I've Done it. We Are Currently a No Car Household.

TJ27

Yes, I believe you're right about the tax implications Sue. But that's fine. The tax on not very much is not very much. It doesn't concern me especially, although it is a consideration. It's the bottom line figure that matters.

The time thing is quite interesting. A few months ago I took part in the council's "Commuter Challenge." Different forms of transport, bikes (inc me), car, train and bus, set off from a location to the North of the city at 8.30am. The challenge was to see who could travel the 6.5 miles to the South of the city the quickest, cheapest, least polluting, etc.

The bike won on almost every single count. The quickest bike took 18 minutes (courier, v speedy!), I took 22 minutes, the train took 35 minutes, the car took 45 minutes and the bus took over an hour.

So it would be extremely easy for me to demonstrate that I am twice as quick on my bike than in a car. They put me on the front page of their own newsletter because of it.

The emergency issue is interesting too, although not really applicable to me. A mate of mine was telling me the other day that a pilot scheme was run in a large city some time ago, where paramedics were put on bikes. It was found that the bike paramedics got to the scene of accidents far more quickly even than ambulances with blues and twos. As a consequence the paramedic bike sceme has become very popular. Don't know which city though. I think you'd have trouble getting a patient to hospital on your bike rack though!