Could do you do without your car?

[anon2334]

Or would you never consider that ? Public transport? Cycling? Walking all good options depending on where you live. I’m cutting back, school runs I need the car though , but definitely walking more into town etc and to parks. Just doing occasional trips out etc.

I've given up the car before, but in those days I had a residential job.

Currently I need the car to go to work, I live rurally and although my workplace is only 10 mins down the road I can't walk 8 miles there and 8 miles back, and be on my feet all day....

As soon as I retire I shall be giving up the car for good. There is a rural bus which goes to the nearest market town, and I can take a train from there if I ever need to go anywhere (eg. London). Other than that, no, I can shop online and walk into the nearest village for exercise and the post office/corner shop/church. I can't wait, actually.....

No, not without moving. Rural, nearest bus stop is a mile away, with a daily bus service that would take 3 times as long as by car to get to the city where DH and I work and where DC go to school.

Without a car (and using online shopping, which we already make great use of!), I could still walk to my hairdresser (about 30 min walk), and the post office (15 min walk), local primary school is about 20 mins (adult pace), but DC are now at secondary, the closest of which is about 4 miles. Other than that, nothing. Not even a place to eat out within about a 50-60 min walk.

Yes. We're a family with disabilities and autism, we're semi rural. I hate public transport. We manage. It's not convenient nor easy but very possible. There's 1 train an hour into town and a taxi to get to it, you can then change to go in different directions. I'm used to waiting for a day I'm well enough to get out or waiting a few days for a delivery if I need something. It's about expectations and being prepared.

We don't have a car, so yes.

No. We chose where we live because we have a car. I don't want to live in a city. We do have trains, but they are hourly and only go to a couple of towns. We have no buses between our village and any of the other villages in the area. You would have to get a bus or train into town and then another one out.

I took a load of stuff to the tip yesterday. How would I do that without a car?
I need a car to get DD and all her stuff to and from university.
My workplace is on a trading estate. It would take three trains and a bus for me to get to work, and would take nearly 2 hours. My drive to work is 25 minutes of mostly motorway driving.

Neither of us could get to work without a car.
But school runs are done either walking or bus. And we do walk to parks etc, and take the bus into town.

[quote PinaColada123456]@drawingpad Driving imo is a life skill and something all 15/16 year olds should be taught. It's about priorities and wanting the best for your child. Also not wanting your child to have to rely on public transport which no parent should want for their child. Luckily where I live Driver's Ed is a compulsory part of the school curriculum, thank goodness.[/quote]
There are lots of things I hope my kids will have but "not using public transport" isn't on the list. How odd

No chance. Live in a village without shops and no public transport. Nearest supermarket is 5 miles away. Work is 12.5 miles each way. Parents live 20 miles away.

No I couldn’t do without it. I use it to get to work. I work shifts and start early on Saturdays and Sundays. The bus near my house first bus comes at 0807 and 0839 on the weekend and I start work at 7:30am and this is in London. I also finish late at night and feel to scared to get on the bus at 9pm by myself. It also costs a lot more to get public transport.

There are lots of things I hope my kids will have but "not using public transport" isn't on the list. How odd

I agree. DD used to get a bus to school and uses the metro in her university city. She also gets a train when she comes home for a visit.

I couldn't manage without my car.

Work would be virtually impossible to get to. All my/the kids activities would be impossible. It would have a horrible impact on my mental health.

Unfortunately, there's a significant lack of useful public transport. Although I live between 2 major cities, almost on the main route between them, the bus companies have massively cut services from where I am. If I need to go into the city centre its cheaper and more convenient to drive to the park and ride. The general train & bus services are inconvenient and quite expensive. I wouldn't dare cycle on the roads round here either.

No. But we could probably cut down to just one car (currently have two).

We live rurally and although there is public transport to the village (about a mile from our house) it is infrequent and doesn't run evenings, Sundays or Bank Holidays. We certainly couldn't get to the DC's activities without one.

I couldn't get to my office easily using public transport, and I also need to travel for work which would be pretty much impossible. DH doesn't travel for work and could feasibly cycle there, so we could get rid of his car. We'd definitely still need one car though.

Being confident in navigating public transport is absolutely a life skill. I much prefer it to driving but it's woefully inadequate in the fairly rural county I live in.

For that reason, I also see driving as a life skill and will be strongly encouraging my children to learn. Strangely, the people I know who never bothered to learn, also don't like the hassle of public transport so are constantly cadging for lifts everywhere.

Yes I didnt have car for first 18 months I lived here. Just used the bus ok not super convenient but I managed. But current job requires me to provide my own cae to use during working day, that may change in the future and in that case car will go .

I could but life would be very restricted. Live in a village which is 5 miles from a town. Buses run hourly but stop at 6.30pm. There's a railway station but it's a 1 mile walk down a bendy unlit road with no pavement. Trains are roughly 2 hourly. The main road to town isn't the sort of road I'd want to cycle on - although once you get 2 miles up the road and cross a busy dual carriageway you can then get on a narrow cycle path.
There's no pub in the village so there'd be no evenings out. I'm currently doing evening classes in the town which involves lugging equipment. Not really practical on public transport ( would have to be train in the evening and too far to walk at each end with equipment even if the train times fitted in with the classes).We do have a shop, post office, primary school (no longer of use to our family) and doctors surgery though, so we wouldn't be totally reliant on having to get to town.

