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?

I wish I wasn't so reliant on my car but I'm yet to work out how do manage that. Public transport to work would cost me £350 a month and make my daily commute 4 and a half hours. Driving costs me £150 in petrol, and makes my total commute 3 hours. Running costs for my car are a lot less than £200 a month thank goodness.

I must say, I do have thighs of steel due to walking everywhere, and save £££s because I don't need the gym!

This isnt defensive its a genuine question.
I live in a medium sized town.
Tell me how i can start work at 7am (bike not a prob)
DH Get DD to breakfast club at 8am and be at work to start at 8.30 3 1/2 miles away.
Buses operate 8-6pm here in my town.
Don't be so bloody blinkered.
I could spend money on fuel or childminders. Childcare costs me far more than fuel would and i would be having to walk home 3 1/2 miles at 10pm with the possibility of being back in work 7am next morning.
Reel yourself in a bit! I am reliant on my car due to work. When i dont have to be at work we walk. Its not cut and dried for everyone.

31/2 miles = perfect distance for taking a bike.

Yes thats why i cycle it! My DH on the other hand cannot physically get dd to school and to work within 30 mins. There aren't any buses then so have to drive!

I live in a rural area, there are buses, but only about twice a day.
I work in a city, the public transport there is good and reasonable, however it takes me about 40 minutes to get to the office from where I stay by public transport and 16 minutes if I drive the car. Mostly I take public transport, but if I need to be in the office early or I am going home I do drive.
I have noticed, though, over the past couple of years, I tend to plan car trips more and can go for days without using the car.

Everyone's situation is different. Of course it is.

I've just come out of a conversation with 3 colleagues- we're all young, healthy and live within a 30 minute walk of our office. I'm the only one who walks that journey and they were all talking about filling up because they "needed" the car.

There are lots of people who need access to a vehicle, but there are far more who just think they do.

public transport would improve if there was a need for it

YANBU
but its been an attempt to make us spend some money to boost the pathetic year end recession dipped coffers(sp)

I'm in a car club which I just use when the journey would be too inconvenient by public transport. I joined about 7 years ago when my last car died and I was just so sick of garages. I never thought I'd manage to keep going through children without getting another car and I planned to get one when it was impractical to use the car club any more.

But so far that hasn't happened. I have two DC, 5 and 1, and we're just getting to the biggest test of whether we can keep on without a car, which is now that DD is in a second stage car seat. Because it's heavier than the infant carrier I can't walk with both car seats and both children to the car so we can only use the car on my own with both children when someone else is at home. It obviously helps that I and DH both work from home, that we live 5 mins walk from school and nursery, 20 mins walk from mainline train station, five minutes from a bus stop, reasonably near a car hire place for longer rentals and that taxis are good.

However lots of other people are in the same or similar situations on my road and have cars. I do feel a bit odd not having a car so I do from time to time work out whether I could justify getting one. I added up what it cost me to use the car club and to hire cars for longer trips and it was £1,800 in the year that included DD being born - when I used it loads. No matter how I do calculations I can't make it come even close to that cheap to buy a car and when you're not used to spending that much on transport it seems ridiculous to do so for a relatively small amount of convenience. But the next three years will be the real test.

southeast astra that is one of the silliest things I have ever heard! Public transport is no longer public, and so it suits the private bus companies to run decent services only on the routes that are guaranteed high numbers of passengers.
I NEED buses in my town, as do many many other people, but the private companies that run the buses don't give the first tiny shit about our needs, only about their profits.

Well obviously we do.

However society has been engineered so that we have little choice, with the centralisation of resources and services, and the shrinking of public transport.

Yes people are lazy and rely too much on their car when they should walk or cycle, but the whole infrastructure of the country needs to be re-thought if we are to stop using our cars so much.

Perhaps we are all over reliant on cars. I only learned to drive in my late 20s and since passing my test, have owned a car only half the time.

But with 3 kids and a 12 mile journey to work, I "need" a car and life would be very cumbersome without one.

I just hate being patronised by fucking idiots who try and make out that this mess is somehow all our own fault because we have the cheek to want to use our cars for necessary and unnecessary journeys thus implying, of course, that the price hikes are justified.

Perhaps we should all give up work, start farming in our back gardens and return to life in the Middle Ages. Then we wouldn't need to use our cars at all.

The idea of a car club is interesting though. How does it work?

The frustrating thing is that we know good, cheap, plentiful public transport is better for travellers, better for workers, better for employers, better for business, better for the taxpayer and better for everyone. The experiment has been done. Yet successive governments have ignored it.

In South Yorkshire, in the 1980s, the council introduced dirt-cheap public transport. There were regular, frequent buses in every direction, and cheap trains too. The results were dramatic - because buses and trains were so cheap and frequent, car use dropped. There was almost no congestion. Fewer road accidents, fewer injuries and deaths, less call on emergency services, more people able to access employment and education (including adult education) and other opportunities... the benefits just went on and on. The economic analysis showed it cost rate-payers something like £20 a year but saved each of them hundreds. Researchers had a handy direct comparison with West Yorkshire which is identical demographically and geographically and South Yorkshire's policy was a clear winner.

It worked in both rural and urban areas, btw - both South and West Yorkshire have a mix of each. I lived on the border between them in a very small market town of a few thousand people but could jump on a bus and be anywhere I fancied quite quickly. Cost me 2p to go 15 miles to school.

