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?

For perspective, an 8 minute train journey costs £12 for work, and the bus to the station costs £6 or can park for £5.50. That's nearly £20 vs a few quid in my 1 litre.

It's not just fuel though

Car- £1.5k bought in cash so no finance to pay, 2 years ago but will include whole cost
Tax- £0
Insurance- £160
Breakdown- £48
MOT last month- £40
Parking on drive and parking at work is free
Petrol- £40 a month, even if I round up to £80 a month still cheaper hah (would be £960)
Odd bits like oil etc- £100 max

Total per year- £2808 (actually less as haven't paid anything for my car itself this year, although will leave it at that to account for if it needs repairs etc)

£2909 for annual tickets for train and bus- £100 more than wildly over estimating how much my car takes to run. When mine is no longer worth fixing I'll reasses, but could even get a lease deal for cheaper! And that's just my essential journeys to work, catching the 2 buses to town etc would add up.

So there's not much in it

I mean if I go by what I've actually spent the past 12 months vs my round up which includes assumptions of big rises and repairs being needed- it's been £1.5k cheaper to drive. Not to mention the time saved and convenience. By paying £1.50ish in fuel to go to aldi as well I've saved £££ vs getting a £6 bus. Adding it all up its just not financially reasonable to make the switch, I would if it was.

OK so yes 1500 is quite a big difference

@Peasock

For perspective, an 8 minute train journey costs £12 for work, and the bus to the station costs £6 or can park for £5.50. That's nearly £20 vs a few quid in my 1 litre.

Here an eight-minute single journey by train costs £3.10, return £3.20.

By bus on the other hand, the same journey will take 21 minutes, costing around £3 for a single, but there are no return tickets so returning means buying a £5.70 day ticket.

By car it takes 10 minutes (subject to traffic, as is the bus, whereas the train is usually punctual). No idea how

...much fuel you'd burn in 3.5 miles (around £1 worth?) but there are other costs to car ownership too.

By bike, 20 mins, basically for free.

It's the most expensive track per mile in Europe apparently which is annoying when you're only going one stop hah. Used to be around £7 return but now £11 which is a wild increase.

Whilst it's absolutely true that many people have no choice but to use the car because of lack of alternatives, it's in everyone's interest for those who have no choice to make a fuss.

People with some disabilities don't have the option to use a car and can be housebound as a result. This could happen to anyone without warning. We all need an alternative.

A family I know was rehoused last week. They don't have a car. Their child is at nursery 3 miles from their new home. Although the house and nursery are on bus routes it would take 2-3 bus rides in each direction to do the journey because of the nature of the routes. The child will no longer be able to come to nursery and as she is due to start school in September no other nurseries or preschools have space for her in her new area. The child is missing out on preparation for school transition because of poor infrastructure. We should all care more.

@Momicrone

It's not just fuel though

It is when it's making a decision about whether to use PT or the car for a specific journey as all other costs are fixed and have already happened.

The time to compare is when it comes to replace the car, i.e. whether or not to replace - that's the time when you can validly compare ALL costs of owning/running a car against making ALL journeys by PT.

I despair at the anti-car attitude many people have. Many seem to be against cars in themselves rather than against pollution and accidents.

Cars can be made cleaner, the process has been going on for decades now. A modern vehicle creates a tiny fraction of the pollution of one from the late 1980's. There's still a long way to go but new technologies will make cars cleaner to the point where the only emission is water.

Cars can be made safe, again a process that's been ongoing for decades. Since the Euro NCAP tests were created tens of thousands of lives have been saved. (One of the main benefits of these tests is that cars are bought from dealers rather than the manufacturer being able to supply a vehicle of their own choosing - which wasn't a great thing.)

In terms of safety we will fairly soon reach the point where self-driving AI cars become demonstrably safer than human-driven cars. This will prevent most incidents even occurring.

Rather than expect (other) people to give up their cars, we should pressure the government to speed up safety and environmental measures, and force scientists to work harder to solve the remaining problems.

Clearly there will also need to be a large scrappage scheme to remove non-compliant vehicles from the road. Maybe if there was a rule where a car could be on the road for no more than ten years, after which the owner has to scrap it. Collectors would still be allowed to keep older cars at home and take them to events on a trailer.

@Nicholethejewellery

Maybe if there was a rule where a car could be on the road for no more than ten years, after which the owner has to scrap it.

