What is needed to get you out of your cars?

The Muffin Man

The Muffin Man

Winger
Love driving but it feels like we are arriving at a cross roads where cars as we know them at the moment (petrol, diesel and fun to drive) are about to go the final journey. Clearly this was always going to happen at some point with the finite nature of fossil fuels and of course pollution and climate change.

So question is what would need to happen to get you to abandon the car? When living in London I didnt use one at all Monday to Friday as the tube network was outstanding and it was far quicker to get about London and to work etc on the tube.....To travel back to Sunderland or anywhere else outside of the M25 transport was again not an option and it was back to the car.

Since arriving back in Sunderland I have had jobs where I have got there a couple of days a week running or cycling but have had to take much longer routes to get to work (50% longer than shortest route) to avoid the death trap roads.

In Sunderland I think all major roads having cycle lanes like in other cycle friendly EU states (not just painted lines) and a Metro that connected SR5 from Town End Farm to the town and up to Doxford International would be a huge success.

I get the feeling that lots of people would use alternatives if they were realistic, cheap and were equally as quick as cars. Am I wrong?
 


I do not enjoy driving and only learnt and passed my test when getting to work started to become problematic.

In my current job public transport would take 1hr 30mins to get to work via 2 different bus companies costing well over £100 months per month for both passes for a pretty unreliable service in truth.

Ultimately though the problems that existed when I passed with public transport are still in place today and are probably worse if I looked into it properly.

Whilst public transport is run for profit and services are continually cut I’d have to be squeezed to about £2 a litre for fuel before I’d consider not driving.
 
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.
 
Charlestonian said:
I do not enjoy driving and only learnt and passed my test when getting to work started to become problematic.

In my current job public transport would take 1hr 30mins to get to work via 2 different bus companies costing well over £100 months per month for both passes for a pretty unreliable service in truth.

Ultimately though the problems that existed when I passed with public transport are still in place today and are probably worse if I looked into it properly.

Whilst public transport is run for profit and services are continually cut I’d have to be squeezed to about £2 a litre for fuel before I’d consider not driving.
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100% agree with this, in London getting public transport was not a chore, it was the first choice because it was fast and cheap. If you want to get people out of their cars that is deffo the challenge ie to make public transport the obvious choice.
 
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.
 
The Muffin Man said:
100% agree with this, in London getting public transport was not a chore, it was the first choice because it was fast and cheap. If you want to get people out of their cars that is deffo the challenge ie to make public transport the obvious choice.
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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?
 
The Muffin Man said:
Love driving but it feels like we are arriving at a cross roads where cars as we know them at the moment (petrol, diesel and fun to drive) are about to go the final journey. Clearly this was always going to happen at some point with the finite nature of fossil fuels and of course pollution and climate change.

So question is what would need to happen to get you to abandon the car? When living in London I didnt use one at all Monday to Friday as the tube network was outstanding and it was far quicker to get about London and to work etc on the tube.....To travel back to Sunderland or anywhere else outside of the M25 transport was again not an option and it was back to the car.

Since arriving back in Sunderland I have had jobs where I have got there a couple of days a week running or cycling but have had to take much longer routes to get to work (50% longer than shortest route) to avoid the death trap roads.

In Sunderland I think all major roads having cycle lanes like in other cycle friendly EU states (not just painted lines) and a Metro that connected SR5 from Town End Farm to the town and up to Doxford International would be a huge success.

I get the feeling that lots of people would use alternatives if they were realistic, cheap and were equally as quick as cars. Am I wrong?
Click to expand...
Actually having a reliable functioning public transport network would be a good start. It is appalling in the North East, whether it is trains, buses or metros but its easy for investment to be chanelled to other areas which are voting in favour of the government

One think to reduce pollution in city centres would be having decent Park and Ride systems. Even places like Scarbrough, Whitby and Durham have them so why not Newcastle and Sunderland?
 

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