Diesel - seriously thinking of giving up cycling

[karlt]

There has been a transport strategy consultation for the Greater Manchester area. Some figures struck me in one of the infographics.

GM infographic.JPG
The £35 million cost to the NHS in the area due to adult physical inactivity & the 38% of journeys under 2km that are by car - nearly 20% of all "trips" are car trips of 2km or less.

An issue with this might however be that the worst health outcomes are amongst the socio-economic groups most likely to be carless. It's a lot more complicated than just getting people out of their cars.

[al_yrpal]

In an answer to a PMQ today Mrs May said the government car fleet is gradually replacing diesels with petrol powered hybrids.

Al

[ianrobo]

In an answer to a PMQ today Mrs May said the government car fleet is gradually replacing diesels with petrol powered hybrids.

Al

and that is great and the RIGHT thing to do where govt leads. Now if they apply the dame to public cars why is the VED for hybrid going up ? either 1) they just want extra cash or 2) they don;t back up their policies !

[mjr]

There has been a transport strategy consultation for the Greater Manchester area. Some figures struck me in one of the infographics.

GM infographic.JPG
The £35 million cost to the NHS in the area due to adult physical inactivity & the 38% of journeys under 2km that are by car - nearly 20% of all "trips" are car trips of 2km or less.

An issue with this might however be that the worst health outcomes are amongst the socio-economic groups most likely to be carless.

A bit because the most carless living near the centre tend to suffer the worst pollution from other car users, but not entirely.

It's a lot more complicated than just getting people out of their cars.

Indeed but getting them out of their cars is a good step.

[Vorpal]

An issue with this might however be that the worst health outcomes are amongst the socio-economic groups most likely to be carless.

A bit because the most carless living near the centre tend to suffer the worst pollution from other car users, but not entirely.

It's a lot more complicated than just getting people out of their cars.

Indeed but getting them out of their cars is a good step.

Well, maybe. It depends what it's replaced with and how.

For some poor people, it's not necessarily a good thing. When a person has to work 60 hours a week at jobs in two different places, and does not have sufficient monthly income to live near work, an hour or more each way to and from work with walking & bus, or cycling is not only too much, but impossible. It may mean losing one of the part time jobs. Or going from 30 hours per week to 10 or 12 on one job. It may also mean paying extra for child care, or taking away from time for food or sleep.

Being without a car may also limit many people's ability to take casual work because casual work is often done at varied locations, or requires transport. It's not necessarily impossible without a car, just very much harder, in a life that is already difficult.

From personal experience, everything costs time, when one is poor. Walking and cycling places, buying things from the shop where that particular item is cheapest, which may mean going to 4 or 5 shops on a weekly basis because, not only do you need the lowest price, but you can't afford to stock up. Buying dried beans and soaking them, then cooking them for a long time because they cost half or less, compared to tinned ones. And that's 3 meals for £1 or so, if you are careful. Being able to drive somewhere, or get rides from someone, can mean the difference between getting 4 hours of sleep per night and getting 5 or 6.

It's easy to call people fat and and lazy, but being poor doesn't give a person time to be lazy.

[ian s]

Neither are all the parents with cars near the school gates fat and lazy. For the younger children the teacher will not let them out until a parent is seen outside the door, and to get to the school in time from work requires the use of a car.

Ianrobo asks why the VED on hybrids is to increase, probably because people have realised that in many respects hybrids have most of the snags of both petrol and IC vehicles, without many of the advantages of either

It has been pointed out that most daily commutes are within the range of an electric car. The snag is the weekend jaunts are not, and so, unless one is to have two cars (which financially (and frequently physically) is usually totally out of the question) the IC car has to do both jobs.

[al_yrpal]

Recently saw a B&M bargain store and went in to have a look. A staggering place! Packed with discounted branded stuff of all sorts. Lots of foods and supermarket goods. The thing that struck me was the sweets and snacks - huge volumes of it. The clientel were obviously the least well off and the striking thing was so many were seriously overweight. No sign of any healthy foods whatsoever. Dried beans - no. The store was in an isolated place so most had driven there and were carrying bags of stuff to their cars, no sign of any bikes although there are bus stops within 10 minutes waddle. A quite depressing experience. How you get a healthy message on pollution diet and exercise through to this section of the population I cannot begin to imagine.

