🚀 go-pugleaf

steve@acorn.co.uk (Steve "daffy" Hunt) writes:
> I think they have it the wrong way round.  They should improve public
> transport until it is really convenient, and then the car problem will
> automatically reduce.

I think this is not entirely true.  Once you pay the enormous cost of car,
insurance and so on, every journey you can use it for reduces the *apparent*
cost of the car.

For instance, if your car + insurance cost is #1000 per year and you only
plan to make one journey by car, it's a ridiculous proposition.  If you can
find a thousand journeys to make, however, the cost is a more reasonable #1 +
petrol.  Hence there is pressure to find journeys to make, in order to
justify the cost of the car.

Putting it another way, once you have a car, you tend to use it even when
such use is unnecessary or inappropriate.  For example, I yelled at my mother
for getting the car out in order to drive three hundred metres down the road
to the village shop.

These days she walks, and now realises how ridiculous her behaviour was.  But
she hadn't previously even thought about the situation; it was a case of "I
am going somewhere, therefore I will get the car out".  The fact that many
other people living in the same village are demanding car parking spaces
outside the village hall indicates that the "car for all journeys" mindset is
fairly widespread.

Another factor is that people tend to ignore the time taken to find parking
when they calculate their journey time by car.  You may have to wait ten
minutes to get a bus into Cambridge from Chesterton, but you can easily spend
twenty minutes queueing for a parking space on Saturdays.

> I never hear it mooted in transport debates, but it makes an awful lot
> of sense: get rid of the rush hour.  Because 9 to 5 working is so
> strongly ingrained in our culture, it would be necessary to introduce
> legislation, or positive financial incentives, to encourage companies
> to operate staggered hours or flexitime.

If we're doing away with 9-to-5 and letting people go to work at different
times of the day, let's get rid of British Summer Time while we're at it.
I've never worked 9 to 5 anyway.


mathew