to think that the news is demonstrating our over-reliance on cars

[Bennifer]

I was watching the news this morning watching the petrol queues, I saw a mum on TV talking about how she needed the car to pick the children up from school. Then there was a story about Nottingham charging people to park at their place of work. As the reporter was talking about this on the streets of Nottingham, there was a stream of traffic behind him, I didn't see a cyclist or a bus.

I just think we've got ourselves into such a pickle over transport policy where so, so many people are dependent on their car to get around, and it's lunacy. I know we all have different circumstances, so I'm not going to judge individuals, but as a society, it just seems crazy. AIBU?

Sorry, that should say sustainable development .

scary I tool the post to refer to people who move to the countryside presumably to take advantage of the quality of life/cheaper housing and living costs and then have the temerity to moan about petrol costs & there's no other way to get to work, etc. etc. Not those who live and work in the country.

Compos- I agree with you totally.

There have been many threads on MN where people who don't/can't/won't drive are accused of being stupid and selfish. Those who post to say that they don't actually need a car are either mocked or pitied and are accused of being overly reliant on other people.

It does bug me OP but I live in a village, the only house we liked enough to buy was the other side of said village and so to do things like shopping I need the car.

The PT isnt too bad - once an hour usually - BUT the main hospital (which we need to go to fairly regularly) is 3 bus rides away! Not great with 2 dc.

I hate the cost of the tax, MOT fuel etc...I begrudge it tbh...

When we initially moved to the country one could get about by bus. Over the 20 years we have had our house, the bus company has gradually withdrawn services, until there are two buses a day, one in, and one out, which don't run at a time suitable to get to work etc.

I currently live some 30 minutes from the centre of Brussels by public transport, in a small town that is quite rural. Here, we have buses and the tram. Areas more rural than us have buses and trains, so that people can get to work. I don't think people moaning about the lack of public transport in rural areas can be said to have 'temerity' in moaning about it. We pay the same taxes, standing charges and council taxes that the rest of the UK do, but we get less in the way of services (no mains gas for example, slower broadband). Lack of public transport is just another facet of that.

..and people who have moved to the countryside, DO live there.

Don't you want to be complaining to the Belgian government?

Yes scary they do live there but in many cases continue to work many miles away. They knew that when they moved into what is in essence a picturesque dormitory for them.

No, Belgium is fine, public transport is well thought out, and works. My house is in a village in Cornwall, and that's where I was referring to with the lack of public transport. The other problem of course, is that for the elderly who have lived in small villages all their lives and don't drive, the lack of public transport effectively ghettoises them if they don't have family to take them about.

I live in a city and public transport is sometimes crap. The bus is okay in the early morning, but late afternoon/early evening is full of people I really don't want to be around, the usual stereotypes of drunken mums shouting at their babies, teenagers playing their 'personal' stereos to the entire bus, yoofs smoking dope on the top deck. I really don't want to spend half an hour a day getting wound up by these lowlife and it's impossible to avoid them.

The train is a little better, at least it's all working people who just want to get home quickly, but it is annoying when trains get cancelled and there are no alternatives to getting home other than a 1 1/2 hour train journey.

So Compos, you should live where you work? What happens if your job takes you all over the UK or abroad? Life ain't like that.

What do non drivers if there's a serious medical emergency? call an ambulance!

I just think that if you choose to live in a village/the country, then you have to accept that you will be totally reliant on a car at all times and not moan about it. It's a judgement call. "I have to drive because I live 20 miles from the nearest town and the buses are crap"- it's daft unless you have been forced to live there against your will. If you choose to live rurally you are choosing a car dependent lifestyle.

The way I choose a house is this: can I buy a pint of milk in the snow? If I can't, I wouldn't live there.

What I meant was I choose to have a car, I love having a car, it isn't my dirty little secret. I refuse to follow the lefty attitude that having a nice car or being rich is something to be ashamed of. I know lots of people who live in the UK and don't have a car for whatever reason, that is entirely up to them but this OP DOES make it sound like we should be embarrassed to like driving cars. I appreciate that if you are a passionate environmentalist, you won't want a car. I am not so it doesn't matter. Why are you all making excuses for having a car? There are still countries where women are not allowed to drive, remember that.

Agree YouOldSlag, but it is a shame, because it wasn't always so awkward - for a start there used to be a lot more shops in small villages before big supermarkets took over, and there also used to be much better rural train/bus services.

But it's not just rural areas.

People seem to be dividing this up into city-don't need a car vs rural-do need a car.

There are vast swathes of places that are just a bit, meh. Not really rural, definitely not city, just small towns that have grown all higgeldy piggeldy, so you have access to milk in the snow, just not to your job.

I can walk to teh supermarket, leisure centre and the gym and if I had been able to get a job in the local school, then there as well. But the only place I could get a job was out of area, which is the same for a lot of people and pretty much everyone I know round here.

scary you are wilfully misinterpreting what I say.

