Why are people buying electric cars?

[jamesev]

Cars take people door to door exactly when and where they want to go. No public transport does this. It's inferior as an option. Always has been. So far all governments have done is to make all transport worse. You could make all buses free but I'd still use the car as it's much better. My local area has no electric buses as far as I can tell. Just ancient Plaxton diesels spewing out fumes. A couple have been so bad I've reported them. Air quality is far more important to improve. A lot of the main bus routes have poor air quality. Local council was on about banning diesels in peak time off some roads but didn't think all the dirty old buses chugging up and down the hill might be contributing.

and we've been sold modern conveniences such as more cars per driveway just to speed up our lives. But agree on the public transport especially here in the UK when trains cost more to travel the length of the country than to fly from on airport at one end, to a different country and then back to an airport at the other end of the country

Certainly in my local areas the buses are not good at all. They do seem to be rolling out electric ones which is good to see, but there is still the problem of them either being too full or completely empty, often late, several all bunched up together then none for ages and of course often there are very unsavoury passengers on them.

Buses here also don't pull into the stops properly and leave their arse sticking out, preventing everyone else from getting past and ultimately causing a lot of congestion. Most people I know cite safety as the main concern with using buses. Trains aren't so bad, but the network (especially the underground) is poor.

I do wonder for city and suburbs if we would be better to have a much wider network of smaller mini bus type vehicles (EV of course) rather than a small restrictive network of large buses? I suppose additional driver costs could make it more expensive, but a wider variety of routes creating a closer door to door service might be enough to encourage more people out of cars.

that seems to come down to lack of planning ability to match demand with supply. Lack of planning ability isn't just restricted to transport, but roadworks, housing. Its all very short-termism

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

Its all very short-termism

Minimal attention span is the curse that goes along with our chaotic political system.

One cause is that politicians hold a completely unfounded belief that they know better than civil servants what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. This has even resulted in foisting "experts" on both local and national services. Too many of these experts are good in their restricted fields but lack the depth and reach of the civil servants, who have dealt with the issues at different levels for many years.

The result is that stupid ideas go forward, sensible ideas are sidelined and too much of what does get done is so confused that it would often have been better not to do it at all.