Sort of. But mostly no.

Post #436,130 by pwhysall 9/9/20 8:04:36 AM 9/9/20 8:04:36 AM Reply	Sort of. But mostly no. The only place it is practical to not have personal transportation in the UK is in central London, where a car is definitely a pain in the arse to own, unless it's in use for daily business. The mass transit options there are genuinely great. The rest of the UK has dogshit public transport, and realistically speaking, one needs a car.
Post #436,131 by mmoffitt 9/9/20 10:28:56 AM 9/9/20 10:28:56 AM Reply	I don't have firsthand experience, of course. The two folks I mentioned live in Woodcote and Reading respectively. Until recently, both of them worked and reported no trouble getting around. Neither of them ever lived in London and I think you'd agree, Woodcote ain't no London. Your country has the enormous advantage of being very small as compared to the US. My sister-in-law just drove here from California (about 2/3 of the way across the country). That was a trip of just under 2,300 miles (not quite 3 times the distance from Land's End to John o'Groats) and she had about 1/3 of the country left to drive across. It's ironic that we have a greater need for public transport and a lower demand for it despite cars killing 30,000 to 40,000 of us every year. It's a very good thing your country isn't populated with Americans. If no one in this country ever had to travel domestically further than 800-900 miles, there'd be absolutely no way the populace would tolerate funding any high speed rail at all. They won't do it now even though the benefits would be tremendous. Personally, I can't think of a dumber mode of transportation than automobiles. bcnu, Mikem It's mourning in America again.
Post #436,133 by Andrew Grygus 9/9/20 1:30:52 PM 9/9/20 1:30:52 PM Reply	And I can't think of a beter one . . . . . for a person like me, with no regular schedule, being on-call for emergencies all over the county, and needing to carry significant loads of equipment, building and maintenance materials, and a 6 foot laddar, to and from locations that are not known more than a couple hours in advance. Helps a whole lot with loads of groceries from a half dozen scattered ethnic markets too. Both my business and my clovegarden.com Web site would be impossible without a car. I'm sure there are a great many others who are not cubical dwelling "salarymen" (to use the Japanese term) with a routine job and a wife at home to spend her day fetching groceries, from the one store she can get to with public transport.
Post #436,136 by mmoffitt 9/9/20 2:17:50 PM 9/9/20 2:17:50 PM Reply	What is it with Californians and their stupid cars? :0) bcnu, Mikem It's mourning in America again.
Post #436,138 by boxley 9/9/20 2:51:32 PM 9/9/20 2:51:32 PM Reply	same here, for me to use public transport I would have to walk or bicycle 10 miles to the coastal rd to catch a bus then walk, cycle another 10 miles to my destination. "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
Post #436,145 by Andrew Grygus 9/9/20 8:56:51 PM 9/9/20 9:27:58 PM Reply	We all know that in your "workers paradise" . . . . . everybody lives in tiny apartments in huge Soviet style rectangular buildings so they can be trucked en-mass to their "jobs for life" at the factory or cubical. Life consists of being trucked to the job, eating a Soviet style lunch at the factory cafeteria, being trucked back to the apartment buildings, eating a Soviet style dinner at the local cafeteria, watching state sponsored TV until falling asleep. Then, at the exact same time as everyone else, the alarm goes off, giving just enough time to have a Soviet style breakfast of weak coffee and greasy pancakes at the local cafeteria, before being trucked back to the "job for life". Here in California, we find that a perfect illustration of Hell. PS Sorry to take so long to respond, but I was called away by a client with a printing problem (POS front end to their system, so printing is veeeery important). Quickly responded due to having a car, while public transport would have taken at least an hour more each way. Edited by Andrew Grygus Sept. 9, 2020, 09:27:58 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #436,163 by mmoffitt 9/10/20 10:47:18 AM 9/10/20 10:47:18 AM Reply	The best thing that ever happened to me in California was when my car broke down. I lived in Long Beach in an apartment across the street from Long Beach City College. My full-time job was in San Pedro. Traffic made that commute about an hour each way. Then, the transmission blew up and I didn't have the money to fix it. So I got bus schedules. I took a Long Beach bus to downtown Long Beach where I made the the free transfer to LA's bus system to complete the journey to work. When I got off of work, I repeated the process backwards. Total trip time was less than 30 minutes longer than "driving" and I was saving about $6.00 per day on gas alone (which back then was real money). In short order I'd saved enough to fix the transmission, but chose not to until just before I left California for good. Why? Because I'd purchased a Sunday Only LA Times subscription which I read cover-to-cover during my commute to work (the paper back then was thick). Without a car, I was able to educate myself during the commute instead of wasting my young life behind the wheel of a car most often sitting almost parked on the freeway. bcnu, Mikem It's mourning in America again.
Post #436,151 by pwhysall 9/10/20 1:39:11 AM 9/10/20 1:39:11 AM Reply	A vehicle for you is a tool of work.
