Car ownership: does it improve lives or is it detrimental?

[Peter Sarf]

AlbertBeale said:
The fact that London work journeys aren't all by means other than private cars doesn't mean that most of them couldn't be. Every car journey, even where it is helpful to the driver, is worsening life for the rest of us.



Occasionally I benefit from the use of a car (either in the sense of my driving one, or someone else's use of one); but pretty much every day I suffer from other people's use of cars. The balance is overwhelmingly one way, which is not to say that they would never be used in an ideal world, but their use (and indeed ownership) would be very rare. NB: I don't count taxis as equivalent to cars in this respect - a certain (probably small) level of taxi use would in my reckoning be counted as part of the necessary public transport system.

I did some calculations on an old couples car use and it became clear that it was overwhelmingly cheaper for them to use a taxi rather than use their car. Indeed they were risking the battery being flat on the car on te rare occasions they needed it !.

I think another big problem is that we have evolved a lifestyle that relies on cars. To get round that we need to demolish all of the out of town shopping/leisure centres and get them concentrated back in town centres where public transport leads.

 

[nlogax]

I think another big problem is that we have evolved a lifestyle that relies on cars. To get round that we need to demolish all of the out of town shopping/leisure centres and get them concentrated back in town centres where public transport leads.

With the dearth of sustainable and profitable stores on our high streets over the last decade now is probably the time to consider reintroducing those out of town companies to the high street. Hand over the brownfield sites to housing companies.

 

[Bletchleyite]

NB: I don't count taxis as equivalent to cars in this respect

Why not? A taxi is a private car while you're using it, it just so happens you hire it for a short period and it comes with a driver.

My experience of supermarket deliveries is hit and miss. It can be useful, but equally having someone else choose your stuff for you has drawbacks (short use-by dates, bruised fruit and veg, etc). And that's before we get onto substitutions, or the challenge of getting a slot when you want one.

That's a fair point. The model I've used in the past is to have deliveries of "packaged" items once a month and to walk to the local Co-op for fresh food as needed throughout the month - that means less of an issue. Substitutions can vary, yes, though I've only rarely had stupid ones. Since Covid, though, I've just shopped at the Co-op and only once been to a large supermarket (Waitrose). Getting slots in a normal situation I've never had a great issue, though that may vary locally.

I've spent time without a car when I was single, both in Newcastle and London, and it was fine. Newcastle is blessed by a good market in the city centre so supermarket shopping wasn't so essential, and a bus from my house went to Aldi for the rest. And London has excellent public transport, again with a bus from the big Tesco to my house.

I only got a car once I moved to MK, and had originally intended not to have one, but the layout of the place just isn't public transport suitable - unless you want to go to the centre or the arbitrary other end of your local route journeys end up easily taking 2-2.5 hours that would be 10 minutes by car, often even slower than walking. That said, I was very anti using taxis in the days when the industry was much less professional, you'd phone and they might or might not turn up and everything would be "5 minutes" and they'd never have change. With apps and card payment the game has changed completely. The main thing that made me buy a car was that I was getting back issues from the old breadvans crashing over the massive speed bumps.

When I was a student I didn't have one, but I did borrow one of my parents' cars when they were on holiday, it was useful to be able to do a big shop with it (delivery wasn't a thing back then). That was in Manchester which does have reasonable public transport, though at the time it wasn't as good as Liverpool (Metrolink of course has been somewhat transformed in recent years).

For me, if you're childless and in a big city you don't need a car. If either of those don't apply, the flexibility of a car outweighs the cost.

Probably true.

 

[Butts]

I think the best thing about having a car is knowing that you can be mobile within minutes to deal with any eventuality that involves travel.

This is particularly prevalent in the small hours where public transport may not be an option.

 

[JohnMcL7]

A few years ago I bought a diesel car with a DPF which wasn't great for short journeys so I decided to get a bike to cover my short journeys to avoid DPF problems. It was a hassle initially but once my fitness improved and I became used to it I started to prefer taking the bike and now I rarely drive the car and mostly use the bike. I still find the car handy for carrying the MTBs to go further afield or the dog and the running costs of the car are low. I've looked into hiring or using a car club but aside from the hassle of getting the hire car, it's usually not cheap to hire a big high spec estate and I find it stressful driving a rental car since I always worry someone is going to scrape it plus I wouldn't want to stick a muddy MTB or muddy spaniel in a rental car but it's fine for my car.

 

[The Ham]

I think the best thing about having a car is knowing that you can be mobile within minutes to deal with any eventuality that involves travel.

