How much of a necessity is having a car where you live?

[OneRealFinch]

Not very maybe at night more so

100% to get to work - public transport not an option
1000% to do a family shop with a chronic bad back
and to carry anything heavy from A to B

It depends.

If you work in town and are happy to accept limited public transport then it's doable.

But I couldn't do my job without my car and I wouldn't live here if I didn't drive either.

I live on a busy bus route (every 10 minutes both ways), and I could walk to work. Kids could all walk to school. Buuuut... I don't much fancy bringing home the weekly shop on the bus. I get in my car most days.

Essential. Village in a hilly rural area, crap public transport.

That means it's not a necessity. You sound very entitled. "I don't do public transport" This is part of the reason we are in the mess we are in. Have some shame.

Very necessary, no public transport

We are incredibly lucky. We live in SW London - railway 1 mile away, tube 1.5 miles away (along tow path). We have great bus services. We walk a lot. We cycle on the Thames towpath. We don't need a motor vehicle. Part of the reason we are here. Wonderful.

FFS.

We live in the London suburbs and manage absolutely fine without a car. 7 min walk to a station, gets me into central London in 15-25 minutes. Bus stop at the end of the road with a selection of regular buses going into two different suburban town centres, in which parking is an absolute nightmare anyway.
When DC is older we might appreciate having a car for hobbies and school runs. But all the primaries we like are walking distance so we could technically manage witout.
What with the CoL, high fuel prices, big mortgage and nursery fees, I'm quite happy not to have the additional expense of running a car right now. I mean, we get the odd Uber or a black cab with the buggy but it costs nowhere near as much as having our own vehicle.
And I feel like with stuff like ULEZ in London there is a policy push to make driving less attractive.
All my NCT friends think I'm mental for not having a car, mind...

Depends what you want to do. My friend up the road has a car but rarely uses it. I use mine a lot. The difference is I do things like sing in a choir an hour’s drive away, play in a band which rehearses in a place not really accessible by public transport, go to a cycle charity again beyond the reach of public transport. She does things within walking distance or accessible by bus/train. I don’t want to be limited by that.

Not at all. I get the bus or walk to work. I live in central London.

I have to phone the council the day before to tell them I want the bus to stop in my village if I want to get it, and that only goes to the nearby larger village, and then doesn't have a connection to the nearest town, so I have to get 3 buses in total to get to the nearest town, and most of them only run a few times a day and dont match up

I could technically go without a car quite easily as I live close to the town centre and we have quite a few restaurants, stores, delis, the library, a couple of gyms and the bus line into the city all within walking distance. I'd go crazy without one though as I like the freedom to just get up and go wherever I want.

Lived in London for 27 years. Never got my license. Public transport all the way.

I only find things tricky when booking UK holidays. I tend to go to areas with a decent bus service, or railway station.

Very necessary. I live in a town in Ireland where we have 1 bus out to Dublin in the morning and 1 back in in the evening. You can get buses more frequently in a neighboring town but there is no long term car park to avail of and it's not in walking distance either. Also if you wanted to go to the main town where I am from there is a local link bus possibly twice a week. So you really do need a car where I live.

Very necessary. One train an hour (if it turns up) to the small city 10 miles away or 4 buses an hour which take over an hour to get there and cost £8.50 for a return (before the £2 single cap). There are local buses across the area but again these are unreliable and costly, so people can manage but driving makes life a hell of a lot easier.

Very necessary. It takes me around 40 mins to drive to work, on public transport it would take literally hours (walk, bus, train, tube, train, bus). In our last house we didn't have a car (London).

I could live my life with public transport, I wfh, DH walks to work, the DC walk to school. I could catch the bus to the supermarket, hairdressers or gym. We have a bus in our village every 30mins to the 2 nearest towns, on the GM bee bus network so max of £2. There is a big push to reopen an closed local train station to the city which would be fantastic if it actually happened.

However, the main town I shop is out of this network and would take me 1hr30 and 2 buses to get to instead of 20min car ride.

The car is just so convenient, not limited to certain routes or times.

Essential living in rural Norfolk with limited and expensive public transport

Mine is essential. I'd love to have the option of commuting on the bus for eco reasons and just to be able to take a book, catch up on emails etc on the journey. I wouldn't be able to have much of a social life, get to medical / dental appointments or see family without it. Public transport is rubbish in the sticks.

Very. We have a bus to the nearest city in one direction which takes an hour (25 mins by car) and 2 other villages in the other direction which runs every 90 mins, stops at 6:50 and doesn’t run on Sundays. There was much excitement recently when we got a new bus service to the nearest town but that takes even longer!

Technically, DS and I could get the bus to work/ school in the city but then we’d have to wait until 5:30 to get the bus home and not arrive home until 6:30.

I couldn’t get DS to cadets or work at all.

DH often gets the train to London for work but I have to drive him to the station as the bus doesn’t start early enough. Last time he went, they decided to terminate at Preston as there weren’t enough trains available in London and it needed to go back! Screw us Northerners though.

Necessary

Ridiculous public transport

If I wanted to go to say work, or Aldi I would have to
Get a bus outside my house into town (the opposite direction to work or Aldi) to the bus station. Then get on another bus going back past the direction I just came from. Then another 20 min walk if it was work
I looked it up one day and it would be around 2 hours - work is about 5 miles away....

Absolutely essential. No buses down my road. 25 minute walk, most of which is down a C road with no footpath & 60mph speed limit, to nearest bus stop. Buses often cancelled in bad weather due to flooding or snow or high winds causing trees to fall & block roads. Nearest train station is 5 miles away. DS3 used to ride a moped there to get to college, but DSs all passed driving test & got cars as soon as they could whilst living at home & DH & I have a car each.

I'm in a large regional Australian city. I couldn't get by without my car. There are buses, but the timetables are poor, the routes inevitably long, and they're unreliable. Only time I tried using one, I got to the stop six minutes early- only to see the damn thing leaving. Which is illegal, iirc. Nothing I need to use is less than a 45 minute walk away, so cars it is.

We don't have one and manage fine, if anything it's a burden to deal with parking and traffic restrictions. I live 5 mins walk from a London tube (zone 1), another tube 10 mins, lots of bus routes and rail stations too. My office is 20 mins walk, DH's office 25 min walk, primary school 5 min walk. Public transport is free for me and the dcs. We have a major town centre 5 mins away with all necessary shops, though I get almost everything delivered. Lots of the central London attractions are walkable (although it's a long walk for children so generally we get on a bus or tube). It's generally quicker to get the tube to most places in central London than drive, but there are handful of attractions in the outer zones and suburbs which we visit sometimes, which are geared towards drivers (lots of parking) and awkward to get to by public transport.

It does limit what we can do outside of London eg holidays and day trips. But most of our holidays are overseas and we can hire cars for holidays.We specifically chose our home so we could have the convenience of a car-free lifestyle and easy proximity to plenty of entertainment, so it's not a matter of luck that we have decent public transport on our doorstep - we have made compromises so that we could have those options.