Along with attempts to cut down on energy use at home, we're also trying to use the car less.
It's something we've looked at in the past - for a few years we were members of an informal car share club with a few friends, which worked well. But when Francis was born we ended up buying a car, which, practically, we would have struggled without. He's now 4 and the time has come to start weaning ourselves off the car again.
I looked at the log book and we've consistently done around 10,000 miles a year. So we decided to set a target for this year of a 15% reduction in mileage - to 8500 miles. That equates to (approximately) 700 miles a month - a reduction of about 150 miles a month.
That's certainly do-able. We tend to go to see family in Burton or Liverpool once a month - and both journeys are over 100 miles as a round trip. Both are easy on the train - and affordable if you book ahead. Journeys to work and nursery - although 2 buses each way - are feasible too - and cut out around 10 miles a day.
So how have we done? Drum roll please - our total mileage for January was.... 297 miles - beating the target by 403 miles.
A great start. But let's not get too carried away. The car was snowed in for the best part of two weeks. But we have continued to get the bus most days - which says something about the importance of habit-forming - it takes time to change behaviour. In this case the snow did us a favour.
But I did go to Liverpool on the train this month - and we went to Cardiff on the train for Voice10 this weekend (although to be honest there's no way I'd have gone that far in the car anyway, so it doesn't really count).
Thoughts so far? Public transport is great when it works, but it's the unreliability that puts people off. Whilst at Voice I had a chat with Dai Powell from HCT Group - a social enterprise which runs buses in London (and community transport services in Leeds). He said that people don't mind if the bus takes 20 minutes longer than the car - as long as they know that it will take 20 minutes longer - not 40 minutes longer because the first bus didn't come. The trains have been faultless this month - but the buses have been hit and miss - which just isn't good enough (are you listening mega-profit-making-monopolists First Leeds?)
Clearly the cost puts people off too. By booking ahead for Liverpool and Cardiff I imagine we paid around the same as we would have done for petrol - and had much more pleasant journeys. But we needed to book ahead - realistically we would have bottled out and taken the car if we'd had to pay the walk-on fare.
Similarly with the buses, there's no getting away from it, they're expensive, particularly if you travel as a family. I think the only real way you can rationalise the cost of public transport longer-term is to get rid of your car. So the £500 you spend on insurance, the £400 on the servicing etc - gets put into your "transport budget." Suddenly £50 on the train, or a £10 taxi doesn't seem quite so bad.
The other thing is that it's reminded me that if more people are going to embrace greener choices (and yes, I know the arguments about a small car being as fuel efficient as a bus with 9 people on it - the average in the UK ) there need to be benefits - and we also need to create benefits ourselves. What I mean by this is that I think you need to adopt a slightly different lifestyle - but that can be a good thing.
So, for example, if I go to Liverpool on the train I'm not as mobile whilst I'm there - and there are plenty of people to see. But now I meet my nan or my grandad in town for lunch when we get there - which I think we all enjoy more than us going to see them at home. It's a simple example of how some of the changes we'll need to make to our lives - away from real and perceived convenience - can turn out to be much better choices in lots of different and unexpected ways.
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