- News
- Reviews
- Bikes
- Accessories
- Accessories - misc
- Computer mounts
- Bags
- Bar ends
- Bike bags & cases
- Bottle cages
- Bottles
- Cameras
- Car racks
- Child seats
- Computers
- Glasses
- GPS units
- Helmets
- Lights - front
- Lights - rear
- Lights - sets
- Locks
- Mirrors
- Mudguards
- Racks
- Pumps & CO2 inflators
- Puncture kits
- Reflectives
- Smart watches
- Stands and racks
- Trailers
- Clothing
- Components
- Bar tape & grips
- Bottom brackets
- Brake & gear cables
- Brake & STI levers
- Brake pads & spares
- Brakes
- Cassettes & freewheels
- Chains
- Chainsets & chainrings
- Derailleurs - front
- Derailleurs - rear
- Forks
- Gear levers & shifters
- Groupsets
- Handlebars & extensions
- Headsets
- Hubs
- Inner tubes
- Pedals
- Quick releases & skewers
- Saddles
- Seatposts
- Stems
- Wheels
- Tyres
- Health, fitness and nutrition
- Tools and workshop
- Miscellaneous
- Tubeless valves
- Buyers Guides
- Features
- Forum
- Recommends
- Podcast
forum
Drivers ‘priced off road’ by fuel costs
Anyone noticed??
(The Times 4/12/21)
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
Latest Forum Topics
Latest Comments
- neilmck 22 min 21 sec ago
People need to realise that there is nothing special about cyclists, they are a full mix and cross-section of the population. A cyclist is just an...
- Secret_squirrel 46 min 49 sec ago
Thanks Neil!
- slc 52 min 42 sec ago
All arguments I am hopeful to see validated, especially (a) and (b) combined....
- nick h. 1 hour 8 min ago
Old news. The Reform saddle has been available for a couple of years. It's very popular with owners and a fair bit cheaper https://shop.cyclefit.co...
- hawkinspeter 1 hour 26 min ago
Well, on Lundy the only predators are the humans, and they're far more likely to buy some farmed non-Soay lamb from the pub than try to chase a...
- mdavidford 1 hour 26 min ago
"Just a little bit off the sides"
- mdavidford 1 hour 28 min ago
Given that one of the Oxfordshire councillors took the time to drop into the comments section of the previous article on this story to deny, at...
- Secret_squirrel 2 hours 49 min ago
What you believe doesn't matter. Only physics and engineering does. An undamped steel spring is frikkin lousy for steering where precise tracking...
- wtjs 3 hours 13 min ago
We're approaching half way through December 24 now- any progress on the Met's hopefully will be live in December 2024, where you will be able to...
- hawkinspeter 3 hours 24 min ago
I reckon they stopped using this for the bonding:
Add new comment
67 comments
We're expecting to stay in this house now for the rest of our days so we'll be going full solar, heat pump (ground source), battery storage, etc over the next couple of years. Big capital investment but at current prices we'd see about a 4% annual return - negligible but it will also put a few quid on the value of the house.
Increasingly I think we'll see this as a desirable tick box when house hunting, much like good broadband or strong 4G signal is today. Just need planning regs to be updated to allow front garden solar installs (yeah, good luck with that)
We started the solar panels install process (via Eon) in September - it’s a slow thing, no install date fixed yet. We’re having over 10 panels so the elec distributor has to approve. Our supplier did us a smart meter (which is an essential to record the nano watts we will sell back.) this week. We’re having a battery which will store about an hour’s worth of output from our west facing back roof.
I doubt it will be economic, and it also remains to be seen if any future buyer would find them a turn-on.
Why did you decide to fit solar and a battery?
Our roof faces due south, but last time we checked the numbers (2011) it still wouldn't make economic sense due to a lot of space being consumed by the bay window and a massive chimney breast. Hoping we can use the west-facing part of the old (brick built, tiled roof) garage to top things up. Our side wall is unencumbered by shade and faces west, but I doubt planning would allow us to mount vertical panels there.
