Ageing and living without a car

[deeferdonk]

Got a local bus in Wiltshire on Sunday (something I very rarely do as I cycle everywhere but I was accompanying a friend) and was very pleasantly surprised by the live tracking which proved to be accurate and the bus itself - well heated, comfy seats, polite driver, USB charging points on all seats, seatbelts, spotlessly clean, etc.

The only thing I didn't like was the price - £3 to go about a mile (as the crow flies but it went round all the housing estates so actually more like 2 miles).

might be worth challenging this next time. Single bus journeys are capped at £3 so i think some bus drivers are being lazy and just charging everyone £3 rather than look up/remember if its less. The other week I was charged £2.70 for a bus journey in one direction, and then £3.00 by another driver for the same journey in reverse on another day, and he didn't seem interested when i stated my destination and didn't give me a ticket after i paid. Not a journey i usually take (i was dropping off and then picking up a car) - but the bus was busy so didn't seem worthwhile causing a fuss for such a small amount when I wasn't sure what i should have been charged anyway.

When I'm old enough to get a free bus pass (and if we're lucky enough that President Farage or whatever government we have in the intervening period doesn't cancel it) - im going to take full advantage

[UpWrong]

Buses make me travel sick . They are transport of last resort for me.

[Bmblbzzz]

Got a local bus in Wiltshire on Sunday (something I very rarely do as I cycle everywhere but I was accompanying a friend) and was very pleasantly surprised by the live tracking which proved to be accurate and the bus itself - well heated, comfy seats, polite driver, USB charging points on all seats, seatbelts, spotlessly clean, etc.

The only thing I didn't like was the price - £3 to go about a mile (as the crow flies but it went round all the housing estates so actually more like 2 miles).

might be worth challenging this next time. Single bus journeys are capped at £3 so i think some bus drivers are being lazy and just charging everyone £3 rather than look up/remember if its less. The other week I was charged £2.70 for a bus journey in one direction, and then £3.00 by another driver for the same journey in reverse on another day, and he didn't seem interested when i stated my destination and didn't give me a ticket after i paid. Not a journey i usually take (i was dropping off and then picking up a car) - but the bus was busy so didn't seem worthwhile causing a fuss for such a small amount when I wasn't sure what i should have been charged anyway.

When I'm old enough to get a free bus pass (and if we're lucky enough that President Farage or whatever government we have in the intervening period doesn't cancel it) - im going to take full advantage

That's a rather complicated implementation. Single price is so much easier for everyone to understand, in addition to eliminating:

• the risk of the driver making a mistake

• time spent handing fare payment (even more so when people insist on paying cash)

• theft/security risk for driver

In places more advanced still (I haven't encountered this anywhere in UK) fares are completely divorced from the driver, or even the vehicle, meaning multiple people can pay at once and dwell time is reduced to a minimum.

[mjr]

Single bus journeys are capped at £3 so i think some bus drivers are being lazy and just charging everyone £3 rather than look up/remember if its less.

Not all single bus journeys are capped, and not capped to the same level. Of the five main bus companies serving King's Lynn, Stagecoach East Midlands, First Eastern Counties and Coach Services (CSVC) have the £3 cap on at least some services, but Lynx and GoToTown do not. All companies are part of a local £1.50 cap for journeys inside the town and three of the contiguous villages, but not my village. The two companies serving stops on the A10 charge different fares for the same journey and the cap means it probably also happens on the A47.

I'm a big fan of London's "hopper" bus fares: tap on and you can travel as far as you like for a single price, or transfer to any bus for the next hour (roughly); and the usual London daily and weekly caps are applied if they would be cheaper than the journeys made in a day/week. It doesn't matter which bus company actually operates the service, or which livery it is in.

Tap-on/tap-off has just been introduced on Lynx and GoToTown this week, with Stagecoach and First already having it, but it's still distance-based (hence the need to tap off, especially on the uncapped buses), any daily/weekly caps are single-operator not Norfolk Fusion (which is a nuisance when the cheaper and faster operator is less frequent, as on the A10, or when parts of your travel are on different operators: you need to realise at the start and buy a Fusion day pass), and it's coincided with through fares to the hospital (that require a transfer from most places) being withdrawn, so that feels like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory yet again.

[mjr]

Buses make me travel sick . They are transport of last resort for me.

All types of buses? Do other motor vehicles affect you the same?

I can't read much on coaches with headrests, and of course it's generally nicer when you can see out and the bus isn't bending around everywhere, but I don't have much trouble on low-floor buses with big windows, or the fancy modern long-distance double-deckers with train-style seating (actually better than many recent trains!)

[Morzedec]

Er - has anyone tried WALKING, if distances are short?

It's a four mile walk from my home to a supermarket, then a mile back to a bus stop - where I treat myself to a ride to the village laden down with a rucksack full of buns , followed by another mile's walk.

Walking keeps me looking slim, good-looking, and attractive to rich widows, so makes sense to me.

[deeferdonk]

Er - has anyone tried WALKING, if distances are short?

It's a four mile walk from my home to a supermarket, then a mile back to a bus stop - where I treat myself to a ride to the village laden down with a rucksack full of buns , followed by another mile's walk.

Walking keeps me looking slim, good-looking, and attractive to rich widows, so makes sense to me.