This is particularly prevalent in the small hours where public transport may not be an option.

Which is where car clubs can cover many if those situations (especially at odd hours).

Likewise taxis can help out at their quieter times quite quickly.

Although I do have one question, how often do you find yourself needing to do this?

 

[Bletchleyite]

A few years ago I bought a diesel car with a DPF which wasn't great for short journeys so I decided to get a bike to cover my short journeys to avoid DPF problems. It was a hassle initially but once my fitness improved and I became used to it I started to prefer taking the bike and now I rarely drive the car and mostly use the bike. I still find the car handy for carrying the MTBs to go further afield or the dog and the running costs of the car are low. I've looked into hiring or using a car club but aside from the hassle of getting the hire car, it's usually not cheap to hire a big high spec estate and I find it stressful driving a rental car since I always worry someone is going to scrape it plus I wouldn't want to stick a muddy MTB or muddy spaniel in a rental car but it's fine for my car.

I have a rule that if I can't afford to pay for the hirer's collision damage waiver insurance (not one of the pay and claim ones), I can't afford to hire the car. It's zero stress then, if you bump it they don't care.

FWIW, if I had to choose between car and pushbike I'd choose pushbike, but it's not overly likely for that choice to arise in that way, indeed I can't think of any way in which that sort of choice would arise because pushbikes are very cheap and if you had nowhere else to store one you could store it in the car!

 

[JamesT]

After writing off my car towards the end of last year I did consider staying car-less. My commute is bike or bus so the main use of the car is shopping and the occasional trip.
Like others, for me it's the convenience of being able to do things without planning them massively in advance. Covid somewhat exacerbated the downsides of supermarket deliveries when you can't rely on being able to get one within a few days. Trips I might do to the retail park on the other side of town or the sports centre become an hour long trip in the bus (with a change) instead of under 20 minutes in the car.
If my nearest car club was closer than a mile away I would have very seriously considered not replacing the car. There is a traditional car hire place closer, but it feels like an awful lot of hassle to do that when I might only need it for an hour in the evening.
So a couple of weeks ago after the garages reopened I did buy myself a car. It's fairly new so I'm hoping to get at least 10 years out of it by which time maybe local transport will have changed completely. I didn't do any real sums on whether hiring and deliveries would work out cheaper than owning, just that I was comfortable with the costs of ownership to give me the flexibility I want.

 

[JohnMcL7]

I have a rule that if I can't afford to pay for the hirer's collision damage waiver insurance (not one of the pay and claim ones), I can't afford to hire the car. It's zero stress then, if you bump it they don't care.

It's not the cost that concerns me but the hassle from it, my sister hired a car and paid for the damage waiver but had months of hassle when the hire company supplied a faulty car and blamed my sister for it. At least with my own car it's something I can deal with myself with the age of the car minor damage isn't much of an issue nor is making a mess of the interior.

 

[Tom B]

Again, as with many of these threads, it depends. When I lived in inner London, I did not have a car for a long time. I was signed up with zipcar who are a spot-hire firm, you book for x number of hours and pick the car up from the street. This was useful to do things like days out, large shops etc.

The costs of motoring depend on many factors. Some people are tied into these leasing deals and paying £300 odd a month for a car and then getting stung for damage etc. I paid £300 for my car upfront - if it gets damaged, I choose whether to repair it to perfection, or whether to touch up/make do.

Insurance, VED and deprecation are the big costs - others may be significant at the time (eg tyres) but not need doing regularly. an MoT can be had for £40 and the parts for an annual service are in the £40 mark too.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Which is where car clubs can cover many if those situations (especially at odd hours).

Likewise taxis can help out at their quieter times quite quickly.

Although I do have one question, how often do you find yourself needing to do this?

As with most of this thread, 'it all depends'.

In a rural area there is no real scope for car clubs as far as I am aware.

There are a couple of local individual taxis. If you want one at school run time or if someone else has booked them first - Tough!

Ironically I managed without a car well into my twenties having joined BR as a teenager. Then I got a new posting and turned up to start. "Here are the keys to the response van you'll be sharing..." Oops! Job had been advertised with the "must be able to drive" bit missing. BR kindly paid for a crash course of driving lessons. Just after I had passed the local train service was slashed, making it impossible to travel for my shifts or enjoy a social life. Immediate car purchase essential. Never looked back.

 

[infobleep]

Car ownership is needed by some and if my brother did not drive or own a car, I would lose the help I get to shift stuff.

