How hard would it be to give up the car

Fire_Fox

The problem is that public transport is not actually a 'service' at all, it's business. But now we are getting into politics ...

moneysaver12

I can't wait till i can start driving lessons, when i have saved up and pass my test. I actually hate catching the bus. The bus is every half an hour, usually always full so you have to stand up, you get thrown around, then because there are so many people on it, you struggle to get off. Thankfully my oh has a car.

A_fiend_for_life

Fire_Fox wrote: »

The problem is that public transport is not actually a 'service' at all, it's business. But now we are getting into politics ...

Definitions too: a customer can 'buy' a product or a service. The journey is a 'service' but the organisation is run as a 'business' - as opposed to a 'service' if they were run by councils.

neet87

Volcano wrote: »

Which (for example) could be 12,000 miles at 45mpg x .95p litre = approx £1100 + depreciation (maybe the same?) plus your aforementioned costs could see you nudging £3000 per year........

If you are able to give up your car that's great, but I don't think that anyone needs to feel guilty or justify not giving it up if they can't/won't.

I think you have misunderstood. My intention was to point out that giving a car up for financial reasons alone may not be as financially rewarding as previously thought; it could even end up costing you more. No justification, just maths.

And lol, I hope my car doesn’t depreciate by £1100 or in a few years it will be posted on the freebies board

economiser

Giving up a car depends on your circumstances. We are pensioners living a rural situation with no public transport. We need to navigate miles of narrow country lanes to get anywhere. Cycling or walking on the lanes is simply not safe because of the absurd speed of many of the cars using the lanes. There is a footpath/bridlepath to the nearest village but the horses make it into a morass for much of the time. Thus a car is an absolute necessity for us.

feesh

I wrote my car off just over a week ago, and have actually been loving not having it! (Although I feel awful about writing it off).

My hubbie doesn't believe me, and is putting me under pressure to buy a new one. He commutes into London on the train, so he doesn't need his own car, but he feels "trapped" without one.

I am getting public transport to work, and have realised how incredibly unfit I am as it does involve a few small walks which kill me

I feel more connected with the local area and not having the responsibility of a car is one less thing to worry about (it was starting to cost money as it had done 119k miles).

I used to think public transport was expensive (hubbie's season ticket is over £3k a year), but I bought my car 8 years ago for approx. £8k, and now it's worth less than £1k, so that's almost £1k per year in depreciation alone. Add on to that £150 a year for insurance (I WAS a low risk driver!) and £110 a year for tax, not to mention services at £200 a pop, and almost £50 a week in petrol - now I can see clearly what I was spending on it, I realise that public transport is not too bad after all for price.

elljay

To go back to Bonnie's orignal question, I put on 2 stone pretty quickly when I passed my test, having previousy walked everywhere! Nightmare!

I'm walking much more now, and have found that distances that seemed really long when I first started, so much so that I've turned back rather than continued, well these are now really short and I can't understand why they seemed so far previously. I'm also walking faster too, and even occasionally do 20 paces walking, 20 paces running if no-one is around to watch the bouncing!!

It feels worse thinking about it than doing it as someone else has said. Liz

rach

Hi Bonnie,

I think I can help you a bit too. My job is to get people fitting more walking into their everyday lives. I'd echo what fire fox says above but say that 10 000 is a lot to aim for at first, we find it puts a lot of people off. That figure would also include all the walking you do in the day - including at home, not just out and about!

The recommendation from the Government is now to aim for 30 minutes of activity on five or more days of the week - if you already do that you are advised to do an hour and the figure for children is an hour a day, as said above.

If it helps with motivation pm me and I can organise for you to get a pack of which will include a step-counter to monitor your progress and some advice and motivational stuff on building up your walking slowly.

Since doing this job I walk a lot more myself, rarely use my car (have used it twice this year and am seriously considering getting rid of it as I also commute to work bystuff public transport), and you do find you can do more quite quickly, and actually i've been stuck at home the last few days and have really missed the walking, your body gets used to it.

Fire_Fox

rach wrote: »

My job is to get people fitting more walking into their everyday lives. I'd echo what fire fox says above but say that 10 000 is a lot to aim for at first, we find it puts a lot of people off. That figure would also include all the walking you do in the day - including at home, not just out and about!

The recommendation from the Government is now to aim for 30 minutes of activity on five or more days of the week - if you already do that you are advised to do an hour and the figure for children is an hour a day, as said above.

I am guessing you work for one of the fantastic 'Walking for Health' schemes? :T

Just to add, it's not just thirty minutes of activity five times a week, it's thirty minutes of moderate intensity activity. That means anything that gets you more out of breath than normal, but still able to hold a conversation. For most people that would be brisk walking but it varies according to fitness levels. The 10,000 steps/ one hour can be at any intensity, even easy pace walking.

rach

Fire_Fox wrote: »

I am guessing you work for one of the fantastic 'Walking for Health' schemes? :T

Similar to that, yes. We also do some workshops and health education as well as the walks as part of the programme.

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Just to add, it's not just thirty minutes of activity five times a week, it's thirty minutes of moderate intensity activity. That means anything that gets you more out of breath than normal, but still able to hold a conversation. For most people that would be brisk walking but it varies according to fitness levels. The 10,000 steps/ one hour can be at any intensity, even easy pace walking.

Yes, that's helpful, we advise to use the 'talk test' - you can hold a conversation but you couldn't sing a song, your hands are warm and you can feel your heart beating (which might be a shock to people if they've done no exercise for a long time). it's important to walk briskly - brisk is what is brisk for you, everyone's brisk is different!