CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
"
It estimates there are 800,000 families trying to run a car with a disposable weekly income of no more than £167.
"
Presumably even more families who can't afford to - or choose not - but car ownership/use is now a 'right' that people (voters) expect governments to 'provide'(?)
I love these kind of stories - I would love to know the definition of 'disposable income'. Is this some arbitrary figure after 'essentials' are taken care of (whatever they are)?
So what are the poor spending the other 75% on? Sky TV, a bit of booze, fags and lottery tickets?
In this sort of calculation 'essentials' will be all or most of food, clothes, housing and energy.
The bigger picture is of course that a car is not seen as a luxury - in the same way that a colour TV used to be, but is now taken for granted.
There are probably people who 'need' a car because cycling isn't an option (for whatever reason) and Public Transport inadequate.
Ignoring that those may be inaccurate perceptions, the fact is that while (current levels of) car use is regarded as normal/desirable/essential/good for the economy/'modern'/etc. improved cycling and PT options are difficult to provide/'sell'.
That's a cracking article title. I would suggest that there's a big difference between 'quarter of income' and 'quarter of disposable income'...
I was thinking about this the other day, I never bought into the 'car as freedom' idea, quite the opposite, As I grew up in the North East I saw my contemporaries get cars and then spend all their money keeping them going. As a result they never managed to quit their call centre service jobs and are probably still there now. For the cost of climbing a 4 mile hill every day (not a bad idea after sitting down for 8 hours) I recon I was a good £50+ better off.
The bike was freedom, just stick at it and you could be on the west coast with for no more than a couple of cheese rolls.
Ruggers, NE Scotland or England?
I grew up in NE Scotland and had a similar experience (though didn't properly discover cycling again till moving down here). A big chunk of my friends who I played football with were a bit older than me, left school at the end of 4th year and got various apprenticeships, then spent everything on a Vauxhall Cavalier SRi; or Novas with huge exhausts; then proceeded to.... drive around the wee town centre in circles beeping at girls.
This was apparently 'freedom'.
aye, Scotland
Furry boots?
(I was in Ellon from the age of 4 - about 16 miles north of Aberdeen).
Invergordon! And the Black Isle before that.
Par for the course along in Turriff too, WC. Police started issuing ABSOs for "doing the circuit" about a year ago which clamped down on the tubers a wee bit but has not completely eradicated the right of passage culture in existence.
Unfortunately, a car was a necessity once I had secured a job when living up there because sadly Turriff to Huntly at 04.30 (including Sundays) was not in the scope of public transport. Now I tend to use the bike for most journeys around Edinburgh, filling the car up at £70-ish roughly once a month to make the journey to the NE and back for a family visit.
I couldn't imagine having to fork out £70-100 for a tank of fuel once or even twice a week and feel sad for those whose journeys by car are actually a daily necessity. Nor could I ever go back to driving like a zombie and still not being awake once in the office until ten by which time two cups of coffee and a pastry had to have been consumed to get me going - a bit of morning exercise means I'm alert by the time my bum hits my seat at 07.45 and I'm in the best shape of my life as an added bonus.
I also happen to be from the NE (I'm a Lossie loon, born in Elgin). I didn't get into cycling until I also moved away after college and started commuting to work (I moved to Didcot, near Oxford, and the lab I worked at was just a few miles away). My parents had never driven (still don't), so I guess as a family we got used to not having a car.
I didn't learn to drive until my mid-thirties, and even now I don't have a car (with my current job it doesn't make sense, I can be away a lot). I guess I'm fortunate that I feel I can do without one, but I'm certainly happy to save the money.
I think owning a car leads people to move further away from their place or work or visa versa, take jobs further away from their home. Proliferation has lead to people having to rely on cars to get about and trying to get people to use public transport or cycles is difficult to do.
I take heart though from a conversaion with a cyclist lastnight on the way home. I chatted to a guy on an MTB cycling through Dalmeny. He said that he has knoticed a lot more cycling over the past few years. I think the increase in fuel cost, general traffic and difficulty in parking in town/city centres has pushed commuters towards cycling.
I like cycling and have recently realised that we can chat to others on a ride, which breaks down barriers we have automatically in cars. Most people are nice and freindly but put then in a metal box which is their pride and joy and they become angry, protective and selfish. On a bike people are generally open freindly and open to a chat.