However if some people can get away without owning a car then that is good. So I feel some need to own a car but not everyone.

Obviously those that drive need to help those that don't but hopefully those that don't can return the favour in other ways.

 

[xotGD]

When the non-car owner starts talking about cost of ownership, the person with the top of the range BMW or Mercedes isn't listening. Otherwise they'd be in a 10 year old Corsa

 

[Doctor Fegg]

For me, if you're childless and in a big city you don't need a car. If either of those don't apply, the flexibility of a car outweighs the cost.

We live in a tiny town (population 3000, but with a railway station) and have a kid. It's a close call.

Child-wise, the main advantage of the car is that it makes it easy to go to the local wildlife park and places like that at weekends. But most of what we need is either here in our town, or reachable easily by bus or train.

As it happens, Mrs Fegg works somewhere with no feasible bus/train service, so we have one (very small) car. If she worked somewhere that was reachable by train, I suspect we might sell the car and just use taxis or similar for the few times we needed them.

 

[Ianno87]

We live in a tiny town (population 3000, but with a railway station) and have a kid. It's a close call.

Child-wise, the main advantage of the car is that it makes it easy to go to the local wildlife park and places like that at weekends. But most of what we need is either here in our town, or reachable easily by bus or train.

As it happens, Mrs Fegg works somewhere with no feasible bus/train service, so we have one (very small) car. If she worked somewhere that was reachable by train, I suspect we might sell the car and just use taxis or similar for the few times we needed them.

With my kids, I prefer public transport where practical as it's a really good opportunity to interact with them on the journey, and help them learn about the world, people, etc.

But sometimes, the convenience of the car is hard to argue with! It certainly helps with socially distancing them at the moment (2/3 year olds don't really understand the concept...)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Can I enter this discussion at a somewhat late stage to put forward my wife (78) and I (75) as examples of people who lived from 2004 to earlier this year from a very rural part of Cheshire East, two miles away from the nearest bus stop and railway station. I gave up driving after my stroke in July 2012 and my wife was advised to stop driving on the onset of her Vascular Dementia.

There must be vast swathes of country areas where no railway station nor bus services now are available to residents of villages and hamlets, where the use of a car is an essential feature of life, in such circumstances.

 

[Tetchytyke]

We live in a tiny town (population 3000, but with a railway station) and have a kid. It's a close call.

Small market towns where you can walk to the shops and walk to school/nursery are an interesting one, not one I'd considered. I suppose it depends on the town and what sort of links with the outside world it has. Those with railway stations with a relatively frequent train service are usually OK, others that lost their train services are often more on a limb.

For me in suburban North Tyneside, the issue was that the nursery for my toddler (right next to the hospital!) was on a bus route from my house, but one that only ran every 30 minutes. So a 15-minute drive home-nursery-work would have taken me at least an hour, if not more, on the bus because of the waiting around.

 

[Ianno87]

Can I enter this discussion at a somewhat late stage to put forward my wife (78) and I (75) as examples of people who lived from 2004 to earlier this year from a very rural part of Cheshire East, two miles away from the nearest bus stop and railway station. I gave up driving after my stroke in July 2012 and my wife was advised to stop driving on the onset of her Vascular Dementia.

There must be vast swathes of country areas where no railway station nor bus services now are available to residents of villages and hamlets, where the use of a car is an essential feature of life, in such circumstances.

Large amount of Cambridgeshire villages, for starters. Arguably, Cambridge's Park & Rides is designed for car users from these areas to access the city centre (for example)

 

[UP13]

We have a 10 year old 3 door Corsa. My wife got it when she was a single mum with just my step son. We are now a family of 5 and with two iso fix car seats we can't all fit in the back. My wife and I discussed getting whether to get a bigger car or not or even be a two car family.

We concluded that it was quite nice not having to pay off a car at the end of each month, which we had been doing for years. We all rarely go in the car at the same time. Both sets of grandparents live close by. My parents are in walking distance, my in laws are a short drive and I cycle behind the car or my wife or myself start walking it and the other one picks them up after dropping off the kids. It might sound like a faff but it is exercise and preferable to coughing up a load of money for a new car.

The only time we actually need a big car is once a year for holiday and it is a Lot cheaper to hire a car for a fortnight than buy a car. Last year we spent two weeks in North Devon and hired a diesel automatic Seat Alhambra with a whole range of mod cons. It was easily the best thing I have ever driven.

In 2 or 3 years time when my step son passes his driving test, we'll give him the Corsa and buy a new car.

