What do you want in the place of cars?

[presta]

Yep all of them, but not sure what is meant by the last one.

The cost of cars, and most else besides, is made up of fixed costs that don't depend on usage, and variable costs that do. Tax & insurance is a fixed cost, like the standing charge on gas, and petrol is a variable charge like gas units. This is what leads to economy of scale: the cost gets proportionally cheaper the more you use, which is how & why traders can offer discounts if you buy a larger quantity. The problem with it is that it makes the pricing regressive: a higher unit cost when you use less, and that's a perverse incentive for any commodity that you want people to use less of. Emission tax & insurance risk are actually mileage related, so the charge for them should be too.

Being a non driver... I'm kind of happy with the way things are... roads clogged up but usually passable for me on my bike, dedicated cycle ways not clogged up with too many cyclists. shifting the 'traffic' from the highway to the cycleway might be utopia for some... but not me personally.

I don't want to see cycling touted as the only alternative to cars, which is one of the reasons why I won't support cycle paths. LTNs curb car use, cost far less, are more practical, and leave people to decide for themselves which alternative they prefer.

I'd welcome a change in the ownership model. Less need for private ownership and all the cost involved. Fewer cars sitting idle. More journey sharing. Something like a cross between Uber and Zipcar with knobs on.

That's why I listed car sharing: sign up, then just book a slot when you need one, wave your membership card at the car parked in the street and drive it away.

Its not just cycle access we need, its public transport as well, but first of all we've got to stop building these places on the outskirts, and we need those that have been built made accessible by public transport without it taking twice as long as getting there by car, and there are other places to look at as well, our local hospital is on the outskirts and takes less than half an hour to get to by car from where we are, on the bus its almost an hour each way.

Yes, we've been, and still are designing a car-centric society, like this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60245980

An end to the super-commute

A tax on excessively long commutes, I'm thinking.

Saying we must all cycle is crazy carrying goods or tools or in the wrist of British weather isn't going to happen!

The improvement to be had is in using alternatives when they exist, but motorists just keep looking for examples of when cars aren't practical in order to justify the status quo. "Cycles are useless because you can't cycle to the Lake District" I'm told, well, by the same argument cars are useless because you can drive across the Atlantic, and planes are useless because you can't go to Tesco in one. The average London traffic moves at 8mph, and that's within the capability of a bike.

In some places local services have withered away. People we dog sit for (or did, when the dog was alive) live in a small village. No shops, no pub. Life without a car would be very difficult. So it wouldn't be a case of just waving a wand and making the cars disappear. There's about 50+ years of societal change to compensate for.

My argument with the motorist I mentioned at the top kicked off after I kept posting this on Twitter:

If a century of designing a society that revolves around the car hasn't disadvantaged those who don't run one, why do motorists keep insisting that they can't give up their car because they need it?

 

[united4ever]

"Being a non driver... I'm kind of happy with the way things are... roads clogged up but usually passable for me on my bike, dedicated cycle ways not clogged up with too many cyclists. shifting the 'traffic' from the highway to the cycleway might be utopia for some... but not me personally."



@MontyVeda

Depends where you live I suppose but if cycling did become more mainstream then that would mean much better infrastructure would be everywhere, cyclists having more priority at junctions, drivers more aware of cyclists etc etc. Wouldn't that be great?

 

[SpokeyDokey]

If a century of designing a society that revolves around the car hasn't disadvantaged those who don't run one, why do motorists keep insisting that they can't give up their car because they need it?

That may well apply to those who don't run a car voluntarily, but what about those who have no choice ie they don't run one because they can't afford to?

I suggest that some will certainly be disadvantaged - albeit to varying degrees.

 

[Chief Broom]

Flying rideable dragons like the ones in 'Avatar'

 

[Andy in Germany]

Flying ridable dragons like the ones in 'Avatar'
View attachment 709160

The Daily Mail may explode in that scenario.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

Flying ridable dragons like the ones in 'Avatar'
View attachment 709160

Perhaps we can breed a large herd of them and run them through an on demand service from a phone app.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Perhaps we can breed a large herd of them and run them through an on demand service from a phone app.

One for Dragon's Den?

 

[presta]

That may well apply to those who don't run a car voluntarily, but what about those who have no choice ie they don't run one because they can't afford to?

I suggest that some will certainly be disadvantaged - albeit to varying degrees.

Yes, people who voluntarily don't drive are likely to have chosen to because they can manage without, but the whole point is that those who have no choice are disadvantaged. I chose not to drive, but I probably wouldn't if I couldn't walk or cycle or bus to the amenities, and even then, it's not as convenient as the car. At the time I quit driving I could easily cycle to nearby towns for shopping, now I can't.

