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?

You guys - you just can't manage the prospect of not driving! It's really, really sad.

No - it's sadly, sadly real.

Apart from people with straightforward trips in major metropolitan areas, or a lot of time on their hands, public transport is not a viable option for commuting. And long trips on public transport (if you can still call them public, not private) - aka trains - is very expensive.

THEMOISTWORLD -the cost of a car is dependent on many factors, in my case, a small Toyota, bought new, low insurance etc, very fuel efficient and kept for 9 years (6 years requiring virtually no maintinence), about 7000miles a year - costs less than £1500 year to buy and run and provides transport for 1 adult, 3 teens (all would pay full fare on the bus) and a baby (who would travel free on the bus). We could not provide PT for the family for that price in out area (rural Scotland).

We just replace this car with another, even more efficient small car, no road tax to pay, very low insurance, low fuel consumption - we will keep it for 8 or 9 years and the cost will be even lower per year.

Buy a big car (which few people actually NEED), and it could cost you 5x that amount, 10x that amount !

the man that sat next to me on the bus last month that smelt of stale piss pretty annoying. He ( whoever he was ) is the kind of reason I prefer my car.

From yesterday's train alone:

• Eating smelly food next to me
• Trying to play footsie and kneesie
• Talking loudly on a mobile phone for 30 mins
• Noisy music
• The huge 4x4 Mechatronobuggy in gangway complete with screaming baby, in rush hour

Lets face it, some members of the public shouldn't be let on public transport

Not that no one should ever drive anywhere, ever. Can you get your head around that

Of course I can but it's hard to take you seriously when you say you might have to what half an hour for a train at Victoria station, where you can go an sit down and have a coffee, get a paper, decide on another route. Very different to waiting at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere with tired grumpy kids for a bus that may or may not turn up that day depending on how the driver feels!

yanbu. We did arrange our lives around being car free and it was great. Buses are fine. The occassional annoying person but we managed. Then dd got brain damaged and in a wheelchair. But we still managed cos there's a wheelchair space on the bus. Now I'm in a wheelchair too so it wasnt do-able without dh taking dd on one bus and me following 20 mins later on another. Sigh
So we got a WAV that eats petrol, has to be parked somewhere and costs £200 a month off dd's disability money. What a waste of money. I hate it and if dd isnt with me never drive the bastard thing.
So I'm jealous of those who can be car free and gobsmacked when people arent.

dh cant drive and cycles the 5 miles to work whatever the weather.

I agree First Buses are CUNTS. i live in a town NOT a rural area and have lived in this flat since 1994 ( i grew up in the same town) our bus service is First and theyve always fucked about with the timetable (in 2007 the first bus in the morning was at 9.35 and we have NEVER had a Sunday service.) Last year they cut it back to once every hour from once every half hour. And Sunday services are just as important because lots of people work on a Sunday.

Oh FFS face reality Lydia. Someone on JObseekers Allowance HAS to apply for jobs up to 90 minutes away. Its the rules they cant just pick and choose. And when First Buses cut our early morning service in 2007 (the bus was always choc full in the mornings yet they still cut it) we had a big campaign in our local paper and First still took no notice.

I think it's difficult to understand the need for a car if you've never needed one.

I've lived in 2 cities, one large and one small. I couldn't drive then, but it didn't matter because you could take a 5 minute or less walk to the end of your road and catch a bus pretty much every ten minutes. Wherever it stopped would be a shortish walk to uni/work/shops etc.

I grew up in a small town where you walked everywhere because the buses only went out of town. It was an hour on the bus to the nearest big town. Everyone I knew learnt to drive as soon as they could. Except me, because I was crap at it.

I don't think anyone is struggling to understand the concept that some people need cars Astronaut. But I've seen statistics, I'm sure you have too, that a large percentage of car journeys are for short distances, for a few miles. These are walkable distances, and coupled with the obesity problem we have in the country (60% of people are overweight, we spend £1m an hour every day on diabetes treatment, I wonder whether there's a link).

In my place of work, I know some people are driving in 20 miles, I know some are driving in 3 miles. Now surely some of them could be defined as over-reliant on their cars.

carernotasaint-You and I can be the first members of the First Buses are Cunts Club.
I predict one meeellion members by the days end

Oh, and I live a few hundred yards away from a farm, so not in London! Anyone who lives here would say they "needed" a car.
I just cant get one at the moment, so I just have to accept that home-school-work is a nearly one and a half hour schlep (school is 2 miles away.)
After work, I often have shopping, school stuff, etc, and often arrive home truly exhausted, but there is no other option, so that's what I do.

I thinks it is a backwards argument to say "well why move somewhere semi rural if you dont want to drive.."
Why not say "Why are the private bus companies reducing service to this extent, and why are we putting up with it?"
There is no reason that buses can't run in small towns and countryside. I wonder if co-op buses are the answer, in the way people in villages have formed co-ops to run their local pubs?

This reminds me of a book I read a while ago. It was about how American suburbs expanded when prtrol was cheap and people could afford to live far from their workplace. But when petrol prices Evan to rise so did the cost of living. Perhaps that is what is happening on a smaller scale in the uk.

I lived and worked in London for almost 20 years and did not have / use a car. public transport i thought was brilliant convenient and by far the best way to travel. i have for the last 10+ years lived in a completely rural area. there are no buses. the nearest a bus comes to my house is a 25 minute walk along a road with no pavements, lighting and 2 blind corners. the bus comes once a week into town and that is it. i am sorry i just cannot manage without a car. if i could i would because i would prefer it. I do get heartily sick of city dwellers telling me not to have a car and tend to shout at the tv/radio "well come and live here then and give it a try"

Mummy, I don't understand your defensiveness. Who tells you not to have a car?

