As we're mostly petrol-heads on here, a car is probably our favourite mode of transport (nod to the bikers here too) but is there something that would get you out of your car and onto *shudder* public transport?
Petrol at £10 a gallon? Road tax at £500 a year? Black boxes inside so you get automated speeding tickets?
I've chosen / been forced to ditch the car for getting to work for 2 reasons:
1. Traffic is too heavy getting into London, driving a car there is insane if you work fairly normal hours.
2. It's £80 a month to park at the railway station which is quite a lot to pay to have my radio nicked and find a new scratch on it every so often. Cycle parking is free and I don't care if my £20 bike gets damaged.
Do you now use an alternative to the car, or are you close to changing? What would push you over the edge?
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As the famous phrase goes....
"you prise the key from my cold dead fingers"
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I honestly thought I'd be the same, RF. Saddens me to find I can't do this anymore!
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Well I am a bus driver for a large well known company and I would never, ever, give up my car to travel on the buses I drive...(nothing to do with my driving I might add!)
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Realistically priced convenient public transport would be a good start.
If you live in a large town or city I could see where it could work but outside of cities it's very difficult to travel from one place to another without changes, and roundabout routes that mean that a journey which takes less than an hour by car often takes more than two hours by public transport.
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Realistically priced convenient public transport would be a good start.
Why would that make you get out of your car though? Even if it was cheap it would still be dirty, smelly, unreliable and inconvenient. Wouldn't it?
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>>Even if it was cheap it would still be dirty, smelly, unreliable >>and inconvenient. Wouldn't it?
That's why I specified price and convenience, the public transport I have used in the last 3-6 months (train, tube) has seemed reasonably clean and pleasant, it just doesn't seem to go where I want to go in most cases, and when it does it goes via every little village / side road so that it takes twice as long as a car on the same journey.
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To be honest, I dont use the car to travel to London for work. This has been the case for nigh on 35 years. On a typical London commute public transport makes much more sense, as it should. NO city could cope with the extra hundreds of thousands of cars.
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Chance would be a fine thing! The nearest bus stop is 2 miles away and then there are 2 buses a day (no trains) to the nearest reasonable sized town which is 50 miles away. I'm currently looking into buying somewhere closer to civilisation.
--
L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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You would not get me out of my car for all the tea in china. Has anyone actually used public transport recently??? It is horrid, I havent used it for must be over 11 years, but judging by the people I see standing at bus stops I don't want to. The closet I get to it is using a Taxi or taking a flight somewhere, but they don't really count.
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I love my car, but if I had to...
Reasonable prices, reasonable travel durations, frequent services.
Going to central London tonight on public transport, approx 25 miles from where I live.
Journey is Taxi to railway station - no bus service available (£7 and about 10 minutes), Return fare Zone 1 (about £11 and an hour to my destination including tube changes etc), Taxi home (after midnight £10 & 10 minutes).
Journey costs roughly £28, travel of about 2.5 hours. Would probably cost me £5 in petrol and would take an hour less in my car. Why am I taking the train again?
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Hope you don't use taxis as a closet, drivers get very cross and charge £40 to clean the car out.>> You would not get me out of my car for allthe tea in china. Has anyone actually used public transport recently??? It is horrid, I havent used it for must be over 11 years, but judging by the people I see standing at bus stops I don't want to. The closet I get to it is using a Taxi or taking a flight somewhere, but they don't really count.
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In the city of Sunderland it would be safe and sensible cycle routes rather than the loony system we now have. I used to cycle here a lot but the traffic density and driver's insensitivity has increased so much that I have lost confidence in cycling as a safe mode of transport.
Or maybe I'm just getting too soft and fat.
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IIRC correctly it's 2.80 for a day rider in Leeds - the buses are OK most of the time, but they're crowded, hot and noisy, and unfortunately end up stuck in the same traffic jams that the cars do.
