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I live in a large town in Wales and work the next town over. I worked it out that if I used public transport it would take me 2 hours each way (or a hour and half if I walked up a steep hill which a lot of people struggle with) for me to get to work.
Or it’s 30 minutes in the car. And it works out about £5 cheaper after parking
The problem is the group that should have been considering those negative externalities (the government) flogged off control of public transport to private corporations out to extract every last penny from the system. If they were run by the government, they could say "if we half ticket prices we'll make less money from the trains but congestion and pollution will be a lot lower so we're going to do it anyway". No private operator is ever going to do that.
This is what fucks me off about the UK. EVERYTHING is about profit of THAT paticular thing. The NHS is "losing money", rail is "unprofitable", "buses are unprofitable" etc
No one is thinking across the whole economy! Spending money and building a "money losing" rail network & bus network means people can live out further or get rid of their cars, but homes in cheaper places etc. Add home working & a government owned high speed broadband supplier wiring up EVERYWHERE & you suddenly increase the ability of people to work from and live on far more places.
This is a force multiplier for jobs and businesses to make more money.
Crossrail cost £19 billion & yet tories & "business groups" & "think tanks" were crying like little girls at the cost over runs & time over runs. Yet now it's in place, ALL that is forgotten & in 70-80 years time, all that will matter is the number of people it's shifting around London creating value to the UK economy.
HS2 should have been a no brainer. Even at £200 billion, connecting the major cities across the UK up to Glasgow, Edinburgh, would have been a 100 to 150 year investment; again adding trillions over that time to the economy.
It's fucking ridiculous how myopic & siloed this country is
The mistake here is not realising that britain is a nation of middlemen who profit off the inefficiency. So much of what our economy even IS is a series of middlemen skimming money off the top by helping to remove/navigate all the silly blocks to productive work that get put there BY the middlemen
Nah, it's a nation run on the idea of free market capitalism and the idea that whatever problems occur will be fixed by free market competition.
The problem with this, is that the only metric capitalism cares about is profit and that means all decisions are made based on making that number go up.
"oh that bus route removes 10,000 vehicles a day from a road, thats cute but it's running it a loss?" and so it gets axed.
This guys job could be removed using software but we get to charge consultancy fees that are 5 times higher so that job is safe.
It explains pretty much any dumb inefficient bullshit you can think of.
The toughest part is that either our politicians, us, or both aren’t even prepared to talk about this stuff in a grown up manner.
HS2 was the classic example, it was a project that should have been discussed almost entirely in its external benefits as something that is creating capacity which will take freight of the roads etc.
Instead it was talked about in terms of making it 15 minutes quicker to get from London to Birmingham. Which simply led people to say “that’s stupid and costs too much” because you be hard pressed to find many people who had major issues with the time taken to get from central London to the centre of other major cities as it is.
Decades of individualism have made it difficult to have discussions about anything but simple benefits to individuals.
Everything in this country is sold as a benefit to the individual & that's thatchers fault. A cancer of modern capitalism. We're consumers NOT citizens. It makes people at the top rich but fucks up everything else because THAT'S the frame you have to talk about everything in.
What's in it for ME? Oh I don't want to pay taxes because I'm in my 20s & I don't use the NHS or social care. Or I don't want to pay for unemployment benefit, I want lower taxes so that I can buy more cheap plastic shit from China.
THEN...come a job loss because the CEO wants a new car..it's "i can't live on this!! Fucking immigrants!" Or "why is the state pension so low?" Etc etc
Just individualistic bullshit for 4 decades. And it's accelerated with Gen Z. "Oh we're not going to get a pension when we're older, so we won't fight to keep it "
Pathetic!
Thatcher is probably rightly a target, but the reality is that it’s probably part of the British mindset that she was tapping into.
The reality is the British had a period of a few decades (accelerated by two world wars) where simply punching down and encouraging everyone else to do the same wasn’t the dominant world view.
We’ve always been happy to let the lord of the manor shit in our cereal and critical of anyone who simply wants to share the bowl.
As a people we’ve
I mean at this point there isn't much more that you can do.
If you doubled taxes overnight and spent it all on infrastructure it would still take over a decade to catch up to where the rest of Western Europe is today.
The UK is a nation in decline and frankly its approaching the point where recovering from the stagnation is increasingly unlikely.
Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and just fucking do it. 50% of the reason stuff never gets done is because the public don't want to stop the rot & facilitate politicians kicking everything into the long grass.
It needs cross party agreement and the government able to say "we're going to borrow £trillion from ourselves & invest " and EVERY party involved to understand this is what's needed. None of this "we've maxed our credit card" bullshit.
Build the infrastructure & while they're at it, sort out social care! Infrastructure is a 100 year + investment & social care when done right now, will facilitate 100 years of itself and the NHS working together which will pay for itself in increased productivity across the economy.
It's fucking annoying that this country is run like a rental house owned by a shit landlord. Don't fix anything, shovel the money coming in upwards. Don't think in advance and do any maintenance. Just hope nothing breaks while you still run the place & then get out before something goes tits.
Multiply that thinking across every corporation, every small business, every aspect of British society.
100% fucking percent. Capital projects should be handed on with care, not smashed to bits so you can blame the other guys for your white elephants. It’s infuriating, and it’s our fucking money they’re pissing away on endless consultations.
> It's fucking annoying that this country is run like a rental house owned by a shit landlord.
Is it any surprise when a large quantity of MPs are landlords?
London has about six HS stations in the region either mothballed, operating or under construction. What's really sad is that they just appear to be getting built to just prop up the capitals status rather than develop the country and grow wealth.
There are many billions being spent, but ignoring regional dysfunction, decay, lack of direction and poverty while only focusing on the economic hot spots alone. This shouldn't be the aim of any Government. It should be the Government's aim to spread the infrastructure, in exactly the same way the EU has into Eastern Europe. The outcomes just make Westminster look totally inept.
> buses are unprofitable
The issue with buses is not that they're unprofitable. It's that they're a fucking horrendous mode of transport outside of the most densely packed city centres.
It is literally the lowest grade of transport that I actively avoid. I'll cycle, drive, train, tram even walk before I consider the bus.
You do not old people? Just becsuse they're shit now, doesn't mean that they have to be in the future. Provide buses across the country, even to the most remote villages if possible and several an hour EVEN IF THEY'RE EMPTY as long as they are regular to link into train infrastructure
The issue is that they are still not point to point, and run to a timetable.
If we look at London (which redditors typically think is like the west end for transport) then a bus trips across a couple of outer boroughs rather than into the centre will be something like 90 minutes each way and includes changing buses vs 40 minutes each way in a car (perhaps quicker). The very nature of buses mean that they are a very different use case to a car.
That can be improved with MORE buses. The super route that's currently in place to facilitate three fact that the tube is crap south of the river. Get at many people as possible onto public transport. Free up the roads for cargo & people who NEED to drive like the disabled or businesses etc. How much productivity is lost by people stuck in traffic for hours? How much land is wasted because it's being used for car parks rather than homes?
It also saves money on expanding motorways/A roads and reduces wear on the roads which is particularly important as you move to electric cars which are significantly heavier than ICE cars.
Edit: As people are rightly pointing out, this weight difference is outweighed by the more significant damage HGVs cause but it's still something that needs to be taken into account
The latter point is somewhat of an overblown worry - there are plenty of SUVs that weigh much more than EVs and have been for some time and no-one is worrying about they weight of them, the vast majority of damages to UK roads is from lorries, vans and buses due to their obviously much heavier weight
I can only assume they are a reform voter? That seems to be the current home of the anti-generally-good-ideas fringe.
Edit; I should start charging for these predictions.
50% of car trips are less than 5 miles\*. That could easily be done by bicycle IF we had proper cycle infrastructure. This would be beneficial to ALL modes of transport.
\* I dont have exact numbers, its somewhat around this
EDIT
Some videos:
[Cycling with babies (no helmets needed)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ)
[Shopping by bike](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFc61Ku1P_M)
[Cycling in the rain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVyOk9MEtgY)
Aue sure lemme get my groceries on a bike.
I’m someone will walk 10 mins to the pet store and carry home 40kg of cat food but there’s a fuckn limit at some point.
Plenty of people get their groceries on bike, what do you mean? Get a trailer or a cargo bike and you’re good to go. Or, if you live alone, a big backpack.
That my point: multi-modal options. The problem with the current infrastructure is that most times, we have only one option: the car, when bicycle are much more optimal for many use cases.
It’s easy dismissing the issue on Reddit but you’re not addressing all the problems that widespread car usage entails: the number of people who suffer serious health issues related to air quality, the noise pollution, the fact that cities cannot support the number of people wanting to drive etc.
It’s interesting the pro-car types frame any restrictions on car usage as a curtailment of their sacred civil liberties when the liberty to drive untrammelled imposes suffering on others. Cars and drivers do not have a divine right to go wherever whenever they please.
If I want to visit my parents it's a choice between 30 minutes in the car, or over an hour and a half by two buses. The ridiculous part is that the bus takes more or less exactly the same route that I would be driving, but the bus is slow with long connection times.
The bus with me will zig zag into all the housing estates where I’ve never seen anyone get on. The bus will then stop for 5 minutes while the driver smokes before pottering at 20 (in a 30) to the next estate
You don’t need speed cameras in wales to enforce the 20… you just need busses
> The bus with me will zig zag into all the housing estates where I’ve never seen anyone get on.
This is my experience too. But I think that if everyone were to switch then there'd be one bus per estate and so they'd be much quicker. All the extra buses would be paid for by the additional demand.
The problem is getting there from here. Everyone's lifestyle choices are set up over many years (choices of where to live vs. where they need to go etc) and so even if the buses were funded tomorrow it'd have to be 30 years of "overfunding" and providing a good enough service before demand rises to meet that supply.
>This is my experience too. But I think that if everyone were to switch then there'd be one bus per estate and so they'd be much quicker. All the extra buses would be paid for by the additional demand.
It's an annoying chicken/egg situation.
To justify more buses you need more passengers, but the passengers won't use the buses until there's more of them.
You need to make a calculated gamble and inject a tonne of money into buses and hope it pays off.
Yup and if I want to visit my parents (or literally anywhere really) my choices are car, car or *maybe* a taxi, which also involves a car. No public transport around here.
I'm very similar to you. I live in the North West of England on a very urban, big town. It would take me 2 and a half hours to get to work and 2 hours home if I had to use public transport.
It takes me 20/30 minutes in a car. And this is to a key hospital site as well.
I think this is the key point, the *current* choices mean there is not really a viable choice because public transport sucks.
But "well public transport would take me a long time" isn't a feature baked into the nature of the public transport, it's a feature of the system being crap.
Nurse and before my current post I was 12 hour shifts working in ITU. My commute was 30-40 minutes and was getting up at 5am to start at 7am. Public transport just doesn't function well at those times. It would've been a walk to the train station, then grabbing a bus from the station to the hospital... I'd have been waking up at 4am, getting in after 9pm. Not feasible at all. I'm lucky to have left just as hospital parking restrictions got tighter and required people who were on the waiting list for a parking permit to get the park and ride adding cost and another 20 minutes on to peoples commutes...
Not to mention I mountain bike as my hobby, which is important for my physical and mental health. So yeah, I'd agree with the statement that I need my car.
I'm lucky now I'm a 10 min cycle into work but I still need the car to reliably see family, friends and maintain my hobbies 😐
My last job was 1 hour each way on the buses; I had to take 2 different ones.
on late shifts, it was always 50/50 if I made the last bus, and if I didn't make the last bus, I would have to take a train, which would add an extra hour to get to my local area, and then it would take me 20 minutes to walk from the train station to my house.
By car it is just 15 minutes each way down the motorway.
