So we are still on this blame the average person for climate change rather than the actual issues?
At a certain point, the government’s climate dog and pony show will butt up against their opposition to working from home.
Do they try to please the planet? Or commercial landlords who own offices?
Whoever wins, we lose.
I live in Bristol and the public transport services here are so laughably poor, it’s no surprise, honestly.
I can drive to Cabot Circus with my entire family, park for a few hours for about 4 quid, and drive back home OR wait at a bus stop and watch as the bus just magically disappears off the board, and the next, and end up late AF for anything I planned on doing, and pay more for the privilege.
Anyone who doesn’t live within a few miles of the centre are likely to have one unreliable service once an hour, and no night bus, so have absolutely not chance of relying on it.
Voi’s are okay, but not appropriate for all journeys, and are starting to get far too expensive.
I’m sure Bristol isn’t the only city like this. You can’t encourage people to use cars less without investing heavily into public transport, so that it’s **more** appealing to get a bus than it is to jump in the car.
Then improve public transport links across the board, from macro to micro levels.
Build towns that require less driving,make it cheaper to buy EVs (maybe decent grants would be nice).
Point is, there is a ton the government can do but let’s be real… they are too busy with their stupid clown show.
Oho, the vroom vroom honk honk members of this sub won’t like this one.
Current levels of car use are unsustainable – even if you could transition fully to EV’s.
The infrastructure’s too carbon-intensive and doesn’t last long enough, the energy and space and materials efficiency is terrible, the resources aren’t there for a 1:1 replacement in a timescale that is climate relevant. Plus the microplastics, noise pollution, and cost in human lives and roadkill.
* The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Clean Growth: Technologies for meeting the UK’s emissions reduction targets. Paragraph 131.
We have two choices:
1: Prepare for that, make planning, infrastructure, public transport, and active travel policies and decisions that undo the current car-dependent structure and make cars unnecessary before they become unaffordable (in monetary terms or carbon budget terms). Build a low carbon transport system as quickly as humanly possible. That will also be cheaper to maintain, improve public health, and increase resilience to energy shocks.
2: Fail to prepare, endure chaotic unmanaged transition when we crash into [the materials crisis of the late 2020s](https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary), leaving us ploughing towards a +3°C world (where the poor can’t afford food), or in a world that *might* squeak past with ‘just; ~2°C warming with *massive* transport poverty and inequality where the rich drive their lovely EVs and live in expensive urban centres while the poor morons who still live where you need a car and can’t afford it are absolutely *crushed*.
Rapid, planned, fair, radical transition, or rapid, unplanned, unfair radical transition. Those are our choices in 2023.
We’ve planned all development for private car use for the past 50+ years, and under invested in public transport alternatives, but now we’re telling you it’s all your fault for using the car so much!
I live in the West of England. My nearest bus stop is over 7 miles away which goes to a local village once a week. I can’t access a train by public transport.
My car usage isn’t going to change until I can access viable public transport.
The west of England is quite spread out. Bus journeys whilst possible are expensive and or take longer than necessary. Cycling often isn’t practical or possible due to the sheer distances or the hills. There is poor trains provision.
The charging network is poor. but both bath and Bristol have introduced clean air zones so hopefully electric car adoption will improve.
Honestly until public transport is free/extremely cheap or it’s completely financially unviable to drive, people will continue to do so.
They are just going to price people out of using diesel and petrol cars and keep us locked in zones, while private jet use continues. They don’t want regular people having freedoms.
It’s the cities and big towns that need to reduce car use, country life needs cars for transport way more than city life does.
At present it’s cheaper more pleasant and waay more convenient for me to drive anywhere. Guess I could walk the 2 miles to the nearest shop more often but I have bad joints so 🤷♂️
Lol. No.
No public transport link exists that takes me to my place of work and allows me to collect my kids from school etc.
The burden of climate change is always thrown upon individuals and bypasses the big polluters.
My entire carbon footprint for my entire life is what BP will pump out in a morning.
Yeah, no thanks. It cost me £70 for an off-peak train from Bristol to London. No wonder people have fucked off public transport and will just take the car. It’s far, far cheaper. I’m all for driving less, but public transport needs to be radically improved before you can start to expect people to stop driving as much. The only time I ever get the train anywhere now is when I know I’ll be having a beer. But if I’m not, I’ll drive as it’s SO much cheaper and quicker.
Nearest train station is nearly an hour away. Nearest bus stop is probably 2 miles, serviced by (maybe) 2 busses a day. This is not going to work in rural areas
They introduced 50mph on the m4…so you can slowly drive past the steelworks in Port Talbot. 🤡
It’s nice that we need to bring down car use, but unless they’re going to invest HS2 money to connect small cities and towns, it’s never going to happen.