They are only after you for your buns!

[Carlton green]

Buses make me travel sick . They are transport of last resort for me.

As a child and into my teens travel on coaches made me sick but bus journeys didn’t seem to trouble me, perhaps that was because of their greatly shorter duration. Eventually travel sickness tablets helped me and as an adult I’m thankfully rarely bothered in that way … but then I now rarely travel by coach and perhaps such ‘delights’ await me . Today’s coaches have good suspension, travel on better roads and don’t have fuel fumes, etc., in the air; perhaps some of those of us who once suffered will now get by OK.

[mjr]

Er - has anyone tried WALKING, if distances are short?

Slower, uses more energy than walking and can't carry as much. Why would anyone? It's better by bike!

[eileithyia]

My neighbours in the 80s had no car, bus into town for shopping and taxi home. I think we get very wrapped up in the convenience of our cars and losing their use is like a 'death' for some it's particularly difficult to see outside of the box.

I know my mum had to adjust to the idea, and while she adapted to going back to using buses she never truly accepted that using a taxi could be a possibility. She had driven since the mid 60s as dad cycled the 1.5 miles to work, she had the use of the car all week for shopping / errands / taking us to after school activities etc so it was hard for especially as it was not by choice but by medical need.

A friend has recently been going through the same having given up his car.... then going shopping in some of the awful weather we have had by bike and getting thoroughly cold and wet.

I for one always try to walk to our local shops, for the exercise and to help keep local amenities going for those who can't drive further.... having had reasons not to drive a couple of times recently (broken bone major surgery) I have at least had some practise runs at not driving and using local transport or walking to shops and taxi back.

I noted the comments upstream about travel sickness in buses, I'm truly not surprised. We have 'luxury' stage coach buses on our route from Bolton to Preston, wifi, italian leather seats etc., but dreadful shock absorbers.... they rattle like an old cattle truck. Not so the buses in Mallorca that are coach style and truly a smooth journey.....

[Bmblbzzz]

Er - has anyone tried WALKING, if distances are short?

Slower, uses more energy than walking and can't carry as much. Why would anyone? It's better by bike!

You are correct. Any activity in BLOCK CAPITALS takes more energy than the same activity in lowercase!

[jgurney]

Single bus journeys are capped at £3 so i think some bus drivers are being lazy and just charging everyone £3 rather than look up/remember if its less. The other week I was charged £2.70 for a bus journey in one direction, and then £3.00 by another driver for the same journey in reverse

I had a similar experience on a local route and out of interest looked into the reason. It turned out that the stops were not exactly opposite each other so the journeys in each direction were slightly different distances. Going one way the journey was a few metres under the maximum distance to qualify for the £2.70 fare while the other way it was just over. The software that worked out the fares had not been instructed to avoid creating such anomalies: it worked purely on distance between stops. I did not draw it to the company's attention in case they responded by overriding their software to make the fare £3.00 in both directions.

[jgurney]

even if one still has a car the idea is to look at leaving it on the drive and instead travel by alternative means; it’ll likely be limiting but will give one some insight into the changes ahead ......

The community in which we live - and likely will live out the rest of our lives in - isn’t well served with public transport,

The second point sounds like the main difficulty - the 'first/last miles', if you are badly placed to start with.

I have not owned a car for over 25 years now and do not find it limiting*. However, we would never have considered living somewhere with poor transport access in the first place.

Occasionally I have asked motorists who tell us that we 'can't go anywhere' without a car where they have been in theirs. I have never yet found one who has ranged around the UK to the same extent that I have without one.

* I have sometimes hired motor vehicles, but generally vans for roles where a car would be too small to be any use anyway, such as the occasion when my mother (in London) gave several pieces of furniture to our daughter (in Liverpool) and a Luton van was needed.

[pjclinch]

We are in a car club and so have access to a car when we need it... but it's a typical Catch 22 variant in that you typically need to be in a town to have enough people to support a car club, i.e. the sort of place you're less likely to need a car.

Pete.

[jgurney]

it’s also worth thinking about what coach routes (where they actually stop too) one could live on, or even what coach hubs one might live near. On the rail network is a more obvious desirable feature, but maybe on a coach route might end up being of more value, and that alternative feature is something that hadn’t stuck me until I read your post.

Edit.
The National Express (coach) website isn’t that helpful ( ) , but this map of theirs is a start point for seeing which hubs and end destinations you might reach:

National Express (and now their main rival FilxBus) are not as useful as they were thirty years ago, especially if you are aged over 60, for three reasons.

Their network is much reduced and now serves very few places which are not rail-connected anyway. Coaches used to be a handy way of accessing places which were off the railways. I think every non-rail connected town or village I have been to by National Express is no longer served by them. Similarly there are now few coach routes linking places which while they have railway stations are not directly linked to each other by rail.

The difference between the cheapest rail fares and coach fares has shrunk. More so for over-60's as the Senior Railcard discount is much greater than equivalent coach fare discounts.

Coach journey times have grown longer while rail ones have often reduced. E.g. In the early 1990's London to Middlesbrough used to take 4h50m by coach and 3h40m by rail (and the coach fare was about 20% of the rail fare). Now the coach is about 6h20m and the train 3h20m (and the coach fare is about 35% of the rail fare before railcards).