to feel car driving is frequently unjustified

[Clairetree1]

Having sat in a traffic jam yesterday, in which I counted 10 buses being held up by around 45 cars, many of which only had one person in.

So say 60 people in cars holding up 600 people in buses....

just as a snapshot, throughout the whole journey, each person in a car seems to hold up 10 people in a bus, and if the cars were not there, those car travelers could easily fit on the buses, and everyone would be moving at least 3x as fast,

and I can't really see how this is allowed, or can be justified.

If you are in a city, or in another area with an adequate bus route, and are physically able to use the bus, how do you justify to yourself the danger, inconvenience and lethal pollution you subject everyone else to? Not to mention the further damage to the environment caused by concreting over parking spaces, car manufacture, etc.

I know some people are going to say they need the time, but if cars were banned from our cities and more people on public transport, everyone would be moving faster.

I know some people are going to say they are disabled, or have too much to carry, but some people who are disabled or have a lot to carry do use buses, they often have no choice! it doesn't automatically preclude you.

I know some people are just going to say they have a right to, but really, do you? Pollution is killing thousands of people a year in the UK, not to mention those killed in car crashes, the environmental damage done including global warming, and the sheer inconvenience to everybody else.

I know a couple of cities are planning on banning private cars, and I know petrol cars are on their way out, so things might well improve, but I just don't understand how we reached this position in the first place, so much death and destruction and time taken away by an entitled privileged few with such a selfish habit I can't understand how they justify to themselves.

I don't expect many people to agree with me, I think this privilege is so deeply ingrained in our culture that people genuinely feel they have a right to drive cars, when perfectly adequate public transport exist.

I don't think there is any moral right at all though, I think it is morally wrong in every way

1. I’m disabled. Today I can barely walk to the toilet, I definitely won’t make it to a bus stop. I will manage to hobble to the car to go to the pharmacy though. Just.

1. Public transport is unreliable, overpriced and quite frankly it stinks (literally).

1. I fucking hate people. Largely because they’re like you, OP. Judgemental arseholes.

So you keep your smelly, overpriced busses. I’ll keep my car.

Air pollution is also caused by planes. You use those. They are public transport.

OP, you contradict yourself on your own thread, you avoid perfectly relevant questions by claiming they aren't relevant, and having glanced at some of your other threads, you contradict yourself all over the place.

But fair play for keeping going and providing us entertainment. The sad fact is that actually you do have a valid point for a sensible discussion, but you went about it in a deliberately, knowingly goady fashion.

I can definitely see we all need to be using our cars less: I think particularly for short journeys.

The public transport system in my town is quite difficult to decipher. The map shows the routes in different colours, but then in the centre of town they just all get turned into one colour, so you can’t tell where the buses go within the middle of town.

Once you talk to a staff member, you establish that if you want to get to the station, the only way to do that from most parts of town is to get a bus to the centre and another bus to the station. This costs £2.50 for a single or £4 for a day return, and can add up to 15 mins to the journey to the station (even at commuter time), compared to if the buses went there. On the way back from the station, there are several bus stops at the station which have buses going into town, but these are too far apart to get from one to the other when you see a bus coming (several hundred metres and a busy road). This means that you have to take a punt on which bus will come first, and if you’re wrong could mean you are waiting twenty minutes for a bus (to take you back to the centre of town where you then have to wait for another bus).

This is cheaper than driving and parking at the station, and I’ll do it if I have a case, but if I can manage to get my stuff on my bike I’ll cycle instead.

Then there’s the issue of actually getting the train. Some lines round here are great: 40 mins to go 50 or so miles. All well and good. Others take 90mins to go 50 miles. So then I’m looking at cycling to the station (11mins), parking my bike at the out-the-way parking spot and walking to the station (4mins) and buying a ticket and getting to my train platform (5mins, but only one train that gets you in before 9, so have to leave 10 in case there’s a queue at the ticket machine). So that’s 25mins plus a 90min train journey. Five mins walk at the other end, and we are at 2 hours. I leave my house at 6:25 and get into that office at 8:25. The equivalent journey to drive takes 75mins door to door (6:30 leaving, in that office by 7:45), and costs less.

In my current job I am already generally out the house 12-13 hours per day: I’m simply not prepared to make that 13.5-14.5 hours.

I have now got a job that is much closer to home, and I will be able to cycle or get the bus. I do totally recognise that we need to encourage public transport use, but I think that needs to be through demistifying bus services (they can be extremely opaque to the non-user), and encouraging their linking up with longer distance public transport methods, as well as offering railcard equivalents for all ages (so frequent users get an appropriate discount) as well as working hard to upgrade lines that compell slow service - in our case this is ungated pedestrian level crossings. These can’t be replaced with a simple bridge with stairs as that would make many footpaths inaccessible, but the footbridges with ramps are so bulky that farmers are unwilling to allow them to be built in their fields and are significantly more expensive due to the volume of building materials required.

Continuing further down the route of higher vehicle tax on highly polluting cars, as well as greater numbers of public charging points for electric vehicles will also help reduce pollution.

Proper cycle route maintenance is also really important: the routes I go along will have random broken glass on them which can cause punctures, and any potholes can be dangerous. The one I use to get to the station pops out onto a pavement on the wrong of the road, but then the pavement isn’t a shared use path, for circa 200m, and then it is again. So I either have to get off my bike, cross a busy road, cycle in the busy road and then cross back, or ignore the non-shared use bit, or get off my bike and walk. All these things are small things which make cycling less convenient than it could be.

I can catch a bus to Chernobyl? Fab! Do we have to shut all the windows when we cross under the sea or will it float on top safely?

