible in a sensible time frame by bike? Car
Sometimes need to do site vists? fine, take the car that day, but for the other 3-4 days a week when you don’t?

etc.

Just getting people to think is the start, right now people use the car as it’s the default option, it’s what they’re used to, it is literally the first option that pops into their heads so it gets used even when it’s not the best option.

I hate going anywhere by car during the week now as it’s slower and more frustrating, and more isolating than walking or riding, sometimes though the car is the better choice, so I use it, but at least I’m choosing to do so out of necessity.

nearest supermarket is a mile away which I know isn’t far but it’s not practical to do that on a bike.

Also wanted to pick on this one, not on the OP directly, but you gave us such a good example!

There are thousands of people all over the country who don’t drive or can’t drive who manage this ‘impractical’ scenario every bloody day/week!
There’s also loads of people who can drive but decide not to use a car for trips like this, so is it that you genuinely can’t see a practical way to do it, or that you’ve just not bothered to even think about it and defaulted to using the car?

I started off just using panniers, migrated to a trailer, now have a cargo bike as it’s Jnr’s nursery taxi, so can pretty much do any shop if necessary but we used to get by just fine with panniers, either a couple of small shops per week, or one big one with both of us and 4-6 panniers as necessary.

get rid of stamp-duty for a start

What a bizarre thing to say.

Is it because the Dutch are all honest and decent? Or because everyone’s already got a shitty old town bike so there’s no market for them?

A Dutch colleague compared it to umbrellas in a public building. Most people will take their own out of the rack, a few people will steal one, but it’s not worth stressing over as on the whole everyone has an umbarella so why would you steal one?

That and I guess there’s safety in numbers, in the Uk if a thief wants a bike from the bike rack at asda, it’s yours. In Holland it’s any one of a hundred. So the individual risk is tiny.

What a bizarre thing to say.

Makes perfect sense. If you want people to move arround and live near their work, you need to eliminate the biggest hurdles to that and as house prices have risen stamp duty has grown from something only the rich paid to the biggest cost of moving between average houses.

It neither reflects the cost of providing a service or a behaviour the government should be trying to influence, so why have it? It’s a tax on people who might have to move arround due to careers etc. Just add the shortfall onto council tax bills.

Makes perfect sense. If you want people to move arround and live near their work, you need to eliminate the biggest hurdles to that and as house prices have risen stamp duty has grown from something only the rich paid to the biggest cost of moving between average houses.

You do that by building more houses, which this country has not done for a long time, you also prevent the further centralisation of jobs in the south east corner of the country, and then start to reverse it, you don’t privatise the railways, as the cost of travelling on them is far too high which as an example increases the price of housing around the stations, just a few examples there.

The original point of this post was to point out that changing from fossil fuel vehicles to electric will not solve problems, and as I have said in an earlier post that cars and their infrastructure/culture does not exist in a vacuum, changing one thing doesn’t change everything.

A “simple” tax cut will not change the market, be it jobs, housing etc, until more fundamental changes occur. Though I suspect it would financially favour those who are suggesting it would.

Just getting people to think is the start, right now people use the car as it’s the default option, it’s what they’re used to, it is literally the first option that pops into their heads so it gets used even when it’s not the best option.

Agreed. We have a supermarket 20 minutes walk away from work which I often walk to at lunchtime. When I’ve mentioned it to my colleagues I may as well have told them I’m swimming the channel. These people are all younger than me also. I think we have a long way to go before the car is no longer the default choice, regrettably.

Increasing railway capacity might increase railway usage, but wouldn’t cut emissions by the same amount as just eliminating the journey though would it?

On its own of course cutting stamp duty wouldn’t solve climate change, but neither will whataboutism. Is there a good argument that it in any way helps either the environment or some other area of life?

Building houses will help with prices, but inevitably they will be concentrated in the SE as that’s where developers get the most bang per buck. And won’t help people move between them when they charge jobs.

Stamp duty is a relic of the last century when people had jobs for life and often never moved out of their home town and house prices were well below the thresholds. These days it just adds cost to moving house when the average time in a job is <5 years.

Have this planned after I’ve ridden home (not on the same bike)
(where’s that halo emoji? 😀 )

You do that by building more houses,

but if the idea is to reduce the need to commute and to get people to move closer to where they work, then this in itself is not going to do that as people will not want to move and drop x thousand on stamp duty as well as moving costs, solicitors, etc.

