- Cost of public transport. I don't cover a lot of miles in my car (<5k>
- Housemates locked into high energy consumption e.g. strolling around the house in t-shirts with the heating on! (cringe!)
- A lack of time to share shopping trips and cooking with housemates (?) (is this self-constructed or a societally constructed issue?).
Case Study: Norwich advertiser Act on CO2 ad.
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Apologies- the first bullet point is incomplete. The point I'm making is that if the public transport system was efficient, cheaper (heavily subsidised) and greener I wouldn't use my car (provided I could get to work using public transport!).
ReplyDeleteThere's an interesting study on Holland which appears to conclude that even the best integrated public transport wasn't enough to stop rising car use. The dutch drive more miles per capita than us. I know, I couldn't believe it either! It's on my blog for the link.
ReplyDeleteYes, I've heard of similar studies in Germany too, with people scratching their heads in wonder that the best pulic transport system in the world (probably) didn;t stop rising car use.
ReplyDeleteSo - we have to understand why people use cars - obviously tere's more to it than getting from A to B, or else they'd all use public transport.
Psychologists have found, not surprisingly, lots if issues around identity, status, esteem, etc around cars and their owners. So asking people to stop driving a car is tantamount to asking them to give up part of their identity.
So the challenge is how to meet those identity and social status needs in other ways, and then the car becomes irrelevant. Any ideas?