I use my car to go shopping at Tesco, which is about a mile from my home on the outskirts of the town and which has a vast parking area.
However, to get there and back by public transport takes a total of four buses costing an average of 95p each to use.
The reason? Well, imagine a triangle, one where I use the narrow bottom section to get to Tesco directly by car, whereas the buses go down one of its longer sides and back the other.
Even though, in fact, I have a bus pass allowing free travel, there's no way I would undertake a journey which would at least quadruple the time involved shopping, not to mention prove unpleasant in bad weather and, on top of that, having to carry several heavy bags, whilst the car is left sitting in the drive.
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"until we have a public transport system that is a viable alternative" - but this is the classic catch-22. Because everyone uses cars, public transport is not viable (except in big cities). Which has to change first?
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"until we have a public transport system that is a viable alternative" - but this is the classic catch-22. Because everyone uses cars, public transport is not viable (except in big cities). Which has to change first?
Start with some adjustments at the edges. If the first bus from this village ran 15 minutes earlier and the last 15 minutes later we could ditch one car.
Then there are the "lazy" journeys. How many parents at our school new intake evening tonight (balmy, still 20 celcius at 8pm)drove less than half a mile - then struggled over parking spaces.
Swmbo and I push biked it; and enjoyed a pint in the pub on the way home.
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Come to Spain - park anywhere!
All new blocks of flats here MUST have one (min) parking space per apartment.
as far as the UK is concerned :why should the motorist have to pay to park on public roads for which he/she has already paid?
The law of supply & demand will sort things out. In other words when the hassle of trying to find a parking space and/or driving into a city reach a point where the motorist rejects the inconvenience, will be the time when car usage in congested areas will decline!
Roger in Spain
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Apologies for the typos & poor grammar in that last post. It's late & I should be in my pit!
Roger in Spain
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Lets have a bit of reality here. You can make public transport as attractive and as cheap as you like, you can even make it free, but 99.9% of those who have a car sitting outside their door will jump in that if they have to go anywhere outside walking distance.
Thats why we bought the things in the first place, we like them and what they give us, it's not just about economics. This is one of thousands of websites celebrating cars and our love affair with them. Never found one where people discussed bus journeys.
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Sorry, Tom, disagree there. Many bought a car because to do what they want they had no option - certainly that was my case. I feel many would leave the car for some journeys if offered a journey of similar duration (or less) where they had no hassle of fighting through traffic and parking at the end of it. Certainly the bus cannot compete for all journeys so cars are still going to be owned and run, but it (and the train) should compete for a lot, especially within busy cities.
I'm sure there are places buses are discussed - I believe there is a bus newsgroup and I frequent uk.railway so trains are represented as well. (OK, I'm going to get chucked off the group now, I know!)
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Public transport is rarely viable even in big cities at the moment. The major problem is that it is being run as a business rather than a public service and therefore the extra routes and journeys that do not make money but provide a useful service are not run. On top of that you have the fact that the larger companies have set profit targets and will either hike fares or cut routes until they are making that target.
The simple answer is that you need to improve the provision while offering incentive to use it. While you have to be careful to be fair to non car owners, you could do things like offering vouchers with your car tax towards using PT, have 'free travel' days and the like, simply to get people to try it out and judge for themselves if removing the hassle of fighting through traffic and paying for parking etc is worth it to them.
Of course you then get another catch-22 where if the number of cars on the road is reduced, journeys become quicker and the car more attractive again...
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The biggest problems with public transport is that it rarely goes exactly to and from where you wish to go, times are inconvenient, in bad weather it's an even worst alternative and bus stops and rail stations are usually some distance from where you live or wish to travel.
We're lucky in my particular neck of the woods in having an excellent bus service - every 10 minutes until after 6pm and then half-hourly.
But for the majority of passengers i.e. those that don't have a free bus pass, if there are two of you it's practically as cheap by taxi and, what's more, door to door service; three or more and the taxi wins every time.
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Should also make clear that using your own car rather than a taxi is just as practical and the savings on bus fares pays for the petrol....
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Public transport serves some people very well but too many people pontificate about it when they don't actually use it or even consider other alternatives to driving, like walking their children half a mile to school. I agree totally that for some people, some, even most journeys are only/more practical by car. However, as someone who wants to retain the freedom to use my car when I need to, I use PT when it's viable (even though doing so may require a bit more effort) and I feel it's important to get out of the mindset so many people have which precludes them from even considering the alternatives.