Yes NowThenWreck we are the club"s founders!

mummymeister, I don't think people are saying that nobody should have a car, in your case you obviously need one.

However I think the argument is that so many car journeys are unnecessary and people have become over reliant on cars. I don't think anyone is saying that nobody should have one.

I like NowThen's idea of a co-op bus as I often think bus companies cannot run certain routes that aren't heavily used or cost effective. I don't think they're doing it to be spiteful to rural dwellers.

Also- if you live rurally you are most likely choosing a car dependent lifestyle as mentioned upthread. The country is nice and all, but you will be using a car A LOT. If you choose to live rurally, don't complain if you have to drive everywhere, it kind of goes with the territory.

I am not complaining that i have to drive everywhere. i would much sooner be rural, grow my own food, live a lot of my life outdoors, not breathe in the rubbish i did in London ( or the fear of crime, the noise i could go on) i am just saying that for some people they dont have a choice whether or not they live in a rural area and in these cases their access to public transport is non existent and we do all get a bit sick of being told to use our car a bit less or use less petrol when there is no alternative. govts talk about persuing the green agenda and use this as a reason to put up petrol prices to try and make us reduce car usage. however they do this and dont provide an alternative in the countryside.

When I lived in a city I didn't have a car, because public transport was cheap and convenient.

Now I live in a village, 5 miles from town. As someone upthread has mentioned, public transport is expensive and crap - the first bus out doesn't get me to work on time, and on some days the last bus home leaves before I do. It also costs me £6 return, for a 10 minute journey.

My parents use the bus a lot - they are pensioners and don't have to pay for it, and don't have any pressing need to be anywhere on time.

I am seeing this from an outsiders p.o.v. I live in Canada. There are only a few cities with trains or subway systems. At least half the towns don't have any public transportation, except taxis, and a town may have only 2 or 3 cabs in total. I was 16 before I lived somewhere with a traffic light, let alone public transit!
It is all well and good to use pt if it is available, but it isn't always available. The comments about how people should just live where their jobs/schools/shops are make me wonder a bit. Is housing that plentiful and affordable in the UK? Are there that many jobs, evenly distributed?
I understand that as a whole, people are very car reliant, but it isn't always a choice.
I wish we didn't have to be. We spend $7,320.00 per year to run our van, between insurance for two drivers, monthly payments, gas, parking, and maintaining it. That is a lot of money! We don't have an alternative that costs less though. To use cabs and buses, it would cost our family $1,500 per month.

Well I do think that part of the problem is almost self perpetuating.

Many business and retailers now place themselves away from the High Street and the high rent and rates. Because workplaces and amenities are far out of town, people feel more of a need to drive. Thus more people learn to drive and buy cars, thus more businesses relocate outside town, the High Street dies out, and more people need to drive and so on....it's really sad and I wish the trend could be bucked. I don't drive and I get around just fine and enjoy life.

However, public transport IS cheap, it might just seems expensive to a habitual driver. If you priced each car journey as a percentage of the lessons, test, car insurance, price of the car, price of the petrol, price of insurance, car tax, MOT and add parking costs, an occasional bus ticket doesn't seem so expensive then!

Mummymeister, nobody is telling you not drive. However, if you do decide to live in the country, don't then complain that the govt doesn't help more! If a bus route costs more to run that it reaps in profit, a bus company won't or can't do it. You chose to live rurally, it's not everybody else's job to make your life choices more convenient.

Bettybat - when I lived in London I lived in various parts of SE London, so even though the trains were every 30 mins in the evening and it wasn't on the tube, the options were good for getting around. I now live in Kent, if I want to get into Central London it's only adding 10 minutes each way to the train journey from here to London Bridge than it did when I lived in Blackheath, however if I want to go anywhere other than Central London (or the coast in the other direction!), I have to walk or drive. There are villages which are a 10 minute drive from my house that would require a circular bus journey of nearly an hour to get too. If you stay in London you can't get how limited your life can be without a car in areas like this.

It's not that people can't cope, it's the limits would be too much to cope with.

To answer your question, I can imagine life without personal cars for anyone, there would have to be London standard public transport for the rest of the country too. But that's not going to just happen over night. (And it would be like the 'oldern days' for large parts of the country, my Nana's family was the first in their village to get a car when she was a little girl, the whole village came out to watch them go on holiday. Many of the other people in the village would go their whole lives without leaving that village - outside of major cities people's worlds would just be very, very small, noone is going to choose that)

I just managed to find some stats

www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/car%20in%20british%20society%20-%20lucas%20et%20al%20-%20170409%20-%20national%20travel%20survey%20wp1.pdf

Ok, so the percentages of journeys taken by car, for certain distances are as follows

0 -0.5 miles = 10.6%
0.5 - 1 = 31.5%
1- 1.5 = 54.9%
1.5 - 2 = 64.7%
2 -3 = 77.0%
3 - 5 = 81.3%
5 + = 83.6%

If we imagine 84 - 85% is where the data plateaus, which is all the people who have access to cars at all, once you get to 2 miles, 76% of those people will get in a car. By the time you get to 3 miles, you're at 91% of those who have access to a car will get in it. These are short distances

"However, public transport IS cheap, it might just seems expensive to a habitual driver."
Nope, You Old Slag. It is expensive.
£4.60 per day I spend. That is a lot for two bus trips.

And actually, the original function of public transport was to transport people from place to place, not to make a profit. And if you want to make a profit, running a service that many use to get to work once an hour is not the way to do it.