What is needed to get you out of your cars?

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DaveH said:
There is always going to be a need for cars. Society has changed where people now live a fair distance from work and it is virtually impossible for public transport to cater for the door to door service most people want. What is needed is better ways of managing cars and transport.

Cheaper public transport would be one improvement, as would better cycling, running and walking routes. Work places need better facilities for people to use alternative transport, such as showers & changing facilities and bike sheds.

For those driving a longer distance, the thing to look at is the last few miles of the trip. I used to have a 35 mile commute, which would have taken over 2 hours going on multiple trains and busses. That clearly was never going to work. However it could take about 50 minutes in the car. 30 mins to do the first 30 odd miles and 20 mins to do the last few miles into the town where I worked. That was crawling in traffic, spewing out pollution to move slowly or not at all. I used to park up in a near by village and cycle the last few miles. If large towns and cities had a park & own steam system where you could park up then have a route in completely away from traffic, it would make a huge difference.

People are going to want to use cars at other times though. I currently cycle to work almost every day. Last week I had cold and cough. Cycling would have been a struggle so I used the car.

Longer trips can be a nightmare with public transport. I've got 330 miles to my mams house. 2 kids, one dog, clothes, any other stuff we want plus I usually bring up tools for the DIY jobs I'm assigned. It takes a fair amount of boot space. On a train, we would be looking at £400 and not be able to take as much stuff. Tins of dog food are heavy and they do sell them in the north east. But the first job on arrival would be to get the bus down to The Galleries to pick up dog food. Who wants hassle like that, when the journey time is the same, driving costs are chearper, we can take all our stuff and we are not trying to usher bags, kids and dogs on and off trains?

One game changer for commuters I can see would be self drive group cars (or I think Uber do it with a real driver). I work on a large site and there must be loads of people who live near me who work there. But, I'm on flexi time and tend to work irregular hours. It would be fantastic to be able to tap a phone app and say "I'm leaving in 10 minutes", to find a car arrive and the cost shared between anyone else who happened to be leaving at the same time.

Basically we need better provision of alternatives. It will not stop car usage but will reduce it.
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Some excellent points and I deffo think reduction is the issue.......If I commuted on bike but then used car to go to Lakes on weekend (engine warm and on long run much more efficient) then Im sure my impact on the environment would be massively reduced.

I guess you also have to factor in the reduced costs of healthcare to a population that is cycling/walking/running to work rather than using cars. Imagine the improvements to the the nations health if most of the population were getting a decent amount of daily exercise.
 
Mackem00 said:
I know I'm only ever a visitor but I'd say using the tube every day would be a bit of a chore and not that cheap. How much to travel a few miles on 2 different tubes each way? Probs about the 8 quid odd limit isn't it?
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Aye but if you are using it to commute you get a season pass.....Mine was about £120 a month i think and given I worked across the far side of London to where I lived it was crazy cheap. Couldnt even pay the finance on a car for that. If you did ever take the car to work, had to go round the North Circular and the 24 miles from the East End to the West end could take over 3 hours.
 
i enjoy driving and far to used to the convenience to give it up. even free public transport wouldn't tempt me
 
The Muffin Man said:
Some excellent points and I deffo think reduction is the issue.......If I commuted on bike but then used car to go to Lakes on weekend (engine warm and on long run much more efficient) then Im sure my impact on the environment would be massively reduced.

I guess you also have to factor in the reduced costs of healthcare to a population that is cycling/walking/running to work rather than using cars. Imagine the improvements to the the nations health if most of the population were getting a decent amount of daily exercise.
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I visit Copenhagen regularly and they've got it spot on....not just on the cycling front but also with public transport. Decades ahead of us....

You hardly see any fatties either.......cycling is simply part of their culture.
 
My mobility is shit and I like driving. Quick answer is nothing bar a free taxi door to door will get me out of my car but that kind of defeats the object :)
 
Having had a think if I lived within a 30 minute walk of work then I would walk it instead of driving. The main issues would be going on holiday - having to get public transport to the airport or if travelling in the UK having to travel from place to place on public transport potentially with loads of gear and then there's the lad who is only 2 to think about as well.
 
Pacific said:
i enjoy driving and far to used to the convenience to give it up. even free public transport wouldn't tempt me
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Which is the main issue, we've made driving every trip in this country the quickest and most convenient option. Making it less convenient behind cycling, walking and PT is what any decent council should be doing.

Unfortunately to achieve this the government would have to commit to spending billions on PT and cycling rather than road widening schemes which will simply never happen.
 
The Muffin Man said:
Aye but if you are using it to commute you get a season pass.....Mine was about £120 a month i think and given I worked across the far side of London to where I lived it was crazy cheap. Couldnt even pay the finance on a car for that. If you did ever take the car to work, had to go round the North Circular and the 24 miles from the East End to the West end could take over 3 hours.
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See I think 120 quid a month for public transport is mental expensive.
 
Proper cycle paths, they are abysmal here, truly awful. Cheaper public transport.

