#1038

This absolutely can, has, does, and will continue to happen where there’s political will. Certainly with driving. Holidays are a trickier one, but imho probably the same logic, just on a grander scale. IDK maybe we’ll have electric planes at some point in the not too distant future.

#1039

Personally I [like to] believe that a majority of people would love to reduce their car and plane usage if they lived in a world where they could live fulfilling, enjoyable lives without needing to.

  • You never have to drive to work ever again or sit in motorway traffic or eat a greggs at Sandbach services, trains and buses are good and free, you have less work so more time to cycle, cook maybe even grow your own food, planes are more expensive and much less options available but you can have some foreign holidays, possibly with cheap international train/boat travel (see also more time off work), holidays in the UK are better/cheaper, there’s not cars parked all over literally every street in the country and your neighbourhood is a nice place just to stroll about and chat to people
  • No I’ll stick with my current miserable life thanks

0 voters

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#1040

I don’t personally drive but pretty much every other single person I know does. When I think about it I can’t see those people willingly giving it up, whether it’s convenience, laziness, status, kids in tow… I don’t know.

I enjoy not driving, feels like a mugs game of angry people jumping red lights just so they can sit on their couch for 45 seconds more. That’s just my interpretation!

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#1041

People in general are absolutely addicted to car culture. The (perceived) convenience of being able to step out of your house into your car and drive exactly where you want to regardless of the cost to yourself or society is just too much to give up willingly

I wish I shared your optimism

10 Likes
#1042

Well it’s a process isn’t it, I’m not envisaging a referendum along the lines of my poll and then we transform society the next day. But this is the vision that has to be presented.
I know what you mean though.

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#1043

I think when I was younger I would enjoy going on long drives with the music up, but recently it’s become an absolute stress fest from start to finish.

That said, having severe anxiety does mean I will sometimes (usually probably) choose a lift over a busy bus/tube if it’s offered.

#1044

Yeah I get you. I think it will require much much more stick than carrot if it has any chance of success though.

2 Likes
#1045

I find I will often naturally want to default to the car for long trips for reasons I can’t quite articulate or justify. But if I then decide to get the train anyway, once I start the journey it feels like so obviously the nicer and better choice.

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#1046

I got half price first class tickets to Edinburgh once and I never want to travel there another way (which is why I’ve not gone back since, can’t afford it at full price lol)

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#1047

I live next to a railway embankment with a regular train service to Central London five minutes’ walk away and several bus routes everywhere else at the same distance. Our household is the only one on our street that doesn’t have a car (and at least two of them have more than one), and even I every now and again have a moment of weakness when I think I’d quite like to have one and be able to nip off somewhere directly.

I’m not optimistic either. Feel we should just start with making them electric and then everything else is a bonus.

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#1048

really unsure how I feel about electric cars. I worry that replacing the global fleet of petrol/diesel cars with a similar number or electric cars will have a very small net effect on climate and ecological breakdown.
Would be interested if there is literature on this anyone knows about actually.

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#1049

This is my feeling too, especially as the car industry is very much built on the premise of continual obsolescence.

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#1050

Well clearly the electricity needs to be sustainably generated, and the impact of the charging infrastructure and the car components need to be low impact too, but the CO2 emissions would drop through the floor. It would be a big step forward.

#1051

and btw, I’m extremely pessimistic on all of this generally, I just think there is already an existing large number of people who want to buy into something like the kind of transformation I’ve outlined above, and building on this is probably a key part of the process.

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#1052

I get hideous anxiety on public transport (no offense Glasgow) but in my car I feel absolutely free. Of course, I’d rather ride my bike or walk anywhere feasible and the car is my last resort (my car is really expensive to fuel so I avoid using it)

#1053

They already exist, although not for large scale aircraft.

#1054

Not forgetting (and no finger-pointing intended here) that your car was very ecologically expensive to make in the first place, and as others have pointed out very difficult to break down into reusable materials at the end of its life.

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#1055

Just expanding on the electric plane thing, a friend of my brother is currently crowdfunding a project to develop a cheap retrofitted electric aircraft. The idea behind it is that it would charge from solar powered base units and be used to make short hop trips in remote areas of the world with poor infrastructure, eg in parts of Africa, for the purposes of shipping medical staff and supplies. So for that particular example you’re improving human health as well as providing a self-contained, low impact, sustainable trasnsport service. So in theory it’s possible to make stuff like that happen at some scale.

[Guy’s a total bellend though by the way, so you’d never catch me in one of his planes]

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#1056

One of the joys of transferring almost everyone to sustainable transport/active travel is that the roads would be freed up for those, like yourself, who genuinely need to use cars for a variety of reasons. It’s one of the reasons I find cabbies who are so opposed to bike lanes and LTNs so frustrating - the fewer cars on the road, the easier (and more profitable) their jobs become

6 Likes
#1057

Non exhaust pollutants make a bit of a mockery of the EV solution, even before considering manufacture and sourcing components and materials for batteries etc :frowning:

Have we got a solution for tyres/brakes on EVs?

2 Likes