 

[The Ham]

Can I enter this discussion at a somewhat late stage to put forward my wife (78) and I (75) as examples of people who lived from 2004 to earlier this year from a very rural part of Cheshire East, two miles away from the nearest bus stop and railway station. I gave up driving after my stroke in July 2012 and my wife was advised to stop driving on the onset of her Vascular Dementia.

There must be vast swathes of country areas where no railway station nor bus services now are available to residents of villages and hamlets, where the use of a car is an essential feature of life, in such circumstances.

Whilst there's a lot of areas where there's small areas of population, the overall numbers in such areas are fairly small.

The UK has about 85% of its population living in urban areas, that is anywhere with a population of greater than 10,000.

I've lived in places with a population of 4,500 and 8,000 and they both have bus services, good facilities and the larger has a reasonable train services.

As such there's likely to be a good proportion of the 15% who live in rural locations where they either have a passable public transport offering or where for many or would be possible to cycle to a location where they can access most services that they need each week and quite probably most months.

Now I can be sure that there's a lot of people who live in urban areas who raise the issue of those in rural areas as to why car ownership is needed, how can I be so sure? Well 80% of all our travel is undertaken by car, if it was only related to rural travel (even allowing for those who live in urban areas and work in rural areas) the figure would be closer to 20% than it is.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Whilst there's a lot of areas where there's small areas of population, the overall numbers in such areas are fairly small. As such there's likely to be a good proportion of the 15% who live in rural locations where they either have a passable public transport offering or where for many or would be possible to cycle to a location where they can access most services that they need each week and quite probably most months.

I strongly object to your somewhat generalised statement about rural locations having a passable public transport offering. Counties such as Cheshire East have had no compunction whatsoever to taking the proverbial axe to subsidised bus services over recent years that once served local villages and hamlets. Many elderly residents of these areas would not take kindly to your suggestion of cycling, especially in heavy rain showers or when the snow lies on the ground "deep and crisp and even".

 

[Jamesrob637]

My car currently makes me relatively happy as it's mine i.e not on finance so I only have to pay maintenance and tax/insurance. However it needed the air-conditioning regassing today (just in time for warmer weather ahead!) and my local garage advised me that "it might die again in a few months." If this is the case I probably won't bother having it regassed until spring 2021. Older cars are nice to not have to be financed but you should be aware of occasional additional costs that you wouldn't usually expect to witness from a newer vehicle. Air-conditioning isn't just about the lovely cool breeze in summer: it's a fantastic demister, much more effective than the fans themselves!

 

[Jamesrob637]

I strongly object to your somewhat generalised statement about rural locations having a passable public transport offering. Counties such as Cheshire East have had no compunction whatsoever to taking the proverbial axe to subsidised bus services over recent years that once served local villages and hamlets. Many elderly residents of these areas would not take kindly to your suggestion of cycling, especially in heavy rain showers or when the snow lies on the ground "deep and crisp and even".

Completely agree. The 88 bus ring a bell?

 

[Crossover]

For me personally, it is an improvement for sure.

As things are, I need it to get to work (which would otherwise be a 15 min walk, a good hour on the train, 15-20 min tram and 20 min walk - in the car its 40 mins on a good day) and that's before any possible need to travel around our sites (we have pool cars, but they are hard to come by and means you need to finish the day where you started, which isn't always practical). Under normal (non-covid) circumstances it also enables me to get to (and mainly, from) events I partake in locally, mainly a drama group where public transport would mean a lot of clock watching etc.

What arguably doesn't help is the public transport provision we have - we are reasonably well connected really with a railway station a walk away, but whilst there are, for example, 2tph to the nearest large town, they are within 5 minutes of each other and in recent years we have gone from having 4 bus routes run nearby (with various frequencies) to now having one which is half hourly in "normal" times and costs a small fortune.

I think it would be one of those things that currently would be difficult to do without, if just for the convenience factor as much as anything else (even if ignoring the work use)

 

[The Ham]

I strongly object to your somewhat generalised statement about rural locations having a passable public transport offering. Counties such as Cheshire East have had no compunction whatsoever to taking the proverbial axe to subsidised bus services over recent years that once served local villages and hamlets. Many elderly residents of these areas would not take kindly to your suggestion of cycling, especially in heavy rain showers or when the snow lies on the ground "deep and crisp and even".

I didn't say that every rural location has a passable public transport option, I said a good proportion of the 15% population which live in rural locations (i.e. those places with the larger populations would have likely have passable public transport and for every place with 9,000 people there's got to be 9 places with a population of 1,000 just to balance it, let alone make it so that there's not a good proportion of the population in rural areas with passable public transport).