Easily, apart from seeing my parents (rural area), having cottage holidays in the UK and my dd would have to give up her sport as the matches aren’t accessible by public transport. So we’re keeping it, as we like to do those things.

Yes but public transport needs to be cheaper and plentiful. Rural areas are another story. The model needs to change 're car ownership. Mine is stood on the drive most of the week. I've done 10k miles in over 2 years incl lockdown. I thought 8k would be average but in reality it's less. If/when road pricing arrives that may sway people's opinions.

My cars been in the garage for a week, I'm having to walk everywhere, pretty sure this is a violation of my human rights 🙄
Can't wait to get my car back, I'm always whizzing off somewhere, it's my freedom

I grew up without a car. You live your life accordingly - using public transport, walking etc.

However, thinking about my life now. My work is ten minutes walk, son and dh wfh most of the time. Office once a week for ds. Dh sometimes has meetings around Uk.

Therefore, not having a car would make life less convenient, and would curtail some of the things we do today. However, we would adapt and catch a train to the coast, instead of driving. However, we would stick going to the main towns, not the more remote ones.

No. I have a health condition that often leaves me exhausted and in pain. My son has autism and wouldn't cope with public transport. We live semi-rurally with a very dangerous road to cross (motorway access) to get to shops and other amenities. Plus buses here are not great.
Plus my son's school is a 17 minute drive away and my other daughter will be going to school a 10 minute drive away so walking is out of the question.

I was perfectly happily car free well into my twenties. But I lived in large towns and applied for jobs and chose my leisure pursuits based on what was accessible. Then the perfect job for me turned up - but I would need a car. And then the perfect husband for me turned up - and it made economic sense for us to move in together in his local market town, rather than my cathedral city about forty minutes drive or five hours by bus or train or terrifying bike journey away. It is virtually impossible to manage without access to a private car in this town. The nearest railway station is six miles away and the official connecting bus service is notorious for running late. The nearest A&E level hospital is eighteen minutes drive - or 50 minutes on a bus due to all the zigzagging it does to cover the villages, and it only runs every two hours. If you are a jobseeker and have to attend the Job Centre, it is 25 minutes drive away - or two hours and 40 minutes by bus as there is no through bus so your journey will involve a 40 minute wait in a draughty concrete bus shelter in a village halfway between here and there, as well as all the zigzagging about to cover villages. To be fair, that journey is not horribly dangerous to do on a bicycle though! Just rather long and a bit sweaty on the return leg due to a very scenic but very steep hill!

When I first went on mat leave with my son I had no car for three years. I walked everywhere and I was super fit and slim. By the time my daughter was born DS had outgrown the pushchair and trying to walk miles a day with a reluctant 3yo wasn't possible so I got a car (and got lazy and fat again). Now I'd love to get rid of it but we'd have to make significant changes to our daily routines and life would be harder. With price rises it may well come to that though!

@LadyMacduff

Being confident in navigating public transport is absolutely a life skill. I much prefer it to driving but it's woefully inadequate in the fairly rural county I live in.

For that reason, I also see driving as a life skill and will be strongly encouraging my children to learn. Strangely, the people I know who never bothered to learn, also don't like the hassle of public transport so are constantly cadging for lifts everywhere.

Not in my case. I positively like walking & trains/tubes. On rare occasions we get driven somewhere I hate being trapped in the car, queueing in traffic, having to find parking, possibility of it breaking down, having to return to where you parked it...

Could not be arsed with any of that!

I'm always having to refuse lifts from people who are convinced I must really want one.

No, I couldn’t get to/from work as I do shifts and public transport isn’t available for the times I start/finish. We live on a new build estate and so no shops or anything nearby. I also have a hobby that I couldn’t get to by public transport; trains stop to my local station by 7pm and to take two buses would take over an hour, as opposed to a 15 mi Ute drive.

I never had one when I lived in the SE, but nowhere outside London and the surrounding areas has such decent public transport that runs 24/7. I have actually said to DH that we may have to move to a city soon as the price of fuel is now getting to an unaffordable amount.

We are retired but have an elderly mum about 200 miles away. The cost of train travel to visit her is eye-watering. It's fine if you can plan ahed , well in advance, but often , that's not possible.

Our son lives about the same distance away but in a different direction. Alas, to make the train journey financially viable, it would mean three changes , long waits and take over four hours.

We like visiting NT properties and have a fair few within an hour's drive from us. These would suddenly become unviable were we to use public transport as these properties are often very rural.

We have a bus that goes into town , every hour but stops after 6pm and doesn't run on Sundays. It costs so much more to pay for a return journey into town than the cost of parking and petrol.

Public transport is extremely expensive for many people , certainly compared to European prices.

This and previous governments have done nothing to encourage people to use it. Privatisation of the trains means that the shareholders must have their profits and dividends whereas most other countries believe that a viable transport infrastructure is imperative and, therefore, subsidises it.