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Unfortunately, those who want to get us out of our cars dont seem to think beyond people who live in big cities with everything on their doorsteps. When you have to travel miles to work, visit family, do your weekly shop or even visit your GP public transport as it stands is not practical.
Like you doctorchris, I too would like to go out more on my cycle but around here you take your life in your hands even on the local and country roads.
Safety is an issue for me. I spent 5 years travelling to work on public transport and it terrified the hell out of me. The trains, buses and stations were regularly overcrowded to a point that I have witnessed people falling onto the tracks/into the road by the shear volume of people they tried to cram into a small space. Not to mention the times I have witnessed junkies, drunks and gangs of yobs being abusive and sometimes violent towards innocent passengers.
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Gave up driving to work just over 2 months ago since I moved house. I was absolutely sick and tired of sitting in traffic jams on the A45 around Coventry with the car only doing 32mpg. I now get a monthly ticket costing £80 that is much less than the monthly cost of petrol I was mainly pouring into the car for the carp commute. The railway station is under a mile from home and also 5 minutes round the corner from work. Train service has been OK and have only been late for work once by 5 minutes so far.
Now only drive at off peak times, unless on business, and I am slowly regaining some pleasure from driving. Another benefit is I can now consider changing the car for something more interesting as my annual mileage has dropped by 9000 miles a year.
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I use the train where I can for commuting, but pay the exorbitant uplift for first class as standard class is hopelessly overcrowded, often leaving you standing or sat on the floor for an hour or more of a 2.5hour journey. I despise buses. Uncomfortable to the point of making me feel unwell, slow and smelly. If I can work within 10 miles of home, I cycle. For all the intermediate journeys or those where the train has you zig-zagging back and forth across the country, changing in every county, car is king.
In a nutshell, you would have to actually ban personal car ownership to get me out of mine. Even then I would be looking for the loophole.
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In a nutshell, you would have to actually ban personal car ownership to get me out of mine. Even then I would be looking for the loophole.
Ditto - although I use the tube when I go into London. Couldn't do it every day though.
This is mainly because I love driving, rather than any selfish motives (Other than public transport still being quite expensive for what you get)
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Diesel would have to be at least £10 a gallon before I took the train to work. 20 mins by car or 1 hour 10 mins minimum by public transport? No contest.
Just don't tell Gordon...
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Short of petrol being 20 quid a gallon nothing. Why should I stop doing someting I enjoy?
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I live in Skipton but work in Harrogate. The distance between these two reasonably sized towns is around 20 miles, yet the bus service is hopelessly irregular and a train involves a 50 mile, 2 hour trip into Leeds and back out, plus an additional walk/bus/taxi of around 2 miles.
I have no option but to drive to work, but if there were a direct rail service, I would definitely use it. Anything beats dicing with death on the A59 twice a day...>> As we're mostly petrol-heads on here, a car is probably our
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> What would push you over the edge?
Doubling the price of petrol wouldn't make a huge amount of difference to me - in fact, I'd probably drive more as it'd make the roads clearer!
However, increasing congestion - especially where it's deliberately caused - might well drive me out of the UK.
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"might well drive me out of the UK"
Are you sure it wouldn't publicly transport you out of the UK ?(boom boom)!
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Why can't I say the word boom twice?
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Simple- provide an alternative.
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"b******** "has a very specific meaning in Tagalog. I hope you don't do it on public transport.....
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but we're writing in English (or at least close-ish). If we were writing in Tagalog then it would be different.
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Sometimes when i am sitting in a traffic jam,i wish that i could use public transport(train) to get to work.but;
1.I have no wish to spend hours a day travelling in close proximity to other people,with their bad manners, germs etc.I like my own space,music,comfortable seats,air-con etc.
2.My car is far cheaper than public transport-train fares are obscenely high.
3.I CANT GET TO WORK USING PUBLIC TRANSPORT AS WE DON,T HAVE ANY WHERE I LIVE IN THE STICKS !
