How do people afford a car?

[Adam Williams]

Are you from Warwickshire originally or did you leave a life you already had in the South East to go there?

I didn't grow up in Warwickshire, no (I did my degree @ Warwick and have stuck around so far). And yes, I've previously lived in the South East.

 

[ar10642]

I didn't grow up in Warwickshire, no. And yes, I've previously lived in the South East.

How was it leaving everyone and everything behind? I hate paying stupid money to live here but it's home.

No. Not what I said. Try reading my posts rather than misrepresenting me..

Nah I think I've heard all I need to hear from you.

 

[Adam Williams]

How was it leaving everyone and everything behind? I hate paying stupid money to live here but it's home

That's definitely tougher, and I don't think "just move" is a reasonable response to anyone who is in that position. Sometimes optimising purely for a financial goal is foolish.

My own friends & family are dotted around now anyway, so I've not got as strong ties to one particular place - for me it was my place of work that mostly had me living there (clients in the City...). It probably helps that I didn't really miss the lifestyle.

It does suck when, through no fault of their own, people's homes have such a high CoL. Without making this thread too political, I don't think it really has to be that way..

It didn't sound like strong family ties were OP's main concern with the prospect of living somewhere else though, admittedly - rather jobs and facilities

 

[DelayRepay]

If I could find £300 insurance I would have already bought a car given how bad the connectivity in Bournemouth to the west or north-west (i.e. in the direction of Bristol) is. The X3 bus isn't a useful railway connection at Salisbury for onward connection to the west.

I get £300 insurance (cheaper really, because it includes breakdown cover) because I have a clean driving record. No history of claims, accidents or motoring offences. Unfortunately if you don't have a no-claims history you will pay a lot more because you represent a higher risk to the insurer.

And how long is your commute? If the £4.80 bus is an express bus running direct on motorways, or a combination of frequent motorway buses having the interchange at a service station, it is a great value since driving itself is a nuisance.

My commute by car is 15 minutes. It used to be a bit longer but there's less traffic since Covid. On the bus it is supposed to take 40 minutes because it goes round the houses. Even with less traffic it's usually late.

I will add, though, that before I moved here, I spent 12 years commuting into London. I enjoyed the time I spent in London, but I don't miss those journeys.

A good public transport system is a system which even the rich who owns luxury homes and cars will use, such as the one in Hong Kong. (The rich in Hong Kong, although having cars, use buses, minibuses, or taxis as their main mode of transport because it's so convenient to hail one at the doorstep)

I don't know about Hong Kong, but London meets that definition. I know working from home has changed the world, but look how many bankers used to get off the tube at, erm, Bank, and Canary Wharf.

That will mean I will need to pay £4084 for my annual commute to Kentish Town, more if I need London Terminals. The reason is that only London can provide the facilities (apart from the beach) and the lifestyle I want.

But if you can't afford to live there, then it won't provide the lifestyle you want. You won't be able to enjoy the city if you have no money.

And it will also limit my ability to find jobs as well. By living 20 minutes away on fast trains from St Pancras, anywhere not on the direct Thameslink line will be out of reach for a reasonable commute time when transfer times, onward waiting times, time needed to get to/from the station is added, as travelling within London can take a long time compared to travelling into London.

What do you think is a reasonable commute? When I worked in London, my commute was normally about 30 minutes but that's because I lived in St Albans and worked near Farringdon. I think I had one of the shortest commutes in my office. I was often got home before people who actually lived in London.

Problem is warehouse jobs also need to be done in the South East and they don't really pay any more than they do up north, which is why the whole "simply move somewhere cheaper" argument you often hear isn't particularly useful. Not everyone wants to leave all their friend and family behind in order to get cheaper housing costs either.

Yes, I get this. I was simply giving the example to demonstrate that £30k is not a poverty wage. When I moved to London my salary was £26k. That was in 2008, so obviously has to be seen in context. To start with, I rented a room in someone's house in Bromley. Not the best house or area to live, but you cut your cloth to fit. I wouldn't have been able to afford a place of my own, and I had no need for a car.

 

[A0wen]

Do they have fuel consumption under 6 L / 100 km and ULEZ-compliant? If not they will not be competitive with train fares.

