
Electric cars 'will not solve transport problem,' report warns - jonbaer
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48875361
======
quantummkv
This is a very weird article. Isn't the main point of electric cars is to
reduce carbon emissions? I don't remember Elon Musk saying that his cars would
solve the problem of Urban Sprawl, traffic jams, or parking space?

The headline feels like pure clickbait.

~~~
stillworks
I have to agree. The article seems like a popularity peice for the politicians
involved therein.

Also the graph comparing motoring costs to public transport costs is
questionable.

Personally, we downsized from two car houshold to a single car. Car doing the
school, grocery and weekend duty, Tfl for commuting.

The car costs about £30 (fuel) per week hauling up to five people at a time.
Tfl costs £51 per week per person. If you mix Tfl + Train then it costs £77
per week per person. (Using the Train also has a noticable effect on my mental
health, currently fortunate enough to have access to Tfl without relying on
Train, hope that continues)

It's the amount of people that need to move from A to B which is the problem
and not how they move from A to B.

If all the people switched to electric cars, it's still ALL the VERY SAME
NUMBER of people. Local emissions may go down, but then the energy to charge
all those electric vehicles will affect "something somewhere else".

If all the people stopped using cars, switched to bicycles, then it's still
ALL THE VERY SAME NUMBER of people getting from A to B maybe at the same rate
as they were before the switch. This will help with noise and emissions,
but... the traffic will be the same.

In London, being on a bicycle is life threatening. Not saying that motorists
and bus drivers are out there to "get 'em", rather there is very little space
on the roads. Several times the typical scene is that of a biker being
followed by up to ten cars until the cars get an opportunity to overtake.
Which happens after several minutes due to lack of space.

~~~
glennpratt
> If all the people stopped using cars, switched to bicycles, then it's still
> ALL THE VERY SAME NUMBER of people getting from A to B maybe at the same
> rate as they were before the switch. This will help with noise and
> emissions, but... the traffic will be the same.

As someone who bike commutes 10 miles in the US, this couldn't possibly be the
case for me.

There is almost never a car impeded by my presence. I spend part of my ride in
a bike lane and most of the rest on a bike route through neighborhoods that
aren't heavily used for car commuting.

Even when there are cars, they quickly have a chance to pass (and inversely in
heavy traffic I filter right through them).

~~~
stillworks
Space is not at a premium the U.S. There is plenty opportuinity there to start
working towards a very efficient transit infrastructure which will allow for
Bikes, Cars, Buses and what not.

I have travelled/driven between the west coast and middle of Arizona (and
somewhat into Utah) and road infrastructure generally was much much better
than what we have here in the U.K.

As a relative/subjective view, consider that on most major roads in London, it
will be difficult to place two London buses side-by-side. (try walking between
Bank and let's say Baker Street)

In CA, Silicon Valley proper or south of San Jose or going even further into
Southern California, most residential streets are large enough to allow
parking even big RVs (almost as big as London Buses) adjacent and still
leaving space for cars to move about. From what I remember of San Francisco,
the main roads were very wide (streets not so much), it was not difficult to
manoeuvre a Chevy Suburban, whereas in London you can rent a studio roughly
the size of that vehicle.

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gibolt
Build some biking infrastructure, it is super cheap on top of existing roads.
Take away a small amount of space from cars and parking between all major
common destinations, and bike/pedestrian usage will skyrocket if they feel
safe going anywhere nearby.

~~~
anonymou2
It is so tiring to hear the same silly argument again and again. Roads are
already the best biking infrastructure, period. We cyclists don't want to lose
our right to use it by being kicked off to segregated bike facilities. We
don't need no cyclist apartheid:
[https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/26/how-
apartheid...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/26/how-apartheid-
killed-johannesburgs-cycling-culture-)

~~~
bildung
This is no either-or situation. In Germany a cyclist has to used a bike lane
if available and else uses the road. Kids <= 8 are allowed to cycle on the
pedestrian paths.

~~~
rerx
This is not true. In Germany bike lanes are only required to be used when
there is a sign saying so (and when they usable and safe, which you cannot
expect, sadly). By default bike lanes are optional.

~~~
anonymou2
I am curious, how do motorists react when you ride on a regular road with an
optional bike lane adjacent to it? Because where I live, in Spain, they have
built such "optional" lanes and when I ride adjacent to them I get a lot of
harassment, which I didn't get prior to their construction in such places. So
it seems the politicians build them and the motorists do the dirty job.

~~~
rerx
Some drivers indeed use the existence of such lanes as extra fuel for their
harassment, which sucks: Very often these lanes are objectively dangerous for
cyclists because they are way easier to be "overlooked" at intersections.

While driving culture generally is terrible in Germany, in my opinion, with
people driving way to aggressively, the situation may be improving gradually.
The idea of having to keep some distance when passing cyclists seems to have
reached some drivers. (From court rulings 1.5 meters is the absolute minimum)

------
jillesvangurp
Self driving taxis will be a lot cheaper than normal taxis and self driving
electric taxis will be cheaper still. Basically that takes the two most
expensive cost factors out of the equation (humans and petrol). This could
become so cheap that even people owning a car might prefer it for short
distances; or for their daily commute.

Self driving cars potentially also increase the road capacity as cars would be
able to coordinate their moves and make more efficient use of the road.

So, that's two ways electrical and autonomous vehicles could contribute to
reducing road congestion, which is what this article seems to be about.

