To despair at our obession with cars

[SelkieQualia]

They are awful. Noisy. Polluting. 4 million people die every year from the effects of air pollution. Housing developments are built around them, which means that the most vulnerable people in our society - young people, the elderly - are made even more dependant on those who drive.
Why do we tolerate such terrible public transport and cycling infrastructure?

@OfstedOffred

It's time.

Ownership of a car saves you masses of time. It's there on your doorstep and gets you to exactly where you need to go.

The fact that it is near impossible to park anywhere near my house, and free parking was a bit of a walk from work was a key factor in my decision to stop bothering with a car.

@CuteOrangeElephant I’m assuming there will be people who need their cars for work? I’m thinking community nurses, carers etc?

The people who stipulate public transport for this kind of thing seem to have no comprehension that there isn't a bus every 5 minutes in every place in the UK. And actually, the buses where my Mum lives don't run any more at all - they were so unreliable (eg return bus wouldn't turn up, stranding everyone until the next day) no-one used them. So it was determined that the service wasn't required. Madness.

The logic is laughable isn't it? It even works the other way round.

A few years ago, there was a proposition to extend a transport link five or six miles so that it served the suburban area in which I live. In the end, they decided against it because, as the commissioned report said, 'the service is likely to be oversubscribed'.

In other words, we think lots of people will use it, so we're not going to provide it.

@Momicrone

It costs on average 3k per year to keep a car on the road, that's a lot of train or bus journeys

Can you link to this, that’s a very high average

@Buzzinwithbez

and that is exactly what the op is writing about - the fact that the way things work, its homes built so cars have to be used and public transport is more expensive than private car ownership.

But if you look at the post on this thread - there are many militant activist drivers stating they will never give up their cars regardless

The Dutch are masters of planning

they were in the 1970s

people protested and campaigned for this to happen

As was pointed out to me in a similar thread, this will hit low income families hard. Means tested perhaps?

not if the money was used to subsidies public transport that was efficien. The low income families I work with don't have the funds to buy a car and suffer through badly funded public transport

@Momicrone

It costs on average 3k per year to keep a car on the road, that's a lot of train or bus journeys

That (if true) shows the problem of averages - it includes footballer's brand new Bentleys in the average.

My 16 year old car doesn't cost 3K a year.

AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii how would it penalise rural people to have a charge to park their car on public property? If then public transport is subsidised, efficient and runs properly for all?

The bike will be an extra. Do you know how much adapted bikes cost?

Suitable clothing would also be an extra for most people.
I'm going to stick my neck out and say that someone who is disabled probably needs to conserve their limited energy for navigating their usual activities, not for cycling from a to b..

@TweenTrauma

Where I live there is no option but to drive. There are some small convenience type shops in my small town but they are very expensive and are limited in what they sell. To get a bus to the nearest supermarket would mean a 20 min walk to and from the bus stop to the supermarket, not possible with a full weekly shop on the way back.

My place of work and where my horses are kept are not at all accessible by public transport. So I wouldn’t be able to get to them at all.

You’d have to have a death wish to cycle around here, it’s all twisty roads, only just wide enough for two cars, lots of hills and corners everywhere.

It’s either own a car or be stuck in a very small town with very limited facilities.

This kind of thing is a bit of a catch-22. Villages used to be much more independent, because most people did not have cars. They didn't have the choices of the city perhaps but you could certainly get what you needed. My grandmother used to speak quite fondly of going to do errands for her mum around 1930. For some things she would go to shops on the high street, for milk and some other things she went to the nearby farms, all on foot. In that same village today you have to go into the town by car for most of it.

But it's because of the car. When people suddenly had the option of buzzing off 20 km to get their shopping or to see a film, small villages could no longer complete. Towns near cities often suffer the same fate.

It would be interesting to see, if cars became too expensive to drive so much, if shops and services became better in small places.

We do need a solution. I don’t suspect it will come in my lifetime.

Whatever that solution is won’t be packing people in with increasing density. There just won’t be support for it. Many of us resist living in tightly packed cities for a reason. The solutions need to let people still have green space and detached homes.

I personally think the movie Minority Report may have been in to something. Individual vehicles that link into a system, but then can separate off to do the last part of the journey if it doesn’t happen to be on the network.

When I was working it used to take me about 20 minutes to drive there. I did think that I could probably cycle and had a trial run which took me 40 minutes there and 30 minutes back (hills!). Trouble was it was country lanes with no verges so it was scary being passed by tractors and trailers and lorries when there is nowhere to go. Thinking it would also help me lose some weight I did it for a week. Got soaked getting there twice and on the Friday I got knocked off. So that was it, not doing that again.

I also once broke my arm so had to get to work on the bus. It took me 1hr 20mins with one bus change on the way. It also cost me £8.50 a day.

