The Big 'Let's sell our cars and take buses/ebikes instead' thread (warning: probably very dull)

I'm happy to concur too. Given that motorists en masse seem to be addicted to a form of transport that isn't best suited to many of the places it's still used overwhelmingly (dense urban areas, for instance), and are very resistant to modifying their habits despite the obvious inefficiency of their choices, it doesn't seem unreasonable to add to the persuasion by increasing the cost.

The massive reduction in smoking in the UK is one of the most dramatic (and pleasing) shifts in public behaviour in my lifetime, which has been brought about by both the health messaging and the ramping-up of the cost smoking. The irony of the parallel with driving is that the more drivers refuse to modify their behaviour, the greater the ramping-up of the cost will be in order to modify the behaviour. Think of it like a Malcolm Tucker carrot & stick approach.

I don't care how expensive car use is particularly but I'd like to see car use reduce, especially in urban ares - making it expensive is one way of making it less popular.

For balance, I'd also add that flying should be considerably more expensive, and train travel cheaper. It's nuts that I can fly to Paris more cheaply than I can get to London by train.

Lonely

I still live 3 miles from the nearest shop. Can we just make driving inconvenient, or more expensive where it isn't needed, like where most of you live?

Congestion charges, basically. Whenever I do go to a city, I use the train these days, but sometimes drive an hour to the station to save an hour and a half more each way.

It can't be a blunt instrument.

Yup. When some cycling-centric group for Exeter suggested anywhere within ten miles of Exeter should be commutable by bike, I just asked them to do a daily commute from Dunsford to Exeter, which is only seven miles out... along a dark and fast road, with a gert big hill both ways, in the winter, when it's raining. Even I wouldn't do it. and there's no way to engineer a 'nice' route (short of re-opening the Longdown and Culver tunnels and turning the old Teign Valley line into a cycle track, which would cost millions).

Far better to have a combination of passable public transport and cars to get people to the outskirts of Exeter, provide a good park & ride scheme, then 'strongly encourage' people (via congestion charging and removing city-centre parking capacity, levying charges on car parking spaces etc) to use the shared/public transport options. These days there would be easy ways to limit private cars usage in town to those who genuinely need it (disabled, etc), and to support initiatives that gradually diminish the need for private cars in dense urban areas.

But their needs would be best served by having less motor traffic (safer and healthier) and better public transport, and, as you say, their needs trump the minority.

No, just using your logic, not least as you presume to be speaking for all motorists. I happen to be one too.

As a car-nut friend has pointed out to me many times, you can see the attraction of air travel for governments who don't want to/can't finance major transport upgrades.... hopping over land without immediate impact or planning disputes really is the easiest short-term option, especially now that aeroplanes are barely noisier than a train... not that long ago that houses literally shook when planes took off, and now there's barely more than a whirr.

Which is why I would tax it much more heavily: it would be a double win of putting a dampener on its expansion and raising funds to mitigate climate change, partly caused by air travel.

Didn't realise it was that many daily air passengers to Europe... seems an awful lot, about 0.5% of the entire UK population per day...

That's all journeys to and from UK and Europe. We have 28 international airports, That works out at about 140 flights in and out of each airport, which isn't so many in 24 hours. One taking off or landing every 12 minutes.

I've got his point, but even so was just amazed at the number. Thankfully, unlike Raab, I'm not a government minister.