Owning a car is outdated '20th-century thinking' and we must move to 'shared mobility' to cut carbon emissions, transport minister says
- Owning a car is outdated '20th-century thinking', transport minister says
- Trudy Harrison, 45, is also Boris Johnson's parliamentary private secretary
- She said the UK should move to 'shared mobility' to cut carbon emissions
12 comments:
She can fuck off, the cunt. One more name to my wishing a terminal cancer -list in my prayers.
MP for Cumberland, apparently, so that's going to go down well among the sheep farmers.
There is a significant difference between her prediction and the one about snow. The government are powerless to affect snowfall, whereas they can make motoring very hard.
Car ownership may be ‘outdated’ if you live in an urban area with ample public transport and your weekly shop delivered to your door; when you are forty miles from the nearest station (thanks, Dr Beeching!) and a half-hour drive from any shops bigger than the local Co-op, a move to ‘car sharing, scooters and bike schemes’ sounds like a decidedly retrograde step.
Unk - nothing will change unless people vote against it, but switching from one mainstream party to another isn't voting against it.
Sam - it sounds like nudge talk with the intention of making it seem less and less hard to enough people. Could work eventually.
But it is not just about car use in isolation. For decades the country has followed a bigger and fewer model for sake of cheaper services. Cottage hospitals have been closed and a few much bigger hospitals built. Village schools have been closed for larger town schools. Corner shops have mostly gone to be replaced by super/hyper/mega stores. High streets have been losing out to out-of-town shopping malls. Jobs have been concentrated into fewer larger offices and factories. All of this centralization has been enabled by the ubiquity of personal transport.
I suspect that car sharing or shared mobility is not going work when the desired schools/shops/offices need lengthy travel to reach them, often at the same times of day. Heaven knows buses are rarely available, if at all, outside the towns.
If you wish to cut back on the use of private transport then you are going to have to undo decades of centralisation, and it would probably take decades of localisation. And since working-at-home appears to more acceptable now, perhaps there is no need at all to upset the applecart.
Macheath - I suspect that may be the eventual role of many electric cars. Small, limited range shopping carts recharged at home and with enough range to be useful in rural area.
DJ - yes there are many problems with centralisation moves which have already occurred. It could be that the pious talk is just that and nobody really expects it to happen in their political lifetime.
So who drives the car from where the current user gets off to where the next used wants to depart?
Who cleans it between users? Because if no single person owns it no single person is going to be arsed cleaning the puke, urine, fag ash, used needles etc.
The private car is only moving when someone wants to go somewhere. It can last for 20 years.It is not running about with no passengers from one arrival point to the next departure point. Like trains and buses all shuffling about at night or outside rush hours.
The private car does not need an army of workers cleaning, driving, driving the drivers about, policing the customers, flogging tickets, proving that tickets have been bought, supervising the rest, providing IT for all the rest and pensions.
The private car, alas, is not good at job creation.
"It can last for 20 years"
I can remember when cars literally fell apart due to rust, even though the mechanicals could be repaired more or less indefinitely. Now the bodyshells are galvanised/aluminium/composite (or combinations of them) and don't have that problem. But the absurdly complicated electronics necessary to meet ever stricter environmental standards are the biggest risk to longevity. And you can't simply change out components as you did years ago - they have to be "Paired" to the main ECU, or they won't work. Add to that the Internet "Connectivity" built into most vehicles now, and you have the spectacle of your car being remotely updated (or disabled) by the manufacturer, whether you like it or not.
"The private car is only moving when someone wants to go somewhere"
What the Trudy Harrison's of the world don't like is that most cars only carry the driver. They envisage a future where autonomous cars act as a sort of hybrid taxi/community bus, always trying to move as many people as possible. But this ignores the private car's main attraction - not having to share your journey with other people!
I have never owned a car, didn't even pass my test. Car ownership is and has always been a very expensive luxury for me. Mainly because I live in the middle of town, close to a good rail link the the City, decent bus services and plenty of taxis. However, I do think that demonising car ownership is not the way to go. Mind you, if the plan to move us "rats" into big cities, packed and stacked like tins of baked beans, we won't need personal transport. Apart from the users of the Zil lanes, such as transport secretaries.
Doonhamer - "Who cleans it between users?" And there is also the thorough disinfection needed between users to destroy those pesky viruses.
microdave - a relative of mine got rid of his upmarket car in favour of something simpler because he found the upmarket too complicated to be practical.
Andy - I imagine town and city living with good transport links is their start and end point. For everyone else - tough.
"Something simpler"
My second Fiat Panda 4x4 is getting increasingly temperamental, which is understandable after 30 odd years. But it only costs around £700 a year to run, so as long as it starts, drives & stops I'm not complaining! And, being devoid of any electronic gubbins, it would be one of a handful of cars still running after a Carrington event or EMP.
Whether I would still be "running" is another matter...
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