ULEZ with a petrol engine means Euro 4 compliant, which is generally a post 2006 car, so almost anything post 2010.

6l / 100 km is about 40mpg in English.

Pretty much any < 1.3 litre engined car will do that - at least as far as their published figures go. What you actually get depends on how you drive it and your journeys. A steady run on a dual carriageway will give better consumption than going stop start across a town.

 

[telstarbox]

That's easily achievable in a small car on an intercity journey.

 

[philthetube]

So look at something a bit different - the C1/108/Aygo are very popular with young drivers which means they are more likely to be involved in a bump.

I am 62, insure a C1 and paid £180 last year.

Pay no road tax and the car cost me £7.000 new 7 years ago, should have been 8 but a long story.

It has had 2 new tyres, needs 4 more soon and I have paid for service and MOT, nothing else


the only other costs have been petrol and the odd drop of oil, plus the odd £15.00 in and out clean, have'nt worked it out but guess around 20p a mile, deff no where near 50p.

 

[miklcct]

This is absolutely an opinion you're entitled to hold, but the vast majority of folks who quite happily live outside the "triangle bounded by Hove, London and Dover" and live happy, fulfilling lives and earn a reasonable wage are going to roll their eyes at these assertions.

Some of the figures mentioned in the OP have already been picked apart by other forum members, but I think the perspective expressed in the first post suggests a very short-sighted view on what it's really like to live outside of the south east.

Places like Warwickshire are actually pretty decent, for example, and my house even cost less than 400k! Do I like visiting London? Sure, and I can acknowledge it does have a lot to offer in terms of night-life, things to do, shopping etc.

Also, as a software engineer, I'm surprised you're concerned about the physical location of potential job opportunities when there are so many remote or mostly-remote opportunities.

The reason I landed at Bournemouth last year was that I was training for a life challenge and my friend advised me either Dover or Bournemouth. Bournemouth is the less evil among the two places since there is absolutely nothing in Dover. Unfortunately, due to a number of reasons, including pandemic closures before moving to the UK and the lack of facilities in Bournemouth afterwards, I failed the challenge in last September as my training was far from what I should have done. And after the failure I pissed off everyone I knew in Bournemouth.

I planned to move away afterwards but, as a coincidence, I found a job in my desired industry and the company happened to be in Bournemouth. That job paid much less than the market rate in London, but more than the elsewhere market rate, and a car would be affordable for me with that salary (that salary could afford luxury outside London, but would just offer a basic level of lifestyle in London). I looked into options but didn't get one after I made my calculations, and joined a car club instead.

However, despite I was earning salary, my qualify of life was so low as there is nothing in Bournemouth for me to enjoy apart from the beach, and my body isn't strong enough to swim for hours multiple times a week in the sea during the winter. A major part of my leisure is doing orienteering races, which, by its very nature, requires travelling to different places. This is why I insist in choosing a place with good transport connection. I bought train tickets week over week, and they are certainly cheaper than the fuel cost alone of driving a car. Note that it isn't possible for me to use an electric vehicle because of the inability to charge the car in a rural area while I'm out racing, and the range of a typical EV isn't enough for me to have a complete day out into e.g. Sussex, Berkshire, etc. from Bournemouth (also as my home doesn't have parking with charger I will need to put it at a public charger, and pick it up again after a few hours which is a major inconvenience, especially after a long day out in the countryside returning home late night).

The area in Bournemouth with the best public transport is the section between the town centre and rail station, including Lansdowne - nearly all buses from the town centre pass through Lansdowne to the rail station, then continue somewhere else, and the existence of university campus / accommodation guarantees ridership. So local travel was never a problem for me using bus and cycle hire, but unfortunately regional travel is a real problem, given the dominance of the railway in the UK for long-distance travel and the late starting time on Sundays.

Unlike popular opinion on this forum, I regard train travel in the UK is cheap as I travel on off-peak and advance purchase fares using a Railcard, and a lot of my regional travel goes via Barnham which is a real bargain. Train fares for me are definitely cheaper than fuel cost if I drove instead.

