Ageing and living without a car

[Jdsk]

Yes, it's possible. And it's a very good idea to discuss it in the open.

Practical steps:
• Discussing loss of competence in driving and how to manage it. This isn't easy.
• Arranging a commercial taxi service so that it's as easy as possible to use it when it it would help.
• Setting up a community voluntary driver scheme. (We have this in our village in South Oxfordshire.)
• Setting up ad hoc arrangements for mutual support. (We have this for lifts to the buses to London and airports.)
• Finding suitable bikes for as many relevant trips as possible. (I'm currently adding electrical assistance to our tourers.)

I'm amazed at how few of the responses mentioned direct community action and collaboration. And if you start and support these schemes then they'll be ready for you when you need them!

Jonathan

[Carlton green]

Yes, it's possible. And it's a very good idea to discuss it in the open.

Practical steps:
• Discussing loss of competence in driving and how to manage it. This isn't easy.
• Arranging a commercial taxi service so that it's as easy as possible to use it when it it would help.
• Setting up a community voluntary driver scheme. (We have this in our village in South Oxfordshire.)
• Setting up ad hoc arrangements for mutual support. (We have this for lifts to the buses to London and airports.)
• Finding suitable bikes for as many relevant trips as possible. (I'm currently adding electrical assistance to our tourers.)

I'm amazed at how few of the responses mentioned direct community action and collaboration. And if you start and support these schemes then they'll be ready for you when you need them!

Jonathan

I’d like to feel good cause to believe such things, but for all the help I’ve given others over the years it seems rare that anything but a quite small percentage ever returns my way; others that I speak to have had a similar experience. Of course doing something either charitable or for the right reasons has its rewards, but expecting something to be there for you when you need it is at best chancy.

Being more positive I really do hope that your efforts with direct community action and collaboration find success and I applaud such well intentioned initiatives.

[mattheus]

Yes, it's possible. And it's a very good idea to discuss it in the open.

Practical steps:
• Discussing loss of competence in driving and how to manage it. This isn't easy.
• Arranging a commercial taxi service so that it's as easy as possible to use it when it it would help.
• Setting up a community voluntary driver scheme. (We have this in our village in South Oxfordshire.)
• Setting up ad hoc arrangements for mutual support. (We have this for lifts to the buses to London and airports.)
• Finding suitable bikes for as many relevant trips as possible. (I'm currently adding electrical assistance to our tourers.)

I'm amazed at how few of the responses mentioned direct community action and collaboration. And if you start and support these schemes then they'll be ready for you when you need them!

Jonathan

Maybe they're less common than you think (selection bias?!).
And very few folks will have set these things up, so that will effect enthusiasm,

(Still a good idea of course!)

[al_yrpal]

Heres the bus that I used to drive and manage in South Oxfordshire. Aside from the bus we had a volunteer driver scheme to take people to and from The Royal Berks hospital in Reading, the Radcliff in Oxford, dentists and other medical things. The bus took people to town centres, supermarkets, garden centres, pub lunches and things like National Trust places, theatres, Oxford Street Xmas lights. We also had a friendship scheme for the lonely and afternoon tea in the village hall. It was great fun and everyone involved enjoyed it. As Jdsk says if you are retired its a great thing you can do for your community.

Al

[plancashire]

I'll expand a bit on what makes public transport a good solution for us in Düsseldorf and Germany. As I mentioned, we have abandoned our car, but we were not using it much anyway.

Public transport here is integrated and widely available. Even before we had smartphones it was fairly easy to use, but needed more planning of course. Now there is one app that does everything: DB Navigator. (DB is Deutsche Bahn). You can enter two street addresses and it will show you how to do the journey with connecting trains, trams, buses and the walking routes to the stops using publicly available mapping data. If you have a national season ticket (Deutschland Ticket) as we do, just bookmark the journey and it will keep you informed as you go, including things like platform changes and delays (yes, lots of those). You can buy a ticket with it too. When you sit in your seat, just activate "comfort check-in" and the conductor knows you are there and doesn't ask for your ticket. Why does this work so well? Germany has ONE database of timetable and live transport information. Every local transport company uses it *. Why does Britain not require this? Why is mapping data not public?

* Local transport companies also have their own apps. Our local Rheinbahn one does one or two more things than DB Navigator which are not very useful. Mostly they exist because ticketing for local journeys is still local and complex. The design of the Rheinbahn app is dreadful; DB Navigator is much better.

Incidentally, you can take a bike on trains, trams and buses. Only the older express trains don't take bikes, all others do but there may be time restrictions. In practice on local transport if there is space nobody objects. You need a bike ticket.