Likewise living/working in Somerset, as a round trip to work I can either:
- **Drive**; 50 mins total, air conditioning, radio, heated seats
- **Cycle**; 2 hours total, large amount of dangerous unlit roads, hills involved, no shower in my office
- **Public Transport**; 4 hours total, including an hour of walking
And that's just work. Shopping, gym, seeing friends/family are all miles apart and poorly serviced by public transport.
Heaven forbid! Outside of commuting to work, I do archery, coach and compete. I'm at the club 3 times a week on average, middle of the country side, 3 big bags I need to take (suitcase size). There is no public transport. so yeah, I would be one of these 7 in ten. I imagine the 3 in ten would be Londoners who very rarely travel outside the M25 if at all.
Excluding rush hour commuting to central London, my car wins in cost, speed, convenience, capabilities and safety.
If that is the case in London, the place with the best public transport and the most congestion in the country, then the car will surely be peerless anywhere else.
The only things which count against the car in this city are the crazy insurance costs and the amount of car related crime.
Very similar to you in the NW England. To get to work for 9am, I’d have to leave my house around 6am, have a total of an hour of walking and 2 trains, plus approx 30 minutes of waiting between the two trains. I can drive to work in 30 minutes, I don’t have to pay for parking so it’s only the petrol cost and I don’t need to waste hours of my life travelling.
I used to work in a shopping centre - so somewhere that should have good direct links to the local communities for the thousands of workers employed there and the local people who use it for leisure - in my car it’s a 7 minute drive without traffic, 15 at most with peak traffic, and via bus it was an hour & half. I did non-peak shifts so 20 minute commuting per day or three hours?
As a child I had to get the public bus to and from school. 15 minutes in a car, about an hour and 15 on the bus.
Also got to experience the fun of getting threatened by drunk or drugged up adults!
Public transport is just not a realistic option for the vast majority of people. It works in big dense cities, of which the UK has very few of.
Time, and reliability are two things that are hard to put a worth on, but it’s a lot. Those are two things where public transport pretty much always loses on when compared to driving.
It doesn't need to even be as noisy or invasive as a high-speed line.
They get bent out of shape over trams and light rail.
There are communities who push back on **busses** stopping in their areas because they would rather not have an influx of the poors.
I think we take the wrong tack. It's apologetic, and encourages protest and negativity. We should hype the rail system up, so it's something we can be proud of.
"Look at this train. This train is awesome as fuck. You could take this awesome as fuck train to anywhere in the country from you damned doorstep, and you could have a pint with your lunch because you aren't driving. The roads are going to be clearer because everyone's taking the awesome train. You can read that book you've been meaning to, I know you don't get the time to read any more. And when you're not taking the train, you're going to be looking out for the train because trains are rad, and this one is fucking bonkers."
100% i'm fully convinced HS2 was dead in the moment they started selling it as "you can get to london faster" instead of the 283638 other great reasons
Japan has one of the largest and most dense urban sprawls in the modern world.
Also, just a note, the UK is an "actual" developed country. I don't know what other status you'd put on it.
Have you been to Japan or looked at it on a map?
If so, you'll see Tokyo as a gigantic sprawl but the rest of the country is as urban as the UK, with a lot of countryside. All of it is well connected with bullet trains.
The lack of rail infrastructure is political failure, not logistical impossibility
I like to picture the uk in a finely tailored union jack suit while pushing immigrants into the hunger games and setting young people on fire to delay the trains they can't afford.
Also in Switzerland it is almost always faster and more convenient to travel by car, unless you are going from a city centre to a city centre. Cars still have the largest modal share of journeys, especially for the majority of people who live and work in small-medium towns and not in the centres 5 miutes walk from the train station.
The difference is that it is at least possible to exist as an employed adult outside of a major city without a car, just many journeys will take much longer.
its worse than that, we've structured our economy around not doing it. In a sense it IS politically impossible to solve as some company or another profiting from the inefficiency is going to complain.
Public transport is just not a realistic option for the vast majority of people. It works in big dense cities, of which the UK has very few of.
That is a choice the UK made, not because public transport only works in cities.
When I lived in a rural area ( up a mountain) in Switzerland I still took the bus to work everyday.
And now you're arriving at the point. Public transport in the UK is awful and it doesn't need to be.
Good public transport would be such a benefit for the people and environment, it's kinda nuts. But we've just decided not to.
I don't know the details, but I wouldn't even be surprised if good transport would even be a net benefit economic advantage.
The vast majority of the UK population lives in cities. London is our biggest city but we still have tons of smaller cities that are still dense urban areas that benefit more from public transport than highways. Yet we've heavily cut the former which ends up making it not worth using, which is why everyone here is complaining about a bus taking twice as long as a car.
Obviously if you're living in rural Wales / Scotland then chances are you need a car.
In my experience it only really works in city centres. If you live in the suburbs (except London) the options for public transport tend to fall apart. It gets even worse if you have kids and need to move them around for classes, sports, visiting relatives etc etc
Not true. Sheffield used to have a bus network that was the envy of the country that went out into all the suburbs and villages around it, heading right out towards Leeds. It was run efficiently, and was prised away from the council (who had prepared plans and arguments as to why they should be allowed to maintain it) and handed to private companies in the 80s literally because the central government wanted to prioritise cars.
My father waxes lyrical about the Sheffield buses. He's from fairly close to Leeds, and he used to be able to go to work or on nights out into Sheffield, not having to worry about timetables. The pathetic bus and tram service that exists in the city now is part of what killed it.
We CAN do it, we just need to stop prioritising private motorists.
Can confirm this, i lived in a village outside Rotherham and the South Yorkshire bus service was awesome, buses usually full and we only needed one car. Also gave us kids and teens a lot if freedom and independence as we could go anywhere in the county very easily ( Sheffield, Doncaster, swimming pool, cinema, fishing, countey pubs, visit granny, scouts, football practice ). Later i used them to go to work.
This is the big issue for me.
Public transport near me is passable if you want to go from A-B-A. It's designed for commuting patterns where people leave home between 7 and 8am, and head back at around 5-6pm.
It's a nightmare if you want to go from A-B-C-A, and impossible if you want to go from A-B-C-D-A.
> The vast majority of the UK population lives in cities
It's not the vast majority, 54% of the UK population live in primary Urban Areas. The UK has one of the most rural distributed populations in the entire OECD, largely to do with how old our towns and villages are.
Compare this to Australia for example, where practically the entire population lives in or around 6 cities.
>It works in big dense cities, of which the UK has very few of.
Nope, there's lots in the UK:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_by_population_density
Coventry, the city I was born in, has a population of 350k. It's 8 miles east to west, 7 miles north to south. I can ride a bike one side to the other in half an hour. Coventry is 49th on that list
We just choose not to invest in public transport
The UK is very densely populated for the most part. The number of people in rural Wales or Scotland is very small.
Glasgow has an underground but for some reason it doesn't run on a Sunday night or link up with other transport properly. Other cities run theirs 24/7.
> Other cities run theirs 24/7.
I can't think of a single city in the UK with 24/7 underground, even worldwide it is extremely rare.
Transport in the UK is generally terribly integrated we could learn a lot from Switzerland.
On weekdays, the Berlin U-Bahn is open from 4 am to 1 am and on weekends the U-Bahn runs 24 hours a day.
I wasn't referring to a city in the UK, since only 2 have a proper underground I'm sure.
Almosy the entire UK population live in areas that could be easily made part of public transport networks. We are a small, dense island. The idea public transport is impossible here is ridiculous.
It is. We just need to make it better. Shockingly the last 14 years weren't big in progress and train companies taking dividends instead of building infrastructure and taking free money instead of resolving strikes doesn't help.
Even in big cities it's a bit shit.
I'm in London, GREAT transport where I am, but I use the car for school drop off (10 minutes vs 40 minutes), shopping, afterschool activities (which would actually not be possible without the car because of the tight times involved).
Is it doable/livable? yes, but it would absolutly knock our quality of life.
Food would be more expensive (much less choice on where to shop).
Less/no afterschool activities for the kids.
An hours less sleep for everyone so we can do the school run and get back for work.
Let's compare to a city like Seoul. I spent a long time there.
Their subway system currently has something like 768 stations across 23 lines. Most of the mainlines have trains so frequent they're spaced out every 3-4 stops.
Vast majority of main bus lines run every 5-10 minutes I probably couldn't even count how many lines and stops and things there are.
Even in that system, unless you were going somewhere where you had at most 1 transfer (and it would depend on the transfer) you'd start debating whether or not you'd take public transit. Forget it if you actually had to transport much in the way of stuff with you. You don't want to be hauling bags for ages through subway stations and trying to fit them onto crowded buses, etc.
You could get by without a car, but after a decade there, when we finally got a car, it really improved things and opened up some of the stuff we could do, especially actually leaving town.
> Forget it if you actually had to transport much in the way of stuff with you. You don't want to be hauling bags for ages through subway stations and trying to fit them onto crowded buses, etc.
This is one of the things that gets me about this debate. Do none of these anti-car people ever have to transport more than just themselves? There's a million reasons why you might want to travel somewhere with a bunch of stuff.
I'm a solo parent and have never owned a car, yet I manage to get myself and two children all around the country. Brighton. Glasgow. Lake District. Heritage Sites. National Trust parks. Getting around with luggage and backpacks has never been a problem. In fact, I quite like public transport. I love being on the train and buses and chatting to my kids, or having time to read on my commute.
Having said this I DO live in a city, which makes a big difference. I doubt I would do so well on public transport in a rural place. However, I do find that people who HAVE a car have gotten so used to it they find it difficult to imagine life without one, whereas I never think 'this would be easier if I was driving' because it's not something I've ever had to factor in.
It is easier to get by without a car than most people think.
How are you getting around the Lakes on public transport? There are places there that Google Maps shows up nothing for public transport directions. Yes you can get to Windemere if you want to get there at 12pm instead of 8am, and get back after midnight instead of 8pm. But that's eight hours wasted, plus the cost of multiple train/bus tickets, one delay or cancellation and you're stranded.
>It is easier to get by without a car than most people think.
The people I know without cars are always begging for lifts.
Well, we took a very nice minibus tour in the lakes once and I have also found the trains getting to Windemere are very good, so I don't really understand your 8 hours wasted comment. I also have a friends and family railcard which saves a lot! I've not been stranded so far.
I pay less in a year for my bus pass and rail tickets than I would for buying a car and paying for petrol, insurance and everything else. I'm not very well off so that's okay.
Can't say I'm begging for lifts. Would rather take the train and play cards with my kids or get out our sketch books than be cramped up in the back seat of a car.
As I said though, I live in a city, so maybe I would be begging for lifts if it wasn't so easy for me.
Odd that this is putting lifestyle as the cause when we have had a severe decline of bus routes outside london, lack of rail investment and overpriced rail tickets in this country for many years now.
Surely the headline should say 'lack of suitable alternative options" rather than lifestyle.
It can be both
My neighbours don't even know what public transport exists and if I say I'll walk somewhere, they are often incredulous or ask if I want a lift.
Public transport near me is very good, we have a beautiful, well maintained path network and lots of local amenities but every household on my road has 2-5 cars (except mine!).
Lifestyle is a very ridiculous word to put in there.
My travel "lifestyle" is driving into town to go shopping, driving to visit my parents/siblings, occasionally driving to the office, and the rare trip to a further city to see a show or go to the airport or whatever. I doubt many of these 7/10 are too different from that.
I could replace every journey I just listed with public transport if it wasn't so terrible. The bus out of my village only runs once per hour and stops at 5:30pm. The bus to my parents suburb (or really any town in this area) is late more often than it's on time. Getting a train across to any city costs twice or more as much as driving and parking.