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boom boom is a swear word on inner kymuli atol 300 miles south of the cook islands
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over-reaction and over-sensitivity of the swear thingy. If there was every a good reason for that one, then goodness knows what it was.
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If they want to get me on to trains, they need to sort the prices out. I can drive from Devon to Leeds for 20 quid of diesel, or I can fly (yes, technically public transport but a million times more fun than a bus or train) from Exeter to Leeds Bradford for 9.99.
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boom-boom?
I think RF summed it up. There are certain communities that don't contribute to this forum in any way, shape or form where I understand Basil Brush to be considered the anti-christ, and a sexually active one at that.
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Dynamite!
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Quite seriously I enjoy using public transport because it means I?m either very drunk or completely wasted.
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Many posters are thinking from their current positions - ie I live in A, work/shop or whatever in B/C, so therefore I have to use my car.
Some friends of ours live in a city centre. They both work / shop / play in the same city and they don't have a car. It's awkward for them to visit relative's etc, but some would think that's no bad thing! If they need a car, then they do a planning to get the most out of it and they hire one for the weekend at reasonble rates.
It has its downsides, but they're saving an absolute fortune.
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You'd have to make a rail ticket cheaper than driving. But there's no rail journey in the land that costs less than it would in diesel for me to do the same trip by car.
Ok there might be one or two, but I'm not prepared to book three weeks in advance and travel at 11am on a Thursday.
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You'd have to make a rail ticket cheaper than driving. But there's no rail journey in the land that costs less than it would in diesel for me to do the same trip by car.
Only if the car did more than 45MPG, had no wear and tear costs on top and I wanted to take longer getting to work then I'd agree with the above.
Just worked this out on my particular commute:
Cost of monthly train ticket = £79.50/4.33weeks = £18.36 per week
Car:
Based on a 210 mile weekly commute achieving 45mpg:
210/45mpg = 4.66 gallons x 4.54 = 21.16 Litres
21.16 x £0.89p per litre of diesel = £18.83 per week
This equates to £81.53 v £79.50.
Small saving you say but we're just talking about the cost of fuel. What about wear and tear?
I'm saving 9,000 miles a year on my car this way. Also my car only averages 32mpg with all the traffic so the savings are far greater.
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and how do you quantify the enormous value of the convenience of having your own method of transport there when you want it, plus the comfort of your own space?
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GrahamF1 said:You'd have to make a rail ticket cheaper than driving. But there's no rail journey in the land that costs less than it would in diesel for me to do the same trip by car.
So the whole cost of running your car is the price of diesel??
The problem with car use is that so much of the cost is pretty well fixed, so people really only think about the fuel cost.
Work out the REAL price os using your car and ther probably isn't a rail jurney in the land that's so expensive.
The real killer with public transport is if multiple people are travelling - so a 3 mile return journey into town on the bus is £3, not bad for 1 person but for a family it's too expensive (even with half fares for children)
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if you want me onto public transport....i need the bus to go from my house to work at 6.20am and to pick me up at 6.05pm to take me home directly,,,or very nearly direct...but alas the bus's dont start fully till 7.30 ish and they dont go from my house to work,,unless i take 2 or 3 buses...
and to think,,it only takes me 10 minutes to drive
--
www.storme.co.uk
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The problem with car use is that so much of the cost is pretty well fixed, so people really only think about the fuel cost.
What this means though, is that if you do have a car already the main extra cost is the cost of fuel or if you are part of the company car fraternity then the only cost is the fuel if you even have to pay that.
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Well, I use public transport on a regular basis. I need to commute from my town of Ashington to Newcastle (for University) at varying times and on varying days. For me, the bus provides an unrivaled alternative to the car for several reasons.