Bus services are terrible and extremely inconvenient most of the time. When you need to get on 3 different buses to get to a destination just 3mile away and each bus runs on just an hourly basis then it's jist not feasible. Also the price for this extremely inconvenient service is extortionate.

If you are going far then you've got to add trains in as well. So a bus/buses from home to train station. 1-3 trains to your destination, then bus/buses from train station to your end point. This is tiring for someone eho is able bodied imagine having a disability and having luggage on top of that too. It's a nightmare journey.

So this is going to add a good few hours onto your journey for an eye watering price which sometimes is 5 x the price of fuel.

I agree we should all be moving towards using cars a lot less. However, public transport in it's entirety needs a massive overhaul to make this feasible.

You're assuming each of those buses had 60 people in. Highly unlikely.

60 people was fair average

“My husband is a nurse who delivers chemotherapy do you suggest he parks and rides”

Why do people on threads like these deliberately make obtuse statements like that?

OP quite clearly stated that some use of cars is unnecessary. I am confident she didn’t mean delivering lifesaving drugs.

YAnbu. We are car mad, and it must change.

i am about to go out in a car - but at least there are 5 of us and we a making a trip not possible by public transport. but i will come back to this as i have always been pro public transport. i find it interesting that people only seem to factor in the cost of petrol/ parking per car trip not the cost of buying a car, taxing, insuring and wear and tear annually. Which increases the costs (though not to the levels that the infrastructure for cars cost the tax paying public). Public transport is inadequately funded and left mainly in the hands of private companies boosted by public funds

but you went about it in a deliberately, knowingly goady fashion.

no I didn't I just sated the facts - if you don't like it, fine, but I have said nothing goady or contradictory

There are usually only 56 seats on a standard bus

If you are a school teacher you are not working a 12 hour shift sometimes longer, get a grip and stop lying.

as well as greater numbers of public charging points for electric vehicles will also help reduce pollution.

It won't reduce pollution, it will just move it to the area around the power stations instead of the areas around the traffic.

unless we vastly increase the amount of electricity generated by renewable sources

In order to get to public transport we would have to drive to the bus stop

With park and rides, sometimes if you don't get there early enough there are no spaces left! We went to use one last week and it was completely full so we ended up having to drive into the city centre and park.

@PintOfMineralWater

"My husband is a nurse who delivers chemotherapy do you suggest he parks and rides”

Why do people on threads like these deliberately make obtuse statements like that?

-OP has stated that the cost of fuel should be doubled or tripled. It's not obtuse to say that for a lot of people, it would literally mean that they could not afford to get to work.

Claiming only rich people have cars for example is being goady as OP knows full well that isn't true..

why is it "goady"? Its just a plain and simple fact- cars are expensive, lots of people can't afford them, if you can afford one you are a lot richer than many other people who can't.

it is true that only rich people can afford cars, I don't understand why that is a contentious thing to say at all

If you are a school teacher you are not working a 12 hour shift sometimes longer, get a grip and stop lying

I'm a teacher and my working days are generally 16 hours with food breaks.

The anger inducing problem with OPs reasoning is the wanting to force people to stop using cars, by making petrol X times more expensive. This would make driving unaffordable to many (if not most) people, who rely on their cars when public transport is not a viable alternative. I suppose those people should all move (unaffordable to many) or get jobs closer (not easy, let alone even always possible).

it is true that only rich people can afford cars

No. It isn't true. I've previously broken it down for you upthread, but it seems like you didn't want to respond because you know you're wrong.

it is true that only rich people can afford cars, I don't understand why that is a contentious thing to say at all

It isn't true!

My DSis is a single parent on low income. She has a 14 year old car. She isn't unusual. Are you serloudly saying she is rich.

Because busses/trains are dirty, expensive and unreliable. There is no way of controlling who you sit next to, what germs they are carrying or how safe you are whilst on the bus or walking to your destination. If you have a buggy you are expected to keep moving around for everyone who is more of a priority or fold it down while holding your bags and child and then if no one sees fit to give you a seat, stand, holding said bags and child. For me to get to a place I frequent regularly on public transport would take me over 2 hours instead of 40 mins in the car as the hourly bus, when running on time, misses the train connection by 3 mins and I have to wait 40 mins for the next one. I could walk but there are no footpaths to the train station, so probably not ideal with a pushchair... It would also cost me over £30 as opposed to about 10 in petrol. Most other places I go have no public transport links at all. My car is temperature controlled, comfortable, I can come and go as I please and not have to sit next to someone I don't know. I drive door to door and the pushchair and bags are contained in my boot. So in short I'll keep driving and if one day, public money is used to improve public transport to make it safer, more convenient and cheaper than driving them I might reconsider, otherwise no thanks.

On what planet is someone on minun wage rich, OP? I live far from work, as housing is more affordable there and I have managed to get a council house I'm going to hold onto if at all possible (after having expensively and stressfully private rented for over a decade).

it is true that only rich people can afford cars

At what annual salary does someone become "rich" please @Clairetree1

The cost of fuel should be doubled or tripled?

Businesses use road transportation too, including supermarkets. I assume you would be willing to pay more for food then?

I work rurally where I need to go from A to B to C back to A etc. I wouldn't be able to afford to do that job anymore if fuel was doubled in price!

Some people just don't think at all 😐

Unless you're living in a recycled hut somewhere we all have an environmental footprint, so I don't think that bringing up what the OP does or doesn't do in the context of this specific discussion is helpful - that just sidesteps the essential issue, which is that perhaps not every journey needs to be done in a car. Does that point really warrant such defensiveness? Instead this thread seems to have descended into people's anecdotes about their own personal circumstances and some very nasty remarks about people on public transport rather than discussing what we could do to improve access and incentivise usage.