There are lots of barriers to cycling that aren’t just about attitude. Many have been picked up already.

The biggest thing for me is safe bike storage. Even at work with cameras and a fence we’ve had relatively low end bikes nicked.
I could get a cheapo but then I’d have to store another bike at home.
I mainly walk and get the train as a result but would rather cycle.

The Next bikes in Cardiff have been great. I’ll often rent one to go a few miles around town when I need to leave the bike. Previously I’d have driven, as bus or train can make them long journeys into the centre and out again.

If we had good infrastructure for bikes I think the above point about things like eScooters or eBoards seeing the most use would be true. I could use that on a segregated cycle path and stick it under my desk at work or carry it around shops etc.

Lots to do but it isn’t complex. Start with the infrastructure and people will shift when they see a benefit either in time, cost or health.

I like cars because it gives me the freedom but I also like bikes (all forms) …

Problem … I like everyone to ride nice (might be expensive) bikes but there are simply too many thieves about to consider leaving the bike safe for a while. On one particular instance when my German friend visited me with her trusted (reverse paddle brake) old bike it got stolen when she parked outside my flat … That’s her bike with sentimental value to her. Another German friend got his titanium bike stolen too in the city. I got my bike stolen as well long time ago but until this day I can still remember the pain as I saved up for that.

There are simply too many thieves about. Yes, you might suggest insurance etc but wait until yours got stolen when you have so much attachment to it.

As for suggesting the creation of barriers to infrastructure for the motorists by making their lives difficult to drive their cars … Good luck with that.

If the govt really want to encourage people to ride bikes to work then simply reduce their income tax level by half as an incentive, any other suggestions are simply fairly tale.

I will vote down any gov’t that intends to make life harder for people to earn a living.

Think these electric vehicles like e-scooters do have a lot more potential to stop people driving cars for short journeys than bikes do.

Yup, it is with regret that I agree with you.

As Reinhold Messner once said: “einiges tages geht der Mensch kaputt, weil sie zu faul sind zu Fuß zu gehen”

One day people will break down as they are too lazy to go by foot.

Munich where I live has reasonable cycling infrastructure. Miles ahead of the UK, but still gives too much priority to cars (not surprising being the home of BMW), although there’s a movement to improve things further.

Our two motors (mx5 & camper) barely get moved and we need to sell the Mazda.

Loads of those e-scooters buzzing about. In fact, today I saw some pissed off old guy chasing one along the road.

The difference I see is that here in the Vaterland bikes are used much more out of town than in the UK. Out of town the infrastructure is so much better. I can ride 50km from town in any direction on cycle paths or quiet roads (beruhigte Straßen).

Out of town people still do their daily shopping and such with the bike. Again, cyclist vs person in a bike.

A possible solution to bike security in town centres is to allocate some of the empty retail units into bike storage facilities. With ebike charging facilities available. Costs could be met by a surcharge on local car parks.

Problem … I like everyone to ride nice (might be expensive) bikes but there are simply too many thieves about to consider leaving the bike safe for a while.

This is a very British thing, where the entry to ‘cycling’ is usually through some kind of sporting discipline, and performance is sold to us at an eye-watering cost. And it’s exactly the type of thing we need to move away from if we’re to make it an attractive transport option.

A perfectly capable bike can be picked up for £40 or less. Lock it up to a drainpipe outside of your house and storage is not an issue. If it gets stolen, it cost about the same as a week’s worth of petrol (it’s probably already paid for itself several times over).

There is no physical barrier here, only ones created by our culture and attitudes.

Unfortunately we have come to value money and material possessions over quality of life.

but if the idea is to reduce the need to commute and to get people to move closer to where they work, then this in itself is not going to do that as people will not want to move and drop x thousand on stamp duty as well as moving costs, solicitors, etc.

Building houses will help with prices, but inevitably they will be concentrated in the SE as that’s where developers get the most bang per buck. And won’t help people move between them when they charge jobs.

You two aren’t getting the whole “fundemental change” bit are you?

There is also the snobbery involved. People in general look down on cyclists as a poor sub species of society who have failed at life.
The fact they are in a pcp rental they don’t own and the vast majority of cycling adults own their car escapes them.
People will not cycle whilst there is a car sat in the drive. Simple as that. Make fuel £5 a litre and that would be a start, although the gov then looses revenue as tax inputs reduce.
Put cycle racks next to the front door of supermarkets to give an impression of superiority and an increase in security as they will be constantly overlooked might help.

yeah..’you cycled poor you’

Haven’t seen anyone mention the weather yet. Yes its doable riding in all weathers but it is far from pleasant, and if you have the option of a nice prewarmed dry car why would you get cold and wet?