1. Can't drive all the way to university, because there is no where to park. Even if I paid for a Uni parking permit, this is no guarantee that there is a space waiting for me at the other end, which would mean waiting around for a space (in the rather cramped and disjointed car park) to turn up. This = late for lecture. Without the parking permit means parking in the NCP car park, which costs many £s an hour. If I was at uni all day, then this could run up bills of £20 + per day. No Way
2. Park and ride. This is what I used to do. Park at my nearest Metro Interchange (15 miles away) and complete the final leg of my journey by Metro. However, this is fine if you need to be in the City before 9.00, because from 9.30 till 12.00, there are sometimes no spaces. = late for lectures etc. The Metro is a pleasant way to travel but can be expensive (Used to cost me IRO £32.00 p/w this way, including parking, metro fare and petrol)
3. Stress. Although I enjoy driving, I cant stand being in the rush hour, faffing on with jams etc.
So, I use the bus. They run every 20 minutes through my estate and the bus stop is a 5 min walk away, so its hardly out of my way. The journey takes an hour off peak, but those in their cars get in the way at rush hour ( :-p), so its takes about 1.5 hours at peak times. Going by park and ride takes the same amount of time. Although going by car all the way to town would be a bit quicker, its hardly as convenient.
The cost is the greatest factor (well, I am a student). It costs £18.00 for a weekly ticket, which is almost half the price of the next cheapest option, and this gives me unlimited access to all the buses in my area, so I then use it for small jaunts across my town too, saving the car from doing short runs.
So, the bus is cheaper, less stressful and generally more convenient for me, thus the car only gets used during the weekend for trips out with friends or family, or when generally using the bus is less convenient. This is why I enjoy driving more now, than when I used to half commute by car.
Its easy to slate public transport, and yes I agree, that they can be a bit late and are sometimes not as clean as the interior of your car. But lets face it, it depend upon where you live. Different places have different quality of services, so its up to you to make the most of it, and if you live out in the sticks, then what else would you expect, the car is bound to be more convenient.
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I lived about 10 years of my adult life in a city. I did not have a car at all during that time.
I now live in a fairly remote rural area, where public transport is all but non-existent. A surprising number of people, particularly pensioners, don't have cars. They depend on family, friends, and taxis. In fact, it would be possible to hold down some jobs without a car. But for many people, a car is necessary, and there is no realistic substitute.
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It would be impossible to do my job (chartered valuation surveyor) using public transport.
But a few years ago I worked for a specialist consultancy in Manchester City Centre, and rarely went to see property, so I commuted by bus or tram. I got rid of my car and was quite happy. If I needed a car, I would either borrow one from my parents, rent a car or take a taxi and claim mileage from the client.
We did have my wife's car, so we were not carless, but it worked until I went back to real surveying.
Today I had to go to Alloa (Scotland) from Manchester for a two hour meeting. I went with one colleague and we both live in north Manchester. We had the option of flying or driving. Even ignoring the cost (the flights were a total of about £170 plus parking at the airport; say £25 and a rental car from Edinburgh to Alloa; say £35), we decided to drive. The journey up north is easy and we had the car readily available. We worked out that we drive 480 miles, had a 2 hour meeting and were home within 11 hours. Had we flown, it would have been 9.5 hours and would have been always looking at our watches to ensure we were not late returning to the airport. Even in my Scooby, 480 miles costs only £70 for fuel. Had I gone on my own I would have flown, but we shared the driving so no contest.
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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I often cycle into Richmond where I work part-time. 2 of the 6 mile trip is down the old railway track and a very pleasant run it is too unless the wind is from the West and you get a whiff from the sewage works.
For handyman/gardener work, I need the car with tools aboard and the trailer for rubbish and mowers etc. This would be particularly difficult to manage on public transport. For nearly all other solo journeys I use the motor bike.
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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I'm another one who couldn't do my job without a car, which is why I get paid a lovely chunk of money and milage allowance every month for the pleasure! :)
I am based at one site, and have to cover four others, and the area in between, if something happens and I get called out. I'd love to picture the bosse's face if I got called out and had to wait twenty minutes for a bus!
However if I didn't work, I'd use public transport if:
Actually having had a wash that day, using deodorant and not being a nutcase were requirements before you could buy a ticket.
