What would you not be able to do without your car, van, 4x4 or any other motorised vehicle.

[ManFriday4]

I noted the question about phones and wondered, being a non car owner I have no problem doing most things without a car.

If you could no longer use a motorised vehicle, petrol/diesel or electric. Could you manage without motor vehicle?

 

[Pattree]

No.

 

[Van-Wild]

Absolutley not. My livelihood depends upon it.

 

[Toddy]

No.
I can't walk to the end of the street without pain. I cannot stand for the half hour if the bus doesn't come to wait for the next one.
So, from shopping, to visiting, to appointments, to getting out to wander quietly somewhere other than the garden and lane....I use the car.

Cycling around here, even if I still could, is a treacherous activity....Roman, Medieval and farm roads, and then the 20th century hit. We go from winding around medieval churches to motorway in less than quarter of a mile, and the roads up and down to the villages from the river are really steep without footpaths on one side....too narrow to accomodate.
We have 18 hours of dark here in Winter, a lot of rain and wind, and we have those fancy energy saving street lights that don't light up enough. Honestly, cyclists take their lives in their hands venturing out then.

There are reasons folks took so well to personal transport options.

 

[TeeDee]

I noted the question about phones and wondered, being a non car owner I have no problem doing most things without a car.

If you could no longer use a motorised vehicle, petrol/diesel or electric. Could you manage without motor vehicle?

Most things?

Define the things you can't do well.

 

[demographic]

Maybe the officewallas would find it easy but I'm a self employed carpenter and my work van enables me to work pretty much anywhere in the county and Cumbrias a pretty big county.
How well would you manage without your employer?

 

[ManFriday4]

Most things?

Define the things you can't do well.

I'm quite happy to cycle 30-40 miles to a campsite or farm we sometimes camp at. A quiet walk in nature is across the road from my house.

I can do shopping etc for the home with bike & trailer.
I get to work and home 10m round trip.

Yes, the roads aren't that safe for cyclists. Some of my routes are X country using bridleways. Interestingly its quicker to cycle to Screwfix than to drive from where I am (2 miles) due to the traffic problems.

New kitchen worktop was delivered along with the sink etc, but a friend who owes ne some favours offered to get it. About 2x a year I might need help with a car, but that's fitted around a friend- such as buying large bags of manure. We do his garden and mine together. The things Ali have struggled with in the past have been really heavy loads.

I don't have to pay a parking permit locally to park or any other vehicle expense other than bike fixing periodically (about £60 last year)

I completely get that pain thing (arthritis in both knees & hips) and standing at bus stops. The rain wet and cold and can be a bit miserable on a bicycle but if I know I am arriving somewhere I can dry off and be warm its not so bad.

 

[Kadushu]

I wouldn't be able to drive to the phone shop to replace the phone I lost in the other thread!

 

[TeeDee]

I'm quite happy to cycle 30-40 miles to a campsite or farm we sometimes camp at. A quiet walk in nature is across the road from my house.

I can do shopping etc for the home with bike & trailer.
I get to work and home 10m round trip.

Yes, the roads aren't that safe for cyclists. Some of my routes are X country using bridleways. Interestingly its quicker to cycle to Screwfix than to drive from where I am (2 miles) due to the traffic problems.

New kitchen worktop was delivered along with the sink etc, but a friend who owes ne some favours offered to get it. About 2x a year I might need help with a car, but that's fitted around a friend- such as buying large bags of manure. We do his garden and mine together. The things Ali have struggled with in the past have been really heavy loads.

I don't have to pay a parking permit locally to park or any other vehicle expense other than bike fixing periodically (about £60 last year)

I completely get that pain thing (arthritis in both knees & hips) and standing at bus stops. The rain wet and cold and can be a bit miserable on a bicycle but if I know I am arriving somewhere I can dry off and be warm its not so bad.

So is it fair to say although you can get by without a car , it requires a car,van or truck to be in the picture somewhere.

I am assuming you live in a city or outskirts of a large town.

 

[slowworm]

I was seriously looking at going down the no car route or at least SORNing the car for several months. However, the council decided we had to take our refuse and recycling a mile up a narrow road to be collected. The recycling is 7 or 8 different containers so a vehicle is the only real option. (I had a few conversations with our Green councillor about it and he simply could not comprehend not using a car).

Although I do cycle I don't think it's safe to do everything on a bike round here, I actually measured the pot hole outside our front drive and it's literally 6" deep. Typical for the area and the council just doesn't care.

There's also little public transport round here, 3 miles walk to the bus stop, over an hour to the train station on the bus. When I looked at visiting my mum by public transport it was tricky to do it in a single day, car is a 5 hour drive.

 

[ManFriday4]

So is it fair to say although you can get by without a car , it requires a car,van or truck to be in the picture somewhere.

I am assuming you live in a city or outskirts of a large town.

I live on the edge of a city.

My personal car requirements are less than 1 or 2 times a year, max.

I do understand that most of what I buy has to get to the market by.lorry, apart from the chicken and eggs, they come from a local farm.

I used to live 20miles away from this town too, also without a car.

 

[Paul_B]

I live 2 minutes walk from a train station in our village. I can get to current work and my new job I'm waiting to start. We get food shopping delivered, clothes are bought online and we can easily get by without a car. Our nearest town is out unless we cycle 20 minutes to the next village to catch the bus that goes quite a distance.

We could go without a car or van but we don't want to. Having gone from 20k miles a year to around 6.5k a year which includes two UK holidays a year often 3 to 6 hours away in Scotland with a bit of van touring too, I think we've made great strides towards reducing the impact of our car use.

