Written by Sir John Redwood
This article was first published in Sir John Redwood’s Diary and we re-publish with his kind permission.
For many young people passing their driving test is an important rite of passage to adulthood. Acquiring your first vehicle is a major advance in your personal freedom. Yet today government, Councils and better off greens from the security of their homes in major cities lecture the rest of us on the wickedness of the car. The better off Green city dweller can rely more on the tube or mass transit and has the money for taxis when needed. The aim is to get people out of car ownership or to reduce their use of the car, and in the meantime to cow people into keeping quiet about their reliance on this flexible and most popular form of transport.
Many Councils work away to make their localities hostile to car traffic, blocking off roads, and deliberately creating unsafe juxtapositions of bus lanes and cycleways with highway, and altering junctions to increase tensions between different road users. I have recently reviewed the many journeys I need to make for work, for shopping and for social and pleasure purposes. All the ones I need to do in my home constituency area either cannot be done by train, or if attempted by train would take me between three times and ten times as long depending on the distance I needed to walk from the destination station, the frequency of the timetable and whether I needed first to go into Reading by train to then get out on another line. All these trips would also be dearer given the relative marginal costs of each mode of travel. Like many people I conclude if the train option is both much longer and dearer it is not a sensible choice. Added to that how would I manage a weekly shop on the train and carrying the groceries to and from stations? In Central London I do mainly walk or use the tube where the shorter distances and the regularity of the trains makes those the best options now the roads have been so blocked and parking removed or priced so high.
Most people in my local area come to the conclusion they mainly use the car. Many take the children to school by car unless they live close to the school. They go on to their place of work in the car because most offices, shops and factories are not near a station. They take the family to a cafe or restaurant by car because it easier with many of the family items they might need in the car already. They visit Granny by car because Sunday transport services are so poor. Sensible Councils understand we need to live with the car. Its flexibility is the ally of better town centres and shopping areas if the Council allows easy access and cheap or free parking. It is the ally of young people being able to enjoy their lives and make more social contacts, it is the friend of events, theatres and concerts wanting people to get back from them at hours of less public transport, and the stand by means to tackle many emergencies for a family. The car can get you to the chemist, the doctor or to the direct rescue of a family member in trouble.
Sensible car policy means designing junctions that encourage freer flow and segregate different types of road user to make them safer. It means building a better local network of strategic roads designed with the needs of the van, truck and car driver in mind, allowing more time and attention for pedestrians, bikes and buses on other local roads. Above all it needs more capacity to ease congestion and tensions on the ever popular roads. Roundabouts are better than traffic lights in most cases. Right hand turning traffic needs a separate lane. Main roads should have more priority, with traffic sensor controlled lights for side roads. There needs to be more bridge crossings over railway lines.
Governments local and national will discover that if they make it too difficult to get about by car there will be a voter backlash. The polls may tell us people want to use their cars less and are worried about air quality, safety and other important issues. If you look however at what people are actually doing they are relying more and more on their cars to buy the food, get to school and work and have some fun. Even before all lockdown is lifted traffic levels are back to pre pandemic levels whilst train and bus travel is struggling to get back to 50% of former levels.
We should not in any way confuse what J.R says with what the Tories actually do.
Please permit me to animadvert a bit on my car pedigree.
As you all know I am somewhat ancient
I first learned to drive in the 1950s when my father taught me to drive the 1936 Morris 8 tourer, I say taught me, he only ever drove a motor bike and side car, this car had a hood and side screens which were a distinct yellow that you peered through, generally unsuccessfully, and hand signals were given by thrusting ones arm through a flap on the drivers side.it also had a fractured front fork, plated and bolted which waggled up and down when one parked in fields which undulated, found at car racing tracks such as Mallory park.
I took my driving test in Rugby,(I lived in Coventry) during the Suez crisis, you were allowed to bookmyour test in another town, if you were on leave from the MN. I did have a couple of prior runs around Rugby, but not much of it sank in, luckily the examiner was also unfamiliar with the town, I won’t say it was the blind leading the blind, but there was a certain feeling of all being in it together.
Oh, having passed I came home on my next leave, to find the car had gone, been reposed, there were’nt any checks in those days.
