Oswaldtwistle said:
And the small matter of the money he earns, which presumably puts a roof over their heads. Plus anylifts they get to wherever-often a deal more than the "occasional weekend trip to B&Q "
I don't know that we're arguing about that much but anyway here goes;
Money earned as a result of owning a car; - sure a few self-employed people, most of the others could as easily use a bike and they would be saving a fortune. My point about the occasional trip to B&Q is that in an average household, most household members barely use the car, and the less they use it, the more they will be exposed to all of the costs of living in a car-dominated society.
Is that a net benefit? For loads of them it's a net cost - and this is in people who are members of a car-owning household.
Oswaldtwistle said:
I know. That's why I used the Lambeth figures, to make it clear just how untypical it was not just of the rest of the UK, but even of the rest of London.
But even with all the benefits of living in tube zone 2 AND with buses every few minutes very nearly half of the households in Lambeth own a car. If that is the case then any hope of a national car owning minority is pure dreamland.
Well ta. But the obvious point is that if less than 50% of households own a car, we are getting down to about 15% of the population who own one. That's a tiny minority. Nationally (from memory) there are about 30 million cars on the UK's roads - and (again from memory) nearly 40% are in households owning 2
or more cars. Population is about 60 million. Do the math.
Yet the space allocation on our streets is about 80% vs 20% to non-car owners. Car drivers are also subsidised fairly heavily through the fact that large amounts of the costs that they incur are paid by all of us (eg the medical care for those maimed by them, the pollution health costs - asthma etc - the congestion costs, the road costs etc etc). Different studies put different figures on those costs but - in brief - there are two camps; pro-car ones which argue that the subsidy is fairly small, and anti-car ones which argue that it is fairly big. Most recent big study of these costs was from Leeds University last year I think, will be on Google somewhere.
If car drivers were given their fair share of the road and made to pay their fair share of the costs they impose we can safely assume that those levels would drop pretty dramatically.
Moreover, how many of those people would actually choose to be in the present situation where they feel obliged to run a car? Many car owners would welcome the chance to be rid of them. The idea that ownership constitutes endorsement is just wrong.
Oswaldtwistle said:
Again, you need to spend more time outside London. Especially outside rush-hour, roads are busy but congestion is *not* "the absolute norm".
'Tis true I don't leave the fair metropolis often. But the point that "personal mobility" is largely illusory stands reasonably well. Increasing road supply merely generates more traffic which undermines the increased supply etc. Just seen this exact same effect in London with the Congestion Charge. I could be wrong about this because I'm talking anecdotally now, but after a brief speed-up when it came in, it's back to where it was.
Studies have shown that drivers systematically underestimate the amount of time car journeys take and overestimate journey-times by public transport. Are we really going to base our transport policy on this kind of illusion?
Oswaldtwistle said:
The problem is that whilst the Greens have their heels in over this, things like a lower speed limit will be seen as 'anti car' rather than 'pro safety' or 'pro fuel economy'. And motorists will reject them.
The Greens are now looking the the most entrenched group in the whole debate tbh.
My original post was in favour of governoring down speed limits (agin another poster who was calling it "authoritarian" etc). It seems transparentally obvious to me that urban cars are - almost without exception - grossly overpowered and that combined with the frustrations of over-crowded streets this makes illegal driving absolutely inevitable. Some confirmation of this can be seen in just about any street at just about any time.
Would you accept that cars should be governored down to safe and legal speeds - if say a majority of people living in an area voted in favour of that?
I think the idea that you will ever get pro-social driving by any other means is a fantasy personally.