It’s utterly laughable it’s not going happen. I’ve grown up in rural Somerset. Public transport has never been a thing if anything it has got worse. Asking people to cut journeys will just increase rural isolation and widen the gaps of opportunities between those in urban areas and rural areas.
Growing up a moped at 16 was basically essential if you wanted to go to college or work or have any social life. Cars were needed for the elderly residents so they weren’t cut off. My village had a lot residents in their late 80s still driving.
There’s also the issue of housing being unaffordable in rural areas. The rural areas with good access are too expensive and the really rural places are cheaper but you spend much more anyway as every trip is a car journey.
It’s simply not going to happen and if you try and force it to happen your just going to create/ worsen existing issues already.
Isn’t transport infrastructure so bad in the West of England that there’s not even a motorway?
Yeah, good one, try living in rural Cornwall where everything is miles and miles away on country roads with no pavements and absolutely fuck-all practical public transport. We’ve been refused a bus route to one of our nearest towns because apparently, according to the official response to repeated pleas, living in a rural area we should all have cars and not need to rely on public transport. So I’ll continue to drive my petrol car and I won’t feel guilty about it.
I’m so glad that the government has put in place reliable public transport to facilitate this.
Not going to happen unless you wipe out half of the population of the west country
A slight increase in permitted power for ebikes would help a lot, restriction at 250W makes them less viable as a replacement for a car. Also we need to see UK developed light electric vehicles something like [Arcimoto.com](https://Arcimoto.com)
Stop with the shitshow about climate target already. Having a private car is basic human right, forcing people to rely on public transport is what a tyranny would do.
Motoring in the future will not be for the masses, that golden age is rapidly disappearing.
The future is starkly split between those who can afford to buy and run a car, and those who cannot. It will not be an even split, far from it.
You know those lovely average speed cameras, well they will be on every major road, logging you on and off, checking your average speed and then sending you a nice bill every month for miles travelled.
Either you can afford that or you can’t and the way it will be priced, most won’t.
I think it’s pretty unlikely we would ever be able to reduce our car use living down here in Cornwall, there are a good many small towns and villages which only get one bus going through a day. Some don’t have any at all.
>West of England’s car use needs to halve
It’s the east (London mostly) that has problems.
Yeah that’s not happening because car brain entitlement is massive in the UK and includes believing that a pavement is not for pedestrians but to park 3-5 ton world killing death machine
Alternatively, we could make the targets more realistic
The UK makes up less than 1% of global emissions and while I sort of believe in the every-little-helps philosophy, the fact is we could sink into the see right now and make negligible impact to the climate. To that end, who cares? Drive your cars, live your life, fuck it.
Stop charging £20 for a return ticket on trains then
This is absolute nonsense. Why is climate change the peoples problem when its literally large corporations spewing out co2 emissions especially in China, let alone all the millionaires and billiomaires who’s co2 footprints are equivalent to 10ks of the average persons
The government can get lost with these targets. Invest in public transport and make it far cheaper and there might be a change. Go after the biggest polluters while you’re at it and actually stop allowing companies to dump sewage in rivers for a fucking start.
LOL it takes me over 5 hours to get from central Cornwall to SE Dorset by train. Local public transport is a joke. Anyone making regular journeys, especially out of Cornwall needs a car down here, its not a luxury people can just give up.
While rich people fly round on private planes….yeh good one!
Dan Norris (West of England Metro Mayor) and Marvin Rees (Mayor of Bristol) are two reasons I’m voting Green in the next GE. Both mayors have been terrible for their regions.
Swindon to Reading £7000 a year by train. Lol no ty I will keep my car.
More people would use trains if it wasn’t literally cheaper to fly a plane from one city to the next.
You can buy, insure and scrap a car daily for cheaper than some train fairs.
I got the train from braunton to Exeter about 5 years ago. They had request stops like it was the bus. I have family down there and frankly I don’t see how they could live without a car at all for work, seeing family and friends 🤷♂️
Or… they could shove the climate targets ( that we didn’t ask for)up their ass along with their heads.
Then the west of England needs adequate public transportation. One bus a day / week is not adequate for people. Also the buses cost more than the car upkeep, fuel and parking would cost. And trains even more than that. If either of them even show up.
They need to stop focusing on individuals to make a change with climate change. You can’t expect people to sacrifice their lifestyle, change they way they eat and stop them traveling.
It needs to come from the top, why not invest in carbon neutral fuels powered by nuclear, lab grown meats or foods for cattle with low methane output, solar panels on all new builds and grands for existing houses etc.
This needs a government push that isn’t just a band-aid, but an actual solution.