 

[classic33]

Yes, people who voluntarily don't drive are likely to have chosen to because they can manage without, but the whole point is that those who have no choice are disadvantaged. I chose not to drive, but I probably wouldn't if I couldn't walk or cycle or bus to the amenities, and even then, it's not as convenient as the car. At the time I quit driving I could easily cycle to nearby towns for shopping, now I can't.

I don't drive and have found that there are other ways of moving around other than by car.
The train strikes in 2001-2 led to me using a bike to get to work. 181/2 miles each way. A distance many thought impossible to cover on a daily basis. I even managed to get, and keep a job, simply because I got there on a bike. Unsocial hours and off the local transport network.

Shorter trips were done on two legs, they still are.

 

[matticus]

Yes, people who voluntarily don't drive are likely to have chosen to because they can manage without, but the whole point is that those who have no choice are disadvantaged

There are people who cannot drive eg. Medical reasons.
(And thousands who practically can't due to poverty - some of whom are cleaning our hospitals and fixing our roads!!)

 

[Alex321]

One of the problems is that through decades of car reliance things have got too spread out, theres a lot of places that its impossible or nearly impossible to get to without a car, we need to start to move away from putting stuff on the outskirts of town.

It isn't just "stuff" though. Many of us don't live in the major conurbations, and public transport to where we do live is abysmal.

We have one bus every two hours Monday-Saturday (7:25 Am to 7:25pm), no Sunday service. Return buses are also every 2 hours, leaving an hour and 10 minutes after the arrival (they continue to Llantwit Mjaor before returning), so we need to either get everything done in 70 minutes, or we wait over 3 hours.

If we want to go into Cardiff, we either catch another bus from Cowbridge, or we go in the other direction to Pontyclun and catch a train from there (can't be bothered looking to see if train/bus times are compatible, but I know the train is an hourly service for most of the day).

And we are lucky, many of the villages round here don't have a bus service at all, and it would be a walk of a mile or more to the nearest road which does have a bus service along it. Though at least most of the services here are "hail and Ride" which means you can supposedly flag the bus down at any safe spot within the Vale of Glamorgan, not just at designated bus stops.

 

[albion]

A blanket 20mph speed limit and/or a total ban of cars in cities.

If we must have personal transport, make it the era of the pod.

 

[Alex321]

Or 15-20 mins by bike and bloody cheap

Yes, but not everybody is capable of that.

I ride, and I commute into Cradiff by bike - taking a similar time if not better than I could manage by public transport, but nearly twice the time it takes to drive.

But my wife cannot ride a bike. She just about learned to do so in her 40's, but was never confident, and where we lived then meant a car drive to anywhere she could ride. She now simply does not have the health or fitness needed to take it up (she is in her 70's, and not in good health). She is borderline whether she could get a blue badge. So obviously if we are both going anywhere, or she is going by herself, she uses her car (a nice small one, bing a Micra). We have considered trying to get her a trike, but I'm not sure even that would be practical for her.

 

[Alex321]

It’s weird how the school run is a thing now. When I went to school we didn’t know anyone who got driven to school. You walked, cycled or got the bus to school. Maybe private school pupils were driven, but not at the primary or comprehensive schools I went to. Now it’s manic round schools with bad parking and driving in large numbers.

Agreed. I don't know when you went to school, but when I did (60's and 70's), being driven to school was almost unheard of. If you were within 3 miles you walked or cycled, if it was further you would have a bus pass for the local bus service, or dedicated school buses for the areas not served by the public service.

But having said that, it was quite rare for any family to have more than one car in those days, whereas now it seems to be the norm to have at least one per adult in the household. And children (particularly secondary school age) were independent enough to be allowed to walk or cycle unsupervised to school a mile or two away, while parents got on with their lives - and most primary school children had a non-working other at home to walk with the child.

And it isn't always about laziness as some here would have it. Parents nowadays often don't trust that their chikld will be safe walking unsupervised, and if both parents are working, just don't have the time to be able to walk with them, so whichever oparant starts work later will drive the child to school before continuing on to work.

There is a lot more needs to change in society before attitudes to car use are likely to change, just adding better public transport and walking/cycling infrastructure isn't enough.

And it is one of those vicious circles where until there are better alternatives, attitudes aren't going to change, but until attitudes change, there isn't enough demand to justify the cost of the better alternatives. Better infrastructure IS being created (including the new 20 limits in Wales), but much more slowly than many of us as cyclists would like, and it still draws complaints from motorists about being a waste of money and making it harder for them.

 

[presta]

There are people who cannot drive eg. Medical reasons.
(And thousands who practically can't due to poverty - some of whom are cleaning our hospitals and fixing our roads!!)

That's how I came to stop driving, the DVLA Medical Centre had my licence for ~5 months, and by the time I got it back again I'd grown used to doing without it.

Many of us don't live in the major conurbations

Most do.

If the only ones with cars were those living in the country the majority of cars would be off the road. Much the same must be true for disability.