Yes cars can be more convenient but they will cease to be so if we continue to insist on using them for every journey we make and find either that we just can't get anywhere or can't park when we do. What amazes me is that people justify their refusal to use PT on inconvenience, lateness etc, but they don't refuse to use their cars when they get stuck in traffic daily or find they can't park. If we had a better PT system we'd all enjoy driving more but we're not going to get that unless we make some sacrifices first. Pretending that we can build a good integrated PT system without years of investment and inconvenience is plain nonsense - it's the price we're all going to have to pay sooner or later.
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If you are inferring that I'm pontificating about public transport and don't use it, you couldn't be further from the truth.
I use the local buses regularly to save undertaking unnecessary solo journeys in my car to and from the town centre and other areas - the point I was making was that for some journeys the car was still the most direct and efficient method, especially if there are two or more people involved.
No matter how much people go on about more use of public transport, the fact remains that for many it is neither convenient nor practical.
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Really not implying anything about you Stuartli (don't know you after all!). I was just making a general point about public perceptions of PT which are:
a) too often based on little or no experience and
b) inaccurate as problems experienced at a local level are assumed to be the same nationally.
Aside from the London commuting times, I really don't have any complaints with PT and am using it more and more.
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You have pretty much summed up my point - at the moment it's not good enough. It needs to be made better before people will switch. On the A6 in to Manchester there are about 30 buses an hour and even 5 or 6 an hour until midnight on a Sunday, yet the road is still clogged with cars. The problems are partly cost, although a weekly pass makes that very reasonable, but partly because few people actually want to just travel down the A6.
What is really needed is a network of park and ride carparks, some at stations, some just outside conurbations but all well served both by local and most importantly express buses in to the towns. However, you also need services starting and ending away from the A6 so people can get to the core route and then away to their destination.
We are stymied at the moment by the fact there are no trains running through Stockport at all until September. People have little option but to drive as the replacement buses are a farce. What you should be able to do is drive from the more remote locations and pick up a regular shuttle service in to Stockport and Manchester costing little and running often. However, Network Rail in association with BeardRail are currently going about reducing the capacity for local journeys in south Manchester.
I know some may think this is getting away from motoring as a topic but I'd say the opposite - it covers the area where you cross a boundary from car being a sensible option to it being a hinderance and a more practical solution being needed. Getting in to the centre of a city that has good rail links by car should be seen as a special-case only, not the common solution it is in this country outside London. Where those rail links aren't available they should be built or a good bus service provided. Cars are a good solution for low traffic routes but not for major arteries and the sooner something is done the better things will become all around, even for those who have no intention of giving up the car for whatever reason.
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The town where I live almost certainly conceived the Park and Ride concept several decades ago - it was first used on a late Saturday in December to help Christmas shoppers and, over the following years, has gradually been built up to permanently cover weekdays and Saturdays.
There are special park and ride centres on the edge of the town centre, waiting rooms have been built at some of them and bus services are both frequent and low cost.
Now the idea is seen all over the country so successful has it proved, especially when workers are able to leave their vehicles for the day and still get into work easily.
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"What is really needed is a network of park and ride carparks, some at stations, some just outside conurbations but all well served both by local and most importantly express buses in to the towns". It all makes good sense, Steve - except that the buses can't be express because of all the cars. So we separate off bus lanes, and all the car drivers object to the reduced space. No-one will win without a radical change of attitude all round, and I can't see that happening, at least among the contributors to this forum.
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Stockport and Manchester have a bus-lane down most of the length of the A6. However, the service buses take so long picking up and dropping off that the journey still takes an age. The obvious suggestion of conductors to handle fares was rejected by stagecoach as being too expensive. So, currently we have bus lanes that are under-used, cause more congestion and don't actually provide much of a benefit.
One thing to consider though is that even if the bus is no quicker than the car would be, you are at least a passenger rather than having to cope with the hassle of driving in heavy traffic and finding somewhere to park at the end of the journey. Naturally rail parkways are the better option where possible - even in the dead of night you can't do better than twice the journey time of the train from Stockport to Manchester and in the peaks it is far, far faster.
However, these seem remarkably difficult to get going. There has been talk of an M60 (Tameside) Parkway station for a while but no sign of anything happening and now the SRA have taken over control of spending policy for the local railways there is little chance it will happen. On the other side of the M60, the local service towards Warrington is being reduced to every two hours, to the north the Oldham line is being converted in to a tram line no-one wants and although there are options around Stockport, the only nominal P&R we have is at Hazel Grove where there is no security, not that much parking and a poor service outside of the peaks.
P&R may be popular in other parts of the country but aside from a Christmas time service, Manchester and the surrounding area doesn't seem bothered. I'm particularly surprised Derbyshire don't arrange something to keep motorists out of the peak district park as they are always up in arms over the number of cars, but then they won't spend £100m on reopening a through railway line that could have significant benefits in that area...
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