Do you expect to travel when and where you choose?
After all the UK is a democracy, right?
Wrong, Government insists 50 % of journeys should be by walking or cycling!
To persuade citizens they continuously make driving more expensive, more difficult and encourage anti-car programs by providing grants for Local Councils to encourage a choice that only a minority want.
These Government figures show what you as citizens choose for transport.
Average trips by purpose and main mode, as a proportion of all modes
| Mode | Walk | Pedal cycle | Cars and vans | Other private transport | Bus | Rail | Taxis and minicabs | Other public transport |
| Commuting | 11% | 4% | 68% | 1% | 6% | 9% | 1% | 0% |
| Business | 10% | 2% | 78% | 1% | 5% | 4% | 1% | 0% |
| Education and escort education | 43% | 1% | 46% | 3% | 5% | 1% | 1% | 0% |
| Shopping | 27% | 1% | 64% | 0% | 5% | 1% | 1% | 0% |
| Other escort | 12% | 0% | 86% | 0% | 1% | 0% | 1% | 0% |
| Personal business | 20% | 1% | 73% | 1% | 3% | 1% | 1% | 0% |
| Leisure | 11% | 4% | 77% | 1% | 3% | 3% | 1% | 0% |
| Other, including just walk | 100% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| All purposes | 31% | 2% | 59% | 1% | 4% | 2% | 1% | 0% |
Perhaps there is a reason for this undemocratic distribution of transport funding this is the national regional distribution of transport mode usage.
Remember these are Government numbers yet they continue to fund and state we should park our cars and walk or cycle. It only works in London.
People will always choose the easiest way of travel and clearly it is Car or Van
Sorry to say Bob Bull, but your article presents a very narrow-minded view, maybe if you live in out the middle of nowhere, and are therefore dependent on your car to be able to get a pint of milk, but if you spend any time in a built-up area in the UK then public transport, walking, and cycling is for a better future.
Reducing the number of journeys made by car can only be good to reduce the staggering number of people being killed in accidents on UK roads, see: https://www.pacts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/PACTS-What-kills-most-on-the-roads-Report-15.0.pdf – it has a good overview of cause and effect of road accidents.
On top of reducing death and injury in incidents with motor vehicles, reducing the number of unnecessary vehicle journeys would help reduce air pollution:
“The annual mortality of human-made air pollution in the UK is roughly equivalent to between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths every year. It is estimated that between 2017 and 2025 the total cost to the NHS and social care system of air pollutants will be £1.6 billion.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-pollution-applying-all-our-health/air-pollution-applying-all-our-health
Plus if everyone were to drive everywhere, we would end up with towns and cities looking like they do in the US: https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ijhV2hgcKaqw/v0/-1x-1.png and nobody in their right mind wants that!
Rick, it is your views that are incorrect & narrow-minded.
Living outside a town or city does not equate to the “the middle of nowhere”. The majority of the country’s population does not live in a town or city. Outside of a few conurbations, public transport is nowhere near adequate, does not fulfil most peoples’ travel needs, & – compared with personal mobility by either car or PTW – never will.
There are some 35 million vehicles in use the UK hence, say, 140 million journeys per day; 5 of which result in a fatal RTA: 0.000036%. We need (by better education & training) to address the primary precipitation factors of RTAs: which are poor observation, poor hazard perception & poor hazard response. Speed is invariably one of the least prominent precipitating factors (look at successive years Speed Compliance stats:
“In 2017, for all accidents, 2.8% (4,879) of vehicles had an exceeding the speed limit contributory factor allocated to them. This percentage has remained stable since 2014, although raw numbers have decreased, with the value being 2.5% (5,381) in 2014.”
Quote Source: Speed Compliance Statistics Great Britain 2018 – Page 18.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/812500/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-2018.pdf
& RAS 50001 contributory factors: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/ras50-contributory-factors
In the very small numbers of fatal & serious injury RTAs annually in which illegal speed IS a prominent factor, is it is invariably associated with gross perceptual impairment through drugs, alcohol or crime (refer to RAS 50 series tables again).
UK air pollution has been declining precipitously for over 100 years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/air-pollution-london-vs-delhi
According to WHO, London now ranks 89th out of 116 cities for air quality: 1st being worst & 116th being best. Air quality does NOT kill 4000 people (or any other trumped-up number) a year in the UK. What COMEAP actually reported was that if ALL sources of pollution could be suppressed (i.e., if society were to be completely shut down), it ESTIMATED that 40,000 life-times’ life years (81 x 40,000) could be saved. Spread over a 67miilion population, that equates to a saving of a few days each. Meanwhile average life expectancy has gone up by years in recent decades, & what correlates best with increased life-expectancy is wealth: Kensington & Chelsea residents (avge. income £88k) vs. Glasgow (avge. income £23.5k) are respectively 90 female, (85 male) & 78 female (71 male).
The US scenario is totally irrelevant to the UK, but what is true is that for decades we have been adding substantial lengths of non-trunk, non-strategic roads while signally failing to adequately expand & upgrade our strategic road network: p.14 here:
https://home-5010050506.webspace-host.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Road-Investment-and-Road-User-TaxationThe-Truth.pdf
But hey, don’t let a good line in exaggerations, omissions & downright untruths spoil your creaky line of argument, will you?