When I used to drive here more I usually listened to the radio. Germany uses the TMC (traffic message channel) service of the radio data system. Announcements would interrupt the radio programme. So far, so like Britain. If I was using my satnav (first generation) it would pick up the TMC data and use it to offer me a route diversion. Navi Annie would say, "Caution, traffic disruptions ahead". Britain never got it together to use this technology. The police and highways folk were never organised enough to provide useful data. Britain ended up with lots of blue camera masts put up by a private company for its paying customers.

Is Britain deliberately leaving integration to the big American tech firms? Or is it just a failed state?

[Carlton green]

Is Britain deliberately leaving integration to the big American tech firms? Or is it just a failed state?

I believe mostly a failing state - though doubtless others are either worse or little better - with some corruption, a lot of social and governmental systems and structures that aren’t fit for purpose, and quite a lot of incompetence. Of course that paints a dark scene but it’s not all uniformly bad. As for the future I’ve been a grafter all of my life and had hoped for a happier old age than I’m now likely to get, but that’s life and make the best of it.

[Bmblbzzz]

Declining but a long way from failing. But I'd say in this case, yes tech bros are favoured because contracts £$.

[mattheus]

Germany has ONE database of timetable and live transport information. Every local transport company uses it *. Why does Britain not require this? Why is mapping data not public?

<snip>...

Is Britain deliberately leaving integration to the big American tech firms? Or is it just a failed state?

That's a pretty hilarious leap - from not having joined up data like the Germans, to being a failed state!!!

[Bmblbzzz]

It's very much a first-world perspective, assuming that all the shiny stuff is somehow the core of the state.

[mjr]

Yes, it's possible. And it's a very good idea to discuss it in the open.

Practical steps:
• Discussing loss of competence in driving and how to manage it. This isn't easy.
• Arranging a commercial taxi service so that it's as easy as possible to use it when it it would help.
• Setting up a community voluntary driver scheme. (We have this in our village in South Oxfordshire.)
• Setting up ad hoc arrangements for mutual support. (We have this for lifts to the buses to London and airports.)
• Finding suitable bikes for as many relevant trips as possible. (I'm currently adding electrical assistance to our tourers.)

I'm amazed at how few of the responses mentioned direct community action and collaboration. And if you start and support these schemes then they'll be ready for you when you need them!

Jonathan

Maybe they're less common than you think (selection bias?!).
And very few folks will have set these things up, so that will effect enthusiasm,

(Still a good idea of course!)

Community transport schemes already exist in most places less conservative than South Oxon. Why should inexperienced people set up more? Wouldn't that risk collapsing both new and old schemes?

[mjr]

Now there is one app that does everything: DB Navigator. (DB is Deutsche Bahn). You can enter two street addresses and it will show you how to do the journey with connecting trains, trams, buses and the walking routes to the stops using publicly available mapping data.

Transitous (and apps based on it, such as Bimba) seems able to do this for most places. I suspect it's free-er than DB but I've not checked.

If you have a national season ticket (Deutschland Ticket) as we do, just bookmark the journey and it will keep you informed as you go, including things like platform changes and delays (yes, lots of those). You can buy a ticket with it too.

There is a GB national train pass, but it costs £625/week. I'm not aware of any national bus pass available to all. A few regions have transport passes, but you're often going to be looking at £80-150/month (I checked Merseytravel, South Yorkshire and TravelWest - the websites are a tangled mess that makes the fragmented Verkehrsverbunds look straightforwards).

When you sit in your seat, just activate "comfort check-in" and the conductor knows you are there and doesn't ask for your ticket. Why does this work so well? Germany has ONE database of timetable and live transport information. Every local transport company uses it *. Why does Britain not require this? Why is mapping data not public?

Britain does require it, but the data sources for GB rail and bus are no longer integrated, because someone closed Traveline, but Transitous seems to have plugged most of the gap.

Is Britain deliberately leaving integration to the big American tech firms? Or is it just a failed state?

To an extent, it's deliberate. Since Thatcher, there's been a lot of "why should government do what private enterprise can" across all political parties, but as you note, private enterprise can't always do what government can, even when it says it can. Politicians seem to have been a bit slow to spot the male cattle dung salespeople, which is understandable, as so many go from study or professions or charitable works to politics and have little experience of commerce.

But hey, Germany isn't great at having realist politicians now either.

[plancashire]

Thanks for the comments. I was just being a bit provocative when I wrote "failed state". And no, Germany gets many things wrong, but in this case it is better. Britain seems not to make data public when it would be of great public benefit. But there can be benefits: it was frustration and rage at the Ordnance Survey that was the motivation for OpenStreetMap.

I wrote about the nationwide Deutschland Ticket rail pass above. What is lacking is a unified ticketing system for taking bikes. My wife and I are just starting to puzzle out how we get our bikes to and along the Fulda Radweg for a trip in May.