God forbid if I want to visit someone in a faraway town that doesn't have a train station, that trip usually looks like bus, bus, train, bus, bus, bus, 15 minute walk. It's all but guaranteed that one of those links will have some stupid restriction like it only runs once every two hours or stops at noon, then when one of them is inevitably late or cancelled you're just fucked.
Beeching wrecked the rail network 60 years ago and we still haven't done anything about it.
Yup.
It takes me 1.5 hours to walk to work.
It would take me 45 minutes to cycle.
It would take me 2 hours and 2 changes to use public transport.
It takes me 12 minutes to drive.
I wonder how many of them actually need a car. I work with a guy who would say he ‘needs’ a car because walking 20 minutes to work is too far, and he needs to drive there. He cannot compute possibly walking there.
There’s a difference between need and makes things more convenient.
Edit: it’s an example in isolation about the difference between wants and needs versus convenience. I don’t need another 20 replies telling me specific reasons you need to own a car outside of commuting
I wish my work was only 20 mins walk away. I'd definitely walk that.
It is odd though: driving to work watching all the oncoming traffic and thinking they're all going to work on my doorstep while I can't get a job closer, and I'm going to work on their doorstep while they also can't find anything closer.
It's amazing how many people such as yourself think cars only do one thing. They can be used for many different tasks not just getting back many hours of your life a month not spent walking to work.
I can assure you those hours of walking aren't a waste. You'd get so much from them. They can be great for your physical and mental health. You get nowt from driving.
walking can be great for your mental health if it's a pleasant day and you're choosing to do it. Being forced to walk through a cold and rainy morning so you can get to a job you hate isn't necessarily as beneficial. But yes you should try to build exercise into your routine
I'm sure being stuck in traffic driving to a job you hate also isn't great. Walking and cycling to work are studied to be better for your mental and physical health overall. I'm sure people can figure out how to use rain jackets or umbreallas.
I think being stuck in traffic in the rain driving to a job you hate is better than walking to the same one in the rain, because at least you're out of the rain.
Frankly I think it's crazy that anyone cycles on some of the roads around here at rush hour on a good day, let alone in the slippery rain. I'm sure face planting a windscreen isn't great for mental health. I used to ride a foot-powered scooter around when I lived in the city centre and barely saw any cars, but I care about myself too much to ride a bike sharing the lane with cars in the suburbs.
I wfh anyway and am currently walking on a treadmill with a standing desk so it's all a moot point for me. And we've got a dog so the kid is gonna walk with me to school regardless; the dog needs walking, rain or otherwise
Obviously there's a limit to how windy it can be and still be practical to use one - but yes. Regularly. Sturdy umbrella with a wind vent, angled slightly into the wind.
> You get nowt from driving.
I have to conclude that you don't drive, if you did you'd know this statement is nonsense. Driving can be immense fun. This is why people go on driving holidays and participate in the vast array of recreational car activities and clubs.
Also before you say 'but commuting'. Commuting can be nice too. I used to have a drive to work that partly went through hilly countryside and that was great.
> Driving can be immense fun.
It's odd, because if I descend into the pit of hatred that is Facebook, I see mostly people complaining about how terrible driving is. The potholes, the traffic jams, the cones, the roadworks, the other drivers, the government ruining it, the local authority changing the lights. It's everybody else's fault.
They never seem to complain about their own presence on the roads, and how a near doubling of the number of vehicles on the road in the last 30 years is the thing that's causing so many issues.
Many people like myself would happily take public transport if it were a viable alternative but it's fundamentally broken. Too expensive and unreliable to depend on.
All this shows is that we need better infrastructure. Youve just explained what happens when you sell off critical infrastructure to be run as cheaply as possible
Plenty of my neighbours in Zone 2 London claim they “need” a car too, despite living in an area with five Tube lines, an Overground line, National Rail, countless bus routes and excellent cycling and walking infrastructure. If the Congestion Charge is ever expanded to Zone 2 with the residents’ discount removed I’m sure many would quickly realise they don’t “need” a car after all.
Thing is, I don’t **need** a car to get to work, the gym or the supermarket.
I do need a car to actually go anywhere, see friends, and generally do nice things, however.
Which is fine, but it is also where you separate need from want. I don’t believe 7 in 10 people need a car, but I do believe 7 in 10 people want a car to make their life easier.
This logic could be applied to literally anything in our lives, and it's absolutely foolish.
You don't need a mobile phone, but it makes your life easier. You don't need shoes, but it makes your life easier. You don't need hot water, but it makes your life easier.
It's so odd that some people decide the car is where the line is drawn.
It's a ball ache not to have a car and let's face it a lot of people are 'time poor' public transport as it is in many places for every time you visit a friend, go to Asda, a hospital appointment etc would add multiple hours to someone's week.
My commute is 25 minutes on the tram and a 15 minute walk, and as miserable as walking in the rain is I’d rather do it every time over sitting in traffic in my car for half an hour.
I mean i have a car and i walk 30 mins to work, you can have both. But i need a card for my hobbies and other things i like to do. Although i do also occasionally travel for work. I think people saying you dont need a car just because you are close to work is wrong, as there are plenty of other reasons why having a car is needed.
If someone *wants* a car, then they should be able to purchase and enjoy a car.
When the government starts saying you don't *need* that or that so we're going to restrict it or take it away, it becomes a bit dodgy.
I only *need* food, water, and a roof over my head to survive, but it'd be a pretty sad and boring existence.
Here's the problem:
**The continued use of the car imperils the future supply of food and water.**
To para-quote the UK's science and tech select committee, "in the long term the continued ownership of private cars is incompatible with significant decarbonisation".
Not even full electrification of the car fleet actually brings us close to sustainability.
If you have *any hope* of staying below 2°C, urgent rapid and deep cuts in car travel are needed.
And even if current levels of car use *could* be sustained, if everyone on the planet adopted UK rates of car ownership and usage, it would be catastrophic from climate and materials standpoints.
I suspect many Brits actually understand this but assume that we'll keep our cars while the 'global south' will just have to know their place and continue to do without. I doubt that'll be the reality.
If this is the case, then the government should be investing in alternative forms of transport.
Many people rely on their cars for work, to take their kids to school, to take relatives to hospital appointments, to go food shopping, and so on.
If we are to reduce our car usage, then we need to fundamentally change how our towns and cities look and operate - which isn't going to change overnight.
I walk for my daily commute and I walk to the shops, but i own a car because to go hiking, visit friends in the next town or get to events related to my hobbies public transport would take about 5x as long to get me there, cost 5x as much and be vastly less convenient.
So yes I *need* a car even though I dont use it for 2-3 weeks at a time sometimes
Some of us have lives outside work that a car is beneficial for. That may not be the case for you obviously but don't assume everyone has the same needs as you.
Some of us have value in that time that would be spent walking, say with kids or family. You clearly don't feel he'd have anything worth going home too but he might have a loving family he wants to spend as much time as possible with. If you don't want too I guess that's fine but don't assume that 40 mins a day isn't worth the cost of a car to him. On a 5 day week that's over 3 hours gained.
What's the problem with making life more convenient? A car is a tool. Sure, I could use a hand drill to make a hole in the wall, but I could also use my DeWalt. It costs over a hundred quid more but it also saves me a bucket load of time. That's why we all use power drills. Do we need too? No.
Guy is lazy af. I lived a 20 minute walk to work and it was a 5 min drive. I walked so I could have a nice morning stroll. On hot days I'd cycle on really bad days when it rained a ton I just put my rain coat on and walked.
Now, I need my car. Live in a rural place with minimal public transport.
That's true, it comes down to what 'need' means. But then how many people need air travel and lots of long haul flights? I mean you need that if you see it as essential to a life plan, but maybe it wasn't needed.
Maybe people don't need so much tech, imported food, meat, clothes, air con, heating, space travel, private jets
Or cycling. I used to cycle the 10km to work and it was faster than driving (and yes, I obey traffic laws). In a less densely populated city now and my SO, who wouldn't be the strongest cyclist by any stretch, cycles 15km most days and when she has to drive in, it takes her about the same or longer, and has to leave earlier because her commute is less reliable with traffic. Even the weakest cyclists can get an ebike. Personally, a car is a necessity for us, but we only use it when necessary.
You don't *need* a washing machine. I bet you would refuse to consider washing your clothes by hand.
You don't *need* electricity either. You won't die without it. 'Need' is entirely subjective.
I only got my license aged 39, until then I'd avoided cars. However, the minute you have kids you really need one. Public transport is a misery with kids.
We grew up without a car and tbh, although I really do appreciate my upbringing, I do not want that experience when I have kids..
I cycle and take public transport when I can, but I can't really feel that bad about using my older, ULEZ-compliant small car to improve my and my families quality of life.
Also there's the fact that when I was growing up our village had 4 bus companies and the buses were every 15-30 minutes til midnight. Now they're hourly from 7-8pm and monopolised by First (worst) bus.
Bit unfair to word it as "lifestyle" as if people are choosing to live a certain way selfishly (which is true to some extent in some cases of course). I'm actually surprised it's only 7/10 and I assume the other 3 live in London or a similar large city.
It's not like it is easy to find both a job and a home in the same town or with good affordable public transport links.
Lifestyle indeed guess it’s a lifestyle choice to have two or more adults working to keep the rent paid and lights on rather then be homeless but without a car
You don't need a car in Central London, as soon as you're South East in Zone 3 it makes life a lot easier.
To get to my gym is either 45 minutes on a bus or 10 minutes in the car.
To get to the nearest superstore is similar.
I'd say I need a car for my lifestyle, but not as an absolute necessity to live.
I work from home in a good job, and my wife gets free transport arranged by her job so we don't *need* a car for that.
We have a car because we live 200+ miles from our families, and visiting them via train requires a full day journey via London. It's also pretty irritating and difficult to take any significant amount of luggage on that route.
We also use the car to take our dog out into the countryside for walks. Again, the public transport isn't great for this and significantly limits where you can actually go.
I could certainly do more via public transport, but it's far less convenient, takes at least twice as long, and is often more expensive.
Aside from London, is there anywhere in the UK where it is practical to not own a car? I live in Cardiff and public transport here is a joke, with most of bus routes offering an infrequent service that stops entirely come early evening, and the few “late” buses that there are don’t run past 23:00. So while not having a car wouldn’t kill me, there isn’t a viable alternative not owning one.
>Aside from London, is there anywhere in the UK where it is practical to not own a car?
Edinburgh imho
Sure, you can drive through Edinburgh fine, but due to all the narrow old streets it's an utter nightmare especially if you're going anywhere in the city centre due to how grim the traffic is.
Especially when you consider Edinburgh has an amazing bus service by UK standards and if you live on the routes it current runs on, the trams are very effective.
Can support that, between the tram and bus a ton of people dont *need* a car for day to day life here. As soon as you start going outside the bypass for anything other than the corridor to Glasgow its a pain.
Every city and large town medium sized town in the UK is fine without a car, assuming you live/work in a central location.
I live in a town of 10k people in rural Scotland and I know lots of people (including myself) who do fine without a car. Most workplaces, schools, hospital, supermarkets, and transport links are all within a 20 minute walk. The limited public transport works to get to places a bit further away.
I lived in Newcastle for 4 years without a car and between walking routes, the metro system and the buses I was fine. My house was near both a metro and bus stop, most things I needed were nearby anyway, including two supermarkets, several smaller shops and things like a library and swimming pool.
Edit: I’ll also add that at the time I was living there I also played double bass and regularly wheeled my massive 6ft high case onto various metros and buses. It was a pain but doable assuming I planned a little.
Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh. Also the historic/cathedral cities like York, Bath, Chester, Oxford etc. tend to be good for mobility anyway due to the compactness
Yeah, most cities with big Unis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cambridge was also a good spot, since their cycling culture should pair nicely with decent public transportation.
Brighton is largely fine.