However, the regional public transport connection from Bournemouth, or in the west of the country in general, is so bad that effectively I couldn't get to most races in the South West, and I had to travel further on the Coastway (using cheap via Barnham tickets) to do races in the South East. For example, if I use public transport on a Sunday from Bournemouth, the first available itinerary will get me to Castle Cary after midday. There is a direct express bus route from Bournemouth to Salisbury but it doesn't make a useful connection to any onward train connections to Bristol, and the very few coaches don't run at a useful time, and I have to waste time by going through Southampton instead. For the most important races, such as the British Championship, if I really want to do it I am forced to hire a car which is costly even that the location is normally reachable by public transport (but it is still less costly compared to car ownership).

Furthermore, if I want to have a longer trip, it's simply impossible (or very costly) while having a full time job if I live in Bournemouth, because Bournemouth Airport is a dead airport with nearly no air services in the winter, and it serves mostly holiday beach destinations (who actually wants to fly to a beach resort when Bournemouth is itself a beach resort?!) instead of domestic city destinations (such as Edinburgh), and Southampton Airport can't host low-cost airlines due to its short runway, which Loganair can easily charge £300 for a flight to Edinburgh as there is no competition, 4 times the cost from Gatwick. And the lack of high-speed rail connection to Manchester means it isn't possible to complete a journey on land to Scotland in the same evening after I get off work on Friday, which, depending on destination, if it is further than Edinburgh the only way to get there on time for a Saturday race is to fly expensive Loganair from Southampton, stay a night at Edinburgh, and continue travel on Saturday morning, or go to London in the evening and use the expensive Caledonian Sleeper from Euston. My trip to Dundee for races wouldn't be possible if I didn't lose my job, as I had to travel from daytime on Friday to get there in time unless I use the sleeper, and using air would be cumbersome and involve multiple undesirable connections with little time / fare advantage compared to the freedom of a super off-peak train ticket straight from London. Note that this is irrelevant if I have a car or not, as the journey is too long to be made using a car.

Although my job was in my desired industry, I actually felt relieved when I lost it as it would mean the end of my crap Bournemouth life. I believe it will be possible for me to do everything I want while having a full time job in London, which isn't possible in Bournemouth. After I move to London I will first complete a train timetable website first, then depending on my situation find another job or start a business.

I get £300 insurance (cheaper really, because it includes breakdown cover) because I have a clean driving record. No history of claims, accidents or motoring offences. Unfortunately if you don't have a no-claims history you will pay a lot more because you represent a higher risk to the insurer.

I also don't have a history of claims, accidents or offences, because I have no history at all.

My commute by car is 15 minutes. It used to be a bit longer but there's less traffic since Covid. On the bus it is supposed to take 40 minutes because it goes round the houses. Even with less traffic it's usually late.

That's pretty bad. If the car commute is 15 minutes and the bus commute is under 30 minutes (including waiting time) the bus will have a great value.

I will add, though, that before I moved here, I spent 12 years commuting into London. I enjoyed the time I spent in London, but I don't miss those journeys.


I don't know about Hong Kong, but London meets that definition. I know working from home has changed the world, but look how many bankers used to get off the tube at, erm, Bank, and Canary Wharf.

Thanks for pointing out that.

But if you can't afford to live there, then it won't provide the lifestyle you want. You won't be able to enjoy the city if you have no money.

Jobs in London commonly pays £50k - £60k or even more for my occupation, while elsewhere in the country £35k - £45k is the norm.

What do you think is a reasonable commute? When I worked in London, my commute was normally about 30 minutes but that's because I lived in St Albans and worked near Farringdon. I think I had one of the shortest commutes in my office. I was often got home before people who actually lived in London.

You are lucky to have your office at Farringdon (the centre of the railway), which makes a commute by rail from Luton / St Albans actually feasible. However, by living at St Albans, you are limiting your commute to the Thameslink line, which ruled out potential job opportunities in e.g. Canary Wharf (at least before the Elizabeth line opens).

 

[DelayRepay]

You are lucky to have your office at Farringdon (the centre of the railway), which makes a commute by rail from Luton / St Albans actually feasible. However, by living at St Albans, you are limiting your commute to the Thameslink line, which ruled out potential job opportunities in e.g. Canary Wharf (at least before the Elizabeth line opens).

