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Have you never been in a bus? Prams and shopping bags are carried on buses all the time. Those who get around on foot and use public transport tend to be more robust than the average person who prefers to drive most times.
Cost of fuel.
- Thread starter gavroche
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Have you never been in a bus? Prams and shopping bags are carried on buses all the time. Those who get around on foot and use public transport tend to be more robust than the average person who prefers to drive most times.
1. yes i have - i took a bus from anfield to the malmaison hotel on liverpool dock.....on both occassions it was a fairly long walk at either end of the journey......
2. do they also help them being carried to the bus from the shop and then off the bus to the house too?? if using a private car you can take the trolley to the car and load up, cant take a trolley to the bus......and with a car, you can park outside the house or on the drive and then unload. cant do that with a bus.......your trying to promote an all in one solution, which is not practical to everyone
i',m guessing not on point 2
D
Deleted member 26715
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Not all London cyclists understand this, they like the Government believe what's good for them is good for everybody in the country.
- Location
- Inside my skull
Shopping by bus is easy , not everyone is in such poor physical shape, that they can’t carry their shopping from the bus to home.
again, not read what i have written.....nothing new here
come to rural south wales and try and do your weekly shop by bus..........ahhh what bus, is what some will tell you
Electric_Andy
Heavy Metal Fan
- Location
- Plymouth
Likewise here. I used the bus once when my car was in for MOT. I got the walked 10 minutes to get the 8.10 bus, it went around the houses dropping off school kids, it took an hour and then I had a 10 minute walk to the office. In the car I used to do it in 15 minutes.
In theory buses sound like a very good and greener solution, but only in compact cites with good infrastructure. In large (area) cities like mine, the roads are just too small so dedicated bus lanes and even pull-in bus stops are impossible.
classic33
Leg End Member
With raised kerbs at bus stops, kneeling buses and ramps on buses, it's more like walking on one level.
As for trolleys, have you seen the number of ways that bags can now be attached/carried on a pram! They even have oversized HMS karabiners that allow bags to be carried. Those along with the growing trend in home deliveries kinda knocks any worries over not being able to carry your shopping.
And I've seen a few who can't be bothered carrying the shopping to their car opting for home delivery.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
1, I've been doing almost all our shopping in rural Norfolk and before that rural Somerset by bike for years.
2, "your weekly shop" is an unhealthy development caused by motoring being so farking awful and inappropriate for daily life that people eat preserved and processed food instead of fresh for most of the week. Much food stays fresh for a few days, so you need to buy the fresh stuff twice a week or more often. That's very easy when you're on a bike and can stop as you pass a greengrocer's or farm to pick up a few items while on your way home from work or an appointment. It should also be pretty easy when you're using buses and can pop into a shop near your boarding stop if there's a few minutes, or by the stop where you get off in your village or estate centre.
A demand that buses or bikes perpetuate the "weekly shop" mistake is a demand that buses or bikes pretend to be cars. It's a demand of people who don't want improvements in public health. It's not a demand that should be heeded.
1. again not everyone can do that or even wants to....again just cause you do it, doesn't mean everyone else has too, its just not practical for everyone
2. seriously........easy to drop on and off bus, again this is rural south wales, not a city like somerset or norfolk. My brother lives in crickhowell, with zero shopping centres, just a small town. nearest shopping town abergavenny, brecon or over the mountain into ebbw vale........not an easy bus route or regular bus route to undertake anything you just said. He also works in hereford, defo no bus route from crickhowell to hereford for the times he needs to be at the barracks during the day ( now a civilian army contractor).......
a bus is not in the solution for everyones needs, it just isnt
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
I agree that cars are here to stay and are currently "nigh on essential" but I disagree that they are convenient (unless you close your eyes to the true costs) or that universal transport service is too expensive... but maybe we differ on how friendly "user-friendly" should be.
