You don't have to live in the deepest countryside to need a car!

tsstss7

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

I think the context of the original remark was that someone couldn't afford to keep up the repayments on her car on a salary of over £21,000 a year, so the suggestion was don't have a car then. The reply from someone else was that this was impossible because everybody needs a car if they have children or work. Well, no, because plenty of people don't use one but get up a bit earlier in the morning and do it all by public transport instead.

If it were an essential tool for employment, surely the first thing that would happen when someone signs on as unemployed would be that they were instantly given free driving lessons or it was made part of the National Curriculum?

It's nice to have a car. But it isn't essential - it's convenient.

i think you might want to try rereading the post you take your first point from as thats not the way I read it.

On your other point in bold - this does/did happen you know. I know someone who had free driving lessons through the job centre because it was generally ackowledged that it was nigh on impossible to get/hold down a full time job if one lived in that area without one....She didn't live in a rural area but a suburb but as it was in wales jobs tended to be concentrated in the big cities.

bubblegum6000

I know a car is not essential but it does make life easier! There is no way I could afford to life where I work - Alderley Edge- a 1bed flat would be well out of my price range! As it is I have a 3 bed house 9miles away and commute by car, to me it's a no brainer, I will drive because it's easier than getting the bus! OH only works 2 miles away from work and walks and I only use my car for work and walk everywhere else, I don't see how this can be that bad!

andrealm

I agree, we live in a town and public transport isn't very convenient from the part of town where we live. If you can drive to work in 20-30 mins and getting there by bus and walking is going to take an 1.5 hours, it's not surprising that most people who can drive, will. I can't drive and I have found that quite a few jobs do involve driving and a clean driving licence is essential, anything that involves going to visit clients usually.

DH drives, he used to live very close to work, but his department was moved. At the time there wasn't a bus that would have enabled him to do his full working day, as the times were wrong for the only bus that ran.

I'm not sure that getting rid of a car is always very MSE, if you do have to travel to work, public transport can be very expensive, I used to be shocked at how much my monthly train ticket cost.

Gloomendoom

andrealm wrote: »

I'm not sure that getting rid of a car is always very MSE, if you do have to travel to work, public transport can be very expensive, I used to be shocked at how much my monthly train ticket cost.

A while ago I got rid of my car for nearly two years. Using public transport was cheaper overall... but only because I didn't own a car at all.

In response to an initiative by my employer, I recently did the sums to see whether using public transport was a viable in my present situation. From a financial point of view it was, as long as only journeys to work and the local town were concerned, and not holidays etc. From a time point of view it was a complete non starter as the earliest I could get to work was 11am and I would have to leave by 4pm.

Needless to say my employer was not too keen on cutting my working day down to five hours.

zcrat41

Quite an interesting read this one!

I'd back up people saying you don't need to live in the Outer Hebrides or Cornawall to need a car. I grew up less than 60 miles from London on a farm. The bus was a 2 mile walk from our house. It took 1hr 45 mins to make an 8 mile journey as it went round all the stops. It also left the village at 9.15am (too late for school!) and left town at 3pm (too early for school!)

That was ten years ago, the service has now been scrapped. You could not live in our village without a car (or at least access to one/share of one) as you could not access shops/doctors etc. Fair enough, a fit and healthy person could bike it but there's not many of them in our village as house prices are so high you tend to have to be a bit older and a bit wealthier to buy - no offence meant here!

On the point of people saying its cheaper to live away from work - I work on my parents farm now but have had to move further away from work to a nearby town as house prices are sooooo much cheaper than in the villages.

Its a 20 mile commute not served by buses. I work up to 20 hour days in the summer so would not want to think about biking!

podperson

While for some jobs I guess a car is a necessity, overall I think it is choice - yes you may need one in rural areas but would you have chosen to live in a rural area if you didn't have a car in the first place?
I am on a relatively low wage and am the only income for my household so there is no physical way that I can afford to run a car - therefore I have to manage, I don't have a choice in the matter. It means that I can't apply for jobs in hard-to-reach places (although one I previously did involved 2 buses and a 30 minute walk from the bus stop but I desparately needed the money at the time so I had to cope). It means that when I moved house 18 months ago I had to check that where I was moving to had decent local amentities and had good bus links. If I want to go somewhere out of town or go away I have to plan out my trip via public transport.
Yes, sometimes it would be much more convenient if I had a car but I'm not going to let it stop me doing things I want to do. I'm not begrudging people who like the convenience of having one but I think that most people would be able to manage without if they had no choice in the matter.

jrawle

I would really like to see a campaign for people only to have one car per household. I manage without a car, but I understand than this is not possible for everyone, and that there are some things that aren't possible without a car.

In modern society where the norm is for both partners to work, it's far less likely to be possible for a household to live where both of them can travel to work on foot or by public transport. However, it should be possible to move somewhere so that at least one of the working adults is able to do without a car. They then have just one car that either of them can use for recreational/household activities in the evening or at weekends, and that is used for one of them to travel to work in the week if necessary.

We seem to live in a society now where the norm is not just to have a car, but one car per adult. I would say a sensible government policy, rather than trying to hit all car drivers hard, would be to reduce or abolish road tax for the first car per household, but then really clobber anyone who has more than one car. That way everyone has access to a car, but those who make no effort to find alternate ways to travel - and so insist they can't do without one car each - pay for all the extra congestion and pollution they cause. It would also improve the parking situation in residential areas!

nickyhutch

jrawle wrote: »

In modern society where the norm is for both partners to work, it's far less likely to be possible for a household to live where both of them can travel to work on foot or by public transport. However, it should be possible to move somewhere so that at least one of the working adults is able to do without a car. And what happens when you move job/get made redundant etc.? They then have just one car that either of them can use for recreational/household activities in the evening or at weekends, and that is used for one of them to travel to work in the week if necessary.

If two people HAVE to go to work, they're very lucky if they can get jobs in the same area, with the same hours.

Becles

jrawle wrote: »

I would really like to see a campaign for people only to have one car per household. I manage without a car, but I understand than this is not possible for everyone, and that there are some things that aren't possible without a car.

What happens if both members of a couple have jobs that require a car?

In my case my husband starts at 6am and there are no buses to get him to work. At the moment he's mainly at an office 12 miles away but he has no official fixed place of work and can be expected to go to any office in the northern region, sometimes at very short notice.

I'm self employed with no fixed place of work and visit various places in the area depending on what work I can source.

Husband has worked up from the bottom in his job and really enjoys it. I love the flexibility of my job as I can work around our children so I'm there before and after school, can attend assemblies etc., and be home if one is sick.

Only being allowed one car would mean one of us would have to give up work. Probably me as I'm the smallest wage earner. I've already said it takes 90 mins to get to my parents by bus compared to 10-15 mins in the car, so I wouldn't have time to take the little one to my parents house before travelling to a job, and then being home in time for school coming out.

Edit: got the little one at home this morning as my parents are on holiday, but she's going to nursery in 10 minutes. I'm popping to a shopping centre 9 miles away to do about 60-90 mins of work. The journey will take about 15 mins each way so I'll be back in good time to pick her up at 3.30pm.

To do it by bus I'd have to drop her at school then wait till 1pm for the bus into Gateshead, then get a bus back out to the Metrocentre. I'd arrive there at 13.47.

I'd have to leave the Metrocentre at 14.15 to get the bus back in time to collect her from school.

That doesn't give me enough time in the shopping centre to actually do my work!

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Guess I'll just have to go down the jobcentre, introduce myself (as I'm not on the dole) and tell them that everyone says I have to have a car, so they have to give me a free driving licence and car, then.

You may be able to hear the laughter from where you are.......