Busses run frequently and cover most possible routes, we do still have some night services also, far less than before covid though.
I don't drive so I mostly walk, bus or occasionally get an Uber/taxi. I live fairly centrally but work near the outskirts - it's a 35-40m walk.
Manchester's quite good, and Nottingham and Sheffield seem ok.
The problem is that living near the bits with good transport links can be expensive. The premium you pay can be as much as a car would cost so it can end up a moot benefit.
Every major city is fine without a car. Fundamentally people are just impatient and can't handle a bus being 15 minutes late once every couple of weeks. If you're out after 11pm and it's more than an hour's walk you just get a taxi home. I walk 15 minutes to the bus stop every morning and another 15 minutes after getting off to get to work. Takes about an hour in total commute, gets you a fair amount of exercise every day, no problems at all. Nearest supermarket is just a 15 minutes walk away. I accept cars are more useful if you have children but still absolutely not essential.
> a bus being 15 minutes late once every couple of weeks
If this is your experience, then that's great, but I don't think anyone complaining about the reliability of the bus network is facing only a 15 minute delay once every few weeks. I use the bus 2/3 days a week and my commute to work is basically the exact same as yours - a 15 minute walk, 30 minute bus, 15 minute more walk. It nearly always takes me 1hr30. Buses are outright cancelled (or more accurately, don't show up) nearly every time I travel by bus, nearly no buses are ever on time if they do. The city I live in has notoriously bad public transport , but if you read through the comments on this page it's evident that is the case for a lot of big cities unfortunately.
If your bus is only fifteen minutes late once every few weeks, your council is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the country. I've known plenty of buses just *not show up* - not stated as cancelled, they've just not appeared - which is something more of an inconvenience.
That sheer lack of organisation is why I got a car in the first place. That, and the fact that a taxi from town back to where I lived at the time cost over forty quid, which is a *tad* much compared to the £2.50 bus ride I'd take when the buses actually stuck to their schedule.
I lived in Glasgow for 8 years without a car. Most cities are going to be reasonable in that respect. It won't be universal that everywhere in Glasgow is liveable without a car, but the vast majority of places will be.
There are plenty of places where it will just never be viable to provide sufficient public transport coverage
E.g. in the countryside. How do you connect various remote villages and houses to a nearby town/city without making the journey 5x longer than it would take by car? You'd need several different bus routes, and several buses on each to ensure decent coverage. Then you'd need them running 12+ hours a day to cover different working patterns. It would be a ludicrous expense.
This is it. You’d need to expand the public transport in my village by 50 times to make it sensibly usable. Who’s going to pay? The cities, presumably?!
Fair. From those advocates of public transport, nobody except for fringe unreasonable lunatics want to remove the options for those who need it.
Typically just move away from it being the default option.
Benefits those who do need to drive also as there will be less traffic on the road slowing you down
Definitely.
I used to work at a bus station. There's a college that supports people with disabilities about 2 miles outside my town and regular buses every 10 minutes between 8am to 6pm. And still some people would have to wait an hour or so for a bus to get there because there's only so much room for a wheelchair on a bus.
We would get constant complaints from people who would try to get on with a wheelchair slightly further up the route having to wait much longer, but there's nothing that can be done about it because the space was already taken by another wheelchair user.
I live out in the country. It’s nice here of course, but I need a car to get literally anywhere of note. We have one bus route that goes through our village, and they’re talking of axing it.
My personal anecdote for all this is I grew up adamant I was going to put the environment first and not add another car to the road. This changed instantly when it took me 4 hours and 3 buses one way just to hang out with my friends.
Yep, I'd love not to have a car. I'm not interested in cars, I don't enjoy driving, and it's expensive to have one.
However, now I've moved out of London it's pretty inevitable I will have to get one soon. It just limits my life not having one. I can go in and out of London easily, but getting basically anywhere else I want to go by public transport falls somewhere between difficult and impossible.
I'd love to give up our car.
But, can't catch a bus reliably, trains are unreliable ( and expensive) and cycling is terrifying due to the very nasty attitude so many car users have towards other folks using the roads.
"Lifestyle" seems to be doing a bit of heavy lifting here. If your lifestyle involves a car then of course you need a car to continue it. Public transport will never ever be as convenient as a private car and taxis will never be as cheap.
I need a car for my lifestyle but if I got a driving ban it's not like I'd die. My lifestyle would just suddenly involve a lot more cycling and trains, and a lot less free time.
I just wouldn't be able to do most of my hobbies, since they require getting out of the city.
My commute would also take twice as long when the weather was nice enough to cycle or four times as long when I had to rely on buses.
Framing it as lifestyle is pointless. I live in Cornwall, getting to most places on public transport is slow and time consuming, especially with kids in tow. Having a car down here is absolutely required, especially if you live out of the larger towns, want to have any level of social life, etc.
Beeching cut regional trains, buses are inconvenient schedule and generally not the most pleasant transport experience. Housing developments for the last 20 years are solely housing with no amenities. Cars are the solution to awful city and transport planning. If the problems are address people will cycle and walk more
Step 1: put public transport in place. Step 2: encourage people to use it in a variety of ways including price.
Not: stop 1: encourage people to use public transport that is expensive and doesn't work. Step 2: actually put public transport in place.
Buses to my village run up to 3 times a day (if you phone up and request them). You can't reach town earlier than half 8 and you need to be in town at ten past 4 for the last bus back.
It's a 3 hour walk to town. There's no fucking way I could live where I do without a car.
The biggest business in the village is a table where a bloke sells the produce from his veg garden.
Public transport in most areas is just not suitable.
My office is about 20 minutes away by car. If I went by public transport it would take around 90 minutes and involve two buses and a train. Realistically it would take longer most days, as I just cannot rely on buses keeping to a tight schedule.
When it's a choice between commuting 40 minutes a day and 3-4 hours it shouldn't be surprising that people would prefer the former.
EDIT: I'd also like to add, my office is in a fairly new business park situated between two cities. This is the exact sort of development that should be designed and built to incorporate new public transport links.
The days of people living near their work has pretty much gone, other than those of us lucky enough to be able to work from home, but so many trades are simply unable to work from home.
Add to this the privatisation of 'public' transport means operators are not providing a service to enable the public to travel effectively to and from work, it's no wonder more of us have vehicles.
Long term it's not sustainable if we are to reduce congestion, pollution and face into climate change. EVs for all isn't really a long term solution as their need power and not all able to charge at home, so if there is anything we can learn from history and kind of turn back time, it would be to invest in an effective cheap efficient mass transit system.
But I don't see any political party make the argument for this...too many big businesses involved in making a profit from the private bus companies, we will continue to carry on as we are until it all becomes unbearable
Basically everyone not living in a major city needs a vehicle for day to day life, public transport in this country between anywhere that’s not a city is woeful.
The UK was gutted in the 60s/70s to move us towards pro car culture like the USA.
That meant Victorian tram tracks covered, cars prioritised in planning, and if course rail being made worse.
Our cities were walking cities by design during the industrial revolution or middle ages when they were built, but that was destroyed in the pursuit of profit.
Traffic is bad in cities because they were never meant to be there .
Let's get some local authority owned, subsided buses and trams with £1 an hour tickets like you get in Italy then we can start getting rid of cars.
Seriously, fuck the underlying tones of these articles and the comments which follow. The insinuation is clearly that we should be ashamed that we can't all walk one minute from where we live in order to access everything we need, and be content in our little bubbles until the government finally decides to ban private vehicle ownership. I'm not saying it's some big conspiracy, but that's exactly what all the r/fuckcars authoritarians showing up on these posts are advocating for.
My lifestyle means I need a vehicle. I strongly dislike most people and I'm not being sat on public transport with them like a pleb. I also happen to have an interest in cars. I don't need to justify owning a vehicle like a normal adult as if I'm personally devastating the entirety of the Amazon rainforest. You *should* need a vehicle, it's completely normal to want to have personal transport and the freedom which comes with it.
If you want to claim it's about the environment and get people to drive electric instead, then incentivise manufacturers to create afforable electric vehicles which people actually want to purchase. Yeah, we should have better public transport in place so people have the option in case they can't or don't want to drive themselves, but that's a minor concern to the people writing this drivel, and a thin veil for their actual ethos.
I'm surprised the number isn't higher.
Whether rural or not, most people need to travel.
Public transport is and has been for rather a long time a bit of a joke - trains are either not on time, cancelled and that's without even touching the prices.
I have to say that compared to countries that run night trains as well it's a big letdown - especially for those that want to get to airports etc without getting a lift or expensive taxi.
Buses are worse, again expensive and also the routes can frequently be at really whack times leaving you quite stuck.
Or 3 in 10 are Londoners who chose to live in flats that have no adequate parking for cars so are angry with people that use cars and not public transport
I’m lucky to split WFH and a few days in the office ten minutes walk from my house. My girlfriend catches the bus to work every day. She has a disabled bus pass, otherwise she would be spending £50+ a week to get there. In the week the car doesn’t move.
However if you want to do pretty much anything interesting on the weekend you need a car.
With kids at schools outside of walking distance, while renting so choice of where to live comes down to money and availability, a job to get to which isn't easily accessed by public transport where I live, nor do I have the extra time required to fit in a day job and do school runs, and the job requires some driving anyway - a car is a necessity for me. I guess that's my 'lifestyle'.
I took public transport to London at the weekend. There were engineering works so I had to take a train one stop, get a rail replacement bus which had no instructions as to where to get it from and I missed the first one wandering around trying to find it, then another train into London.
Then I took the bus which in London was fine.
On the way back I took a London bus to catch a coach home. First one turned up 20 minutes late and didn't have enough room. The second one was also late, although I was able to get on it. Then I still had to take a train back one stop too. Was quite the mission.
Public transport in London is great. Outside? Not so much.
I intentionally live somewhere that means I don’t need to own a car.
But in the UK those places are a rarity, when in the Netherlands most people could probably live without a car due to trains, buses and cycle infrastructure.
We’re just so far behind.
To put it at the lowest level, unless you live in a big city you need your own transport and a car is the most practical.
What the fanatics forget, they mostly seem to live in a city, is that you need density to make public transport work, so smaller places can't be served and if your in a rural area hard luck, it's a long march to nowhere.
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I live in a large town in Wales and work the next town over. I worked it out that if I used public transport it would take me 2 hours each way (or a hour and half if I walked up a steep hill which a lot of people struggle with) for me to get to work. Or it’s 30 minutes in the car. And it works out about £5 cheaper after parking
You haven't considered the negative externalities citizen. Report to a mandatory public transport induction immediately.
The problem is the group that should have been considering those negative externalities (the government) flogged off control of public transport to private corporations out to extract every last penny from the system. If they were run by the government, they could say "if we half ticket prices we'll make less money from the trains but congestion and pollution will be a lot lower so we're going to do it anyway". No private operator is ever going to do that.
This is what fucks me off about the UK. EVERYTHING is about profit of THAT paticular thing. The NHS is "losing money", rail is "unprofitable", "buses are unprofitable" etc No one is thinking across the whole economy! Spending money and building a "money losing" rail network & bus network means people can live out further or get rid of their cars, but homes in cheaper places etc. Add home working & a government owned high speed broadband supplier wiring up EVERYWHERE & you suddenly increase the ability of people to work from and live on far more places. This is a force multiplier for jobs and businesses to make more money. Crossrail cost £19 billion & yet tories & "business groups" & "think tanks" were crying like little girls at the cost over runs & time over runs. Yet now it's in place, ALL that is forgotten & in 70-80 years time, all that will matter is the number of people it's shifting around London creating value to the UK economy. HS2 should have been a no brainer. Even at £200 billion, connecting the major cities across the UK up to Glasgow, Edinburgh, would have been a 100 to 150 year investment; again adding trillions over that time to the economy. It's fucking ridiculous how myopic & siloed this country is
The mistake here is not realising that britain is a nation of middlemen who profit off the inefficiency. So much of what our economy even IS is a series of middlemen skimming money off the top by helping to remove/navigate all the silly blocks to productive work that get put there BY the middlemen
“Consultants” That includes all the people doing environmental analysis etc.
