Vegescoob

As those nice people who preside over us want us to use it and not our nasty evil cars I'm suprised that everybody hasn't decided to use public transport for say, one week, for all travel and I mean all. Let's then see what happens to our great economy.

Vegescoob then retires gracefully.

Chip

Public Transport. What's that????

Chip

milo

some of us on here actually very rarely use cars and against all odds seem to manage ok...

Dracoro

I use public transport all the time. It takes me about 40 minutes to get to work from S Croydon to Fitzrovia in central London each day. The journey takes 1 to 1.5 hours by car. No brainer really. It also has the benefit of not having to think each day. Just hop on train then tube in 'auto-pilot' mode. Driving the same journey is frustrating and stressful.

On the other hand, where I grew up was in a small village and I would not have had a social life (or job etc.) without the use of the car.

Bascially, it all depends on your personal circumstances and the access to public transport in your area. Some would find the transition easy and some would find it a pain the ar$e (and I'm NOT talking about school drive mums who normally live only a mile or two away!!) The roads are SOOO much clearer during school holidays and half term.

Chip

Chip

milo

why the ?

Vegescoob

I meant all travel incl. all business so, for example, when I was a Technical Sales Manager in Norfolk and travelled all over the UK, using public transport would have been a nightmare.

davegtt

Personally think central london is great for transport, tube and all that, when I lived in Oldham I thought it was OK there too,easy to get around but now Im in a fairly large town with a few citys only 30 miles away Im stuck, no bus stops, wouldnt have a clue where they stop, its rare I even see 1. if traffic gets too bad round our way the push bike comes out.

David Lock

Scenario. My boy goes to college in Guildford. Home to Guildford by car ciirca 50 minutes. Home to Guildford by public transport circa 2 hours. 3 bus changes and if he misses one he has buggered up his day in college. Public transport in semi rural areas is a joke

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Just about to post the same, David. it's AOK for HM government to say use public transport, but my wife works 17 miles from where we live. There are NO trains. Buses don't start until 8am, she needs to BE THERE then. She COULD get home, but about 8pm instead of 6-6:30.

Public transport for most of the UK? Utter bollox, a pipe dream.

Alcazar

little'un

iTrader: (9)

Can someone tell me how this works then...to bus it..

To get into town return it costs £3
Single costs £2.40

I'm only wanting half the journey and even if I walk 3 bus stops further up (1 mile) it's still the same...

Plus there is one bus at 7am, one at 8 and then if you miss this one you have to wait until 9.55 - stuffed if it's early and they don't wait around...


little'un

hedgehog

When I work 9 - 5 ish type hours then I use public transport to get to work.

However, in my real life public transport is of no use to me at all. To get from home to one of my regular fishing spots, and back, would take 2 full days by public transport. It takes about 45 minutes each way in the car.

The fact is that public transport is fine for people who live in, and rarely leave, central London. It is also fine for politicians who get driven about at our expense to talk about it at length and how great it would be if everyone, except for them of course, were to use it. However, for the vast majority of people living outside of central London who actually do something other than go to work and come home again public transport is never going to work. The very fact that there are so many private cars on the road just highlights how functional, sensible and useful a mode of transport the private car is. There is absolutely no reason for many people to consider any other mode of transport now that we have found one that works well.

GaryCat

Public transport is OK... except for the "public" part of it.

David Lock

Leslie

We all like to have our personal freedom and our cars are a very important part of that. The public transport is usable in some parts of the uk but generally is virtually non existant for most of the things for what we want to do. Certainly is for my part of the UK and what there is around is prohibitively expensive too.

Just one example, if I want to go fishing, especially sea trout fishing which has to be done after dark, it would be totally impossible to do unless I have a car. Even by day I could not transport my equipment with me on a bus.

There will be all sorts of other examples of what people want to do of course. Even going for the weekly shopping expedition would be pretty difficult when it comes to bringing it back home.

Good public transport at a fair price would mean that people could do that sort of shopping more often in the week and carry less each time, but that just does not exist in most parts of the country. The much vaunted plans and promises by those in charge have not come to any kind of fruition.

Can't blame us for using the car!

Les

Chip

Just found it strange for someone who rarely uses cars to be posting on a car website.

Chip

milo

i still own a subaru. i just rarely use it. it is purely for pleasure, and i accept the premium i pay for insurance/petrol for the fun i get out of it.

for commuting etc, like many on here, i use a push-bike.

plus bear in mind, this is NSR. a lot of people on this board dont even drive, much less own a scooby

Chip

Fair comment!

Chip

hedgehog

I think this highlights one of the problems: there is current a drive by a small minority to attempt to make people feel guilty for using a car because having personal freedom is, in their view and in some strange way, a bad thing.

In truth there is nothing wrong with having the freedom to travel where we like when we like and it is, in fact, something that ought to be promoted and encouraged in any free modern society. People should use public transport, as I do, when it is handy for them and makes life easier than using the car. However, current policies aimed at reducing car use by persecuting drivers should be stopped and the motorist should fight them all the way.

