"The man who never misses has officially missed": Adrian Chiles claims expensive cargo bikes are a "new kind of class politics"; Foul-mouthed rant at cyclist not using cycle lane... but public sticks up for rider + more on the live blog

Oh that I am!

Was pretty sure that a while back Charge dropped their saddles & the personnel morphed into the Fabric brand (with the Spoon seeming to vanish).   Oh well, my kidney (and my arse it seems) are saved.  Happy times.

I bought my now over 20 year old entry level Golf new with a few security extras for 16000€. Look what that costs now.

I'd suggest you take this up with the Guardian's editor-in-chief, but it seems her husband's copy is too important to let the last remaining subeditor near. 

Presumably distinguishing between "nursery", on the one hand, and "primary or prep school" on the other. Though I accept that some would append the word 'school' to nursery too.

True. I also think that "nursery, primary or prep school" would be perfectly acceptable.

Have you considered joining a car club for the remaining 40%?

I would but I don't know how keen they would be with me using it to take crap to the tip, sticking dirty bikes in it or driving to Europe in it. 

I looked at this, but in my case concluded a car club would be significantly more expensive than keeping my car. But then I run a 15 year old Golf.

I suspect that it is common to express surprise and even ridicule at the way other people spend their money in ways that we do not understand. £4k on a bicycle of any kind, a pair of trainers, jewellery, a pokemon card, football tickets, overpriced fizzy wine in a lap dancing bar etc seems crazy if you are not into those things.

But surely on your 60/40 split it's the car which is more akin to the (very) expensive limited-use vehicle?

Given the availability of Uber etc., taxis, public transport, hire cars and (as below) car clubs, many people in urban areas would be able to re-organise their lives in such a way that they could do without a car and save themselves all that expense of car ownership. The trade-off may or may-not be in convenience.

The reason we all own cars is because they are fantastically convenient. Public transport is crap in this country. Uber isn't available in loads of areas and you need to know when you can leave and when you want to come home for taxis etc or be happy to wait for hours at times. I travel to Europe a few times a year by car. I drive to family who live all over the place. I go to the tip, I take my mountain bike in the car regularly, I go to pick up items from facebook marketplace. 

I have a car and I can do all these things at the drop of a hat without any planning, without worrying about damaging the car or getting it dirty, without worrying about when I come home etc. Its fantastically convenient and I paid about £5k for the car 5 years ago. It costs me nothing in VED, MOT is £50 and insurance for me and my partner is about £400. There has been almost zero maintenance cost as I change the oil and filters myself. 

I, like many, love the idea of ditching the car but my lifestyle and the way the transport system is built in this country make a car the best tool for a huge number of journeys. 

Some people could ditch the car but it feels a little like a "london centric" view when people think that even a sizeable chunk of the population could abandon their cars.

mctrials23 wrote:

The reason we all own cars is because they are fantastically convenient. Public transport is crap in this country. Uber isn't available in loads of areas and you need to know when you can leave and when you want to come home for taxis etc or be happy to wait for hours at times. I travel to Europe a few times a year by car. I drive to family who live all over the place. I go to the tip, I take my mountain bike in the car regularly, I go to pick up items from facebook marketplace. 

I have a car and I can do all these things at the drop of a hat without any planning, without worrying about damaging the car or getting it dirty, without worrying about when I come home etc. Its fantastically convenient and I paid about £5k for the car 5 years ago. It costs me nothing in VED, MOT is £50 and insurance for me and my partner is about £400. There has been almost zero maintenance cost as I change the oil and filters myself. 

I, like many, love the idea of ditching the car but my lifestyle and the way the transport system is built in this country make a car the best tool for a huge number of journeys. 

Some people could ditch the car but it feels a little like a "london centric" view when people think that even a sizeable chunk of the population could abandon their cars.

I think it's more to do with being an aspiration to get as many people as possible to abandon their cars due to better/cheaper alternatives. As you say, public transport sucks in most of the UK, so that will need to be improved if we want people to choose it over a personal car - one easy way to do that is to hugely subsidise public transport, maybe even provide it completely free to people. Once we get more people onto public transport, it should massively reduce congestion and enable quicker and easier trips for people who need/want to be travelling in personal vehicles.

Ultimately, personal cars waste too much space on the roads which means that they're not practical for moving large numbers of people around once the population gets over a certain density. It's a problem of geometry and building more roads ends up with needing yet more roads to be built as the number of car journeys increase. At some point, we need to evaluate the benefit of spending public money on building roads so that people can sit in metal boxes in queues of traffic - the only people that benefits is the motor/oil companies.