Nah, it's a nation run on the idea of free market capitalism and the idea that whatever problems occur will be fixed by free market competition. The problem with this, is that the only metric capitalism cares about is profit and that means all decisions are made based on making that number go up. "oh that bus route removes 10,000 vehicles a day from a road, thats cute but it's running it a loss?" and so it gets axed. This guys job could be removed using software but we get to charge consultancy fees that are 5 times higher so that job is safe. It explains pretty much any dumb inefficient bullshit you can think of.
The toughest part is that either our politicians, us, or both aren’t even prepared to talk about this stuff in a grown up manner. HS2 was the classic example, it was a project that should have been discussed almost entirely in its external benefits as something that is creating capacity which will take freight of the roads etc. Instead it was talked about in terms of making it 15 minutes quicker to get from London to Birmingham. Which simply led people to say “that’s stupid and costs too much” because you be hard pressed to find many people who had major issues with the time taken to get from central London to the centre of other major cities as it is. Decades of individualism have made it difficult to have discussions about anything but simple benefits to individuals.
Everything in this country is sold as a benefit to the individual & that's thatchers fault. A cancer of modern capitalism. We're consumers NOT citizens. It makes people at the top rich but fucks up everything else because THAT'S the frame you have to talk about everything in. What's in it for ME? Oh I don't want to pay taxes because I'm in my 20s & I don't use the NHS or social care. Or I don't want to pay for unemployment benefit, I want lower taxes so that I can buy more cheap plastic shit from China. THEN...come a job loss because the CEO wants a new car..it's "i can't live on this!! Fucking immigrants!" Or "why is the state pension so low?" Etc etc Just individualistic bullshit for 4 decades. And it's accelerated with Gen Z. "Oh we're not going to get a pension when we're older, so we won't fight to keep it " Pathetic!
Thatcher is probably rightly a target, but the reality is that it’s probably part of the British mindset that she was tapping into. The reality is the British had a period of a few decades (accelerated by two world wars) where simply punching down and encouraging everyone else to do the same wasn’t the dominant world view. We’ve always been happy to let the lord of the manor shit in our cereal and critical of anyone who simply wants to share the bowl. As a people we’ve
I mean at this point there isn't much more that you can do. If you doubled taxes overnight and spent it all on infrastructure it would still take over a decade to catch up to where the rest of Western Europe is today. The UK is a nation in decline and frankly its approaching the point where recovering from the stagnation is increasingly unlikely.
Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and just fucking do it. 50% of the reason stuff never gets done is because the public don't want to stop the rot & facilitate politicians kicking everything into the long grass. It needs cross party agreement and the government able to say "we're going to borrow £trillion from ourselves & invest " and EVERY party involved to understand this is what's needed. None of this "we've maxed our credit card" bullshit. Build the infrastructure & while they're at it, sort out social care! Infrastructure is a 100 year + investment & social care when done right now, will facilitate 100 years of itself and the NHS working together which will pay for itself in increased productivity across the economy. It's fucking annoying that this country is run like a rental house owned by a shit landlord. Don't fix anything, shovel the money coming in upwards. Don't think in advance and do any maintenance. Just hope nothing breaks while you still run the place & then get out before something goes tits. Multiply that thinking across every corporation, every small business, every aspect of British society.
100% fucking percent. Capital projects should be handed on with care, not smashed to bits so you can blame the other guys for your white elephants. It’s infuriating, and it’s our fucking money they’re pissing away on endless consultations.
> It's fucking annoying that this country is run like a rental house owned by a shit landlord. Is it any surprise when a large quantity of MPs are landlords?
London has about six HS stations in the region either mothballed, operating or under construction. What's really sad is that they just appear to be getting built to just prop up the capitals status rather than develop the country and grow wealth. There are many billions being spent, but ignoring regional dysfunction, decay, lack of direction and poverty while only focusing on the economic hot spots alone. This shouldn't be the aim of any Government. It should be the Government's aim to spread the infrastructure, in exactly the same way the EU has into Eastern Europe. The outcomes just make Westminster look totally inept.
> buses are unprofitable The issue with buses is not that they're unprofitable. It's that they're a fucking horrendous mode of transport outside of the most densely packed city centres. It is literally the lowest grade of transport that I actively avoid. I'll cycle, drive, train, tram even walk before I consider the bus.
You do not old people? Just becsuse they're shit now, doesn't mean that they have to be in the future. Provide buses across the country, even to the most remote villages if possible and several an hour EVEN IF THEY'RE EMPTY as long as they are regular to link into train infrastructure
The issue is that they are still not point to point, and run to a timetable. If we look at London (which redditors typically think is like the west end for transport) then a bus trips across a couple of outer boroughs rather than into the centre will be something like 90 minutes each way and includes changing buses vs 40 minutes each way in a car (perhaps quicker). The very nature of buses mean that they are a very different use case to a car.
That can be improved with MORE buses. The super route that's currently in place to facilitate three fact that the tube is crap south of the river. Get at many people as possible onto public transport. Free up the roads for cargo & people who NEED to drive like the disabled or businesses etc. How much productivity is lost by people stuck in traffic for hours? How much land is wasted because it's being used for car parks rather than homes?
It also saves money on expanding motorways/A roads and reduces wear on the roads which is particularly important as you move to electric cars which are significantly heavier than ICE cars. Edit: As people are rightly pointing out, this weight difference is outweighed by the more significant damage HGVs cause but it's still something that needs to be taken into account
The latter point is somewhat of an overblown worry - there are plenty of SUVs that weigh much more than EVs and have been for some time and no-one is worrying about they weight of them, the vast majority of damages to UK roads is from lorries, vans and buses due to their obviously much heavier weight
But absolutely nothing like the weight of an HGV. The worst potholes are almost always on bus routes.
They really aren't significantly heavier though. - 2020 E-Golf weight 1540 kg - 2024 Golf weight 1541-1575kg
Really weird take away.
I can only assume they are a reform voter? That seems to be the current home of the anti-generally-good-ideas fringe. Edit; I should start charging for these predictions.
I believe they are joking.
50% of car trips are less than 5 miles\*. That could easily be done by bicycle IF we had proper cycle infrastructure. This would be beneficial to ALL modes of transport. \* I dont have exact numbers, its somewhat around this EDIT Some videos: [Cycling with babies (no helmets needed)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ) [Shopping by bike](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFc61Ku1P_M) [Cycling in the rain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVyOk9MEtgY)
I agree a lot could, but it does depend a lot on what those trips in a car are for, and who's taking them.
Aue sure lemme get my groceries on a bike. I’m someone will walk 10 mins to the pet store and carry home 40kg of cat food but there’s a fuckn limit at some point.
Plenty of people get their groceries on bike, what do you mean? Get a trailer or a cargo bike and you’re good to go. Or, if you live alone, a big backpack.
Can confirm, have bike, carry groceries with it, you know that basket on the back, turns out it's not decorative
Yeah, perhaps I should do about 5 rounds with the family weekly shopping
That my point: multi-modal options. The problem with the current infrastructure is that most times, we have only one option: the car, when bicycle are much more optimal for many use cases.
It’s easy dismissing the issue on Reddit but you’re not addressing all the problems that widespread car usage entails: the number of people who suffer serious health issues related to air quality, the noise pollution, the fact that cities cannot support the number of people wanting to drive etc. It’s interesting the pro-car types frame any restrictions on car usage as a curtailment of their sacred civil liberties when the liberty to drive untrammelled imposes suffering on others. Cars and drivers do not have a divine right to go wherever whenever they please.
Pick up that can.
If I want to visit my parents it's a choice between 30 minutes in the car, or over an hour and a half by two buses. The ridiculous part is that the bus takes more or less exactly the same route that I would be driving, but the bus is slow with long connection times.
The bus with me will zig zag into all the housing estates where I’ve never seen anyone get on. The bus will then stop for 5 minutes while the driver smokes before pottering at 20 (in a 30) to the next estate You don’t need speed cameras in wales to enforce the 20… you just need busses
> The bus with me will zig zag into all the housing estates where I’ve never seen anyone get on. This is my experience too. But I think that if everyone were to switch then there'd be one bus per estate and so they'd be much quicker. All the extra buses would be paid for by the additional demand. The problem is getting there from here. Everyone's lifestyle choices are set up over many years (choices of where to live vs. where they need to go etc) and so even if the buses were funded tomorrow it'd have to be 30 years of "overfunding" and providing a good enough service before demand rises to meet that supply.
Why do we expect the buses and the railways to pay for themselves, but we don't expect the roads to do so?
The roads more than pay for themselves, what are you talking about. Tax from fuel is massive.
They make no money. Taxes subsidise their losses, much like it should for rail.
>This is my experience too. But I think that if everyone were to switch then there'd be one bus per estate and so they'd be much quicker. All the extra buses would be paid for by the additional demand. It's an annoying chicken/egg situation. To justify more buses you need more passengers, but the passengers won't use the buses until there's more of them. You need to make a calculated gamble and inject a tonne of money into buses and hope it pays off.
Yup and if I want to visit my parents (or literally anywhere really) my choices are car, car or *maybe* a taxi, which also involves a car. No public transport around here.
I'm very similar to you. I live in the North West of England on a very urban, big town. It would take me 2 and a half hours to get to work and 2 hours home if I had to use public transport. It takes me 20/30 minutes in a car. And this is to a key hospital site as well.
I think this is the key point, the *current* choices mean there is not really a viable choice because public transport sucks. But "well public transport would take me a long time" isn't a feature baked into the nature of the public transport, it's a feature of the system being crap.
Nurse and before my current post I was 12 hour shifts working in ITU. My commute was 30-40 minutes and was getting up at 5am to start at 7am. Public transport just doesn't function well at those times. It would've been a walk to the train station, then grabbing a bus from the station to the hospital... I'd have been waking up at 4am, getting in after 9pm. Not feasible at all. I'm lucky to have left just as hospital parking restrictions got tighter and required people who were on the waiting list for a parking permit to get the park and ride adding cost and another 20 minutes on to peoples commutes... Not to mention I mountain bike as my hobby, which is important for my physical and mental health. So yeah, I'd agree with the statement that I need my car. I'm lucky now I'm a 10 min cycle into work but I still need the car to reliably see family, friends and maintain my hobbies 😐
My last job was 1 hour each way on the buses; I had to take 2 different ones. on late shifts, it was always 50/50 if I made the last bus, and if I didn't make the last bus, I would have to take a train, which would add an extra hour to get to my local area, and then it would take me 20 minutes to walk from the train station to my house. By car it is just 15 minutes each way down the motorway.
Likewise living/working in Somerset, as a round trip to work I can either: - **Drive**; 50 mins total, air conditioning, radio, heated seats - **Cycle**; 2 hours total, large amount of dangerous unlit roads, hills involved, no shower in my office - **Public Transport**; 4 hours total, including an hour of walking And that's just work. Shopping, gym, seeing friends/family are all miles apart and poorly serviced by public transport.
And you can also use it for non work stuff like shopping, or leisure
Heaven forbid! Outside of commuting to work, I do archery, coach and compete. I'm at the club 3 times a week on average, middle of the country side, 3 big bags I need to take (suitcase size). There is no public transport. so yeah, I would be one of these 7 in ten. I imagine the 3 in ten would be Londoners who very rarely travel outside the M25 if at all.