When you got off, you were as clean as when you got on.
There were individual cubicles so that you didn't have to have other people coughing and sneezing on you, and you didn't have to listen to their mobile phone conversations.
A security guard was in every single train carriage and on every bus, especially late at night.
The bus appeared on demand, picked me up from my house and deposited me at where I actually wanted to go. I can't live my life to someone else's timetable.
I could have my choice of CD/radio station on, and sing as loud as I wanted to.
I could drive it. I am a terrible passenger, and if I'm going to die through bad driving, I'd rather only have myself to blame!
It was actually quicker and less expensive than driving. It rarely is.
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Having two infants makes public transport an absolute no no. Can?t be done. Try getting a double buggy and two infants onto a bus then bring them back with 20 bags of shopping.
Here in Poland though as often as not I?ll jump into a taxi knowing that I?ll never pay more than two quid. In London that?s an expensive alternative and many times my wife was not allowed onto a bus if she had the pushchair. And don?t get me started on the "Lets keep the wonderful piece of our heritage that is the Routemaster" brigade. What useless lumps of crap those things are when you?re lugging a pram around.
It?s good to see London adopting the bendy bus though that the rest of Europe have had for two decades. Paying before you get on makes much more sense. I can?t understand why it baffled and confused so many people. Perhaps people who use public transport aren?t that bright...
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I took SWMBO up to London on Bank Holiday Monday for a day out to visit Covent Garden , have a meal and see a show so decided to go by train so we could have a drink.
Two cheap day return tickets cost £35 for which we could have travelled to London and parked all day in an NCP.
The train was and absolutely filthy rattletrap slam door with windows covered in a sort of brown grime and graffiti mix. I got grease on my hands from the door handle.
We suffered the usual aggravation of mobile phone morons, ordinary morons and an Italian couple jabbering away with the male having one of those irritating regular sniffs which he could have cleared quite easily by blowing his nose. A sniff every 30 seconds or so from East Croydon to Victoria had me planning murder....
Got to London to find the District and Circle Lines which we needed to use to get to Covent Garden were closed and it had started to rain - no buses going where we wanted so it was walk or taxi.
We had a nice meal and saw ' Chicago 'in the Strand but of course needed to get a taxi to get back to Victoria in time for the last train or else it meant Gatwick Express and a £30 taxi fare home.
Thats why I don't use public transport.
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Just done a quick check on National Express to see about using the bus on Monday instead of the car to do a 94 miles round trip.
Bus departs at 8.07am and arrives 47 miles away at 5.05pm
Return the same day leaves 13.30pm and arrives 4.58pm
Hmmm.... 9 hours to do 47 miles. Really can't see why people don't use public transport in the sticks.
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I enjoy walking and cycling and I quite like buses.
If I'm going into the town centre, which is about 1.5 miles away, I usually walk or cycle (there is a nice 'green lung' with a footpath/cycle track).
I used to commute to work by bus sometimes, but my hours are irregular and the bus adds one and a half hours to my travelling time.
I have an economical car (50 mpg) and I work at home one or two days a week.
A proper Sustrans cycle route is growing section by section around here. I can't wait - I'll use it a lot, but mostly for pleasure cycling.
Cheers, Sofa Spud
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Good to see someone elses actually walks or cycles short distances. Does anybody have any views on the social effects of car use. Whilst I am not a fan of public transport as it is now it seem to me that everybody locked into their own little world in their car is one of ther reasons why cities have become such unpleasant places. Public tranport need more people to use it and demand better standards. More people walking would mean a safer environment. I like drivng - I clock up 25,000 miles per year but we do need to abandon this view that I've got a car so I am entitled to use it no matter the cost to everyone else.
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Tube should cost 1 quid single journey no matter how far you go, £2.50 for unlimited daily travel card or £10 a week. No more peak/off-peak malarkey. Taxis should cost 50p a mile instead of current ~£2 a mile on top of minimum £2.20 fare. This would also cut congestion in the city, as currently 70% of traffic in CC zone is empty cabs cruising streets. Bus should cost £1 for unlimited daily travel. Trains should cost £1 per 50 mile zones per single journey.