I agree with everything you say except that. You can't have a blanket rule like that. It needs to be something more specific, such as cars over x years old with CO2 emissions of y or above, or cars with mileage over 150k, or similar. There are lots of relatively low emission cars that are only half way through their life at the 10 year stage. We have a 13 year old small (second) car, which has only done 30,000 miles and I confidently expect to keep it another 7 years or so. It's CO2 emissions are similar/less compared to a basic new car today. It'd be a massive waste of resources to scrap perfectly good cars just because they're a particular age. Not to mention I'd be particularly peeved to have to buy another car at great expense, to replace a perfectly good, reliable car already in my drive.

@LoveFall. have you ever cycled in the dutch winds? id take a hill anyway over the winds, reason being you know after 15 minutes its going to be behind you

tbh the winds this last week in the uk have been excellent for training but they are nothing in comparison to the winds in the Nederlands

Peasock. all that you've said goes back to my early posts that with private car ownership subsidised (links to this in early posts) and public transport not getting that same level of subsidy - its going to be cheaper to drive yourself. If the fuel duty freeze over the next 5 years costs over £7 billion in tax for the country, there would have been the money to give free bus transport for every single person in the country

@ivykaty44

Peasock. all that you've said goes back to my early posts that with private car ownership subsidised (links to this in early posts) and public transport not getting that same level of subsidy - its going to be cheaper to drive yourself. If the fuel duty freeze over the next 5 years costs over £7 billion in tax for the country, there would have been the money to give free bus transport for every single person in the country

7 billion divided by 60 million people gives only £117 per person. That's nowhere near the cost of a bus pass. And what about all the people who don't live/work/shop on a bus route with frequent buses? A bus pass is useless if you can't get a bus from/to where you want to go at a time you want to travel.

Maybe if there was a rule where a car could be on the road for no more than ten years, after which the owner has to scrap it.

Have you considered the negative effect of emissions created and valuable raw materials used when it’s shiny new replacement is manufactured?

What a waste of resources scrapping cars after 10 years would be. My car now is 7 years old and has a lot more than 3 years life left in it - and I have no intention of changing it any time soon!

My brothers car is 15 years old and only done about 50,000miles! We should be encouraging people to use things for as long as possible instead of upgrading all the time.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

My brothers car is 15 years old and only done about 50,000miles! We should be encouraging people to use things for as long as possible instead of upgrading all the time.

Exactly, my 13 year old with 30k on the clock got written off by a neighbour a few months ago. I couldn't bring myself to scrap it as it was more or less immaculate, so I took the insurance money and paid for it to be repaired myself to keep it on the road. It gives me a warm glow inside to see it outside on our drive, once again, looking pristine (not a mark nor scratch on it), and despairing that the insurance company wanted to scrap it when it had so much life left in it.

Leave the incentives/laws for the cars that have been hammered and/or are the highest polluters!

@ivykaty44

Peasock. all that you've said goes back to my early posts that with private car ownership subsidised (links to this in early posts) and public transport not getting that same level of subsidy - its going to be cheaper to drive yourself. If the fuel duty freeze over the next 5 years costs over £7 billion in tax for the country, there would have been the money to give free bus transport for every single person in the country

I don't think it's heavily subsidised is it? There are all sorts of taxes and roads and infrastructure are maintained to the absolutely minimum they can be. You have to pay to park in most government owned places like hospitals etc. The bus network isn't sufficient as is for most areas, unless there was a huge investment in improving and extending it (bearing in mind the impact of that), I wouldn't be a fan of free bus passes as many people would still not use them.

I would

Roads and infrastructure would still be needed even if there were no private cars. As there'd still be lorries, vans, buses, taxis, etc, in fact, there'd be more as people would have more home deliveries if they couldn't drive for shopping, there'd need to be a huge increase in the number of buses and taxis to ferry people around, etc.

So, Govt would lose billions in revenue (fuel tax, road tax, insurance premium tax, vat on fuel, vat on repairs, vat on cars sold, fuel duty tax, company car benefit in kind tax/nic, etc).

Not only would the govt lose billions in tax revenue from private cars, they'd have billions to spend in subsidising public transport. Govt are already getting worried about the loss of tax revenue due to the growth in electric cars and thinking about "per mile" tax to recoup the lost revenue!

User149, that was precisely the time I came to compare it, when we needed to replace our old car...or not

User149, although less people driving cars would hopefully be less of a burden on the nhs. We can't keep an archaic system going because of tax revenue, we'd all still be smoking if that was the case.