Currently I suspect that the most often used argument against the private car is something the media like to call "global warming" and this term comes with the implication that man is causing it. Anthropogenic global warming is not a fact and indeed is not supported by many scientists. There is a petition from the league of concerned scientists saying that we are possibly causing global warming and it is signed by about 3000 scientists. There is also the Oregon Petition which states that man is most certainly not causing global warming and it is signed by 18,000 scientists.

The atmosphere of Mars is nearly all carbon dioxide and yet it is a ball freezing spot that would like nothing more than some global warming.

Dr. Moore the founder of Greenpeace said the following on resigning:

"There were always extreme, irrational and mystical elements within our movement, but they tended to be kept in their place during the early years. Then in the mid-Eighties the ultraleftists and extremists took over. After Greenham Common closed and the Berlin Wall came down these extremists were searching for a new cause and found it in environmentalism. The old agendas of class struggle and anti-corporatism are still there but now they are dressed up in environmental terminology."

Those are the people who want you out of your car. Real environmentalists don't want you out of your car as they understand that progress means a better environment for us all, though they do want you to be sensible and take a reasonable approach to the environment. Prof. David Belamy, for example, described man made global warming as "poppycock" and his fight against green supported windfarms (which are an environmental disaster) as the most important of his life.

So, motorists should never take the attitude that there is any logical reasoning behind those "blaming" them for using their car. In truth personal transport has made an important and significant improvement to the quality of life of almost everyone in the modern world. There is no doubt that there will always be real areas of contention, like the building of a motorway in someones back garden, but taken as a whole private transport is vital for the economy and the environment. Yes indeed, just remember that more developed economies tend to have significantly better environmental conditions than less well developed economies. People in third world countries, as an example, often die from atmospheric pollution but this doesn't come from cars, as there aren't any, it comes from the fact that they have to burn wood in their living area to cook food. If they had a good oil or coal burning cooking facility which was efficient and exhausted its fumes outside their house the death toll would fall like a stone and my money says they will not get that infrastructure until they have roads and cars.

So, get in your car and help save the environment and ignore those trying to use you as a political pawn to further their own nutter agenda.

Leslie

Well I think the lie is given to the government's "concern" for global warming by cars when it is a drop in the ocean compared with the greenhouse gases being produced by aircraft and also beig deposited in the upper troposphere where they can do the most harm. It takes 40 tons of fuel for one arcraft to cross the Atlantic, one way!

The airlines pay no tax on aircraft fuel!

Big business rules of course!

Les

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Well, here's another thing about so-called public transport that really p*sses me off:

Can someone please show me the law that FORCES people to live in villages? No? I thought not. MOST people living in villages do so because they want to, right?

So why does it cost me £1.20 to go 3 miles into town centre from my dad's house, and £1.20 to go 14 miles through the countryside to Gainsborough if I go from the same stop, same bus company, but in the opposite direction?

Bl**dy subsidised country fekkers!

Alcazar

David Lock

Les, I've often wondered if aircraft should not be allowed to fly unless they were say 80% full. I appreciate airlines want them full for obvious reasons but I still think a lot go with less than 50% capacity. Of course the airlines would scream that it would be impossible schedule wise but, if forced, I am sure they would manage even if it was inconvenient at first. To start with perhaps they could be fined if they flew below minimum limit. This would cut aircraft pollution substantially "at a stroke" as someone once said! DL

hedgehog

I can see no reason at all why we should stop planes any more than we should stop cars or cows. 48% of New Zealands so called "greenhouse" gas emissions come from cows producing methane. I call for all cows to be stopped unless they promise not to fart. I also call for everyone to do everything I tell them and I want to be able to track their every move, all the time, so I can make sure they are not damaging the environment.

This isn't about the environment, it's much more frightening than that.

Leslie

That was the point I was making Hedgehog-subtly!

Les

Vegescoob

We were in NZ last year and the government was proposing a tax on cow emissions. You couldn't make it up. Needless to say the idea was dropped after the ensuing outcry.
BTW have you observed how the Prime Minister ,who has talked about an airline fuel tax, takes his family on hols several times a year usually by plane. I suppose that's ok cos he's well off and tells us ehat to do. No need for him to set an example then

Nigel H

I depends on circumstances - I think public transport works best in cities. I commute to London by bike and public transport most days and this is fine, the car is not a viable alternative. Even travelling late at night I get a damn good service and I don't get the stress of driving in traffic.

I also use it at other times - when it suits me, but for the most part I use the car at the weekend.

I think the message should be to *think* about using public transport as an alternative. It will work sometimes

hedgehog

Or perhaps a more useful message would be for the government to start a substantial road building and improvement scheme so that no one had to think about public transport at any time.

Many forms of public transport are, in environmental terms, much more damaging than even one person in a car undertaking the same journey.

To address the other argument, i.e. that private transport is dangerous, in stastical terms and discounting suicides the number of deaths per mile of railway line is similar to the number of deaths per mile of motorway. On top of this the government hail each new increase in rail speed as a success while they try and persecute any private motorist moving faster than a snail on the basis of safety.

So, what we need are more motorways with higher speed limits. The only people for whom private transport is actually dangerous is the government because, in their paranoia, they believe there is danger in not knowing where you are every second of every day. Remember they want you to have to show your ID card to buy a train ticket.

Leslie

Very good point Hedgehog, I suppose that is unthinkable for this lot though.

Les