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I remember blithely using the headline ‘Car-free is carefree’ on a college assignment to try and sell the dream of a modern city-centre where people could shop at artisan food stalls before sitting down with a flat white to watch cyclists glide past. This is a very seductive tried and tested way of revitalising and enhancing our city centres whilst reducing the polluting and oil-consuming effects of cars.
But what is the reality of living without a car if you are one of the approximately 20%/10 million who don’t live in an urban area? Is living in the countryside really as ‘green’ as it would appear?
In the last few weeks I have been experimenting with not using my car. I’m lucky I live within walking distance of the office, the railway station and the town centre, including a supermarket. This works well on a day to day basis and is relatively ‘carefree’ as I have no need to fight for a parking space in the morning or worry about delays on the roads. However, if I need to access something this town (or one connected to it by train or bus) cannot provide I run into trouble. I have, for example, become acutely aware of how difficult out-of-town retail parks and garden centres are to access without a car.
J.H. Crawford’s ‘Carfree Cities’ (http://www.carfree.com/) compares life in Venice, which he considers the ultimate densely populated car-free city, with US cities such as Los Angeles which were built with the car very much in mind and where pedestrians are either viewed with pity or suspicion. He concludes that a sustainable future lies in adopting the medieval Venetian model with a dense and diverse mix of shops, services and residential uses to every city block.
Of course, we can easily see how the combination of access to a full-range of facilities and good public transport makes a car an unnecessary burden but if you are not in a city and are car-less what happens? What is most noticeably impacted is your choice; you cannot choose necessarily to go where and when you choose, you can’t even choose how long to remain in one place. A recent visit to a friend for lunch in a village (thankfully on a direct bus route) gave me the choice of arriving at 11am or 2pm and then leaving at either 4pm or 5.30pm. It is easy to see why an infrequent bus service is only slightly better than none at all and why rural buses appear to be used as a last resort in a way that city centre buses are not.
Whilst it’s clearly unrealistic to expect buses to pander to every individual’s schedule, in order to prove a real alternative to private car use in rural areas a regular, frequent, reliable and simple bus service which starts early and continues late enough to take commuters to and from the nearest station is key. This would have the added benefit of reducing the amount of valuable town centre land devoted to providing day-long parking for commuter vehicles.
The village I visited for lunch also has a major problem with the lack of residents’ parking, especially in its central Conservation Area and is promoting ‘best parking practice’. The real solution, rather than trying to squeeze too many cars into too few parking spaces would be to try and liberate rural households from the burden of multiple cars and see if they can at least experience some of the ‘carefree car free’ life.