Over 20 years we should be quids in but then there's the question of replacement when we're in our dotage/not earning and improvement in technology over that time. I recall friends having one of the first solar installs in the early '80s (they also had micro-wind too), technology hasn't improved a great deal since then. And that was a south-facing roof on the coast with clear sight of the horizon and access to a decent westerly.
Your occasional reminder that the car (whatever it runs on) kills off public transport. Every time you drive you, are part of this problem; each individual driver things he's being very clever, but - well, you know the rest. Driving is misery.
The car deprives public transport of passengers and revenue and congests the roads - less reliable, less frequent. Unpleasant, waiting for a bus, unsafe waiting for a train at some iffy, unmanned station,
To give an example: 18 buses a day in our village in the 1970s - evenings, Sunday afternoons ; now 6 and none on Sundays. In the many places where the buses have died out completely, every adult and child now needs a car / access to a car to go anywhere.
As someone that both cycles / walks whenever it is practical (which is often), but at the same time works in an office 30 miles from my home, I am able to see both sides of the argument.
For all the great intentions behind many comments posted (alongside the anti-car rhetoric), this whole rejoicing at the purse of the average man being emptied has a number of flaws, namely;
Many - I count myself as one - have little choice but to use the car for commuting. There are sadly not any realistic alternatives, even if people like to pretend there is. Until that changes, fuel price increases won't change anything, it'll just make people poorer.
Electric vehicles are beyond the budget of those most feeling the pinch of current fuel prices. Poorer people are unable to make better choices.
Public transport options are terrible for anyone not living in a large city. Again, without a viable alternative, nothing can change.
Whilst many short car journies are absolutely avoidable, the fact they are so short means that the corrolation between fuel spend and alternative travel methods will not be made... it takes a very long time to empty a tank only driving a car a couple of miles to the shop and back. Therefore, fuel price increases are unlikely to change attitudes / behaviours in arguably the most easily achievable areas.
And that's not forgetting that these fuel price increases are not part of some greater drive for sustainability, rather the simple drive for greater profits from big corporates. I'm surprised that so many are seemingly so OK for the big guys to rinse us with impunity so long as it negatively effects people you don't 'like'.
Trying to think what has made public transport so poor over the past 40 years.
Can other readers help?
40 years ago you say...
Might there have been a change politically at that time, maybe a whole new ideology...
You mean the leadership of Neil Kinnock?
Public transport is no longer publicly owned, therefore has to make a profit, therefore non-profitable routes are simply shut down because there is no requirement that an alternative be in place.
The school where I teach covers a massive catchment area of mostly small rural villages and agricultural land, and some of the village have precisely one bus per day that can get the kids to school. Miss it and you are doomed to an unauthorised absence for the day.
Reason ... the bus company gets enough passengers to make a profit on the route by running one bus each way per day and forcing everyone to use it regardless of how convenient (or otherwise) it is.
Ah yes, because if you privatise all the buses then you allow 'competition' and 'the market' and everything will get cheaper and more efficient.
You definitely won't just be creating a local monopoly for a particular private company...
All of this. Things do get complicated because in some cases there are agreements on certain service levels with local authorities I believe. Not that those are necessarily transparent or always in a particular local population's interest of course. In certain areas there is also the fallout of corporate fights e.g. the tactics of taking on services / predatory pricing simply to put other companies out of business or drive them off - see Darlington Bus War.
It's a good point about the tank fill thing. I allocate one tank of fuel to my Volvo 940 (25mpg if I'm lucky) per month. Costs over £100 to fill up now. When its gone its gone. Undoubtedly with the recent rises it crossed a psychological barrier but it would have to double to make me change that behaviour.
I'm just about old enough to remember the impact of the '70s oil crisis, it does need that level of shock to make a change in ownership behaviour. I remember my uncle buying a Jag E-Type for buttons, and then a Rover P6 - no-one wanted them, people started swapping to small family hatchbacks. We'll be there with used EVs in a couple of years I think. 6 months ago you could buy an 8yo used Leaf with good battery/history for around £6k - nearer £7.5k now.
o please, deisel and petrol prices now are barely more than they were in 2014
The Finance industry provides loans based on their perception of risk and appetite for that versus the rewards they can gain. Asset backed lending is one of the highest quality, i.e. lowest risk. Thus the mortgage loan with the loan to value ratio as their measure of risk. If you default, what part of the asset value are they confident that they will get at auction..