Al

[[XAP]Bob]

Neither are all the parents with cars near the school gates fat and lazy. For the younger children the teacher will not let them out until a parent is seen outside the door, and to get to the school in time from work requires the use of a car.

Ianrobo asks why the VED on hybrids is to increase, probably because people have realised that in many respects hybrids have most of the snags of both petrol and IC vehicles, without many of the advantages of either

It has been pointed out that most daily commutes are within the range of an electric car. The snag is the weekend jaunts are not, and so, unless one is to have two cars (which financially (and frequently physically) is usually totally out of the question) the IC car has to do both jobs.

It might mean that one car has to do the job - there are other ways to boost range of an electric vehicle...
I'm trying to count the number of days in a year I need more than 100 miles range....

2 trips to my parents (4 days - though we tend to stop off en route anyway, so there is an opportunity to do a charge boost)
Erm - 1 holiday a year (often combined with one of the visits above TBH)
Maybe 2 gigs which would be at the edge of range (loaded with PA gear/musical instruments)

[pwa]

I've been doing return trips to Exeter from my home in South Wales a couple of times a month recently, sorting out my homesick daughter at Uni. By car. It's cheaper and much quicker than the train and I can dump a good load of supermarket groceries on her. It would not be practical without a car. Nor would taking my elderly parents out for a pub lunch. I could do the pub lunch thing with an electric car but not the Exeter thing. And I can't afford two cars. So I have one car that will do long range journeys when necessary.

[ian s]

So, [XAP]Bob, you may be able to make do with an electric car, but there are countless of us who can't. Why do you want to inflict your lifestyle on others.

What the proponents of electric cars fail to think of is where is all the electricity going to come from, because the same "green" types will probably oppose the wind turbines, HEP schemes, pylons etc that will be required if the mass of the population were to adopt electric cars

[mjr]

It's a lot more complicated than just getting people out of their cars.

Indeed but getting them out of their cars is a good step.

Well, maybe. It depends what it's replaced with and how.

For some poor people, it's not necessarily a good thing. When a person has to work 60 hours a week at jobs in two different places, and does not have sufficient monthly income to live near work, [...]

There will always be a few winners and losers but it's usually impossible to set either/or policies without a few people being worse off. The aim has to be to minimise how many are worse off and how much by and provide a safety net for the unavoidable. How many people are working 60 hours a week at two jobs far apart? We hear a lot lately that the problem is "underemployment" as much as unemployment, so are there even any?

And is it already really worth their while running a car to do two low-paid jobs, with fuel at £1.20/litre and rising and mostly-imported spare parts getting more expensive? It seems like a tiny segment of the population, who could be given assistance to transition with a generous income-related clunker scrappage scheme. Giving some of the poorest people an escape route from self-defeat-by-motoring could be a fringe benefit of transport reform.

[mjr]

It might mean that one car has to do the job - there are other ways to boost range of an electric vehicle...

Such as?

I keep looking at electric vehicles, but maybe 10-20% of my minimal car trips are beyond their current range and hiring has been hell. (I've hired when stuff doesn't fit in our current car, or when I didn't have a car, or when travelling further abroad.)

So, [XAP]Bob, you may be able to make do with an electric car, but there are countless of us who can't. Why do you want to inflict your lifestyle on others.

So why do the rest of us have to have your lifestyle inflicted upon us instead?

Anyway, I don't think anyone is demanding everyone has to have electric cars, but that the playing field should be levelled to let them compete fairly, in a way that reflects the relative harms of electric and locally-polluting cars.

What the proponents of electric cars fail to think of is where is all the electricity going to come from, because the same "green" types will probably oppose the wind turbines, HEP schemes, pylons etc that will be required if the mass of the population were to adopt electric cars

Stop lying about other people! Personally, I love windmills (and the ones near my house are really useful for predicting if I'm going to be cycling into a headwind) and I can already see a few dozen pylons because my valley is the one used to run the power lines from the gas-fired power station on the coast to Norwich. I'd be very happy if those pylons were carrying renewable electricity instead or as well.