I can get a bus to London for only around £2 more than it costs to get a bus from Houghton to Sunderland. How is that possible?
 
Redandwhitedust said:
It's the cost that gets me. I was at a funeral in South Sheilds with my mum and dad a few weeks ago. We thought about public transport so we could all have a drink. It worked out well over a tenner a head from their house in Lanchester.

You can fly to Dublin for that!

That's before you work out the slower journeys, hanging around for connections and the walk from bus stops to where you actually need to be. It was just a non starter when we could all jump in the car.

For most people, to use public transport would require it being cheaper, faster and more frequent. Which is near impossible to achieve, because to make it more frequent and faster means it's more expensive to run, meaning higher fares!

What I would say though in recent years it has definitely got more comfortable. The buses tend to be newer, cleaner and more comfortable than before.
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I live in a coastal town and the bus follows the coast then goes through the high street, rather than having a service that goes through where people live. It is a mile walk to the bus stop. Despite working for the biggest employer in the area, the buses no longer go onto the site at peak times and it is close to a mile and a half from the nearest stop to my office. That is 2.5 miles of walking, which is not too bad. However the whole trip is only 5 miles. I can walk the whole lot in the same time the bus takes, but is is a £7 return per day on the bus.

Absolutely crazy prices for a poor service. If I could get a bus for a couple of quid that ran near where I live, I'd consider it. At 5 miles, the quickest ways of getting to work in order are driving, cycling, running (really hard work!), walking and bus. If traffic is bad, then cycling is quicker as it is off-road. Cost wise, cycling, running and walking are joint top at zero (ignoring the low cost of bike maintenance), then driving and bus as way more expensive than petrol costs.

Why would I use the bus when it is the most expensive and slowest possible option?

I did talk to the transport people at work and suggest that if they wanted to cut down on car park use, we could produce a postcode heat map of employees then look at free shuttle buses at peak times. I worked at one place that had a free shuttle from the local train station and it worked well. Their response was that they didn't want to upset the bus company.
 
When I was in London, and childless, I never bothered with a car. I lived quite centrally, had nowhere to keep a car even if I had one, and had buses passing my house, and about 7 or 8 tube stations within easy walking distance. Once I got married, moved out to the suburbs and had kids, I bought a car, mainly so I knew I could get my son to hospital quickly if I had to (my first child had died shortly after birth, so I was perhaps a bit paranoid the second time), but also just to avoid the hassle of trying to travel on public tranmsport with pushchairs and bags full of baby stuff.

Nowadays, I don't generally use my car to commute, unless I'm late or it's pissing down, in which case I'll drive to the station.

I use the car for shopping, and for trips out, but only if there is no convenient train station near where I'm going. I'll always use the train where practical.
 
The Muffin Man said:
Some excellent points and I deffo think reduction is the issue.......If I commuted on bike but then used car to go to Lakes on weekend (engine warm and on long run much more efficient) then Im sure my impact on the environment would be massively reduced.

I guess you also have to factor in the reduced costs of healthcare to a population that is cycling/walking/running to work rather than using cars. Imagine the improvements to the the nations health if most of the population were getting a decent amount of daily exercise.
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Good point about health, though it is difficult for people to get started. My trip in is up a big hill followed by 1.5 miles of slow incline. Although I had a good fitness level from football and running, when I first started I would really feel like shit by the time I got to the end of the incline. It was a long battle to go from that, to feeling ok, to actually enjoying it to now wondering if I have improved my Strava stats.

Easy to see why many people will struggle for motivation, despite the health benefits.
 
DaveH said:
Good point about health, though it is difficult for people to get started. My trip in is up a big hill followed by 1.5 miles of slow incline. Although I had a good fitness level from football and running, when I first started I would really feel like shit by the time I got to the end of the incline. It was a long battle to go from that, to feeling ok, to actually enjoying it to now wondering if I have improved my Strava stats.

Easy to see why many people will struggle for motivation, despite the health benefits.
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I dont have the stats but you do see more and more people commuting and cycling in general these days, certainly over the last decade. If you put the infrastructure in place, make it safe then people will use it.
6 mile each way on the bike for me......30 mins max. The bus during peak commuting times takes 45 mins and costs £20+ a week........its a no brainer.
 
Said this for years, but all buses and trains should be publicly owned and 100% free to use.

It would decimate car use, and because the demand would be so high, the quality & frequency would climb, making them even more useful.

Money is an issue of course, but we'd also save from not having to build and maintain so many roads, and you know, less people dying of air pollution.
 
Hull_Mackem said:
Proper cycle paths, they are abysmal here, truly awful. Cheaper public transport.

I can get a bus to London for only around £2 more than it costs to get a bus from Houghton to Sunderland. How is that possible?
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Pretty much this. If there were more safe cycle lanes or off road cycle paths it would help.

Not only does public transport need to be cheaper it also needs to be more reliable, but all of this requires funding/subsidies & I cant see the Government doing this, paricularly as there'll be a double whammy of reduced revenue from less vehicle excise duty (aka car tax) and fuel duty if people switch to cycling and/or public transport
 
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