Anyway time moved on, I inherited my brother’s car.Thrre was a tale that Mr Ford, heard there was a market for 2nd hand cars,and so invented one, this was a fine example a black Ford Popular, it was fitted with a windscreen wiper, that apparently worked on a vacuum system, result was ascending a hill in driving rain, it ran slower and slower………do I need to relate the rest?, it’s as driving blind.
Oh and luckily our house was built on a rise, I always parked facing the way I had entered our close, as most cold mornings, getting a start with the handle, took hours or risk of a fractured wrist, and a run and a bump was so much more positive!
When the company I worked for introduced compulsory company cars, I was severely miffed, I had a £200 a year car allowance and it was a nice addition to my wages ( I have always run old bangers and still do, my present vehicle is a 2002 Rover 45, about to be parted with for something smaller that my girl friend says she can drive)
Talking a bangers, I often say women drivers are the best drivers, I know my wife was, she always had ropey bangers and covered the whole of Scotland with her job. The pinnacle of her skill was evident one morning around 9am when she was positioned at the front of the traffic light queue in Perth, opposite the Isle of Sky hotel.
Lights changed to green, no movement from my wife, much pipping of horns from behind, she got out of her car, walked back down the queue, showing their drivers her gear stick which had come off in her hand.
Don’t ask me which car it was, but I know it wasn’t the first one she had, which was an original Vauxhall Viva HA, such was the bottom rot on that one, it was said she could put her feet through the holes and propel it that way. I don’t wish to knock the car though, because it was a far better goer than the company Later model Viva I got, it was said they built in the obsolescence by then, had to tow a caravan in it from Dundee to Weymouth and didn’t get out of third gear,
Anyway I’m still a petrol head, live rural (2 buses a day) I regularly drive to Scotland and back couldn’t get all the kit I take on the train and so I agree with Sir John and the other commenters below, I will add motor confiscation to my “I am a denier list”
That Grant Chapps is a wrong ‘un to start with, typical policy of a bully like him don’t know how he ever got back in government.
He always talks sense as far as he goes! My Morris Minors were all the estate version. Morris Minor Traveller.
Add the heath risk of meeting Saddick Khan on the tube , or other vaxx refusers.
In Praise of the car
Outside cities cars are essential.
Outside cities you do not have the luxury of trams and underground railways.
Outside cities public transport is nearly non existent, on Sundays and Bank Holidays there are no buses.
Outside cities public transport between towns is virtually non existent.
Outside cities you do not have concerts and theatres.
Trains, forget them they are too expensive. If you can afford the train north and south journeys are fast, east west journeys are slower than buses. Expect at least one train change.
However look on the bright side the local roads are going green. There are beautiful weeds growing in the gutters and around road drains. Road surfaces are cracking up and weeds are taking root. Ban motor vehicles and the greenery (weeds)would flourish There have been no utility works to cause the road surfaces to deteriorate.
A similar situation is occurring on some footpaths where small potholes have developed in the tarmac footpaths and weeds are taking root. Paved footpaths are slowly resembling crazy paving whilst tarmac footpaths are becoming gravel paths.
New roads are a luxury. Many roads are were wide enough for two horse and carts to pass each other, now the nearside wheels of a lorry use the dirt verge to pass each other. I was going to say grass verge, unfortunately the grass no longer grows.
Traffic lights add time to the journey. Busy roundabouts have traffic lights added to them. Chaos if you do not know the road, a speaking satnav is essential. Luxuries are flyovers, dual carriageway and motorways,
Welcome to living in an old market town where industry has disappeared, a policeman is a rare sight and traffic wardens are less rare ,the local hospital might close. Welcome to life in modern England outside metropolitan areas.
Roll on an independant England with its own parliament.
Interesting point that cars are back to normal already and public transport struggling at 50% so showing what the people want but not of course what the greens and the media want. Love the photo. Reminds of driving on the old main road through the marshes east of Pevensey a few years ago with the excellent resurfacing contrasting with with the acres of waving green reeds and the smooth meandering dark tarmac pristine and not yet disfigured with all the modern ‘road research laboratory’ edge markings, double white lines and general nanny state warnings of bends on a bendy road, wonderfully nostalgic experience!
The “nanny state”; another insidious development to change life as we knew it and not for the better.