If you can't run public transport cheaper than private transport then what's the point. Last week I saw lorry plowing 30 mph on A2 with train carriage on trailer. Surely it's all gone wrong, it should be the other way round - lorries should be carried across country via cheap rail, just like anywhere else in Europe.
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The problem with cheap public transport is that there are only two ways to fund it. You either pay those employed to run and maintain the transport system very low wages, or you increase taxes to subsidise it. Like many, I live in a rural area where there is one bus an hour up to eight o'clock at night and then nothing, so I would strongly object to paying a lot more tax so those who live in cities and earn far more than I do can have cheap travel.
If there are any people who would like to work in the system for a wage that would put them on the poverty level I have never met them, so that method would not work either. If a fraction of the money that was spent on public transport was spent on genuinely improving the road system then the problem would largely solve itself. That does not mean nescesseraly building more roads, but improving those we have and redesigning junction layouts, many of which have been tinkered with to deliberately obstruct traffic by anti car local authorities. Anyone who live in london like I used to can site many examples of where roads have been redesigned and traffic lights have been rephased for no other reason than to cause frustration and delay for those who use them.
Many rural railway lines which have two coach trains running up and down once an hour with three people on board could be torn up and tarmaced for use by buses and comercial traffic. The reason you see railway stock being moved by road is because it is cheaper than using the inefficient rail system, which is only profitable on the Inter City and busy commuter routes. And as for cycling, great if you live in a city where all the facilities are within five miles of your doorstep, not so clever when you live elsewhere.
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Inefficiency of rail system is a myth, just like it's a myth that you can't create cheap public transport. For years we were told there is no such thing as cheap flights or cheap telecoms. Unbundling and cutting monopol on both proven otherwise. Someone mentioned Poland up there in thread and how cheap taxis were over there. Last time I was in Wroclaw I couldn't help but notice how local councils swapped expensive and inefficient equivalent of national express buses running between city and small towns for fully licensed system of private transport providers. So at the end of the day you have loads of 20-40 seater mini buses running on tight schedule to all forgotten little villages that national provider claimed were no longer profitable to charter to. What do you know, the new lines are never late, run very often and very quick and are dirt cheap. Suddenly running private little bus line can be profitable to providers, drivers and commuters.
I'm sure we would find someone to run EasyTrains or Ryan Tube at fractions of the costs?
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Chiltern Railways (I assume) run a local minibus from Bicester North station to all the local villages. Every 15 minutes during rush hours, every hour out of rush hour. Anywhere betweeen £1 and £2 and about 12 minutes.
What a brilliant idea. And in this household we probably use it for 10 return trips a week.
However, Chiltern Railways are clean, smart, polite, timely and generally reliable travelling through mostly clean and well-maintained stations - so they're not like a real train company.
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Having heard that people will be able to use mobile phones on the underground and beam in TV + Radio signals, I think the question is "What will it take to get me on the tube"?
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Living in Kirkstall in Leeds I am near the Leeds/Liverpool canal.On a sunny day it is an absolute pleasure to straddle my bike,whizz down the hill and pick up the towpath that takes me right into the city centre.No jams,no parking and a bit of healthy exercise.Last time I tried a bus,probably over ten years ago,I thought my fillings were going to be shaken out.
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I took a taxi last night, or rather 2 o clock this morning from a bar near Warsaw airport to my house. It was 11 miles and it cost £3.66. There were millions of them too, I didn?t have to stagger around trying to flag down a pig-ugly black cab with a light on. He seemed to realise that as a taxi driver, it was his job to take me where I wanted to go, which he happily did without tutting, complaining, rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath because he?d rather be at home watching Eastenders. I hated black cabs, absolutely hated them. Is there any other country in the world where a taxi driver will actually say to you "Sorry mate I?m not going that way"
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