My commuting by bike is sadly down to 1 or 2 days a week as I have nursery runs and children to transport. This autumn / winter I stopped entirely as I had two very very close calls in a week and decided its just not worth the danger – and I’m a seasoned cyclist, no wonder there are so many cars about.

I agree more cars, electric or whatever, are not the key to solving our mass transit issues. One idea I like is tax people on the number of miles they do, this would then start to modify behaviour on journeys that don’t really need to be done, or working a job hundreds of miles away.

Something like a £1 per journey plus 10p a mile

One idea I like is tax people on the number of miles they do, this would then start to modify behaviour on journeys that don’t really need to be done, or working a job hundreds of miles away.

Not a bad idea but like most ideas that would actually have an impact (i.e restricted flights to 1 every 2 years), nobody would back a party that is suggesting them as policies.

You two aren’t getting the whole “fundemental change” bit are you?

I think it is you who aren’t getting it.

Jobs are not for life nowadays so making it easier to move home would make it easier to consider moving around the country and living closer to work, hence reducing commute time and making it more likely that someone could walk/cycle in to work.

The housing ‘market’ is not a market as it is being manipulated by this tax – houses are not a commodity, removing this tax might be a step towards making them more of a commodity.

There is also the snobbery involved. People in general look down on cyclists as a poor sub species of society who have failed at life.

whereas in fact those people take the bus and jealously look out the window at cyclists with envy…

Improving other infrastructure at the expense of cars is the answer, you can see it in many european cities where trams rule, etc.

I agree more cars, electric or whatever, are not the key to solving our mass transit issues. One idea I like is tax people on the number of miles they do, this would then start to modify behaviour on journeys that don’t really need to be done, or working a job hundreds of miles away.

We already do this with fuel duty. Granted, it doesn’t apply to electric vehicles (yet), but neither is it currently discouraging people from driving traditional vehicles. Of course, that’s partially because the fuel tax escalator was frozen.

However, if we increase the cost of driving, we must provide viable alternatives so that those travelling for legitimate reasons are not penalised.

What we really want to stop is all the short, unnecessary, journeys. That’s a bit more complicated.

You two aren’t getting the whole “fundemental change” bit are you?

Ermmmm, it is you who’s arguing against change?

I’m all for anything that changes people’s environmental impact for the better, including getting rid of a tax that encourages long commutes.

Or are you suggesting this “fundamental change” (fundamental has two a’s in it) will just happen because people are told to, because we’ve (collectively as a society, my dad wasn’t even born yet at that point let alone me) known about the impact of CO2 on climate change since the 1950’s and yet have fundamentally failed to fundamentally address the problem!

We need houses where there are jobs, jobs where there are houses and people to be encouraged to move to be near them. Londoncentricism is a problem because it tends to mean the breadwinner commutes from miles away to London and the second earner possibly even works somewhere in the opposite direction which is just bonkers. The country and environment would be better served by better jobs in Leeds than ever faster trains from Leeds to London.

In our house my job location has changed twice and the OH has changed three times since we moved there 4 years ago! And that doesn’t include temporary assignments.

IME you see lots of people cycling in London, oxford and Cambridge because

#1. Driving is slow.
#2. Slow driving makes cycling feel less scary.
#3. Parking is expensive and hard to find in the centre.
#4. The centre is a desirable part of the city to be.

You can make driving slow easily with 20mph zones.
You can make parking expensive but unless the town centre is desirable many will stop coming and then the crys of a dead centre by business are felt.

+ the critical mass thing occurs which get more and more people involved

Costs could be met by a surcharge on local car parks.

Ooh Channel 5 would love that.

IME you see lots of people cycling in London, oxford and Cambridge because

#1. Driving is slow.
#2. Slow driving makes cycling feel less scary.
#3. Parking is expensive and hard to find in the centre.
#4. The centre is a desirable part of the city to be.

I think those were always the case, for London at least, the difference was and always is safe separate bike infrastructure.

Yep I am a proponent of good cycle lanes, but I definitely saw a big rise in cycle number when I lived in London both pre and post super highways. The pre super highways growth was still significant even though it was more of an “early adopters crowd” but it got the ball moving.