It's a lot easier to manage without a car in a city (especially one like Edinburgh) than in a provincial town or in the country, where public transport is less frequent/reliable and employment cetnres a more thinly spread so there's a good chance your job is in a different town to the one you live in.
I managed for about 12 years in Edinburgh without a car and since we got one I've found it's an excellent way to haemorrhage money (and that's with it only really being used for longer trips/holidays - Monday to Friday it rarely moves). If people sat down and did the maths on it, a lot of them really would struggle to justify paying for the convenience that ownership gives them. But we get them anyway because that is how Britain is just now.
"
In the 1950s, 3 out of every 10 people on the planet lived in a city. Today, that ratio has nearly doubled — and the United Nations projects that by 2050, nearly 7 in 10 people will live in urban settings. Our population is gravitating towards cities, and this shift is creating amazing opportunities as well as critical problems that need our immediate attention. Modern cities are hubs of connection and creativity and, at the same time, centers of pollution and dehumanization.
"
http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/05/cities-without-highways-a-qa-with-ted-book-essayist-diana-lind
@PS and DaveC. I agree with both your posts. People do seem to force themselves often into needing lots of cars. (don't know what I did with the earlier post I was writing, but it said) my parents seem like a good example of this, they decided when moving to the area they now live to move to a small village a few miles from a smallish town (that has a train station). My dad works in a larger-town ~20 miles away (very near the station there). If they'd lived in the small town he could have taken the train to work every day, and pretty well done away with the car. Mum drives to work almost every day (works in village now, about a mile from home). I figure they've effectively chosen to 'need' cars...
Also I was getting annoyed by the lack of actual info on what fuel duty's been doing (in real terms).
so figured it out myself!
http://lionfishy.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/fuel-duty/
Some people *do* need cars (e.g. the job might require moving lots of heavy stuff across lots of the country), but most people really don't need to be driving everyday... guess we'll just keep campaigning!
But we get them anyway because that is how Britain is just now everyone else has got one.
FTFY. I think this is the crux of the matter: conformity, fitting in. The complete opposite of freedom, in fact.
The article mentions "motoring poverty" as if it is something that needs cured by reducing the cost of motoring vs. reducing the need for motoring by providing more, better and less-expensive alternatives.
I kind of think that the article is actually downplaying the true cost of motoring (they've got no real vested interest to make it seem as expensive as it really is) For instance, googling suggests the UK average car insurance premium is £971. Which would put the calculation for weekly insurance costs in the "study" (£420) under half of the actual average. £250 per year on maintenance seems hugely generous, last time I had to stump up for some repairs to a front-wheel drive CV joint it was more than that alone. And they've budgeted for 2.4 gallons of fuel a week, which would unlikely even cover my 12 miles a day commuting by bike.
“To make any meaningful difference to those on the lowest incomes the rate will need to be cut much further.”
That's some perversly backwards logic, which doesn't surprise me at all! And it hardly surprises me that the rent-a-quote shadow minister for cars is of exactly the same mind and almost fell over herself to get the phrase "ease the pressure on families" in her statement. I wonder would any minster be standing up saying that we need to cut the duty on tobacco because "hard working families are drowning under the price of cigarettes"? No, they wouldn't, but until we get a governmental and social acceptance that for many people motoring (or the amount of motoring they do) is an optional not a necessity, we won't get much change. It's recognised that we tax tobacco how we do to discourage its use and to meet the costs of its negative side effects on the population. However, fuel duty is just the government screwing "hard working families".
I have to confess I'm currently looking at putting my motorbike back on the road (or replacing it with an equally old/cheap big bike)because the costs of using it sometimes instead of bike and train are pretty comparable (and yes I do know the *full* costs!) And holding down two jobs the odd and long hours make an extra "spare" hour on the odd day a very attractive prospect. :-/
Does that mean I get chucked out of the gang?! ;-)
@crowriver Same thing, really. ;-)
@kappers, not sure.
Basing entirely on my own situation and not at all on any fact-based research, £971 as an 'average' insurance cost seems immense - I'd be more inclined to believe £420 (ours is even less than that and we've got a 'hot' car - though no points and parked on a driveway and low annual mileage helps).