I don't live in St Albans, or work in Farringdon any more. I still work for the same company but moved to another part of the UK. To bust the London myth, I actually get paid more money now and have lower costs.

But I could have taken a job in Canary Wharf. Plenty of people from St Albans work there. And plenty of people who work in Canary Wharf have much longer journeys than the one from St Albans!

 

[skyhigh]

I also don't have a history of claims, accidents or offences, because I have no history at all.

Which to an insurer is little better than a poor history. They have no evidence to suggest that you will not be a terrible driver and have loads of incidents, so their risk is higher, which equals you paying more until you build history. It's a little bit similar to how a bank won't offer you a good rate loan or mortgage with absolutely no credit history.

£800 a month for a 3 bed terrace house?! That's insanely cheap! Is it in somewhere which will take hours of high-speed train to reach London? Even in Bournemouth this price can only get me at most 1 bed, and in London, probably at most a studio. I'm already looking at a very large part of the South East, approximately the triangle formed by London, Poole and Dover, and Bournemouth is already in the lower end of the prices.

You say it's in a decent location? Where's that?

A decent location in Leeds. Yes, it does take several hours to get to London. But I work in Leeds and have everything I need up here, so it doesn't matter to me.

For where the OP is looking (Zone 3 Thameslink, so Hendon or Cricklewood) that's pretty much the going rate.

That's fair enough - I got the impression from the post I quoted @miklcct was suggesting £1200 per month for a one bedroom flat was typical for the UK as a whole, which I don't think is the case.

£50 a year in parking is, again, on the low side. It very much depends on how much driving you do and where you tend to park. If you only go to the town centre once a month and only pay a few pounds for parking each time, it's perfectly feasible. Whereas if you often park at railway stations or city centres where parking is expensive, it will indeed only last you a short time. Either way, it is unlikely to be a substantial contributor to the cost of driving.

I'd agree it's on the low side but I wouldn't say it's atypical for my area. Free parking in my town if you're willing to park a 5 min walk away from the main shops, free parking at work, free parking at home. So I really only pay for parking when I go somewhere a bit further away.

 

[johncrossley]

You are lucky to have your office at Farringdon (the centre of the railway), which makes a commute by rail from Luton / St Albans actually feasible. However, by living at St Albans, you are limiting your commute to the Thameslink line, which ruled out potential job opportunities in e.g. Canary Wharf (at least before the Elizabeth line opens).

It is not a great hassle to change at London Bridge for the Jubilee Line. Crossrail makes it even easier, though.

 

[ar10642]

That's definitely tougher, and I don't think "just move" is a reasonable response to anyone who is in that position. Sometimes optimising purely for a financial goal is foolish.

My own friends & family are dotted around now anyway, so I've not got as strong ties to one particular place - for me it was my place of work that mostly had me living there (clients in the City...). It probably helps that I didn't really miss the lifestyle.

It does suck when, through no fault of their own, people's homes have such a high CoL. Without making this thread too political, I don't think it really has to be that way..

It didn't sound like strong family ties were OP's main concern with the prospect of living somewhere else though, admittedly - rather jobs and facilities

If we moved up north somewhere (I basically don't know anywhere or anybody up there so it hardly matters where) I could probably save £600 - 700 on rent a month. But the cost would be having no support network, no friends, no family, nothing. It would mean dragging my kids out of a school they love and them not seeing their friends either.

Not sure it's worth it just for the "dream" of owning a property personally.

Not sure people from the south would be popular if everyone started doing this and started pushing prices up in northern towns either.

 

[richw]

Before we can put a car on the road, we already need to pay insurance which, for the lowest-risk groups, already costs £700+ upwards per year.

Where did you get this figure?
My insurance is just under £200 a year for a small sized 2018 Hyundai, mid 30s male,

 

[Runningaround]

I don't know where the O.P works but I do hope his career leads to him getting into a position on the Minimum Wage board.

 

[miklcct]

Where did you get this figure?
My insurance is just under £200 a year for a small sized 2018 Hyundai, mid 30s male,

I tried to get quotes with my information (Citroen C1, 28 male, 3 years of licence, town centre with outdoor off-road parking, no prior driving history).