If you work and live in a city and then move to a rural location, in the process giving yourself a massive commute to your job in the city, you have been the architect of that situation.

We are over reliant on cars and this has caused a decline in public transport. until our kids were 10 we lived in a big city and managed without a car fine.

We moved with DH work and carefully chose somewhere with good public transport as DH cannot drive and he manages fine with a combination of bus train but even so needs lifts from people if he has to go to certain places for meetings.

We had to get a car because DCs are at school 2 miles away (no places in local school) and when I went back to work could only get a part time job in nearby city. The only way i can get DCs to school breakfast club, do my job and get home to pick them up is by using a car (to drive to school & station in time availble). There is minimal out of hours public transport and about one taxi which you need to book several days in advance if you want to use it on a saturday.

We still try to use buses but it is really expensive - £16 for all of us for a journey of 5 miles. DH annual bus travel cost is over £1k p.a which is only slightly less than we spend on running a small car for a year.

We tried really hard to marry up all our needs with public transport but its just not possible unless i give up my job. When DCs go to local secondary we will use our car a lot less.

OK we chose to move but it is not as simple as saying i chose my job and i chose DC school. There was no choice in these matters. We don't live somewhere very rural - just a small town.

We have a car, we rarely use it, school is a mile away, walk to and from everyday, town/supermarkets also 1 mile. Have caught the bus back with heavy shopping on many occasions. The other day, next door neighbour asked if I could collect her very overweight children from school, I said yes, but we'd be walking, I was shocked when her children didn't know their way home! They get chauffeured everywhere!
If I'm taking my 3 month old on a bus, instead of using buggy, I use a sling and a rucksack (for nappies etc)
We live a fair distance from family, so use our car for visiting, days out and holidays. But like to use pt during school hols, makes it more adventurous.
After reading this, I'm thinking of selling my car and hiring one when we need to instead.
And no, we don't live in London, semi rural actually.

Many people who live in large cities with good transport links have to take their cars because of what their work entails.

We have built driving into our daily lives, as we have with computers, there is no turning back, for most people.

Vair- the difference is that you can afford public transport after paying for your car, in expensibe insurance postcodes, this isn't possible for some people.

Theo, that's fine for you to have a car, but we are think as a society, we're becoming more and more aware of the wider costs of driving, which someone has to pay for

YANBU
And this is one subject that get my blood boiling.
I live in a small town-not far from a city, but a self contained place.

The buses are useless. The fares in my Metropolitan area have also increased every year, so that now, the price of a day ticket is 90 p more than it was 4 years ago.
I have worked out that now ds is over 5, and has to pay too, it is cheaper for us to have a car, and I resent that!

The traffic is already appalling round here. The roads are unsafe for kids almost everywhere, people drive like maniacs, and don't look out for kids at all.
In many ways, it was better when we lived on an estate, because it more pretty quiet, so you would get kids out all day in the summer.

I would rather have a bike to get to work, but am too much of a wuss to take on the crazy roads.
And the work thing is a nightmare. If I work in the city-fine, lots of buses, but If I work anywhere else in the local area-forget it.

We walk a lot, get the shopping home in a backpack, or a taxi, and are fit as fiddles , but sometimes it would be nice to have a car for day trips etc. However, it sickens me that I am going to have to get a car soon, if I realistically want to manage working full time.

No money is being put into public transport. First buses seem to have a policy of reducing services to such a laughable degree that they get pulled "due to lack of customer use"-well yes, if the service runs 4 times a day, no-one will use it!

And yet the government are pushing car travel above all.

Their mandate is to turn A roads into dual carriageways (nice for those that live on A roads) and allow train fares to be massively inflated.
(And this at the same time as building on the greenbelt, but that's another rant!)

I suppose it it demonstrating our over-reliance on cars - but I have no choice. Due to start time of work and location of the only childcare available locally that starts at 7am, it's impossible for me to get to work by any other means than driving. Even at that time in the morning, it takes me 45 mins to do a 15 mile journey.

We did relocate for DP's work so that he could cycle in and I would be the one with the commute (as I'm part time). Then they moved his bloody office to 3 hours commute away.

But I live in a BRAND NEW VILLAGE, the first part of what is supposed to become a BRAND NEW TOWN. Sure they labelled it 'sustainable' to get planning permission and to attract homebuyers, but it bloody isn't. It has houses, flats, a school that caters for 3-9 year olds and a playground. There is nothing else, and nor is there likely to be for the foreseeable future because the advertised train station, health centre, middle and upper schools, and shops (and therefore, jobs) are not going to happen in the short term, if ever.

And with the relaxation of planning laws this is going to become commonplace. Developers are being allowed to renege on promises in order to get housebuilding moving again. Where does that leave the people who bought houses there? Reliant on cars for work, school, health and entertainment that's where.