Sadly Maggie couldn't stand Ken Livingstone and S Yorks Metropolitan Borough was abolished as a side effect of her legislation to get rid of the GLC. Now Sheffield's just as jammed as any other city at rush hour.

You might just as well complain about our over-reliance on electricity in the home. We could all do our laundry by taking it to the communal lauderette. But most people these days do not have the time to do this or a lauderette close enough. Just because I did this as a student where there were such facilities available does not mean it's practical now.

Same with the car. When I lived in a big city & did not need to travel large distances & co-ordinate kids school run/ childminder drop off with work I did not run a car. Now I do & my DH needs a car for work (he travels for work alot - times & places not suitable for PT). I need a car if I am not to be late for work - school drop off for 9 - must be at work before 9.30. Not possible on the bus. If I walked or cycled I would be late. I DO walk the kids to school & then walk back to get the car. I couldn't live closer to both the school & work. DH works at various locations as far apart as Scotland & South Wales.

For those saying they use taxis/ lifts from friends - what do you think their cars run on? If you rely on taxis you are still reliant on a car.

I'd love not to have to run a car. I do a 100 mile round trip to work every day after being made redundant from my previous, closer to home job. I could take public transport but it makes my commute 2.5 hours each way, whereas taking the car makes it a 1.5 hour trip each way. The car gives me an extra 2 hours at home every day to spend with DP & DD. If I took the bus/train I'd never see my child during the week. I'd love our situation to change, but sadly it doesn't look likely in the short term. I'm sure there's many others out there like our family. Neither of our cars move much all weekend - we use bikes, and walk at weekends where at all possible.

I'm only vaguely aware of the 'petrol panic' due to having got a dongle and had some internet time tonight. It kind of falls in the category of 'weird shit mundanes do.' TBH if you live in a city with plenty of transport, and you don't have either a mobility problem of your own or shitloads of small children, or a job which involves transporting heavy, bulky gear, then you don't need a car. And if you have one, you're a spoilt wuss.

Wormholes.

That's what we need. Who do I write to about this?

Public transport is nasty.

Traffic queues are too.

This is why I like my bicycle. So much more convenient. No queues, no parking worries, no petrol shortage, quickest option for ANY journey under about 3 miles (which form 40% of all car journeys), just better all round.

You do need to spend a bit on getting a decent bike, luggage, lighting, maybe clothing too, but it's much less than you'd spend on a car....

"DH Get DD to breakfast club at 8am and be at work to start at 8.30 3 1/2 miles away."

3.5 miles takes 20 minutes, cycling very slowly. 15 minutes is not much to ask either. Some people could do it in 10, but probably not on a bike that can carry a child; realistically 15-20 minutes is what you are looking at.

I don't really see why it would be a problem, you don't worry about traffic or queues on a bike, so if you left on time each morning, you'd never have to worry about being late (ok, you get very occasional punctures, but that's about it). You could leave school 8:05am, and you'd certainly be on time.

People look at us like we're mad b/c we don't have a car. We live literally 1/4 mile, a bloody stone's throw, to the city centre. Say what?

We moved here from a very, VERY car-centric culture (America) and it's been refreshing to not have to use one at all. If you are strategic and live anywhere within a decent-sized town, there's really no reason to have a car.

We've chosen our home because it is located in a place that is convenient to shops, city centre amenities, parks, good schools, and a decent bus route to DH's job. For other things there are taxis, car hire, ASDA/Tesco delivery, etc, etc etc. It's just not that difficult to live without.

We have 2 cars as well. Buses are a bit rubbish here, I can walk the school run but the nursery is too far for a 3 year old to walk especially in bad weather same with any decent shops. I walk whenever I can though.

You also have the old thing of prams on buses, I have had buses just drive past me drivers shaking their heads as there already 2 prams on them. The worst time was when I have had double buggies newborn and toddler, I couldn't have physically folded the buggy.

We are a family of 6 a day out would cost us about £8 in petrol compared to bus fares and train fares and the time spent waiting about.

DP does a 90 mile round journey, his work is on the outskirts of a city, he would have to walk 20 mins, get a train into the city, walk to bus stop, get a shuttle bus back out to his work which takes 20 mins. Yes he could do it but it would take an extra hour each day and cost more, it's a no brainier really.

When we lived in London preDC we didn't have a car, we didn't need one but lives change.

We moved from central London to Bromley 18 months ago, and it shocks me how people use their cars for the shortest journeys. We are literally the only family in our street with only one car. I drive my DCs to school 2.5 miles away, but I park in a quiet side street near school and walk home again, then walk to pick them up. The other school run parents think I am completely bonkers - I think they are the bonkers ones, turning up at school in their gym kits, dropping off the DCs then driving to the gym to run for half an hour on a treadmill!!!
I've already told the DCs (they are 8 and 10) that when they are in senior school (same site) they will be walking . In London there is very little excuse not to use public transport. I do understand that PT can be expensive elsewhere, but here we have the Oyster card so its £1.30 per trip and children are free under age 11 so TBH it's practially cheaper than the cost of fuel.

I probably am over reliant on the car but until we get something resembling a decent public transport system here then I will carry on being over reliant.

Walking isn't an option as I have dodgey joints and actually there aren't many places in walking distance. A bus to the nearest town takes an hour (and waiting up to half an hour for it to arrive), I can drive there is 10 minutes.