To not understand why the fuel situation is so bad in the SE when they have better public transport than the rest of the country and shorter distances

[3dame]

Where we live public transport is woefully bad, non existent in many places and expensive.Bigger county too than most SE counties.

We live in Greater London. There are great transport links. IF you are going in one direction - into the town centre - and don't need a further connection to go somewhere else.

At present, the tankers delivering are spending hours in traffic to try and get along the few roads that haven't been reduced to single lane/one way only/cycle lane that's never had a bike in it since the bollards went up and are full of all the cars and buses also sent along the same roads because somebody decided that you can only get to area A if you go via the town centre via areas X, Y, Z and then transfer to something else that comes via area G, H, I and K, doubles back on itself and then goes around 8 one way systems when if it went direct, it would take around 15 minutes in more or less a completely straight line bypassing everything.

DP's home village has 4 buses an hour in rush hour, one an hour during the day. They take less time to travel ten miles in a straight line than it takes to travel 4 in London, you're guaranteed a seat as the kids are all on the designated school buses and there's a path you can easily walk or cycle along if you don't fancy that.

Is this really necessary? You're just stirring the pot.

Lots or rural locations in the SE that do not have good infrastructure. I am 40 miles from the city (London) as the crow flies. However I live in a small village (if that) which has no amenities at all. My nearest shop is seven miles away and there is no way to get there other than by car. If I wanted to go to the nearest market town on public transport there is one bus a day and even that not every day of the week. The return bus is about seven hours later which is not very helpful as there isn’t seven hours of things to do in the town.

And yes, we are still having petrol shortages here.

The population densities are higher, so there are fewer pumps per head population (Wales has the most)

Yes, public transport is good in London. But that doesn't mean it serves the routes you want especially in outer London (lots going radially to the centre, but far less going round the suburbs). And outside the main cities and towns it can be extremely patchy

Because the SE is not one homogenous entity.

There are two buses a week to my village. The village is 5 miles from a very small city. This city has good train links to London - because clearly that's the only place anyone here ever wants to go - but local public transport is dire. As with a PP, even the school bus provision is appalling: late buses, buses without enough seats for all the travellers.....

I live in the SE and there's a bus once a week

My dh queued for 90 minutes the other night to get me some fuel.

If you live somewhere crowded with more traffic you don’t necessarily spend any less time in your car even though you might cover less distance, it just takes you longer per mile to get anywhere.

It must just be population.

The woeful public transport is an issue everywhere outside the south east too, so in this regard the south east is no worse/better off than the rest if the country.

If the problem is principally caused by the panic buying, then it's plausible that that has more effect in areas where more people use public transport. If you think about people who use public transport for most journeys but have a car as well, then they probably only fill up every few weeks. If all those people fill up in the same week, there's your problem. People who use their car all the time would probably have filled up this week anyway. So the more people you have in the first category, the greater the surge in demand.

We have public transport but it's only useful for commuting to bigger nearby cities, not for getting quickly from one place to another such as from school to kid's hobbies to shop to home..... I don't drive and I WFH so haven't been affected by the fuel shortage but most households here have 2+ cars and many are rationing their journeys at the moment.

The south east is densely populated. It also has many more petrol stations than less densely populated regions.

However my guess is they would typically receive much more frequent deliveries than forecourts in less populous and more remote areas.

Normally that works - hyper connected road network after all - but at the moment, frequent deliveries just aren’t happening.

I was driving in central SE London this afternoon - did think about getting the bus, but it was raining & I was going supermarket shopping.

I drove past several petrol stations, none appeared to be closed, no queues at the ones that were a bit more expensive (say £1.37 per litre rather than £1.34), shortish queues at the supermarket ones that tend to be at the cheaper end of the price range.

I didn't get any fuel as I didn't need to, I filled up about a week before the panic/shortage - but if I needed it, paying £1 extra to fill the tank wouldn't bother me.
I think it's being overhyped TBH

*central AND south east London

Public transport is great if I want to go into my local town or London. If I want to go to the town 8 miles away it'll mean catching one of the 3 daily buses that go there (which are completely not set up for people to get to work for 9am) or going into London, onto a different line and back out.

