If someone can come up with a better plan to get people out of private cars instead of just weeping over programmes about doomed Polar Bears and then just leaping into their cars again refusing to see any connection I will sign up to it.

See my post above. Make it cheaper, safer, more reliable - then I'll use it.

In my experience, being a user of public transport, it has been steadily improving over the last couple of years especially the trains, not that we had it bad round here before.  It is very reasonably priced particularly the trains and, I understand, has always been safer than car travelling.

Until they rebuild the railway lines we'll never have a train service within 12 miles of the village. If there's a bus running at a time for someone to catch a train, it takes well over an hour to even get to the station. And that isn't an unusual situation for rural areas.

Nearest train station is 35 miles away .......

The government thinks you could catch a bus or get a taxi, jas. It'd only take you a couple of hours each way ...

Until buses and trains pick people up outside their houses and take them to exactly where they want to go, you'll never get private cars off the road.  

Left to their own devices you are probably right :rolleyes:  Which is why we are having to resort to tax penalties to make them put in the effort as individuals to get over the fact that they might need to walk some distance occasionally.  At least the nations health might improve along with the chancellors funds for improving public transport ;)

Taxation will NOT work. People will pay what they need to pay for convenience. Folk in England are already the hardest working with the longest hours - do you really think they want to walk and stand at a bus stop after a hard days grafting - for a bus that might or might not turn up that they then have to stand up on??!

>do you really think they want to walk and stand at a bus stop after a hard days grafting

Why not?  I catch buses, thousands do, I can't remember the last time one did not turn up.  Going in and out of my local town at peak times we scoot along the bus lanes and it is preferable to sitting in a car.
What is your answer to reducing private car usage or do you, perhaps, consider it unnecessary? 

Bus lanes? We have country lanes, often single-track, nothing as posh as bus lanes!

Rely on trains Never :rolleyes:

I worked in London for a few months and the service was diabolical :rolleyes:

In one week alone I was kept waiting mostly sitting on the train for over 15 hours

I use my car for my job and if I am given the choice of train or car then it is my car everytime. I have family commitments also as many of us do so we can't car share, and we can't be delayed sitting on a train for hours whilst our children are waiting to be picked up :)

There will be a rise in inflation as a consequence as this tax will be passed onto companies thus making their margins smaller so they will put prices up :rolleyes:

I have to use my car as well as we live in a village  and a to Oxford for example which is approx 25 miles away can take two hours :rolleyes:

The bus lanes are in town, where all the congestion occurs. 

Make the bus lanes into car lanes then - no more traffic jams :)

:)  It's not really funny though, Carla, it's not just about congestion.  Everyone was getting upset about the Polar Bears starving because of loss of habitat in a recent post but nobody seems to be aware that their actions might have any bearing on it all.
Perhaps I'm just the potty one over this :) but I'll try asking again, not just you but anyone who does not want to try to limit their car usage, do you really think it makes no difference or is not necessary?

Was the loss of habitat for the woolly mammoths we used to have in Britain down to Man's burning of fossil fuels? Climate change is normal.

Sorry Isabel.....can't be bothered trawling through all mails....but do you work?

I work part-time at present.

Well may be so, this is what we have heard from some experts but other are now sure what we are experiencing is man made certainly the Stern report points that way.  Maybe you are right we should just sit back and see what happens, I don't have any children why should I care? :) but somehow it upsets me greatly to consider we might be the cause of something that we could have stopped.

The Stern Review reported to the Prime Minister and Chancellor, and was commissioned by the Chancellor in July last year. Fancy that ... just when Gordon and Tony were dreaming up their road pricing scam .........

Of course it was Government commissioned that is what governments are for.  I was not aware that it was welcomed with fully opened arms though so not sure if the conspiracy theory holds up ;)

A single trans-Atlantic flight produces the same amount of pollution as driving a car from London to Edinburgh and back continually for a year. Cars aren't great polluters. To cut pollution, ban all flights. Close down all power-stations that burn fossil fuel. And do all these things worldwide, because even if everybody in this country used no fuel at all it wouldn't make an iota of difference to the planet. China plans to open 100 coal-fired powerstations every year, and would make up our difference within weeks.

No, these 'green' taxes will do sweet Fanny Adams to cutting pollution - what they'll do is raise funds for the government to spend on civil servants to monitor that nobody's slipping through the net. Now, if they made public transport free, people would be far more likely to leave their cars at home ...

I would like air travel to be reduced but I would have concerns about it stopping altogether as I have always felt travel was essential for the broadening of the mind, particularly for young people.  They say only 10% of Americans hold passports which, I feel, says something about that point :)
Free public transport would be good but I suspect you would still have to penalise some people to get them onto a seat that they did not personally own :)

Americans can travel further within their own country than most Britons do by travelling abroad! After all, most never go further than Florida or Ibiza, neither of which broadens the mind!

No, these 'green' taxes will do sweet Fanny Adams to cutting pollution

'Green Tax' is just yet another way to tax and waste. I loathe New Labour and everything they stand for but unfortuantely the other lot seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet. For the first time in my life I'm tempted to spoil my vote by writing 'none of the above' across it next time.

No, there aren't bus lanes in Banbury, or Leamington, or Stratford, and these are our big local towns. Cities might have bus lanes - but not the country as a whole.

