Oldjohnw wrote:.. 81% of people have access to a car.
According to DVLA there were 38.2m licenced vehicles in 2018, an increase of 1.2% over the 2017 figures.
I am not making a point or expressing an opinion: just stating facts.
If you read further, it says that
At the end of 2018, there were 18.5 million licensed petrol cars, 12.4
million licensed diesel cars, and 620,000 licensed alternative fuel cars.
which adds up approx 31.52 million cars. Well I know there are some people that use a van or minbus or even small truck such as horseboxes like we normal folk use a car. An estimated 0.6% are classic cars etc which mostly are weekend runners i.e second cars. Can we fudge it and say that the 0.6% of classic cars balances out the number of households that only have a van or minibus? Also, some cars are hire cars so could be said available to anyone with a licence, but in practice they're not.
About 52.4 million adults in the UK in 2018. So a little rounding down thats 52 million people divided by 32 million cars. ( pun intended....)
Which is about 62% which feels more right to me than 81%. And as others have said cost is a factor for both the very young, and the unemployed and low paid.
But there's also around 2 million people with sight loss serious enough to lose their licence, over 500,000 people have epilepsy, and out of about 7.4 million people with heart disease maybe about a third have particular conditions that fail licence standards, need I go on to also mention diabetes, some physical disabilities, some psychiatry conditions.
It's said that many families share a car, but in my experience more multi driver families have a car each as it's difficult for them both to use the same car for work and school runs etc etc. Then there's the mainly men that have more tha one car to themselves, nextdoor neighbour has a banger of a merc, and a Porsche for the weekends (pompous git)
Transport inequality is only going to get worse with the phasing out of ICE cars. Even with a substantial increase in on street charging, it's going to be much much harder for people without their own driveway to keep an electric car. And they're not that cheap either, to buy even second hand, let alone new. Doubtless as some point the gobernment will scrap the EV grant all together. And electricity isn't going to get any cheaper from now on even if the gormiment begin only a tenth of genuine carbon reduction policies.
So unless public transport starts serving all the out of town industrial estates etc where the new jobs are, better cycling facilities is the only option for the most disadvantaged.