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Rural people: Is life impossible without a car?
THR
Posts: 9,808
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I'd like to ask people who live outside towns whether they could imagine living without private cars. I have experience of the English countryside in Cambridgeshire where my mother´s and my late stepfather´s second home is. The place is so isolated that it would be impossible to live there without a car of your own or being dependant on the goodwill of your neighboroughs to give you a ride. The rural Cambridgeshire is certainly not the worst in this respect.
Most people who live in cities wouldn't need a car but too many choose to have one. In the rural areas life would be, if not impossible, at least very difficult without a car. On the other hand, people have lived in the English countryside long before cars and have managed well. Everything is relative.
Most people who live in cities wouldn't need a car but too many choose to have one. In the rural areas life would be, if not impossible, at least very difficult without a car. On the other hand, people have lived in the English countryside long before cars and have managed well. Everything is relative.
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With all respect, your mum can't be living in a very isolated area if there are two buses an hour.
But saying that my parents have a car and friends etc so I dont use public transport for anything other than to get to and from work. If I had a car i would probably still use the bus!!
(there is also a school bus at 8.30 )
I don't think it is impossible to live with out a car but I do think it is essential for alternative modes of affordable transport to be available esp for the elderly etc.
Loads of villages around where I live stop getting serviced after 5pm-ish!
Where i live the bus comes every hour. It used to be every 2 hours lol
Yes a car is essential but of course you can't get and run a car until you have work.
I have a car but I can't run her around because I would be bound to have to work at different times to her.
On the other hand, I say there's almost no justification whatsover for having a car in London.
Not necessarily .
Yes bloody impossible. Putting aside my self employed status and need for a car for that reason, I cant imagine anything worse than living in a remote place with no means of transport. I like food shopping and driving to see friends and without a car its impossible.
Guess its a bit like an open prison, that feeling of being free but at the same time a prisoner of your circumstances.
I wonder if the likes of Tesco, ASDA an Sainsbury's do on line orders to isolated areas. Can you even get an internet connection in some of them ?
That's another problem with rural areas. Telecommunications are pretty poor in most parts. You'll get poor internet access and if you want multi-channel TV then you're usually restricted to satellite.
I guess the countryside aspect of living in a rural area outweighs things like this for most people, though.
Yes, we are not quite that primitive. I'm on 8mb broadband, actually achieving about 6.8mb and yes, ASDA and Tesco do deliver!
Having said that, the nearest place with any form of public transport is about an hours drive away.
But I am happy to say that between the two local towns, we can get everything we need and don't have to go into the big town very often.
I LOVE where I live!!!!!!!!
NIce one. I'll buy her one for Christmas!!
It used to be, too, that in the past villages had a much wider range of shops and tradespeople, whereas now a village may just have just one or two shops (or none at all!) that probably carry just a limited range of goods at high prices. Of course, it's a vicious circle: because more people have cars nowadays they tend to head off to the towns to do their shopping. As a consequence, the village shops lose trade, and so they carry less stock and increase their prices — and so more people go to shop in towns, and the village shops lose trade, and so on. It often tends to be that the only people who patronise the village shops are those who are forced to do so because they don't have cars, and that tends to be the old and the poor — who won't have much to spend anyway.
My village has buses about every hour and so I guess I could manage by public transport, but head out into the country and there are many roads that never see public transport at all. Many rural areas are served only by school buses, and during the school holidays the buses are off the road.
No, I'd hate to live in the country without a car. Of course it can be done, but it's isn't easy.