Of Car Sharing and Folding Bikes

Well, I've been doing the car-sharing-to-work/cycle-home thing twice a week for about 5 weeks and it seems to be working quite well.

It's saving me money, cuts my carbon footprint, helps keep me fit, and means fewer visits to the petrol station.

Unfortunately, only a third of my route is bicycle lane, so I'm at the mercy of car drivers for the rest. Thankfully, most of that part is fairly quiet, with only 2 short busy sections. Strangely, the bike journey is only slightly slower than by car.

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For those who are interested in such things, my bike is a Raleigh Swift. I've no previous experience of folding bikes but I can say it's not the sort that's easy to carry about! It's heavy (16kg), takes up a surprising amount of the boot in a family car, and it doesn't even have a convenient hand-hold for lugging the folded version around with.

On the plus side, it's quick to fold and unfold, is quiet to pedal, has most of the features of a regular bike like mud-guards and a stand, and has a prop to keep the folded version upright.

There are lighter and more compact folding bikes out there, but they seem to be far more expensive: I've seen ones topping £1000. Mine was 'just' £160, so I'm happy with what I've got.

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.