41 comments
So we are still on this blame the average person for climate change rather than the actual issues?
At a certain point, the government’s climate dog and pony show will butt up against their opposition to working from home.
Do they try to please the planet? Or commercial landlords who own offices?
Whoever wins, we lose.
I live in Bristol and the public transport services here are so laughably poor, it’s no surprise, honestly.
I can drive to Cabot Circus with my entire family, park for a few hours for about 4 quid, and drive back home OR wait at a bus stop and watch as the bus just magically disappears off the board, and the next, and end up late AF for anything I planned on doing, and pay more for the privilege.
Anyone who doesn’t live within a few miles of the centre are likely to have one unreliable service once an hour, and no night bus, so have absolutely not chance of relying on it.
Voi’s are okay, but not appropriate for all journeys, and are starting to get far too expensive.
I’m sure Bristol isn’t the only city like this. You can’t encourage people to use cars less without investing heavily into public transport, so that it’s **more** appealing to get a bus than it is to jump in the car.
Then improve public transport links across the board, from macro to micro levels.
Build towns that require less driving,make it cheaper to buy EVs (maybe decent grants would be nice).
Point is, there is a ton the government can do but let’s be real… they are too busy with their stupid clown show.
Oho, the vroom vroom honk honk members of this sub won’t like this one.
Current levels of car use are unsustainable – even if you could transition fully to EV’s.
The infrastructure’s too carbon-intensive and doesn’t last long enough, the energy and space and materials efficiency is terrible, the resources aren’t there for a 1:1 replacement in a timescale that is climate relevant. Plus the microplastics, noise pollution, and cost in human lives and roadkill.
>[In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation.](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmsctech/1454/145408.htm)
* The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Clean Growth: Technologies for meeting the UK’s emissions reduction targets. Paragraph 131.
We have two choices:
1: Prepare for that, make planning, infrastructure, public transport, and active travel policies and decisions that undo the current car-dependent structure and make cars unnecessary before they become unaffordable (in monetary terms or carbon budget terms). Build a low carbon transport system as quickly as humanly possible. That will also be cheaper to maintain, improve public health, and increase resilience to energy shocks.
2: Fail to prepare, endure chaotic unmanaged transition when we crash into [the materials crisis of the late 2020s](https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary), leaving us ploughing towards a +3°C world (where the poor can’t afford food), or in a world that *might* squeak past with ‘just; ~2°C warming with *massive* transport poverty and inequality where the rich drive their lovely EVs and live in expensive urban centres while the poor morons who still live where you need a car and can’t afford it are absolutely *crushed*.
Rapid, planned, fair, radical transition, or rapid, unplanned, unfair radical transition. Those are our choices in 2023.
We’ve planned all development for private car use for the past 50+ years, and under invested in public transport alternatives, but now we’re telling you it’s all your fault for using the car so much!
I live in the West of England. My nearest bus stop is over 7 miles away which goes to a local village once a week. I can’t access a train by public transport.
My car usage isn’t going to change until I can access viable public transport.
The west of England is quite spread out. Bus journeys whilst possible are expensive and or take longer than necessary. Cycling often isn’t practical or possible due to the sheer distances or the hills. There is poor trains provision.
The charging network is poor. but both bath and Bristol have introduced clean air zones so hopefully electric car adoption will improve.
Honestly until public transport is free/extremely cheap or it’s completely financially unviable to drive, people will continue to do so.
They are just going to price people out of using diesel and petrol cars and keep us locked in zones, while private jet use continues. They don’t want regular people having freedoms.
It’s the cities and big towns that need to reduce car use, country life needs cars for transport way more than city life does.
At present it’s cheaper more pleasant and waay more convenient for me to drive anywhere. Guess I could walk the 2 miles to the nearest shop more often but I have bad joints so 🤷♂️
Lol. No.
No public transport link exists that takes me to my place of work and allows me to collect my kids from school etc.
The burden of climate change is always thrown upon individuals and bypasses the big polluters.
My entire carbon footprint for my entire life is what BP will pump out in a morning.
Yeah, no thanks. It cost me £70 for an off-peak train from Bristol to London. No wonder people have fucked off public transport and will just take the car. It’s far, far cheaper. I’m all for driving less, but public transport needs to be radically improved before you can start to expect people to stop driving as much. The only time I ever get the train anywhere now is when I know I’ll be having a beer. But if I’m not, I’ll drive as it’s SO much cheaper and quicker.
Nearest train station is nearly an hour away. Nearest bus stop is probably 2 miles, serviced by (maybe) 2 busses a day. This is not going to work in rural areas
They introduced 50mph on the m4…so you can slowly drive past the steelworks in Port Talbot. 🤡
It’s nice that we need to bring down car use, but unless they’re going to invest HS2 money to connect small cities and towns, it’s never going to happen.