People letting their car drive around for hours because they can't find a
parking space sounds a bit far fetched. Self parking cars could park on the
edge of a city though and pick the driver up when needed. This would also
enable autonomous charging and address that issue.

~~~
lnsru
Petrol is cheap, taxes make it expensive. I see, you are in Berlin:
[https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Standardar...](https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Standardartikel/Service/Einfach_erklaert/2018-01-11-grundlagen-
benzinpreis.html)

At the end state will tax electricity same way to keep this wonderful tax
income. No way to have cheap fuel, hydrogen, gas, etc will be taxed same way
due to political reasons.

I don’t see a chance to ditch my car having family. It is clean, clean
children seat, toys for travel, snacks for next trip, some water, some bad
weather clothing. It is available all the time for me, no waiting, known
condition.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
> At the end state will tax electricity same way to keep this wonderful tax
> income. No way to have cheap fuel, hydrogen, gas, etc will be taxed same way
> due to political reasons.

But not clean electricity. The gas is taxed for the environmental reasons: it
is endangering our planet. I don't know of any government taxing clean
electricity.

~~~
eMSF
>The gas is taxed for the environmental reasons

Then why was it highly taxed before carbon emissions were considered a problem
at all? I can tell you: because it's easy to tax (very much like estates).

~~~
ollie87
Depends where you live I suppose but in the UK there are two taxes on fuel.

Fuel duty which has nearly always been on fuel, but left in place and
manipulated as a tax on hydrocarbons - £0.5795 per litre

VAT is then added on top of this price, which has been around since 1973 -
currently 20%

Currently there is no tax on electricity used for road vehicles, but we do pay
VAT on our Electricity bills so it's fair to assume that the government isn't
losing out a huge amount of money by people switching to electric vehicles.

------
krtkush
Electric vehicles will solve the problem of localized pollution. The cities
and dense urban areas will have less pollution and you will be actually be
able to walk on the footpath without inhaling fumes from gas guzzling
machines.

------
safgasCVS
For me to take the train to work every day from London to Sunbury it works out
to just over twenty pounds per day. For what I pay in commute fares is less
then leasing and insuring a new car (which also won’t decide 5 minutes
beforehand that it won’t be stopping at your station because it needs to make
up time). I’m very pro getting people to give up their cars but I don’t see it
happening In the U.K. until affordable alternatives exist

~~~
dougmwne
Ouch. I'm curious about the details. Do you have to pay the congestion charge
or any tolls when you drive? Do you have free parking at your office? What's
the petrol cost of a day's driving? How do the leasing and insurance costs
break out daily?

I'm asking because when I ran the numbers for myself in a major US city, it
turned out that driving was expensive enough that public transit and Uber
would have been superior. But then our transit tickets were only a few dollars
and most parking downtown was $20 a day.

~~~
safgasCVS
Wow that’s London-expensive parking.

So the normal congestion charge is around £11 per day but because I’m a
resident and live in a congestion zone it’s £1 pound. However the CC only
applies to the most central parts of London so many people don’t have to pay
it. Daily fuel works out to £4.5 and my office has free parking. My Annual
insurance for a newish Mazda 3 is £500 and while I bought my car outright i
think a lease on a similar car would be around £220pm. B

~~~
dougmwne
Thanks! So you're looking at roughly £15 a day in overall costs. (Maybe a
touch more when you add in maintenance and repairs.) It's interesting that if
you had to pay the congestion charge or for parking, the scales would easily
tip twards the train. So in conclusion, it's really too bad the transit
tickets in London are so expensive since it's clearly pushing a lot of people
to drive instead.

------
kingosticks
> They should also incentivise local councils to build housing developments
> that are easy to access without a car.

This is becoming more and more normal in and around London. Developers build
blocks of flats (increasingly tall blocks) without any parking at all, and the
councils do not provide any resident parking permits for those living in the
new flats. Because they simply don't have the space to do so.

Whilst not having a car in London can work (I don't have one), it's a total
non-starter for many, especially those with kids. So now there's a load of new
homes built, which looks great on paper for the council, but they are totally
useless homes for many people.

------
jfoster
It's similar to the way fixing a leaking pipe doesn't help with electricity.
Electrification alone doesn't solve every problem.

Elon Musk seems to be taking on all of the cited problems, though.
Electrification helps with emissions. Autonomy helps with parking spaces.
Boring Company helps with traffic. If he's successful, we'll be whizzing
around in silent and emissions-free self-driving Tesla pods that use Boring Co
tunnels to travel at ridiculously fast speed. Sounds cool.

------
reacweb
Oil is a precious finite resource that is misspent because it is too cheap.
Electric cars reduces our waste of oil and reduce pollution in towns.

------
holri
Sure, it does not make sense to use 2 tons mass and 10 m2 for transportation
of 80 kg and 0,25m2. Electric does not change this inefficiency.

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Copenjin
The transport problem (that is not just the problem of emissions) can only be
solved through rigorous planning.

A planning that involves all aspects (direct or indirect) of the multi-faceted
problem of mobility.

But hey, who has time for plannin'.

~~~
steve_gh
The UK Govt actually. There is a current call for Future Mobility plans - the
Govt is putting a lot of money (£90M IIRC) into a tender process, to select 3
local authorities to develop future mobility plans over the next 10 years,
integrating public transport, EV and EV charging, electric bikes, last mile
solutions etc.

------
baxtr
_$type cars ‘will not solve’ transport problem_ , others warn

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sunstone
While this is true, self driving electric cars will definitely make a big dent
in some of these problems.

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Causality1
Cities should absolutely be doing everything in their power to make it safer
and easier to get around without a car.

For me personally, any city urban enough for public transportation to exist at
all is too crowded. My sweet spot is having no buses but still having dozen
good restaurants within a ten minute drive.

~~~
perfunctory
> to get around without a car... within a ten minute drive.

I don't understand.

~~~
Causality1
The first part refers to large, dense cities. The kind where you can hear your
neighbors and getting around on foot is practical.

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Arn_Thor
The accuracy of that headline depends on what problem we're talking about