 

[thejuggler]

If people really worried about the fixed costs then we would see a different distribution of vehicle makes and models on our roads.

The 50p a mile isn't really a fallacy - it's an underlying representation of the truth that is largely ignored when many people make a purchasing decision on a private car.

I had my last car 6 years and about 45,000 miles. It had 10k miles when I bought it at a year old.

I worked out how much it cost me based on all running costs, including depreciation (bought for £20k, traded for £11k), insurance (£250 ish a year), repairs and maintenance and an estimate for fuel based on average mpg and it was 50p a mile.

 

[Bletchleyite]

@miklcct - reading your long posts above I think you still have unrealistic expectations. Nobody in their right mind would try to get to Scotland for something like a race from Bournemouth after work on a Friday unless the Sleeper suited. Just book the Friday off and destress!

With regard to low income, I don't get where you get the idea that two incomes are not better than one. It just doesn't add up!

You are lucky to have your office at Farringdon (the centre of the railway), which makes a commute by rail from Luton / St Albans actually feasible. However, by living at St Albans, you are limiting your commute to the Thameslink line, which ruled out potential job opportunities in e.g. Canary Wharf (at least before the Elizabeth line opens).

Have I missed the news about the closure of the DLR and Jubilee line?

 

[Jozhua]

Speaking as someone who lives alone on a 'starter' professional salary - getting a car seems very daunting. The cost of learning to drive is very expensive if you can't get the experience with friends/family in their cars.

Very few of my friends are yet to get a licence. - that's coming from a small Derbyshire town. A lot of younger people are going to be skipping their licence with the cost of living crisis getting worse.

Personally, most of my journeys I do by pedal bike. I live near where I work and just shop frequently (kicked supermarket delivery as it is too expensive.)

Train/bus prices are rather painful. It's hard to really get anywhere without going over my weekly budget.

I agree. I have an app that reports the cost of my journeys based purely on the cost of the fuel I put in. It doesn't count anything else, which varies form user to user. So many factors at play, like my driving style that will decide how often I need to change tyres and brakes for example.

Short journeys also mean I'm rarely getting the best mpg, and my low mileage means I can't save the money needed on fuel to justify getting an EV (but my next car will be an EV, which will be more for convenience than anything else).

A car is essential to many, but also a luxury for many others and I can't see that changing. I've always said we need more carrots and less sticks. Make alternatives more enticing so people will change their habits voluntarily. People living in London are already well used to public transport and there's little to no stigma attached to using a bus, and many people can go without a car and just hire a car/van as needed.

We should be trying to find ways to replicate that in all other towns and cities as much as possible, and the Government talk big about improving rural bus services - but will it happen? And how do we get people to try them out in the first place?

Absolutely agree on adding more carrots.

The biggest one to begin with is fixing bus services. Making the fares/routes intelligible by someone who hasn't got a degree in it would be a good start!

Yes more than 80% of people have car access i.e. a car in their household, and of course many households have multiple cars (even if they only have two adults). The rationale isn't difficult to understand, it's that if you use your car for a whole year for basically everything you need, which is an option for almost everyone countrywide except for travel to Central London, it's going to add up cheaper than public transport fares plus taxi fares for a year, even if you use taxis very sparingly.

This has been explained politely several times now. The situation is a very disappointing one but that's just the way it is. Public expenditure on transport, and also to an extent the tax system has for decades worked to encourage driving and discourage using public transport. Fuel duty is today 6p per litre lower than it was in January 2011, but railway fares have risen by significantly more than CPI inflation during that time. It will be even worse next year. The price of rail services will continue rising at a much higher rate than general inflation and an even higher rate compared to wage growth, but the service will keep getting worse as a consequence of the cost cutting that's being imposed. This is before we've considered how poor nearly all bus services in England are outside of London.


I think it's more likely that the OP, although they have received a quite the number of polite explanations, just doesn't have any experience of living in the UK outside of the very small slice of England approximately between Bournemouth and London, which is much wealthier and often much more expensive than most of the rest of the country.

CPI + 1% on rail fares is frankly extortionate.

Unfortunately, it seems the answer to demand is raising prices, rather than adding capacity to get more people on the trains.