 

[ManFriday4]

I live 2 minutes walk from a train station in our village. I can get to current work and my new job I'm waiting to start. We get food shopping delivered, clothes are bought online and we can easily get by without a car. Our nearest town is out unless we cycle 20 minutes to the next village to catch the bus that goes quite a distance.

We could go without a car or van but we don't want to. Having gone from 20k miles a year to around 6.5k a year which includes two UK holidays a year often 3 to 6 hours away in Scotland with a bit of van touring too, I think we've made great strides towards reducing the impact of our car use.

That's really interesting.

My question wasn't about environmental impacts of vehicle use it was more of an if for one reason or another you can't use your vehicle would you be really stuck?

For example the suez canal was blocked a few years ago & currently the Panama canal has extended restrictions through September. 6% of world trade goes through the Panama & 12% of trade through the Suez. Asia/Pacific rim dominates the global ball bearing market. If both the Suez & the Panama Canal were closed there would be a bottleneck in the ball bearing market to the UK & Europe impacting all transport over time.

Globalised supply chains are vulnerable to minor shocks impacting us too.

 

[Paul_B]

There's significant ball bearing facilities around Europe. Also there's shipping routes avoiding the canals. I remember sorting out the export of my old company's products in a 40ft HC container to a far off part of the world. We were offered two routes, one through suez the other the long way. The long was cheaper at the time and we were able to adjust the schedule ti account for the longer sailing times.

My point being that working in the automotive sector now and other sectors before, there is a very sophisticated logistics business behind large industrial sectors. While huge impacts such as pandemics do it seems have a big impact, logistics is not actually a big deal. Suez and Panama canals shutting down is not something that can't be dealt with.

As to car use right now there's little to stop ppl using them. It's still a choice. Not to say in the future the end of ICE without adequate infra for other sources of personal automotive power couldn't cause issues but until then it's a personal choice. But this is a good theoretical discussion.

In my opinion one of the big issues is that people don't live local lives. By this I mean we often don't live near our places of work, near our facil such as doctor, hospital, kid's schools, supermarket or other for shops. This was not always the case. Often ppl used to live in the streets around their factory, down the road from kid's schools, corner shops, local butchers, greengrocers, etc. Now it's often the case the worst off have the least local facilities. They don't have cars for food shops at the out of town supermarkets for example. I know many ppl who walk into town to do food shop then have to pay for a taxi. One guy used to finish early one day a week or use a day's holiday on that day just so he could help his mum bring bags of weekly shopping home from the shop. He used to get teased for that day being his farm foods day!

I reckon one day we'll go back to living near your job with those who can WFH.

 

[slowworm]

I reckon one day we'll go back to living near your job with those who can WFH.

I cant see that making a vast difference. We've worked from home for the last 10 years and the need for a car has increased in that time such as services being moved further away, reductions in public transport (I think people working from home was one reason for the reduction).

Just thinking of our nearest town, logically people would live and work in the town. However, the council has consistently ripped the heart out of the town by approving out of town shopping meaning shops in the town close and people need to drive out of the town to go to the shops.

The council also view motorists as a giant cash cow, freely admitting when they need more cash they just put parking charges up by large amounts.

It's going to take a lot to change the mindset of many councils to help people reduce car usage.

 

[Paul_B]

That's what I'm talking about. Things can't go on like this indefinitely. One day there will be work, housing, services, etc within reasonable distances for most people. We can't keep on with distance living.

 

[Ozmundo]

Most of the jobs I’ve had couldn’t be done with out them.
I am considering a home business but then I still need to use couriers to ship and bring non local supplies. So even if my personal miles went down to zero I effectively still need a vehicle.


“Get on your bike!” Back in the day when that was a call to tell people be prepared to go looking for work and travel to jobs a lot of folks though it made sense.

As a teenager I cycled in the early morning on country roads to do kitchen prep for an hour before school a couple of days a week and evenings washing up. That route now terrifies me, I would ask anyone to cycle it. Let alone in child semi-darkness. The roads are way too busy.

Tradesmens always had to travel but now I know a lot of guys who have to go all over the country. There is no option to not use a vehicle for many self employed people.

Even I had minimal kit some of the things I need probably fall foul of terms of carriage. Public transport is not especially cost effective and what takes me 45 minutes is a three hour train and bus journey if the various parts actually link up.

My Grandfather worked much of his life in a timber yard and relied on Shire horses. They went mechanised in the end but I’d love to be able to do that. I probably have a rose tinted view through.

He was fun to visit places like the Weald and Down museum with, “It don’t go like that ye swarmey booger”. I remember him being shown around a large collection of forestry tools, his one comment after forty minutes was the the head of and adze was on backwards.

 

[SaraR]

I wouldn’t be able to get to work, get to the shops or go to places to go hiking/walking. Basically, where I live you’re totally reliant on a car. Sadly.

 

[demographic]

On about people working close to home or not.
A while ago I was working in a place called Maryport, travelling from Carlisle.
On my way to work me and my workmate used to pass two lads from Maryport on their way to a job in Carlisle.
We all worked for the same company...

Waving at two blokes who live in Maryport and were working in Carlisle as we drove from Carlisle to the job at Maryport didn't irritate us at all, no siree.

Pathetic management really should be stomped on, from a great height.

 

[British Red]

That's really interesting.

My question wasn't about environmental impacts of vehicle use it was more of an if for one reason or another you can't use your vehicle would you be really stuck?
.

We need a car, but would be far better off than most in the situation that you describe. We are a good few miles from shops or bus stops but, thankfully, could potter along for a few years without shops if we absolutely had to. In the situation you describe it's the people who get their food from shops week to week that I would feel most sorry for - that stuff would be gone in very short order. Which raises the other question. How long could you last without going to the shops?