[Vorpal]

There will always be a few winners and losers but it's usually impossible to set either/or policies without a few people being worse off. The aim has to be to minimise how many are worse off and how much by and provide a safety net for the unavoidable. How many people are working 60 hours a week at two jobs far apart? We hear a lot lately that the problem is "underemployment" as much as unemployment, so are there even any?

And is it already really worth their while running a car to do two low-paid jobs, with fuel at £1.20/litre and rising and mostly-imported spare parts getting more expensive? It seems like a tiny segment of the population, who could be given assistance to transition with a generous income-related clunker scrappage scheme. Giving some of the poorest people an escape route from self-defeat-by-motoring could be a fringe benefit of transport reform.

I know several people who work more than one part time job. One is self-employed as a child minder, and works weekends for a catering company, serving tables at dinners and receptions. Another teaches Bikeability in school hours, and works as staff / mechanic in a bike shop after school hours. Another teaches Bikeability in school hours and makes night time deliveries to London markets (fruit & veg) in a HGV. One person I know who works in retail also makes money on the side buying stuff at boot and jumble sales, or getting them free from various places, then reselling them on eBay. I used to know a couple of people doing multiple jobs, some were seasonal, and some only got a few hours per week of paid work. I haven't kept in touch with them since I moved away, so I don't know what they are doing these days.

They all made/make enough money to support themselves, and in two cases, children, but it's hard going, and they work a lot of hours, ad depend upon grandparents for child care to make ends meet. The Bikeability instructors ride their bikes, if they are teaching within 20ish miles of home. The person who works as a child minder; her weekend job often finishes when there is no public transport, and they could be working some distance form home, or in remote areas (like at a hotel on a rural A road junction) She can sometimes ride with other people working the same event, but not always.

I've worked two jobs myself roughly 25 miles apart, though not recently.

While it's true that many poor people would save money and get fitter without cars, that may not make them better off. I think that until people who work 40 hours per week earn a living wage, and public transport adequately moves them to and from their jobs, the biggest burden of any moves to reduce or eliminate driving will fall on the poor.

I generally agree that we should discourage driving, and that it requires disincentives to drive, as well as incentives to use active travel. But the poorest need additional solutions, in order for it to help them more than it harms them.

[mjr]

There will always be a few winners and losers but it's usually impossible to set either/or policies without a few people being worse off. The aim has to be to minimise how many are worse off and how much by and provide a safety net for the unavoidable. How many people are working 60 hours a week at two jobs far apart? We hear a lot lately that the problem is "underemployment" as much as unemployment, so are there even any?

I know several people who work more than one part time job.

Sorry to labour this point, but: and how many do 60 hours a week?

I think that until people who work 40 hours per week earn a living wage, and public transport adequately moves them to and from their jobs, the biggest burden of any moves to reduce or eliminate driving will fall on the poor.

I think that's a misperception. It's similar to how suggestions to reform local short-stay parking to discourage short-journey motoring and benefit visitors gets howls of protest about how it's an attack on the frequent visitors who have no public transport links when survey after survey shows that almost all short-stay parking users actually live within 3 miles, within cycling distance and near cheap and frequent 18-hours-a-day bus routes. The people living 5+ miles away are already mostly paying extra to use the long-stays and private car parks even for short visits because the short-distance motorists are clogging up the short-stays. 5+-milers have a poor choice between motoring or spending much more clock time travelling but also having to leave for home about 5pm.

So... while I'd like to see non-motoring become a viable option for more people, I think there's plenty of simple cases which could give a big win before it has much effect on people with unusual travel patterns like 60 hours a week to multiple part-time workplaces at off-peak times.

I generally agree that we should discourage driving, and that it requires disincentives to drive, as well as incentives to use active travel. But the poorest need additional solutions, in order for it to help them more than it harms them.

Oh well, at least we agree on incentives and additional safety-net measures.

[al_yrpal]

A neat way to live with an electric car for someone retired like me who doesnt do many long journeys just occurred to me.

Use the electric car for all local journeys - free parking concessions, no emission restrictions.

Use a classic car for the odd long journey. No tax, very low insurance, no depreciation, simple cheap DIY servicing, fun!

For very long journey involving cars, hire one.

Got me thinking..

Al