 

[miklcct]

@miklcct - reading your long posts above I think you still have unrealistic expectations. Nobody in their right mind would try to get to Scotland for something like a race from Bournemouth after work on a Friday unless the Sleeper suited. Just book the Friday off and destress!

With regard to low income, I don't get where you get the idea that two incomes are not better than one. It just doesn't add up!



Have I missed the news about the closure of the DLR and Jubilee line?

I'm sorry I've completely missed it when reading the map as I didn't look for anything on the opposite side of the river when Canary Wharf is on the North of Themes!

Speaking as someone who lives alone on a 'starter' professional salary - getting a car seems very daunting. The cost of learning to drive is very expensive if you can't get the experience with friends/family in their cars.

Very few of my friends are yet to get a licence. - that's coming from a small Derbyshire town. A lot of younger people are going to be skipping their licence with the cost of living crisis getting worse.

Personally, most of my journeys I do by pedal bike. I live near where I work and just shop frequently (kicked supermarket delivery as it is too expensive.)

Train/bus prices are rather painful. It's hard to really get anywhere without going over my weekly budget.

How's the cost to learn driving like here? I got my licence in Hong Kong and I budgeted HK$10000 (approx. £1000) for it (although I went a bit over budget as I took 3 attempts to pass my car licence and 2 attempts to pass my motorcycle licence)

 

[A0wen]

CPI + 1% on rail fares is frankly extortionate.

Unfortunately, it seems the answer to demand is raising prices, rather than adding capacity to get more people on the trains.

It really isn't when the costs need to be covered.

And "adding capacity" costs - so if you have a 3 car unit running at ~100% capacity, if you send out a 6 car unit you'll have doubled the fuel or electricity consumption, yet you'll struggle to double the usage in anything less than 5 years, which means for 4 years you'll have massively increased costs making matters worse, not better.

 

[miklcct]

It really isn't when the costs need to be covered.

And "adding capacity" costs - so if you have a 3 car unit running at ~100% capacity, if you send out a 6 car unit you'll have doubled the fuel or electricity consumption, yet you'll struggle to double the usage in anything less than 5 years, which means for 4 years you'll have massively increased costs making matters worse, not better.

The staffing cost, a major cost to operate the railway, won't double.

 

[johncrossley]

It really isn't when the costs need to be covered.

Everyone knows the railway needs paying for, but that is of little comfort to the end user who can't afford it, or simply finds the cost unacceptable. The alternative is to get the taxpayer to pay more of the bill like they do in other countries. Then at least the cost of the fare can be one less factor deterring people from using the train.

 

[Ken H]

The difference is Tesco make a *profit* from selling bog roll. The rail network is making a *loss* from most passenger tickets.

So Tesco when promoting items are taking a hit on their margin in the hope it will increase overall profit. But they're still making a profit.

With the rail network making a loss, you'd be making a bigger loss unless it stimulated enough demand to offset that. Alternatively you could actually *increase* fares, because a 5% fare increase might only result in a drop in demand of 2% meaning the overall income is higher.

You need to understand the elasticity. How many more people you get buying tickets for a percentage drop in price.

 

[Ken H]

Everyone knows the railway needs paying for, but that is of little comfort to the end user who can't afford it, or simply finds the cost unacceptable. The alternative is to get the taxpayer to pay more of the bill like they do in other countries. Then at least the cost of the fare can be one less factor deterring people from using the train.

So tax poor people to subsidise train travel for the better off. Hmm.

 

[ComUtoR]

Everyone knows the railway needs paying for, but that is of little comfort to the end user who can't afford it, or simply finds the cost unacceptable. The alternative is to get the taxpayer to pay more of the bill like they do in other countries. Then at least the cost of the fare can be one less factor deterring people from using the train.

They may know it needs paying for but they do not want to pay for it. The current strategy feels like they are doing the bare minimum to keep it running. Cut, cut , cut is the current mantra.

For taxpayers its even worse. Nobody wants to keep subsidising the railway and again, the mantra is to reduce the burden on the taxpayer and reduce subsidy. If there was no taxpayer subsidy and the customer had to pay then the ticket price would be astronomical.

 

[ar10642]

They may know it needs paying for but they do not want to pay for it. The current strategy feels like they are doing the bare minimum to keep it running. Cut, cut , cut is the current mantra.