The current level of car use is not here to stay, though. It's completely out of control and proportion and unsustainable. Cory Doctorow has said "geometry hates cars" and he has a point: there simply isn't enough space in our historic towns, cities and villages for everyone to be dragging around a 4m x2m metal box and definitely not with 12m or more of headway. We shouldn't flatted more history to make space and EVs will not solve this. Making cars slightly smaller will not solve this, not until they become smaller than 2m x1m and use a bit of human power and a 15-20mph top speed to reduce the size of the heavy battery being carried around... and hey presto, we've reinvented e-bikes.
So then we need something for longer and faster journeys, which will be mass transport, trains and medium/long-distance buses, so I disagree about where public transport is needed most: it's to span the sparsely-populated gaps more than move people around densely-populated areas. People can walk and bike most smaller densely-populated areas.
Yep, EVs are losing the plot because they're being sold as glamour goods, not transport. The main thing EVs do is remove the "cost of fuel" discouragement of/limit on car use for those rich enough to afford an EV.
Has anywhere ever legislated to do that?
most on here commenting only from a cyclists point of view.....this is the motoring section.
saying people can walk/bike smaller densely populated areas is nonsense....as for trains, that will mean digging up large cycle networks here in wales, as trains were stopped from the area i live, way before i was born. They aint rebuilding the train networks to these areas and they not running buses to most of these areas either.......not practical or cost efficient
saying people can walk/bike smaller densely populated areas is nonsense....as for trains, that will mean digging up large cycle networks here in wales, as trains were stopped from the area i live, way before i was born. They aint rebuilding the train networks to these areas and they not running buses to most of these areas either.......not practical or cost efficient
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
I'm not saying everyone else has to. I'm not saying it's practical for everyone. I'm just answering your challenge which implied that it's practical for no-one, which is completely wrong.
Norfolk's one city is a long way from the fens. I look out of my window and I see my next door neighbour's house, then the next nearest are 3 miles away on the ridge on the edge of the fens. In Somerset, I could see a couple of terraces down hill from me, but mostly across the channel to the South Wales hills. Even Somerset's cities are mostly small.
Crickhowell, population 2000, is a small town, bigger than where I live in Norfolk or used to live in Somerset.
A regular bus route (X43) takes 10 minutes direct into Abergavenny. It's not frequent enough and there's no through tickets onto the trains to Newport and Cardiff, or Hereford, but it's wrong to say it doesn't exist.
Buses and trains could and should be the solution for easy things like commuting from a town to a major employment site, either direct or with one change. It's not the solution yet, but it would cost a hell of a lot less in the long run to make it so than to keep propping up inappropriate motoring.
1. i didnt say it was practical for no-one, i said for some
2. i never said it didnt exist, i said infrequent.......or not regular. it also doesnt stop anywhere near were they live in crickhowell. Again your just looking at something on a map, looking at a bus table route and saying, yeh they got buses
3. you would have to destroy a lot of infrastructure, rural areas and other roads, paths etc etc to get the trains back into the areas around were a live. not practical and certainly not cost effective
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mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Oh, I'm a motorist as well, but I don't think being a motorist means we have to accept all the nonsense other motorists spout about how motoring must be essential or is inevitable or a good thing.
I think you should probably give some reasoning why you think that. It seems obviously true from what we see in many other places. Do Welsh people not have legs? Do they have no sense of balance?
I'm pretty sure Wales still has many trains. I also doubt many old lines will be reopened, especially where they've been recycled, but often a high-quality bus corridor could replace them in a very practical way. There seem to be rather perverse incentives for bus operators currently, with it looking like they hunt easy wins like meandering services seemingly aimed at senior bus-pass holders instead of developing fast main-road express transport services. And the bus operators get hurt by the cost of fuel even more than car users, which probably makes them quite conservative.
the topography of wales, isnt the same as the flat lands of england........there's a saying around here, that if you flattened off wales it would end up bigger than england.
were we live in wales, nearest train station is ebbw vale and that only goes to cardiff.....next station is abergavenny circa 8 miles away, can go to various cities like newport/cardiff, can even go to hereford. but would require a car to get to the station.
brother in crickhowell, ZERO trains into crickhowell, closest abergavenny, again would need a car, buses not regular enough to plan a car free route or day out.
Honestly you english cyclists think it simple to do everything by bike, but it aint in the valleys of rural south wales....trust me
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