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Comment by lancebeet | Hacker News Reader

It has always fascinated me how incredibly car-dependent the UK is, given how small, densely populated and flat it is. The UK seems to have the perfect conditions for getting rid of the automobile entirely, but in reality public transport in the UK (at least outside of London, but sometimes even there) falls short, even compared to much larger and more scarcely populated nations.

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Plenty of people here don't need cars. Granted they're mostly people in the cities and large towns. I'm almost 40 and don't know how to drive. Buses and trains can get me everywhere I want to be.

One third of British households have no car.

The USA has 908 vehicles per 1000 people; the UK just 600.

I can understand people not owning a car, but not learning to drive seems short sighted. Driving is a life skill like swimming.

I'm also 40, and I've driven so little that I might well have saved money by spending the cost of learning and getting certified on taxis and public transport for the same trips.

No idea how far we really are from a no-steering-wheel-needed car, so this may or may not remain true as the years continue to pass, but now I live in Berlin and (non-express) public transport nationwide is only €49/month and is good enough to rely on — I've even seen people literally take a kitchen sink with them on the tram.

>One third of British households have no car.

I'd like to believe that but judging by my neighbours I'm struggling to.

Depends where you live - I'm in London, and probably 1/10th of my friends have a car, at most.

It seems it’s 21% (in 2021).

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-travel-sur...

> getting rid of the automobile entirely

Saying "entirely", or "all" or "every" or "always" always results in the pile of replies you see where people come up with counterexamples.

But the UK was built without the car; we had thousands of years of pre-modern economy, and the peak of the Empire was entirely done by rail and ship. That serves as an existence proof for ways of life in which many people do not permanently own a car.

Car dependency was a choice of the 1960s and the Beeching era.

The only good examples inside of Europe of countries where you can get by train to almost everywhere, in time, are very far and few between.

Switzerland is of course in there, maybe Netherlands, maybe Belgium, not sure about Denmark, certainly not France nor Germany. Rail transport outside of Paris which does not involve the TGV is absolutely crap, meaning expensive (unless you purchase your tickets 3 months in advance or some crazy stuff like that) and it doesn’t get you to where you want, unless you want to get from Paris to one of the big other big French cities, but in that case you’d take the TGV anyway.

Spain's rail system was great during my (admittedly very short) visit.

My claim is not that public transport is perfect everywhere else in Europe, only that the preconditions for good public transport are much better in the UK than in most other countries, such as France or Germany, yet it isn't vastly superior. In my personal experience, public transport in the UK is definitely worse than in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark, but I would argue it's worse than in Germany, France and even Sweden. Mind you, I don't restrict this to trains, buses make more sense in scarcely populated areas and their reliability tends to be highly affected by local politics.

The UK does have good public transport. It just doesn't have amazing public transport. I would disagree public transport in Germany is better. Deutsche Bahn trains are notorious for being late.

Ekeryone complains about their local system. What does the data show?

That 34.8% of long-distance trains were late in 2022. [0]

[0] https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2022/fileadmin/pdf/dufe_2022.p...

> Deutsche Bahn trains are notorious for being late.

Statements like this don't make sense unless you take into account cultural differences in what "late" means.

In Germany people think that a 5-10 minute delay is unacceptable. In the UK trains are so frequently late and cancelled that when a train is 5-10 mins late, it's considered on time.

No that's not true. UK punctuality figures are based on actual lateness, not perceived lateness. If a train is more than 15 minutes late in the UK you're entitled to compensation on a sliding scale up to one hour when you're entitled to a full refund of your ticket.

I don't know about that, I take trains in the UK a lot, and the _vast_ majority arrive exactly when expected.

> The UK seems to have the perfect conditions for getting rid of the automobile entirely

How do you get your dog to the vet?

Or, we're going away to a country cottage for christmas. How do we get all our stuff there?

If niche situations like those are the only ones this person needs a car for, it might be better for them to rent a car for situations like those, rather than keep and maintain a vehicle full time. Still reducing car use by a lot even if it's not getting rid of it "entirely".

I agree - car hire/share/rent works out great for these "one offs", but it's worth noting that these "niche situations" can happen pretty often, and it's entirely at odds with "getting rid of the automobile entirely".

At a certain point you'd have to think to yourself, I have "niche situations" every week, maybe I actually do need to have my own car. And that's not the "niche situation" OC was describing.

> How do you get your dog to the vet?

A taxi? I don't know how uber or whatever work, but you can just ask for a taxi to take your dog somewhere

This gets “rid of the automobile entirely,” how, exactly?

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