For taxpayers its even worse. Nobody wants to keep subsidising the railway and again, the mantra is to reduce the burden on the taxpayer and reduce subsidy. If there was no taxpayer subsidy and the customer had to pay then the ticket price would be astronomical.

A decision needs to be made then. Make it affordable and useful to everyone or get rid of it. What's the point in the taxpayer forking out for a service that's been cut back so much as to be useless or costs so much that people don't use it?

 

[Foxhunter]

How do people here have their car insurance so cheap? If I can find £300 p.a. insurance I would have already bought a car when I lived in Bournemouth? I'm trying to get quotes of the lowest risk cars, 28 years old, living in town centre with off-road parking, 3 years of licence and no NCB. Nothing below £600.

There is so much I recognise here from my own days of first car ownership and living in London in the 1970's. Specifically on insurance I did what I think many did at the time, for the first 5 years of my motoring I bought Third Party, Fire and Theft (TPFT) insurance with a big excess, which built up a No Claims Discount to be able to subsequently afford Comprehensive. Self maintained, second hand, unattractive to joy riders cars also helped the finances (but not the image, life is compromises). Not sure if TPFT is still a thing these days, at the time I remember it being around one third of the cost of comprehensive.

There was no realistic hope of having my own accomodation; then as now, shared space was the only good option on most starter salaries in London. When it came time to grow up and buy my own place, Slough did not appeal so I found a company in the East Midlands that needed my skills and moved to Nottingham, not knowing anyone within 80 miles, and started the next stage of my life.

Which eventually involved a lot of business trips to Hong Kong. I can clearly see why miklcct's sets it as his personal bench mark for public transport, I absolutely loved visiting the place. But, it's a benchmark that can only be achieved by a city state, only Singapore is remotely comparable. Looking for it here is looking in the wrong place.

 

[jon0844]

Do they have fuel consumption under 6 L / 100 km and ULEZ-compliant? If not they will not be competitive with train fares.

I think some of these costs are conveniently forgotten about, and perhaps ULEZ doesn't affect a lot of people - but it will be extended to the M25 soon, and likely replicated elsewhere around the country.

Getting an EV will solve this, but they have much higher up front costs (but lower ongoing costs) which must rule them out for the many people who appear to buy older cars than brand new, presumably because a new car massively skews the figures.

 

[skyhigh]

There is so much I recognise here from my own days of first car ownership and living in London in the 1970's. Specifically on insurance I did what I think many did at the time, for the first 5 years of my motoring I bought Third Party, Fire and Theft (TPFT) insurance with a big excess, which built up a No Claims Discount to be able to subsequently afford Comprehensive. Self maintained, second hand, unattractive to joy riders cars also helped the finances (but not the image, life is compromises). Not sure if TPFT is still a thing these days, at the time I remember it being around one third of the cost of comprehensive.

Out of interest I've just had a look on a comparison site, and the cheapest Third Party Fire and Theft policy was actually around 30% more expensive than the cheapest Comprehensive policy. Might be different for others, but I'd suggest that unless you had a very cheap car going with anything other than Comprehensive would not be a sensible idea.

Getting an EV will solve this, but they have much higher up front costs (but lower ongoing costs) which must rule them out for the many people who appear to buy older cars than brand new, presumably because a new car massively skews the figures.

I was very lucky - I managed to get an EV on lease with the monthly cost being less than my monthly fuel bill for my previous car and full servicing included. With home charging, I'm spending roughly £30 a month on charging costs. So overall going electric has saved me a significant amount of money.

 

[johncrossley]

I think some of these costs are conveniently forgotten about, and perhaps ULEZ doesn't affect a lot of people - but it will be extended to the M25 soon, and likely replicated elsewhere around the country.

Getting an EV will solve this, but they have much higher up front costs (but lower ongoing costs) which must rule them out for the many people who appear to buy older cars than brand new, presumably because a new car massively skews the figures.

It won't affect many people until EVs become affordable. My friend lives in the current London ULEZ area and has decided to keep his non-compliant car, put it on Auto-Pay and see how often he gets charged. He only uses it occasionally so might not be caught on camera very often.