Population density in London and the South East, London and the SE contains 34% of England's population, whilst containing only 14% of the land, there are lot more people.

Public transport is not better in the South East, it is better in London, in the Home Counties where I live it is mostly useless. For my husband to get to his usual place of work takes him around 25 minutes by car, 1hr 15 min by bike, or 2hr 20min by public transport. The car costs a few pounds in petrol, the bike costs nothing, public transport costs £24.

Public transport in Central London is good, the same in Central Manchester, Central Birmingham etc. but outside of the central ish areas of major cities it is largely useless all over the country.

People don't only travel to get to work you know. And buses are useless when it's stuck in the same queues as everyone else because traffic is at a standstill queue for a mile at each petrol station.

It's a very odd fuel crisis. I'm surprised the SE didn't get priority for refuelling - economic engine of the country, blah, blah. Perhaps this is levelling up?

Up here, I used the supermarket petrol station to fill up last week and used it again this week. No queues, no problem, either time.

Meanwhile the two local stations I pass seem on repeat: all out or people queuing and blocking the road. I can't figure out why drivers don't they just drive up the road to the supermarket.

Maybe supermarkets have more clout and stronger supply chains, but it is all very odd.

@HermioneWeasley

It’s very odd - my sister is in west London. They have 6 petroleum stations near them and they’ve all been empty since last weekend. Sainsbury’s would normally have a delivery every day and hasn’t had one in 5 days apparently.

I’m up north and it’s fine here - the stations are slightly busier than usual and a few pumps capped off but you can get fuel no problem.

I imagine it’s as it is a) Presumed a lot of Londoners have filled up - a large chunk of people there have cars and don’t use them much and many people panic bought, which caused a dire fuel shortage due to high population density. b) Fuel will have been delivered to emergency services only in London... As c) congestion to get into london is so high that more remote areas with poorer transport links have been prioritised. Deliveries will be make more difference in certain targeted areas and be faster so fuel gets into a larger number of tanks faster.

This reminds me of when I went to uni and when I said I was from Kent a friend asked me if Id ever seen a field. As if the South East was one giant block of concrete

I grew up in Kent and the public transport is dire. If you want to get to London your doing grand (albeit a bit squished) but anywhere else and your gonna struggle. My grandma lives in a village that has buses 2 days a wweek. It takes 2 hrs by bus to get 15 minutes down the road!

If you live in Brighton or London then yes you might have good public transport but anywhere else and it's pretty shit.

People commute long distances from places like Kent and Essex. There's a reason the M25 is so busy and it's not sightseeing. There are many rural areas in the south east which are completely reliant on roads/cars. And densely populated areas. Its really not a massive puzzle

And realistically if you live in Manchester, or Newcastle or Sheffield you have good public transport. Any city and the transport is there. But outside of cities anywhere in the UK the public transport is quite poor

Places are closer together in the SE but it doesn't mean the public transport is necessarily good. It certainly isn't linked up. I live just outside of London at the end of the tube line. I can get to the centre of London (17 miles away) in the same time it takes me to get to my place of work in the next town over (6 miles away) using public transport because there is no bus route that goes directly from where I live to the school I work at.

london has better transport links.

But thanks to Beeching, that Tory dude, who destroyed the cross country rail network, we don’t have decent transport. It’s all about having a car - if you want to get from one town to another (eg for work or school).

So OP, YABU

High population density, high levels of car ownership?

@Staffy1

Because it is over populated.

Yes it is over populated. We know.

We campaign until we're blue in the face, but they won't listen. We don't want our countryside, our woods, our fields, flood plains, arable land, lakes, hills, sites of special scientific interest, our wildlife reserves built over, but do the powers-at-be listen? No they don't.

Just look at the destruction caused by HS2 in the rural home counties. They are now planning the so-called 'Oxford-Cambridge Arc', which as far as I can see, involves what someone on our local fb page described the other day as wall-to-wall distribution warehouses interspersed with a million houses.

@3dame I don't know and I don't give a shit because I don't live there.

Yep that's right. IDGAF. Because suvveners don't give a shit about norveners and midlanders, EVER.