Ford of Europe makes more money from their finance company than they do from the actual manufacturing of the vehicles. Obviously retail banks are delighted to use their credit rating of customers to lend on an asset like a motor vehicle. Much better than unsecured personal lending.
So both car companies and banks are all in on making motor vehicle 'ownership' as accessible as possible. While that remains the case, there will continue to be multiple vehicle per household, or even per person.
Structural change is required in the Finance industry to change that. Pay per use rather than 'ownership' needs to be caused by a collapse in the perceived asset value of the internal combustion engine vehicle so that starting again makes pay per use of an EV or H2 powered vehicle attractive.
Making pavement parking illegal and actually enforcing that would also help to convince the hard of thinking that 95% idle time is a poor transport choice....
It's an age-old driver whinge, the world owes me a free pass, poor little me, the underdog, taxed to the hilt etc
A snap of the article below.
meanwhile those same drivers will say they can't afford to use the train or bus. Hardly proving the point that driving is expensive.
If only the chancellor had finally increased fuel duty in line with inflation, let alone making up for all of those years it was frozen, then maybe, just maybe some might think twice before using the car...
Same here in Australia, complaining about the cost of fuel. Yet our government recently published this which shows different. I have a different measure, when I stop hearing some 18yo lad destroying another set of tyres at 2am in the sports ground carpark then I'll know fuel has become too expensive.
https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-petrol-prices-in-2020-2...
fuel in the uk is about 70% more than in australia
And it's not enough. The cost to health and environment and cost and to the economy of burning petrol and diesel is subsidised by the tax payer to a staggering amount (and those that don't pay tax - for example the price paid by urban kids in particular, in terms of permanent damage to developing lungs)
I don't disagree with that, fossil fuel is far to cheap which is why everyuone uses it, and of course all the argument is about how we can have as much energy from green sources for the same price, rather than how can we reduce our energy usage.
Should read:
Fuel prices to remain high. Retailers recouping costs associated with previous crisis caused by panic buying motorists, which resulted in additonal tankers being laid on and security staff deployed to forecourts.
Another classic example of the attitude here from the East Anglian this weekend, guy who normally cycles to work,complains it took over an hour to drive 3.5miles...and car parks should be free too apparently.
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/frustration-over-roadworks-and-traffic-in-su...
Not sure he was asking for car parks to be free in general but pointing out that the town would lose out to other towns during this month. Some places do offer off peak free parking to encourage Chistmas shopping (as long as you have a phone with an app !)
If he'd said Cambridge he might have been onto something, though the train is a far better option, but theres not alot of shopping in Ely to write home about.
"Mr Baker 55 [...] had been taking his daughter across town for maths tuition on November 26 when [the] 3.5-mile journey took an hour and 10 minutes by car - when it should have been 10 or 15 minutes on a normal evening."
"it's 'too dangerous' for you to cycle, here I'll drive you. "
Not priced off the road at all. There are very few toll roads.
Do they mean priced out of cars?
Again no, it costs nothing to sit in s car, and standing charges have not changed significantly.
Do they mean having to consider whether any given journey is worth burning petrol, and reducing car usage accordingly? Isn't that the point of fuel taxes?
Absolutely not!
If people can afford to buy/lease a 69-reg German upmarket vehicle, along with the other vehicle(s) parked on their driveway or the pavement outside their house and the multiple annual holidays they think they deserve, they can certainly afford to pay a few more pence per litre for the fossil fuel used to make it move.
I have been looking forward to the day when the cost of fuel is expensive enough that it prompts people to reconsider how many journeys they make and how far and how fast they drive.
It would make the roads safer for everyone, not just people on bikes. It would also greatly reduce pollution, congestion and the mental health issues related to noise (grossly underestimated by so many), among other things.
So many big wins yet no desire from politicians and their 'Blah, blah blah'.
Even during the fuel supply issues of a couple of months back, I reckon that I failed to notice any reduction of unnecessarily huge motor vehicles accelerating towards the next red light or queue of other unnecessarily huge motor vehicles.
Pages