So. Yes, I will stick with my car.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that someone who is disabled probably needs to conserve their limited energy for navigating their usual activities, not for cycling from a to b..

and others are using bikes as a mobility aid, campaigning for better cycling infastructor as its easier than using other transportation. bikes can be a real asset as it takes away the worry of running out of energy

www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jan/02/cambridge-disabled-people-cycling-rolling-walking-stick

cardiffbybike.wales/2017/06/23/bicycles-as-mobility-aids/

Villages used to be much more independent, because most people did not have cars.

I read somewhere that most villages in England are located within seven miles of a market town (or what was a market town) because 14 miles is as far as people were prepared to walk in one day.

Why do we tolerate such terrible public transport and cycling infrastructure?

that was the ops question

and so many replies are - public transport and cycling infastructor are really bad - so ill drive

but thats not answering the question

why do you accept it?

@etulosba

Villages used to be much more independent, because most people did not have cars.

I read somewhere that most villages in England are located within seven miles of a market town (or what was a market town) because 14 miles is as far as people were prepared to walk in one day.

Yes, and if you look at old maps what you see is a very sensible distributed network that minimizes the need for long trips.

But I will say there is in my experience some hypocrisy found among a certain number of the people who really push some of this getting rid of car business. Because they are often people who want access to all the things, they want activity choices for their kids, they want to live in a multicultural area. etc.

So they end up living in these giant cities that have all those choices close by with good public transport to boot. But those cities tend to suck the life out of surrounding villages and towns, and grow to epic proportions. They become these economic black holes, and they also set a standard for choice and way of life that is not sustainable in a more distributed network.

The fact is in a small town or village, with minimal car use, people are not going to have the choices we now expect. There might be one or two kids activities, one exercise class at the hall, your neighbours are the people who happen to live nearby, your groceries are going to be less exotic, maybe there is only one dentist's office, etc.

@ivykaty44

Why do we tolerate such terrible public transport and cycling infrastructure?

that was the ops question

and so many replies are - public transport and cycling infastructor are really bad - so ill drive

but thats not answering the question

why do you accept it?

I think the underlying answer is - what can I really do about it?

It's rather passive but I think many people do feel powerless.

[quote AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii]@CuteOrangeElephant I’m assuming there will be people who need their cars for work? I’m thinking community nurses, carers etc?[/quote]
Yes of course, some people will always need a car. That being said I know community carers who use bikes only.

@ivykaty44

Why do we tolerate such terrible public transport and cycling infrastructure?

that was the ops question

and so many replies are - public transport and cycling infastructor are really bad - so ill drive

but thats not answering the question

why do you accept it?

People don't really accept it they find an alternative, ie the car.

It's a bit like people choosing to go private with medical treatment, can't be assed to wait months for a bus or Operation they splash the cash and go private.

@ivykaty44

The Dutch are masters of planning

they were in the 1970s

people protested and campaigned for this to happen

Yes they did.

I lived in the UK for 12 years and this was one of the most frustrating things about it, the public just tolerating bad policies and lack of vision by the (local) government.

If I compare where I used to live in the UK to where I live now, it's night and day. In essence they are very similar towns, same size and with good connections to bigger cities. But the English town was incredibly run down, extremely poor city planning with a big retail park sucking the life out of the city centre. Of course no cycle route to the retail park. Virtually no people live in the city centre, making it like a ghost town at night apart from drunks and homeless people.

The Dutch town is vibrant with lots of shops. But that does not come easy or for free. 10 years ago the council ran a scheme where empty spaces above the city centres shops were converted to apartments, so loads of people live there now supporting the local economy. It's a very easy 3 mile cycle for me to go there. On safe, well maintained cycle paths.

The English town could have done that but didn't.

Not everything is perfect here but I am not ever going back.

One of the problems is the sunk costs of a car. If you need a car for reasons like carting about children occasionally, going to remote places, etc, as it cost you £10 grand, or whatever, people feel they might as well use that, and just pay the petrol, rather than fork out again for public transport.

Not sure what the solution might be - car sharing seems to work in densely populated areas...

"If then public transport is subsidised, efficient and runs properly for all?"

Bear in mind that all cannot use public transport because it will never be accessible for all. Yes it needs to be better but those who cannot use it should not be penalised because of that.

Car sharing isn't the answer either, the days of people working 9-5 and starting and finishing at the same time are long gone.

I know two other people who live in the area who work in the same industrial estate. We all work different hours, and have little people who need collected. So even if two of us could car share what do we do with the four kids that get collected on the way home?

@daimbarsatemydogsbone

Because nothing can come in any way close to matching the convenience of a car - especially outside London.

And trains and busses are full of sniffing sneezing tossers, people shouting into their phones and gits playing tinny "music" loudly, who give you a mouthful of abuse if asked politely to desist.

These are not easy issues to address.

Why are we so obsessed with keeping ourselves away from other people? Building big fences round our houses and locking ourselves away in polluting metal boxes and seeing that as a sign of comfort and luxury? When did we forget that we are social creatures and that the more we move around, mix and interact with other people (like us a different from us) the healthier and happier we are?