Yes and if there are bus lanes the are often empty JG :rolleyes:

I think that is the point Lucy ;)

Why when there are queues of people trying to get into work ?:rolleyes:

The Park and Ride buses were useless as well in Oxford often only two three people on during the day and then only half full during the peak times but no more frequent so you could be waiting for 20 mins. Yes I could walk quicker but with equipemnt needed for work etc like laptops and paperwork it is not viable and also I don't like turning upto work sweaty, hot and bothered and choking from car fumes :)

Ban all cars from every city/town centres and bring in electric or some form of transport that can be run on sustainable fuel :)

>Why when there are queues of people trying to get into work ?

In cars would that be? The idea is to make it easier on the bus :)

Some people cannot get the bus as most of the schools are near the centre. If they have to drop the kids off and then go to work afterwards how can they use the bus ? :)

Yes they could dump the children on the bus and get them to travel and walk to the school on their own but I for one wouldn't especially in a City :)

Also the bus lanes start where the routes are going to the ring roads which people use to go to other parts of the city. If they used buses it would mean using about three maybe four different buses which would add loads of time onto their journey and standing in a queue waiting for a bus when it is peeing it down with rain is not very nice and not on my top ten ways to get to and from work :)

Lancaster is not very big :) but, like many towns that bottle neck due to a river passing through it gets very congested at times.

.... and no bus stop within 5 miles in our case. We have an elderly 4x4 for towing, taking the dogs out off road and for getting to the main road when it snows / floods and we have no intention of getting rid of it.

I'm not convinced that global warming is man made, and pricing Britons off the road will do precious little to stop it an any case. It will however fill the Exchequer nicely ........

One didn't turn up last week to get my dad home from jury service. Nothing unusual about that. 2 buses worth of people then climbed on board one bus and there was nowhere to sit. Dad had stood for 45 minutes waiting for a bus journey that takes 20 mins and then had to stand all the way back. Had he been in his car he'd have been home. That was a regular occurance too for the 2 weeks he was on for too.

I can certainly sympathise with you on that point Carla.  They can tell us till they are blue in the face that things are improving but I kid you not.  I had to travel 9 miles to work, the bus ran once an hour, I had three quarters of an hour wait for the bus to bring me back and got to work three quarters of an hour before I had to.  We worked an 8.5 hr day, work it out that is a long time to be away from home.  The train was no better as it meant catching the same bus to get to the train station and wait for a train.  I gave it up when they took the late bus off and I couldn't get home.  Incedentally there were people using these services - certainly all the people who worked with me and lived on route as well as others.

Some villages have a bus once a week, even now.

When I first came to Cornwall I travelled 25 miles to work by foot and train.  It took me a monumental 2.5 hours to get there and quite often the train coming back was 1 hour late and we were given free tee or coffee and a biscuit to warm us up as an apology. 

I work for myself now, and make no attempt to leave my little town unless someone takes me so I guess having lost another passenger they will reduce the service even more given what other people have said.

To put the cap on it:- My son goes to college 25 miles away.  I bought him a special bus ticket so that he could do the journey on the same bus without changing.  The stumbling block came when we were told the pick up point was 4.5 miles away down a country road with no lighting.  After explaining this to the powers that be they told me to put him on the bus to the pick up point, guess what, there is no bus.  Go to the next pick up point in the next village about 5 miles away in a different direction and I quote, 'there is a bus to that village' great, however it doesn't start to run until the college bus has passed the pick up point by an hour. 

Oh the joys of semi rural living.

That's very much the reality of rural public transport, echo. The Powers That Be in London haven't a clue.

I live in the North of Lancashire, far from London and find my public transport very reasonable.  Perhaps I am exceptionally fortunate but I really never seem to have these problems that people are relating here or at my other address in a quite isolated town in North Cumbria.  In fact I can catch a bus from one to the other :)  A 7 minute walk at this end and a 2 minute one at the other.  It takes 3 hours, but is a joy trundling through the countryside sitting on the top deck peering into all the gardens in the villages we pass through and I have never known it to be in the least unpunctual.

Sorry Isabel .... can't be bother trawling through all these message....but do you work?

So, you'd be prepared to travel 3 hours on a bus, work an eight-hour day, then travel 3 hours back again (I'll ignore the walking time - you'd need to stretch your legs after all that sitting down, or you'd get DVT)?

No of course not.  My journey into town here is about 15 mins or maybe 20/25 at peak times.

That's what it takes me by car. If I took a bus it'd be about 75 minutes each way. More at peak times.

Yep my nine mile journey to town takes just under 1 hour as the bus services all the little villages in between.

I really would be happy with that, plenty of people spend longer in a car to work and at least you can relax, look about or read and enjoy a bit of a walk home to stretch your legs in the end.

And people's dogs and children get left unattended ...

I work full time and what takes me 20 mins in the car would take me about an hour or more on the bus.  Plus the bus station is about a 30 min walk away from work and when I finish at 5.30 each night, the next bus is at 6.15.  I wouldn't feel safe wlking to the bus station after work in the dark in the winter and my day is bloody long enough as it is!  I would be away from my house for about 13 hours per day each day and have about 2 hours time to myself and for my dog when I got home before bed time (I'm sad and like my early nights!) which is no joke really!

It's true JG the longer you are away from home faffing about catching buses and saving the world, the longer you are leaving your dogs. 

That is why I do not work full time.

But I don't have that luxury tho of working part time!! and my point is I don't need to cos I drive to work!!!

Luxury of part-time?  Perhaps the sacrifice of part-time ;)

I need to work full time to survive.  I have bills to pay and full time work keeps me above water  :rolleyes:

Brill if people can afford to do that but some can't and also I'm not about to change my whole career that's taken me 7 years to achieve my qualification just so I can catch a bus or get on a bike to go to work part time!

For some people it is just not feasible but good on you for doing ur bit.