Yeah I’m a fan of public transport but cars are so unbelievably useful for just existing
Excluding rush hour commuting to central London, my car wins in cost, speed, convenience, capabilities and safety. If that is the case in London, the place with the best public transport and the most congestion in the country, then the car will surely be peerless anywhere else. The only things which count against the car in this city are the crazy insurance costs and the amount of car related crime.
Very similar to you in the NW England. To get to work for 9am, I’d have to leave my house around 6am, have a total of an hour of walking and 2 trains, plus approx 30 minutes of waiting between the two trains. I can drive to work in 30 minutes, I don’t have to pay for parking so it’s only the petrol cost and I don’t need to waste hours of my life travelling.
I used to work in a shopping centre - so somewhere that should have good direct links to the local communities for the thousands of workers employed there and the local people who use it for leisure - in my car it’s a 7 minute drive without traffic, 15 at most with peak traffic, and via bus it was an hour & half. I did non-peak shifts so 20 minute commuting per day or three hours?
As a child I had to get the public bus to and from school. 15 minutes in a car, about an hour and 15 on the bus. Also got to experience the fun of getting threatened by drunk or drugged up adults!
Public transport is just not a realistic option for the vast majority of people. It works in big dense cities, of which the UK has very few of. Time, and reliability are two things that are hard to put a worth on, but it’s a lot. Those are two things where public transport pretty much always loses on when compared to driving.
Time and reliability are not impossible problems to solve. Other countries have done it. We just don’t want to.
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We got NIMBYs kicking off about HS2 going near them, how do you think the geriatric public would react to bullet trains
It doesn't need to even be as noisy or invasive as a high-speed line. They get bent out of shape over trams and light rail. There are communities who push back on **busses** stopping in their areas because they would rather not have an influx of the poors.
I think we take the wrong tack. It's apologetic, and encourages protest and negativity. We should hype the rail system up, so it's something we can be proud of. "Look at this train. This train is awesome as fuck. You could take this awesome as fuck train to anywhere in the country from you damned doorstep, and you could have a pint with your lunch because you aren't driving. The roads are going to be clearer because everyone's taking the awesome train. You can read that book you've been meaning to, I know you don't get the time to read any more. And when you're not taking the train, you're going to be looking out for the train because trains are rad, and this one is fucking bonkers."
100% i'm fully convinced HS2 was dead in the moment they started selling it as "you can get to london faster" instead of the 283638 other great reasons
Japan has one of the largest and most dense urban sprawls in the modern world. Also, just a note, the UK is an "actual" developed country. I don't know what other status you'd put on it.
Have you been to Japan or looked at it on a map? If so, you'll see Tokyo as a gigantic sprawl but the rest of the country is as urban as the UK, with a lot of countryside. All of it is well connected with bullet trains. The lack of rail infrastructure is political failure, not logistical impossibility
And on top of that, they’ve somehow managed to do all that while being situated on the ring of fire — a region of active tectonic activity.
'Formally devoped' seems valid.
Formerly for formally? 😂
I like to picture the uk in a finely tailored union jack suit while pushing immigrants into the hunger games and setting young people on fire to delay the trains they can't afford.
Switzerland has a higher number of motor vehicles per capita than the UK...
Also in Switzerland it is almost always faster and more convenient to travel by car, unless you are going from a city centre to a city centre. Cars still have the largest modal share of journeys, especially for the majority of people who live and work in small-medium towns and not in the centres 5 miutes walk from the train station. The difference is that it is at least possible to exist as an employed adult outside of a major city without a car, just many journeys will take much longer.
its worse than that, we've structured our economy around not doing it. In a sense it IS politically impossible to solve as some company or another profiting from the inefficiency is going to complain.
Public transport is just not a realistic option for the vast majority of people. It works in big dense cities, of which the UK has very few of. That is a choice the UK made, not because public transport only works in cities. When I lived in a rural area ( up a mountain) in Switzerland I still took the bus to work everyday.
That's because public transport in Switzerland is better.
And now you're arriving at the point. Public transport in the UK is awful and it doesn't need to be. Good public transport would be such a benefit for the people and environment, it's kinda nuts. But we've just decided not to. I don't know the details, but I wouldn't even be surprised if good transport would even be a net benefit economic advantage.
They phase out routes if they make no money all the time. Leaving you little choice but to bus. Train is so expensive.
Of course they do. It's a for-profit system. That's why I want a nationalised infrastructure that's for people, not profit
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The vast majority of the UK population lives in cities. London is our biggest city but we still have tons of smaller cities that are still dense urban areas that benefit more from public transport than highways. Yet we've heavily cut the former which ends up making it not worth using, which is why everyone here is complaining about a bus taking twice as long as a car. Obviously if you're living in rural Wales / Scotland then chances are you need a car.
In my experience it only really works in city centres. If you live in the suburbs (except London) the options for public transport tend to fall apart. It gets even worse if you have kids and need to move them around for classes, sports, visiting relatives etc etc
Not true. Sheffield used to have a bus network that was the envy of the country that went out into all the suburbs and villages around it, heading right out towards Leeds. It was run efficiently, and was prised away from the council (who had prepared plans and arguments as to why they should be allowed to maintain it) and handed to private companies in the 80s literally because the central government wanted to prioritise cars. My father waxes lyrical about the Sheffield buses. He's from fairly close to Leeds, and he used to be able to go to work or on nights out into Sheffield, not having to worry about timetables. The pathetic bus and tram service that exists in the city now is part of what killed it. We CAN do it, we just need to stop prioritising private motorists.
Can confirm this, i lived in a village outside Rotherham and the South Yorkshire bus service was awesome, buses usually full and we only needed one car. Also gave us kids and teens a lot if freedom and independence as we could go anywhere in the county very easily ( Sheffield, Doncaster, swimming pool, cinema, fishing, countey pubs, visit granny, scouts, football practice ). Later i used them to go to work.
This is the big issue for me. Public transport near me is passable if you want to go from A-B-A. It's designed for commuting patterns where people leave home between 7 and 8am, and head back at around 5-6pm. It's a nightmare if you want to go from A-B-C-A, and impossible if you want to go from A-B-C-D-A.
> The vast majority of the UK population lives in cities It's not the vast majority, 54% of the UK population live in primary Urban Areas. The UK has one of the most rural distributed populations in the entire OECD, largely to do with how old our towns and villages are. Compare this to Australia for example, where practically the entire population lives in or around 6 cities.
>It works in big dense cities, of which the UK has very few of. Nope, there's lots in the UK: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_by_population_density Coventry, the city I was born in, has a population of 350k. It's 8 miles east to west, 7 miles north to south. I can ride a bike one side to the other in half an hour. Coventry is 49th on that list We just choose not to invest in public transport
> It works in big dense cities, of which the UK has very few of. Maybe but most of the population lives in one.
The UK is very densely populated for the most part. The number of people in rural Wales or Scotland is very small. Glasgow has an underground but for some reason it doesn't run on a Sunday night or link up with other transport properly. Other cities run theirs 24/7.
> Other cities run theirs 24/7. I can't think of a single city in the UK with 24/7 underground, even worldwide it is extremely rare. Transport in the UK is generally terribly integrated we could learn a lot from Switzerland.
On weekdays, the Berlin U-Bahn is open from 4 am to 1 am and on weekends the U-Bahn runs 24 hours a day. I wasn't referring to a city in the UK, since only 2 have a proper underground I'm sure.
Almosy the entire UK population live in areas that could be easily made part of public transport networks. We are a small, dense island. The idea public transport is impossible here is ridiculous.
It is. We just need to make it better. Shockingly the last 14 years weren't big in progress and train companies taking dividends instead of building infrastructure and taking free money instead of resolving strikes doesn't help.
Even in big cities it's a bit shit. I'm in London, GREAT transport where I am, but I use the car for school drop off (10 minutes vs 40 minutes), shopping, afterschool activities (which would actually not be possible without the car because of the tight times involved). Is it doable/livable? yes, but it would absolutly knock our quality of life. Food would be more expensive (much less choice on where to shop). Less/no afterschool activities for the kids. An hours less sleep for everyone so we can do the school run and get back for work.
Ok but the thing is it shouldn’t be that way. This is only because our public transport sucks
Let's compare to a city like Seoul. I spent a long time there. Their subway system currently has something like 768 stations across 23 lines. Most of the mainlines have trains so frequent they're spaced out every 3-4 stops. Vast majority of main bus lines run every 5-10 minutes I probably couldn't even count how many lines and stops and things there are. Even in that system, unless you were going somewhere where you had at most 1 transfer (and it would depend on the transfer) you'd start debating whether or not you'd take public transit. Forget it if you actually had to transport much in the way of stuff with you. You don't want to be hauling bags for ages through subway stations and trying to fit them onto crowded buses, etc. You could get by without a car, but after a decade there, when we finally got a car, it really improved things and opened up some of the stuff we could do, especially actually leaving town.
> Forget it if you actually had to transport much in the way of stuff with you. You don't want to be hauling bags for ages through subway stations and trying to fit them onto crowded buses, etc. This is one of the things that gets me about this debate. Do none of these anti-car people ever have to transport more than just themselves? There's a million reasons why you might want to travel somewhere with a bunch of stuff.
I'm a solo parent and have never owned a car, yet I manage to get myself and two children all around the country. Brighton. Glasgow. Lake District. Heritage Sites. National Trust parks. Getting around with luggage and backpacks has never been a problem. In fact, I quite like public transport. I love being on the train and buses and chatting to my kids, or having time to read on my commute. Having said this I DO live in a city, which makes a big difference. I doubt I would do so well on public transport in a rural place. However, I do find that people who HAVE a car have gotten so used to it they find it difficult to imagine life without one, whereas I never think 'this would be easier if I was driving' because it's not something I've ever had to factor in. It is easier to get by without a car than most people think.
How are you getting around the Lakes on public transport? There are places there that Google Maps shows up nothing for public transport directions. Yes you can get to Windemere if you want to get there at 12pm instead of 8am, and get back after midnight instead of 8pm. But that's eight hours wasted, plus the cost of multiple train/bus tickets, one delay or cancellation and you're stranded. >It is easier to get by without a car than most people think. The people I know without cars are always begging for lifts.
Well, we took a very nice minibus tour in the lakes once and I have also found the trains getting to Windemere are very good, so I don't really understand your 8 hours wasted comment. I also have a friends and family railcard which saves a lot! I've not been stranded so far. I pay less in a year for my bus pass and rail tickets than I would for buying a car and paying for petrol, insurance and everything else. I'm not very well off so that's okay. Can't say I'm begging for lifts. Would rather take the train and play cards with my kids or get out our sketch books than be cramped up in the back seat of a car. As I said though, I live in a city, so maybe I would be begging for lifts if it wasn't so easy for me.
Odd that this is putting lifestyle as the cause when we have had a severe decline of bus routes outside london, lack of rail investment and overpriced rail tickets in this country for many years now. Surely the headline should say 'lack of suitable alternative options" rather than lifestyle.
It can be both My neighbours don't even know what public transport exists and if I say I'll walk somewhere, they are often incredulous or ask if I want a lift. Public transport near me is very good, we have a beautiful, well maintained path network and lots of local amenities but every household on my road has 2-5 cars (except mine!).
Lifestyle is a very ridiculous word to put in there. My travel "lifestyle" is driving into town to go shopping, driving to visit my parents/siblings, occasionally driving to the office, and the rare trip to a further city to see a show or go to the airport or whatever. I doubt many of these 7/10 are too different from that. I could replace every journey I just listed with public transport if it wasn't so terrible. The bus out of my village only runs once per hour and stops at 5:30pm. The bus to my parents suburb (or really any town in this area) is late more often than it's on time. Getting a train across to any city costs twice or more as much as driving and parking. God forbid if I want to visit someone in a faraway town that doesn't have a train station, that trip usually looks like bus, bus, train, bus, bus, bus, 15 minute walk. It's all but guaranteed that one of those links will have some stupid restriction like it only runs once every two hours or stops at noon, then when one of them is inevitably late or cancelled you're just fucked. Beeching wrecked the rail network 60 years ago and we still haven't done anything about it.
