Car Sharing

I've finally got organised enough to car share with my wife on the way to work. It's only twice a week at the moment, and a round trip of 8 miles, but it's a start.

Apparently 93% of all car journeys in the UK are less than 25 miles. They contribute 60% of the CO2 produced by cars in Britain and car use produces 22% of all CO2 emissions here.

I wonder how much of this could be saved if we had a decent, 'joined up' public transport system? Having grown up in London, I know what such a system looks like: Frequent buses, trams and trains; good time table information; plenty of links with other routes and networks; transport deep into the night and at weekends; and all at a reasonable price.

By comparison, much of the rest of the country is in the Dark Ages. Even in some of the towns, where you'd expect the service to be best, it can be poor. I guess that's down to our 'public' transport system being in private hands: They only run the routes that make money. Words like "reasonably priced", "frequent", and "running all hours" don't necessarily fit in with that business model.

Political parties of various colours keep banging on about improving transport but nothing ever happens. Empty words.

So, for the moment, we're stuck with car sharing.