It’s utterly laughable it’s not going happen. I’ve grown up in rural Somerset. Public transport has never been a thing if anything it has got worse. Asking people to cut journeys will just increase rural isolation and widen the gaps of opportunities between those in urban areas and rural areas.
Growing up a moped at 16 was basically essential if you wanted to go to college or work or have any social life. Cars were needed for the elderly residents so they weren’t cut off. My village had a lot residents in their late 80s still driving.
There’s also the issue of housing being unaffordable in rural areas. The rural areas with good access are too expensive and the really rural places are cheaper but you spend much more anyway as every trip is a car journey.
It’s simply not going to happen and if you try and force it to happen your just going to create/ worsen existing issues already.
Isn’t transport infrastructure so bad in the West of England that there’s not even a motorway?
Yeah, good one, try living in rural Cornwall where everything is miles and miles away on country roads with no pavements and absolutely fuck-all practical public transport. We’ve been refused a bus route to one of our nearest towns because apparently, according to the official response to repeated pleas, living in a rural area we should all have cars and not need to rely on public transport. So I’ll continue to drive my petrol car and I won’t feel guilty about it.
I’m so glad that the government has put in place reliable public transport to facilitate this.
Not going to happen unless you wipe out half of the population of the west country
A slight increase in permitted power for ebikes would help a lot, restriction at 250W makes them less viable as a replacement for a car. Also we need to see UK developed light electric vehicles something like [Arcimoto.com](https://Arcimoto.com)
Stop with the shitshow about climate target already. Having a private car is basic human right, forcing people to rely on public transport is what a tyranny would do.
Motoring in the future will not be for the masses, that golden age is rapidly disappearing.
The future is starkly split between those who can afford to buy and run a car, and those who cannot. It will not be an even split, far from it.
You know those lovely average speed cameras, well they will be on every major road, logging you on and off, checking your average speed and then sending you a nice bill every month for miles travelled.
Either you can afford that or you can’t and the way it will be priced, most won’t.
I think it’s pretty unlikely we would ever be able to reduce our car use living down here in Cornwall, there are a good many small towns and villages which only get one bus going through a day. Some don’t have any at all.
>West of England’s car use needs to halve
It’s the east (London mostly) that has problems.
Yeah that’s not happening because car brain entitlement is massive in the UK and includes believing that a pavement is not for pedestrians but to park 3-5 ton world killing death machine
Alternatively, we could make the targets more realistic
The UK makes up less than 1% of global emissions and while I sort of believe in the every-little-helps philosophy, the fact is we could sink into the see right now and make negligible impact to the climate. To that end, who cares? Drive your cars, live your life, fuck it.
Stop charging £20 for a return ticket on trains then
This is absolute nonsense. Why is climate change the peoples problem when its literally large corporations spewing out co2 emissions especially in China, let alone all the millionaires and billiomaires who’s co2 footprints are equivalent to 10ks of the average persons
The government can get lost with these targets. Invest in public transport and make it far cheaper and there might be a change. Go after the biggest polluters while you’re at it and actually stop allowing companies to dump sewage in rivers for a fucking start.
LOL it takes me over 5 hours to get from central Cornwall to SE Dorset by train. Local public transport is a joke. Anyone making regular journeys, especially out of Cornwall needs a car down here, its not a luxury people can just give up.
While rich people fly round on private planes….yeh good one!
Dan Norris (West of England Metro Mayor) and Marvin Rees (Mayor of Bristol) are two reasons I’m voting Green in the next GE. Both mayors have been terrible for their regions.
Swindon to Reading £7000 a year by train. Lol no ty I will keep my car.
More people would use trains if it wasn’t literally cheaper to fly a plane from one city to the next.
You can buy, insure and scrap a car daily for cheaper than some train fairs.
I got the train from braunton to Exeter about 5 years ago. They had request stops like it was the bus. I have family down there and frankly I don’t see how they could live without a car at all for work, seeing family and friends 🤷♂️
Or… they could shove the climate targets ( that we didn’t ask for)up their ass along with their heads.
Then the west of England needs adequate public transportation. One bus a day / week is not adequate for people. Also the buses cost more than the car upkeep, fuel and parking would cost. And trains even more than that. If either of them even show up.
They need to stop focusing on individuals to make a change with climate change. You can’t expect people to sacrifice their lifestyle, change they way they eat and stop them traveling.
It needs to come from the top, why not invest in carbon neutral fuels powered by nuclear, lab grown meats or foods for cattle with low methane output, solar panels on all new builds and grands for existing houses etc.
This needs a government push that isn’t just a band-aid, but an actual solution.