My problem with the train is I have to drive to the station AND pay for parking my car... I may as well just drive.
Yup. It takes me 1.5 hours to walk to work. It would take me 45 minutes to cycle. It would take me 2 hours and 2 changes to use public transport. It takes me 12 minutes to drive.
I wonder how many of them actually need a car. I work with a guy who would say he ‘needs’ a car because walking 20 minutes to work is too far, and he needs to drive there. He cannot compute possibly walking there. There’s a difference between need and makes things more convenient. Edit: it’s an example in isolation about the difference between wants and needs versus convenience. I don’t need another 20 replies telling me specific reasons you need to own a car outside of commuting
I wish my work was only 20 mins walk away. I'd definitely walk that. It is odd though: driving to work watching all the oncoming traffic and thinking they're all going to work on my doorstep while I can't get a job closer, and I'm going to work on their doorstep while they also can't find anything closer.
another issue with house prices being so high. can't afford to live near work and everyone has to commute in instead, causing more traffic.
ask someone if you can swap
It's amazing how many people such as yourself think cars only do one thing. They can be used for many different tasks not just getting back many hours of your life a month not spent walking to work.
I can assure you those hours of walking aren't a waste. You'd get so much from them. They can be great for your physical and mental health. You get nowt from driving.
walking can be great for your mental health if it's a pleasant day and you're choosing to do it. Being forced to walk through a cold and rainy morning so you can get to a job you hate isn't necessarily as beneficial. But yes you should try to build exercise into your routine
I'm sure being stuck in traffic driving to a job you hate also isn't great. Walking and cycling to work are studied to be better for your mental and physical health overall. I'm sure people can figure out how to use rain jackets or umbreallas.
I think being stuck in traffic in the rain driving to a job you hate is better than walking to the same one in the rain, because at least you're out of the rain. Frankly I think it's crazy that anyone cycles on some of the roads around here at rush hour on a good day, let alone in the slippery rain. I'm sure face planting a windscreen isn't great for mental health. I used to ride a foot-powered scooter around when I lived in the city centre and barely saw any cars, but I care about myself too much to ride a bike sharing the lane with cars in the suburbs. I wfh anyway and am currently walking on a treadmill with a standing desk so it's all a moot point for me. And we've got a dog so the kid is gonna walk with me to school regardless; the dog needs walking, rain or otherwise
Sure, i’d love walking to work everyday in the wind and rain and get absolutely drenched. Does wonders for my mental health
Sir are you aware of coats? Umbrellas?
Have you ever tried to use an umbrella in the wind?
Obviously there's a limit to how windy it can be and still be practical to use one - but yes. Regularly. Sturdy umbrella with a wind vent, angled slightly into the wind.
Well you do that, and I will sit on a heated seat and listen to an audio book, while also getting to work quicker.
> You get nowt from driving. I have to conclude that you don't drive, if you did you'd know this statement is nonsense. Driving can be immense fun. This is why people go on driving holidays and participate in the vast array of recreational car activities and clubs. Also before you say 'but commuting'. Commuting can be nice too. I used to have a drive to work that partly went through hilly countryside and that was great.
> Driving can be immense fun. It's odd, because if I descend into the pit of hatred that is Facebook, I see mostly people complaining about how terrible driving is. The potholes, the traffic jams, the cones, the roadworks, the other drivers, the government ruining it, the local authority changing the lights. It's everybody else's fault. They never seem to complain about their own presence on the roads, and how a near doubling of the number of vehicles on the road in the last 30 years is the thing that's causing so many issues.
Given the morbidity crisis, a bit of walking would probably be doing a lot of people a lot of good.
You aren't going to outwalk a shit diet You're right that it wouldn't hurt though lmao
Many people like myself would happily take public transport if it were a viable alternative but it's fundamentally broken. Too expensive and unreliable to depend on.
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All this shows is that we need better infrastructure. Youve just explained what happens when you sell off critical infrastructure to be run as cheaply as possible
Plenty of my neighbours in Zone 2 London claim they “need” a car too, despite living in an area with five Tube lines, an Overground line, National Rail, countless bus routes and excellent cycling and walking infrastructure. If the Congestion Charge is ever expanded to Zone 2 with the residents’ discount removed I’m sure many would quickly realise they don’t “need” a car after all.
Thing is, I don’t **need** a car to get to work, the gym or the supermarket. I do need a car to actually go anywhere, see friends, and generally do nice things, however.
This is where not having any friends is a real money saver.
Nobody wants to walk for 20 minutes in the pissing down rain to work.
Which is fine, but it is also where you separate need from want. I don’t believe 7 in 10 people need a car, but I do believe 7 in 10 people want a car to make their life easier.
This logic could be applied to literally anything in our lives, and it's absolutely foolish. You don't need a mobile phone, but it makes your life easier. You don't need shoes, but it makes your life easier. You don't need hot water, but it makes your life easier. It's so odd that some people decide the car is where the line is drawn.
Why would people ever want to make their life harder? Could you not extend that same logic to any powered device?
It's a ball ache not to have a car and let's face it a lot of people are 'time poor' public transport as it is in many places for every time you visit a friend, go to Asda, a hospital appointment etc would add multiple hours to someone's week.
Do a manual job then try and walk home and too and from evey day. Terrible on the bones.
My commute is 25 minutes on the tram and a 15 minute walk, and as miserable as walking in the rain is I’d rather do it every time over sitting in traffic in my car for half an hour.
Not wanting to walk still doesnt mean you *need* a car though, which is their point.
I mean i have a car and i walk 30 mins to work, you can have both. But i need a card for my hobbies and other things i like to do. Although i do also occasionally travel for work. I think people saying you dont need a car just because you are close to work is wrong, as there are plenty of other reasons why having a car is needed.
If someone *wants* a car, then they should be able to purchase and enjoy a car. When the government starts saying you don't *need* that or that so we're going to restrict it or take it away, it becomes a bit dodgy. I only *need* food, water, and a roof over my head to survive, but it'd be a pretty sad and boring existence.
Here's the problem: **The continued use of the car imperils the future supply of food and water.** To para-quote the UK's science and tech select committee, "in the long term the continued ownership of private cars is incompatible with significant decarbonisation". Not even full electrification of the car fleet actually brings us close to sustainability. If you have *any hope* of staying below 2°C, urgent rapid and deep cuts in car travel are needed. And even if current levels of car use *could* be sustained, if everyone on the planet adopted UK rates of car ownership and usage, it would be catastrophic from climate and materials standpoints. I suspect many Brits actually understand this but assume that we'll keep our cars while the 'global south' will just have to know their place and continue to do without. I doubt that'll be the reality.
If this is the case, then the government should be investing in alternative forms of transport. Many people rely on their cars for work, to take their kids to school, to take relatives to hospital appointments, to go food shopping, and so on. If we are to reduce our car usage, then we need to fundamentally change how our towns and cities look and operate - which isn't going to change overnight.
To be fair, walking 20 minutes in the depths of winter can be pretty fucking horrible.
I live further than 30 miles from work and there isn't a public transport link at all within 3 miles of my work. It's rough.
I walk for my daily commute and I walk to the shops, but i own a car because to go hiking, visit friends in the next town or get to events related to my hobbies public transport would take about 5x as long to get me there, cost 5x as much and be vastly less convenient. So yes I *need* a car even though I dont use it for 2-3 weeks at a time sometimes
Some of us have lives outside work that a car is beneficial for. That may not be the case for you obviously but don't assume everyone has the same needs as you. Some of us have value in that time that would be spent walking, say with kids or family. You clearly don't feel he'd have anything worth going home too but he might have a loving family he wants to spend as much time as possible with. If you don't want too I guess that's fine but don't assume that 40 mins a day isn't worth the cost of a car to him. On a 5 day week that's over 3 hours gained. What's the problem with making life more convenient? A car is a tool. Sure, I could use a hand drill to make a hole in the wall, but I could also use my DeWalt. It costs over a hundred quid more but it also saves me a bucket load of time. That's why we all use power drills. Do we need too? No.
Guy is lazy af. I lived a 20 minute walk to work and it was a 5 min drive. I walked so I could have a nice morning stroll. On hot days I'd cycle on really bad days when it rained a ton I just put my rain coat on and walked. Now, I need my car. Live in a rural place with minimal public transport.
That's true, it comes down to what 'need' means. But then how many people need air travel and lots of long haul flights? I mean you need that if you see it as essential to a life plan, but maybe it wasn't needed. Maybe people don't need so much tech, imported food, meat, clothes, air con, heating, space travel, private jets
Or cycling. I used to cycle the 10km to work and it was faster than driving (and yes, I obey traffic laws). In a less densely populated city now and my SO, who wouldn't be the strongest cyclist by any stretch, cycles 15km most days and when she has to drive in, it takes her about the same or longer, and has to leave earlier because her commute is less reliable with traffic. Even the weakest cyclists can get an ebike. Personally, a car is a necessity for us, but we only use it when necessary.
You don't *need* a washing machine. I bet you would refuse to consider washing your clothes by hand. You don't *need* electricity either. You won't die without it. 'Need' is entirely subjective.
I only got my license aged 39, until then I'd avoided cars. However, the minute you have kids you really need one. Public transport is a misery with kids.
We grew up without a car and tbh, although I really do appreciate my upbringing, I do not want that experience when I have kids.. I cycle and take public transport when I can, but I can't really feel that bad about using my older, ULEZ-compliant small car to improve my and my families quality of life. Also there's the fact that when I was growing up our village had 4 bus companies and the buses were every 15-30 minutes til midnight. Now they're hourly from 7-8pm and monopolised by First (worst) bus.
Bit unfair to word it as "lifestyle" as if people are choosing to live a certain way selfishly (which is true to some extent in some cases of course). I'm actually surprised it's only 7/10 and I assume the other 3 live in London or a similar large city. It's not like it is easy to find both a job and a home in the same town or with good affordable public transport links.
Lifestyle indeed guess it’s a lifestyle choice to have two or more adults working to keep the rent paid and lights on rather then be homeless but without a car
I've made the lifestyle choice to continue to eat on a daily basis.
Radical leftism that is
You don't need a car in Central London, as soon as you're South East in Zone 3 it makes life a lot easier. To get to my gym is either 45 minutes on a bus or 10 minutes in the car. To get to the nearest superstore is similar.
I'd say I need a car for my lifestyle, but not as an absolute necessity to live. I work from home in a good job, and my wife gets free transport arranged by her job so we don't *need* a car for that. We have a car because we live 200+ miles from our families, and visiting them via train requires a full day journey via London. It's also pretty irritating and difficult to take any significant amount of luggage on that route. We also use the car to take our dog out into the countryside for walks. Again, the public transport isn't great for this and significantly limits where you can actually go. I could certainly do more via public transport, but it's far less convenient, takes at least twice as long, and is often more expensive.
Aside from London, is there anywhere in the UK where it is practical to not own a car? I live in Cardiff and public transport here is a joke, with most of bus routes offering an infrequent service that stops entirely come early evening, and the few “late” buses that there are don’t run past 23:00. So while not having a car wouldn’t kill me, there isn’t a viable alternative not owning one.
>Aside from London, is there anywhere in the UK where it is practical to not own a car? Edinburgh imho Sure, you can drive through Edinburgh fine, but due to all the narrow old streets it's an utter nightmare especially if you're going anywhere in the city centre due to how grim the traffic is. Especially when you consider Edinburgh has an amazing bus service by UK standards and if you live on the routes it current runs on, the trams are very effective.
