Nuxx:108bec98-3d1f-4832-b35c-3105e4b3f15f@r33g2000prh.googlegroups.com

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!r33g2000prh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <108bec98-3d1f-4832-b35c-3105e4b3f15f@r33g2000prh.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Surprisingly high Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 02:32:31 -0700 (PDT) References:  Lines: 21 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.71.49.124 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1305883951 3885 127.0.0.1 (20 May 2011 09:32:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 09:32:31 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: r33g2000prh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=82.71.49.124; posting-account=WrLs9woAAAD151hWKA9yknAtxFHW4kE4 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1,gzip(gfe) Bytes: 2376 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:845890

On May 19, 2:46=A0pm, Squashme  wrote: > "In 2007, 43 per cent of households in London did not own or have > access to a car compared with 31 per cent in other built-up > metropolitan areas and 10 per cent in rural areas."

How many of those people do you think would like a car but can't afford one (probably due to things like ridiculously high petrol costs and the abuse of parking penalty charges in order to raise revenue, particularly in places like London)? How many of them would like a car but can't be bothered with the artificial and needless stress caused by the persecution of the motorist by the authorities (which again is worst in places like London)?

I'll wager that in almost all cases it's one or both of those things, rather than "None of my journeys would be made easier by a car", or "I'm a car-hating freak who thinks cars are bad for society (but at least I actually practise what I preach by not driving myself, unlike Chapman et al)". Anyone who has to often make non-radial journeys in south London, for example, is going to find that a car makes things considerably easier. And in the vast majority of places public transport is even worse than it is there.