Some good points here.  TL/DR - we should avoid getting stuck in a binary of "cars everywhere / no cars at all" as that's unhelpful (and never going to happen that way).  "What is the current situation" / "do we need change? If so, what would we like to have?" and "how could we start that change?" are the questions.

mctrials23 wrote:

The reason we all own cars is because they are fantastically convenient.

Basically - but I'd go a little further:
 - Cars are a good Swiss-army knife for transport.  They cover most common use-cases and do so pretty well - at a large (and normally hidden) cost (use of vast amount of space, direct casualties on roads, health impacts, supression of independent mobility for some, cost to taxpayer...).
The deeper view is that most adults only consider what exists.  So once many people have cars our entire view of "what we can do" (or even "what we need to do") is filtered through the potential and characteristics of cars.  To the person with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
 - The organisation of our entire transport system, built environment, location of amenities and housing, many jobs etc. are (after 3 generations or so) predicated on mass motoring.  This is a driveogenic environment.  For most choices we make everything says "use a motor vehicle".
 - Cars don't just mark just richer / poorer (or "class") social status - though they certainly are used to convey that.  They're also considered a general marker of adulthood and being a competent / independent / "productive" member of society.  Don't own a car?  You'll be explaining why not to many people you interact with.

mctrials23 wrote:

[ list of things done with car ]

This is the "driveogenic" part.  Once you have a car lots of things become possible or just more convenient.   Within a few trips this becomes your life and "I need a car".  You could actually achieve many if not all of those goals without a car.  Would you do it in exactly the same way?  No.  Would they be as convenient?  Probably not - but point is your current patterns would change - a lot.  So if you have a car and then don't, that's a major life change.  People see this as an extreme loss / unacceptable disruption.  (On the flip side - I've seen people adapt pretty quickly to not having a car...)

mctrials23 wrote:

[ cheapness and convenience ]

Agree.  For the cost of quite a bit of money, some admin etc. you get "last minute" convenience (or what seems to be that).  I think though people complain about insurance, tax and MOT these are just seen as "stuff I can't avoid" (except in Lancashire) so people then tend to look at the cost of fuel per journey - which is often less than public transport.  Even including the other expenses the "marginal cost" of a car be remarkably low compared to anything other than cycling.  And people don't tend to worry about the car getting stolen (unlike bikes).

mctrials23 wrote:

Some people could ditch the car but it feels a little like a "london centric" view when people think that even a sizeable chunk of the population could abandon their cars.

Hmm... how does that measure up against the fact that the majority of trips driven are actually within cycling range (and many in walking distance)?  The majority of the UK population is urban.  There is a massive potential for change there.  As the Dutch and other different thinking countries show we don't need magic.  The Dutch are (2019) car owners and users in similar numbers to the UK.  In addition - unfortunately for them they also have some of the longest commutes in Europe.  Many of them do so by car.  The point is - they show how we can have many more short trips made other than by car (and also use multi-modal transport to facilitate longer trips).  The NL shows some of the environmental, health and social benefits available from taming the motor vehicle.  It shows that this is possible without "returning to the stone age" and it's nonsense to claim that "old people will be trapped in their homes" / "the ambulances won't get through".  (That's down to *how* you change - the UK shows local authorities can make that happen without any cycle infra at all!)  It shows that this kind of change is possible even while people still own lots of cars!

Is it politically possible though?  That's the three-pipe problem!

I think its entirely fair to say £3k+ for a limited use vehicle that plenty of people won't get masses of use out of is a luxury item most can't afford

There is, of course, the intermediate and much cheaper stage: the trailer- for that great majority of trips where I have to take the car because I'm getting loads of shopping (plus 'don't want to mess up my hair, get all sweaty etc. etc.) Of course, you need a bike for that as well

But then there is a choice when replacing the family's second (or third) car.

And then one of them is working from home, so the car is not always being used for the commute...

And no congestion or ULEZ charges, no diverts because of LTNs, free parking in town...

And of course the cargo bike is the answer to how you can transport that bag of cement that you can't on a bicycle.

If it takes you from needing 2 cars to one, it will be nearly paid for in a year just on the savings.

Indeed he is. That completely explains why his confused meanderings get a regular slot in the Graun because otherwise it is quite puzzling.

I've always thought he also looks an awful lot like "Pig Cop" from the early Duke Nukem games.