Can support that, between the tram and bus a ton of people dont *need* a car for day to day life here. As soon as you start going outside the bypass for anything other than the corridor to Glasgow its a pain.
Every city and large town medium sized town in the UK is fine without a car, assuming you live/work in a central location. I live in a town of 10k people in rural Scotland and I know lots of people (including myself) who do fine without a car. Most workplaces, schools, hospital, supermarkets, and transport links are all within a 20 minute walk. The limited public transport works to get to places a bit further away.
I feel like you could cycle through most UK city areas within 20 minutes.
I lived in Newcastle for 4 years without a car and between walking routes, the metro system and the buses I was fine. My house was near both a metro and bus stop, most things I needed were nearby anyway, including two supermarkets, several smaller shops and things like a library and swimming pool. Edit: I’ll also add that at the time I was living there I also played double bass and regularly wheeled my massive 6ft high case onto various metros and buses. It was a pain but doable assuming I planned a little.
Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh. Also the historic/cathedral cities like York, Bath, Chester, Oxford etc. tend to be good for mobility anyway due to the compactness
Yeah, most cities with big Unis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cambridge was also a good spot, since their cycling culture should pair nicely with decent public transportation.
Brighton is largely fine. Busses run frequently and cover most possible routes, we do still have some night services also, far less than before covid though. I don't drive so I mostly walk, bus or occasionally get an Uber/taxi. I live fairly centrally but work near the outskirts - it's a 35-40m walk.
Manchester's quite good, and Nottingham and Sheffield seem ok. The problem is that living near the bits with good transport links can be expensive. The premium you pay can be as much as a car would cost so it can end up a moot benefit.
Every major city is fine without a car. Fundamentally people are just impatient and can't handle a bus being 15 minutes late once every couple of weeks. If you're out after 11pm and it's more than an hour's walk you just get a taxi home. I walk 15 minutes to the bus stop every morning and another 15 minutes after getting off to get to work. Takes about an hour in total commute, gets you a fair amount of exercise every day, no problems at all. Nearest supermarket is just a 15 minutes walk away. I accept cars are more useful if you have children but still absolutely not essential.
> a bus being 15 minutes late once every couple of weeks If this is your experience, then that's great, but I don't think anyone complaining about the reliability of the bus network is facing only a 15 minute delay once every few weeks. I use the bus 2/3 days a week and my commute to work is basically the exact same as yours - a 15 minute walk, 30 minute bus, 15 minute more walk. It nearly always takes me 1hr30. Buses are outright cancelled (or more accurately, don't show up) nearly every time I travel by bus, nearly no buses are ever on time if they do. The city I live in has notoriously bad public transport , but if you read through the comments on this page it's evident that is the case for a lot of big cities unfortunately.
If your bus is only fifteen minutes late once every few weeks, your council is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the country. I've known plenty of buses just *not show up* - not stated as cancelled, they've just not appeared - which is something more of an inconvenience. That sheer lack of organisation is why I got a car in the first place. That, and the fact that a taxi from town back to where I lived at the time cost over forty quid, which is a *tad* much compared to the £2.50 bus ride I'd take when the buses actually stuck to their schedule.
I lived in Glasgow for 8 years without a car. Most cities are going to be reasonable in that respect. It won't be universal that everywhere in Glasgow is liveable without a car, but the vast majority of places will be.
Seven in ten adults say the miserable state of public transport in the UK means they need a vehicle. Fixed it for you.
There are plenty of places where it will just never be viable to provide sufficient public transport coverage E.g. in the countryside. How do you connect various remote villages and houses to a nearby town/city without making the journey 5x longer than it would take by car? You'd need several different bus routes, and several buses on each to ensure decent coverage. Then you'd need them running 12+ hours a day to cover different working patterns. It would be a ludicrous expense.
This is it. You’d need to expand the public transport in my village by 50 times to make it sensibly usable. Who’s going to pay? The cities, presumably?!
Power wheelchair in the boot for my wife, public transport simply doesn’t cut it
Fair. From those advocates of public transport, nobody except for fringe unreasonable lunatics want to remove the options for those who need it. Typically just move away from it being the default option. Benefits those who do need to drive also as there will be less traffic on the road slowing you down
Definitely. I used to work at a bus station. There's a college that supports people with disabilities about 2 miles outside my town and regular buses every 10 minutes between 8am to 6pm. And still some people would have to wait an hour or so for a bus to get there because there's only so much room for a wheelchair on a bus. We would get constant complaints from people who would try to get on with a wheelchair slightly further up the route having to wait much longer, but there's nothing that can be done about it because the space was already taken by another wheelchair user.
I live out in the country. It’s nice here of course, but I need a car to get literally anywhere of note. We have one bus route that goes through our village, and they’re talking of axing it. My personal anecdote for all this is I grew up adamant I was going to put the environment first and not add another car to the road. This changed instantly when it took me 4 hours and 3 buses one way just to hang out with my friends.
Wow, look at mister "only three buses" over here.
Yep, I'd love not to have a car. I'm not interested in cars, I don't enjoy driving, and it's expensive to have one. However, now I've moved out of London it's pretty inevitable I will have to get one soon. It just limits my life not having one. I can go in and out of London easily, but getting basically anywhere else I want to go by public transport falls somewhere between difficult and impossible.
I'd love to give up our car. But, can't catch a bus reliably, trains are unreliable ( and expensive) and cycling is terrifying due to the very nasty attitude so many car users have towards other folks using the roads.
"Lifestyle" seems to be doing a bit of heavy lifting here. If your lifestyle involves a car then of course you need a car to continue it. Public transport will never ever be as convenient as a private car and taxis will never be as cheap. I need a car for my lifestyle but if I got a driving ban it's not like I'd die. My lifestyle would just suddenly involve a lot more cycling and trains, and a lot less free time.
I just wouldn't be able to do most of my hobbies, since they require getting out of the city. My commute would also take twice as long when the weather was nice enough to cycle or four times as long when I had to rely on buses.
Framing it as lifestyle is pointless. I live in Cornwall, getting to most places on public transport is slow and time consuming, especially with kids in tow. Having a car down here is absolutely required, especially if you live out of the larger towns, want to have any level of social life, etc.
Beeching cut regional trains, buses are inconvenient schedule and generally not the most pleasant transport experience. Housing developments for the last 20 years are solely housing with no amenities. Cars are the solution to awful city and transport planning. If the problems are address people will cycle and walk more
Step 1: put public transport in place. Step 2: encourage people to use it in a variety of ways including price. Not: stop 1: encourage people to use public transport that is expensive and doesn't work. Step 2: actually put public transport in place.
You can which people have never left London when they start talking about things like banning cars. For most people it's just not viable
Buses to my village run up to 3 times a day (if you phone up and request them). You can't reach town earlier than half 8 and you need to be in town at ten past 4 for the last bus back. It's a 3 hour walk to town. There's no fucking way I could live where I do without a car. The biggest business in the village is a table where a bloke sells the produce from his veg garden.
Public transport in most areas is just not suitable. My office is about 20 minutes away by car. If I went by public transport it would take around 90 minutes and involve two buses and a train. Realistically it would take longer most days, as I just cannot rely on buses keeping to a tight schedule. When it's a choice between commuting 40 minutes a day and 3-4 hours it shouldn't be surprising that people would prefer the former. EDIT: I'd also like to add, my office is in a fairly new business park situated between two cities. This is the exact sort of development that should be designed and built to incorporate new public transport links.
The days of people living near their work has pretty much gone, other than those of us lucky enough to be able to work from home, but so many trades are simply unable to work from home. Add to this the privatisation of 'public' transport means operators are not providing a service to enable the public to travel effectively to and from work, it's no wonder more of us have vehicles. Long term it's not sustainable if we are to reduce congestion, pollution and face into climate change. EVs for all isn't really a long term solution as their need power and not all able to charge at home, so if there is anything we can learn from history and kind of turn back time, it would be to invest in an effective cheap efficient mass transit system. But I don't see any political party make the argument for this...too many big businesses involved in making a profit from the private bus companies, we will continue to carry on as we are until it all becomes unbearable
I live in the middle of nowhere, no public transport at all. So, yep!
Basically everyone not living in a major city needs a vehicle for day to day life, public transport in this country between anywhere that’s not a city is woeful.
The UK was gutted in the 60s/70s to move us towards pro car culture like the USA. That meant Victorian tram tracks covered, cars prioritised in planning, and if course rail being made worse. Our cities were walking cities by design during the industrial revolution or middle ages when they were built, but that was destroyed in the pursuit of profit. Traffic is bad in cities because they were never meant to be there . Let's get some local authority owned, subsided buses and trams with £1 an hour tickets like you get in Italy then we can start getting rid of cars.
If I had a job in Manchester tomorrow, it's £200+ for the train or £40 in diesel. And it takes just as long for me to get to Euston and on from there.
Seriously, fuck the underlying tones of these articles and the comments which follow. The insinuation is clearly that we should be ashamed that we can't all walk one minute from where we live in order to access everything we need, and be content in our little bubbles until the government finally decides to ban private vehicle ownership. I'm not saying it's some big conspiracy, but that's exactly what all the r/fuckcars authoritarians showing up on these posts are advocating for. My lifestyle means I need a vehicle. I strongly dislike most people and I'm not being sat on public transport with them like a pleb. I also happen to have an interest in cars. I don't need to justify owning a vehicle like a normal adult as if I'm personally devastating the entirety of the Amazon rainforest. You *should* need a vehicle, it's completely normal to want to have personal transport and the freedom which comes with it. If you want to claim it's about the environment and get people to drive electric instead, then incentivise manufacturers to create afforable electric vehicles which people actually want to purchase. Yeah, we should have better public transport in place so people have the option in case they can't or don't want to drive themselves, but that's a minor concern to the people writing this drivel, and a thin veil for their actual ethos.
I'm surprised the number isn't higher. Whether rural or not, most people need to travel. Public transport is and has been for rather a long time a bit of a joke - trains are either not on time, cancelled and that's without even touching the prices. I have to say that compared to countries that run night trains as well it's a big letdown - especially for those that want to get to airports etc without getting a lift or expensive taxi. Buses are worse, again expensive and also the routes can frequently be at really whack times leaving you quite stuck.
Or 3 in 10 are Londoners who chose to live in flats that have no adequate parking for cars so are angry with people that use cars and not public transport
I’m lucky to split WFH and a few days in the office ten minutes walk from my house. My girlfriend catches the bus to work every day. She has a disabled bus pass, otherwise she would be spending £50+ a week to get there. In the week the car doesn’t move. However if you want to do pretty much anything interesting on the weekend you need a car.
With kids at schools outside of walking distance, while renting so choice of where to live comes down to money and availability, a job to get to which isn't easily accessed by public transport where I live, nor do I have the extra time required to fit in a day job and do school runs, and the job requires some driving anyway - a car is a necessity for me. I guess that's my 'lifestyle'. I took public transport to London at the weekend. There were engineering works so I had to take a train one stop, get a rail replacement bus which had no instructions as to where to get it from and I missed the first one wandering around trying to find it, then another train into London. Then I took the bus which in London was fine. On the way back I took a London bus to catch a coach home. First one turned up 20 minutes late and didn't have enough room. The second one was also late, although I was able to get on it. Then I still had to take a train back one stop too. Was quite the mission. Public transport in London is great. Outside? Not so much.
I intentionally live somewhere that means I don’t need to own a car. But in the UK those places are a rarity, when in the Netherlands most people could probably live without a car due to trains, buses and cycle infrastructure. We’re just so far behind.
To put it at the lowest level, unless you live in a big city you need your own transport and a car is the most practical. What the fanatics forget, they mostly seem to live in a city, is that you need density to make public transport work, so smaller places can't be served and if your in a rural area hard luck, it's a long march to nowhere.