Clearly that still leaves a lot of places which won't have passable public transport, however the point is that the total population who do have access to public transport is the vast majority of the population.

The fact that there's areas where that's the case doesn't stop that from being true, however it does appear to be that there's many who live in urban areas which use it as an excuse as to why there can't be more incentives to use public transport by there being more of a tax on car ownership.

As to with regards to cycling again I didn't say everyone, I said many. Again there often appears to be much made about what about old people, bad weather, etc.

However to get to HALF the average distance cycled (total distance divided by the total population) in 1950 we'd need to increase cycling rates by a factor of 2.4.

The reason I select the target of half is so to allow for the increase in average age over that timeframe. As such there is a lot more cycling which many could do but they don't because they'll rather drive their cars 600m than walk to take their child to school only to return home again.

The 1950's average was nearly 1.1km/day, it's currently 225m/day. With those current levels a few km at a weekend during the the summer months reaches that amount.

With the advent of e-bikes then the ability to user bikes for more travel should be made easier.

As to bad weather, that too is often over rated. With the number of wet days that even very wet places in the UK seeing is only about 1/2 the days. However even that isn't the full picture as several wet days only have very light rain, with several more will be limited to an hour or so of rainfall. As such the risk of actually getting wet when undertaking daily tasks is fairly low, even with poor clothing.

With reasonable clothing (I never remember who is accredited to but it's very true there's no such thing as bad weather just bad clothing) even very heavy rain isn't a problem to be out in for 1/4 an hour, whilst good clothing would extend that time further.

Of course there'll be those who won't be able to cycle, however in the greater scheme of the total population the overall numbers aren't going to be overly significant compared to the numbers who could do so and don't.

 

[Dr Hoo]

These content references to the mount of cycling 70 years ago are all very nostalgic but of little relevance to the present. I am sure that a lot of it was to and from nearby jobs in factories, etc., or to education when many went to their local school until 15.

Current patterns of residence, employment and education are nothing like that era and the transport task is far more complex.

(I am well aware that other changes, such as remote working and learning, may yet provide scope to reduce car travel again but that isn't much to do with cycling either.)

 

[talltim]

I grew up in a family without a car, but I’ve had one since I was 17. Although I’ve not considered not having one I have thought about having an electric car and many of the same issues come up.
The instances I really need to use a car for are exactly the sort of things that I wouldn’t want to use a hire car for, going to the tip and going camping.
can you imagine having to drive 300 miles back from holiday, then unload the car and get it spotless after 2 weeks with two kids and a dog in the back so you could return it without incurring another day’s fees?

 

[The Ham]

These content references to the mount of cycling 70 years ago are all very nostalgic but of little relevance to the present. I am sure that a lot of it was to and from nearby jobs in factories, etc., or to education when many went to their local school until 15.

Current patterns of residence, employment and education are nothing like that era and the transport task is far more complex.

(I am well aware that other changes, such as remote working and learning, may yet provide scope to reduce car travel again but that isn't much to do with cycling either.)

Which is very much why I didn't compare to 100% of the figure from 1950 (395 km), rather I opted for half that figure (~200)

Even if we go for 1/3 (132km) then we'd need to increase cycling rates by 60%. However that would would be an average of 2.5 km a week, so wouldn't need many people doing doing that each way to work (which is fairly easy, especially given that e-bikes often have a range of more than that on a single charge) to cover for those who do a few km each month.

WFH is likely to actually increase the use of walking/cycling/public transport whilst residing overall travel, as an example:

Someone doing 10,000 miles a year:
6,000 a year for work (~13 miles each way), so that stops, leaving 4,000 miles.
Of that 4,000 up to 1,000 get cut (more online shopping), ~1,500 miles by public transport and ~1,000 miles of walking/cycling and ~500 miles by hire car.

Even where there's two cars in a household and that gets reduced to one car there's likely to be a lot more walking/cycling as the ability to drive short distances as the car would be in use.

 

[najaB]

can you imagine having to drive 300 miles back from holiday, then unload the car and get it spotless after 2 weeks with two kids and a dog in the back so you could return it without incurring another day’s fees?

Though, one extra day's rental vs the costs incurred owning a car... still works out cheaper to rent.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Even where there's two cars in a household and that gets reduced to one car there's likely to be a lot more walking/cycling as the ability to drive short distances as the car would be in use.

I note there is more than one company that currently runs TV adverts for residential multi-car insurance.