Post #436,150 by pwhysall 9/10/20 1:34:58 AM 9/10/20 1:38:47 AM Reply	They're outliers, then. Sorry, but the buses in Reading are no better than the buses up here, to wit: shit. I'm happy that they've found a way of living that means they don't need a car, but their experience is absolutely unrepresentative of the not-London mass transit situation. People around here (a very ordinary small town in England albeit on the coast) who don't have cars find themselves either considerably disadvantaged (good luck taking a job with irregular hours, because if you finish at midnight or later, getting home is going to be an ordeal) and/or flinging themselves on the mercy of their car-owning friends and family. For example: my office (that I don't go to any more, because WFH :D) is 30 miles away, which is 40 minutes by car. By public transport? Two hours, five minutes. And I live literally 5 minutes walk (about a third of a mile) from a (very minor) railway station. There's a saying: in England, a hundred miles is a long way. In America, a hundred years is a long time. The thing with cars is this: they give you agency. You get to go where you want, when you want. This is very powerful. Public transport, as much as I'm a huge proponent of it, is best suited to solving the commuting problem - as evidenced by its obvious success in London (and, to be fair, NYC, and other giant cities). But it's inherently travelling at the pleasure of someone else, and that's a very conditional freedom. Edited by pwhysall Sept. 10, 2020, 01:38:47 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #436,155 by crazy 9/10/20 2:03:47 AM 9/10/20 2:03:47 AM Reply	Yeah, personal transportation is not going away For those that can handle it the electric bikes, scooters, unicycles have crossed from toys to amazing long-distance transport vehicles. Long-distance meaning under a 15-mile commute. Each way. At around 30 mph. I would have loved to have any of them to get from my house to the train station and then from the train to my office. We could have cut a multiple car family down to a single car. But they're not carrying a family and they're not enclosing you in the weather and you better be able to balance and stand. But for commuter vehicles for healthy people they look great. Until it rains or snows.
Post #436,162 by mmoffitt 9/10/20 10:34:37 AM 9/10/20 10:34:37 AM Reply	Nit Re: You get to go where you want, when you want. Provided, of course, somebody has built you a road to there. I'm not arguing that the same doesn't apply to buses, trains, subways, etc. It's just that there's this commonly held American fantasy (also, I'm not ascribing that to you personally) that the "highway is Merkin Individual Freedumb" and that is plainly not true. I'll concede that, sadly, cars remain a necessity because of the ways we've chosen to arrange ourselves. That is a choice I'd hoped to see withdrawn in my lifetime, but that's not going to happen. And I'm as guilty as anyone for making that choice. In non-Covid days, I commute by car to work 40 miles from home and there is no mass transit of any sort between me and where I work, despite my office being in the second largest city in my state. In fact, Moffat Scotland has more regular bus service than that second largest city in my state has within its city limits. So, I could say, "I must have a car in order to get to work." But, that accepts as fact that I "must live 40 miles from where I work." TBH, that's a dubious claim. bcnu, Mikem It's mourning in America again.
Post #436,165 by pwhysall 9/10/20 11:11:37 AM 9/10/20 11:11:37 AM Reply	Nah, that's not it. It's that you don't have to wonder if there is a bus to your destination, and if it's running today, and whether you can take the dogs with you, and is there a return service, etc. You don't have to stand in the pissing rain waiting for the bus that isn't coming because they're running a reduced schedule due to strikes, driver illness, or whatever. Also, when The Man decides you're not travelling, well. You're not travelling. There are simply too many people now for everyone to live within walking or even cycling distance of their place of work. It was practical when, in a town of 10,000 people of working age, they almost all worked in the local industries, and lived in the kinds of housing that was within a mile or so (aka shitty slums). There are a couple of correct answers here: 1. Eliminate the need to commute. People should work from home where it is practical. This is a lot of people. And this will lift the load on the transport infrastructure for those who do need to commute. 2. Improve mass transit. This should be entirely focussed on commuting right now. 3. Eliminate ICE vehicles. This will make everything quieter and cleaner. 4. For shorter journeys, greatly improve sustrans infrastructure - this means proper cycleways everywhere, nice wide footpaths, properly engineered crossings where peds and cyclists have to traverse roads, mass transit vehicles that can accommodate a lot of bikes, etc. tl;dr: the ability to partake of personal travel, without recourse to a third party for permission, is freedom. There are a very large number of journeys made, however, that are either unnecessary, or could be made via sustrans and/or mass transit. But personal travel is still freedom, and doing these things makes it better.
Post #436,167 by malraux 9/10/20 12:20:32 PM 9/10/20 12:20:32 PM Reply	Real estate and rent is significantly more expensive the closer to a city center you get. Someone I work with just bought an extremely nice house out in the burbs for the same monthly outlay as a 2br apartment in downtown Detroit. Personally I despise apartment living. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #436,170 by boxley 9/10/20 4:16:48 PM 9/10/20 4:16:48 PM Reply	apartment==kennels don't like them either rather live in a trailer park "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

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