My maintenance costs in the last year have been.... Nil. In the past 7 or 8 years my maintenance costs have amounted to about 4 new tyres.
12 miles a day (working days) = 60 miles. 2.4 gallons = 25mpg, which is very low these days. At, say, 40mpg, 2.4 gallons would get you 96 miles, or almost 20 miles per day. There are people who commute more than that by car, but equally those lazy sods who will use the car for 4 miles per day, which over a week would only use 1.2 gallons.
"Does that mean I get chucked out of the gang?! ;-)"
If you mean CCE - only ever chucked the Chinese spammers out.
IF you stopped cycling, you'd be chucking yourself out.
then proceeded to.... drive around the wee town centre in circles beeping at girls.
I noticed a lot of that going on in Kirkwall when I was in Orkney on holiday. Driving round and round the same block. Sad. It's a nice town otherwise.
@WC You've got a nice new motor though - maintenance costs will increase exponentially for those punters who have older/second hand cars (which you'd assume those threatened by fuel poverty have). On the other hand, you lose more money through the depreciation in value of a new car...
In the past 7 or 8 years my maintenance costs have amounted to about 4 new tyres.
Have they been new cars covered under warranty? Or have you just been immensely lucky with mechanicals?
Never having owned a car, I can only go by hearsay from sister / brother-in-law / colleagues / car-owning forumites trying to keep second-hand motors on the road and forking out hundreds a go every time the exhaust falls off. If it only costs a tenner a week to buy a car (which is what the article quotes) then that's cheaper than a Lothian bus pass and would frankly seem cobblers.
I'm assuiming you're not going to get anywhere near 40mpg doing 6 miles each way, twice a day in stop-start traffic and from a cold start. I've always assumed that it's not a linear relationship between distance driven and fuel used. That is, you only reach the quoted optimum fuel economies after a couple of miles and once the engine warms up and if you can more-or-less keep the car going at a fairly constant speed; if that's the case, that the 2 miles to the shop probably uses something disproportionately similar to the 6 miles to work and 6 miles to work through town probably similar to 10 miles down a major road, so on, so forth.
Yep, under warranty - but you can't discount that from the average as there will be plenty such new warrantied cars on the road (as evidenced by the thread on a 12th monthly rise in new car sales in a row). So the 'nil' return from those cars will balance out the major works to others.
And on mpg, a lot of modern cars are easily 60mpg 'combined', so probably make 40mpg in town driving (my car is around 50mpg combined, and comes out about 35mpg in town driving if the computer is to be believed).
Best MPG I ever got was coming back from Lewis last year when the temperature sensor blew, so thought we were constantly overheating. Nursed it at 50mph all the way - was shattered after that drive (mainly through worry the car was going to die on us at any point, though thankfully we were on the mainland by then). But that's by the by ;)
then proceeded to.... drive around the wee town centre in circles beeping at girls.
I noticed a lot of that going on in Kirkwall when I was in Orkney on holiday. Driving round and round the same block. Sad. It's a nice town otherwise.
Aye, it was a bit like that 30 years ago too. In those days most of the young farmer's sons/fishermen had motocross bikes, but a few of the older/higher earning ones had souped up Escort XR3i shag wagons in which they cruised around the narrow streets at low speed. That was before taking off at high speed around the rural roads. 'Dyke busters' the locals used to call them, due to their propensity to crash at high speed into dry stanes in the middle of the night...
there will be plenty such new warrantied cars on the road
If those are the sorts driven by those in "motoring poverty" then that article really is a case of reverse-QED.
But the average costs stated are not just for those in 'motoring poverty' but for ALL motoring.
I'm halfway through a project to digitise the costs of our current car; I've now got every tank of fuel in a spreadsheet with the mileage covered for each. I need to add all the garage bills to get the true picture however.
IIRC in the first year we spent around 10p/mile on maintenance (i.e. on top of fuel, insurance, VED and all other standing costs) but it has been less since then.
One thing that jumped out at me was something like £10pw set aside for depreciation. That's £520 a year, which seems aggressive for someone in poverty who buys bargain used cars and takes good care of them (read: can't afford to abuse them).
Ah, cross-post with WC. £10pw for all motorists, not just poor ones.
You must log in to post.
Cycling in Edinburgh Flickr group
Video embedded using Easy Video Embed plugin
posts