Car use in decline? RAC Foundation report says Peak Car theory oversimplifies the issues

I'm not surprised by the drop in male young drivers, the cost of insurance is so high. With the new EU rules about gender netural insurance starting at the end of this month the cost for young femail drivers will also rise sharply.
Hopefully habits formed in their 20s will stick for life.

My parents generation remeber when there were far fewer cars and so tend to drive everywhere, my generation seems to drive much less.
For example I or my other half would never drive into central London, but her parents will (as thats what they always have done).

i can understand the increased use in the southwest , public transport is a joke and cycling facilities are slowy being introduced but not quick enough its the chicken and egg scenario again!
Meanwhile we are trying to instigated "the yellow brick road" here in cornwall but funding is woefully slow to coming through ce la vie!!!

We as a family are using the car a lot less these days, most of my mileage has changed in the last few years and is mostly for work, not for pleasure. We have moved house so as to be closer to the kids schools family and my wife’s work which has enabled them to be able to walk or cycle. We have sold the second car. I now cycle not just for fun but use my bike to free up the car so that my wife can take the kids to those activity that are part of busy family life (if I am off work or there is the infrastructure there we will often use our bikes to go to the local swimming pool ect). Is this the real change that is boosting cycling? 40 Something middle of the road types that see that the future is not car based!

How typical of a car lobby group, especially the RAC Foundation, to argue that the general trend masks various other changes, and then attempt to remove company car use from the analysis so as to imply that car use is actually increasing.

They refer to company car journeys for commuting or business and the move to train travel but in fact the great majority of company cars are rarely if ever used for business purposes.

Company cars are - or were - a tax-advantaged perk. At one time the tax benefit attached to a car, and especially to free fuel, was considerably less than the actual value of the benefit. That is why employers provided it - doh!

The tax advantage was steadily stripped away, partly because it was unfair to taxpayers who were not provided with cars, and partly because it encouraged environmentally bad behaviour. Hence company car taxation based on engine capacity/carbon emissions.

You then saw a trend, as I experienced when I used to be eligible for a company car, to offering employees a choice - you can spend a budget of, say, £500 a month an leasing a company car, or you can have the cash and do what you like with it. This same trend, of flexible benefits, extended to various other things like childcare vouchers, more contributions to your pension, or additional holiday in exchange for parts of your cash salary.

Nowadays, many employers don't even offer a car as a choice, they skip straight to the cash allowance.

Fact is, if you strip away tax subsidies like those, the company car really loses its appeal. Once you are back in the real world of buying, financing, insuring, and fuelling a car yourself, many people will be cannier about how, or indeed if, they do it.

I would suggest that women still tend to have more domestic duties where a car is actually more useful, like ferrying children between activities, going to the supermarket, that sort of thing. So they are probably not all just driving to the gym, campag_10

Cycling around the place solo, or maybe plus one on the front, works fine but while the roads may be ok for "battle-hardened males" on roadbikes , the environment is still not a nice one for larger, lower-speed cargo bikes full of children and groceries, no matter who is piloting.

I will give it a go when I am in that situation (battle-hardened female that I am ) but I can see why many don't see it as an option, especially when they are transporting their most precious cargo down roads where their contemporaries speed around in massive urban assault vehicles (it's 'safer' you see, the 'dangerous' ones are those who get in the way...).

That is the acid test here, the roads will be fit for cycling when women feel they can safely transport their babies about by bike, and children can ride to school. Any piece of infrastructure that doesnt allow this is, in my view, a waste of everyones time, a bit like a new footpath that is only good for fast runners (cycle superhighway, anyone?).

Women also tend to use a car when the take exercise – like driving to the gym or a country park to go for a walk.

As the report mentions, women's independence in general has increased over the years. Less housewives, more with careers (rather than mere 'jobs') therefore earning enough to fund car ownership, increased salary parity between the genders.

That's before you get onto the other conversation about road design and traffic conditions/hostility meaning that the majority of cyclists are battle-hardened males, and females/children opting for less daunting methods of travel.

I wonder why car use by women has increased so much?

Thankfully i'll generally get a club memeber to ferry me to races. Or if it's less than about 30k away i treat that as my warm up.

With the UK Government spending less and less on roads, congestion is going to get worse and worse. Some people have already cottoned on to the fact that increased cycling reduces congestion. Young people almost certainly have been put off driving by high insurance costs, though in real terms owning and running a vehicle isn't as expensive now as it has been in the past.

There are still a lot of lemmings who seem to enjoy queuing in their cars in jams at peak periods though. I don't quite get it myself and while I've got a car I certainly don't use it for commuting. I've better things to do than waste my time in traffic jams.

I've been cycling in London for over 20 years and long ago realised that commuting on two wheels (either by bicycle or motorcycle) made a whole lot more sense than trying to drive anywhere in the city in a tin box. If the weather's bad I'll take public transport, but most of the time I commute on 2 wheels.

The car comes in handy for ferrying myself and my son and our bikes here and there when we're racing.

I'm 26 and have no desire whatsoever to own or drive a car.
Currently my commute is the best part of my day, evern in the cold and the wet. Why would i sacrifice that to spend it in the horrible environs of a car, spending a fortune and having a negative impact on my health?
I am extremely lucky however as my employer provides, showers, drying room, tool kit and covered bike racks. I feel if more provided these kind of facilities a lot more people would take to their bikes.

It is almost inevitable that fewer and fewer people living in major urban centres will own cars, where it has long been a luxury that not many actually needed. One of the "drivers" (sorry) behind this will undoubtably be the "squeezed middle" (almost all of whom have owned cars up until now) having less disposable income due to evaporating work available in middle-income jobs. So whatever transport policies are or aren't proposed, I personally think this will be the case. That doesn't necessarily mean they will all start riding bikes though - they may switch to trains or walking, hopefully slashing our NHS bill at the same time. What the hell happens to the squeezed middle in more rural areas, I do not have a clue. Maybe like all over the world they will move to cities so they can go to work without having a car. Urbanisation dude.

Its anecdotal i know but i (a 40 something father of three) is certainly driving a lot less than i was 10 years ago. My wife also - she cycles to work now.
Some of this is out of choice but the rising cost of running a car has been a huge motivator too. Combine this with fact that all the joy of driving has been sucked out over the years and it is now nothing more than a chore.
I agree with Campag too - young people are less inclined to learn to drive ive noticed - mainly because they cant afford to insure a car.
Its such a shame public transport and cycling infrastructure isnt keeping pace with the underlying trend away from car use.

There's little doubt that in London and the South East, the influence of initiatives like the cycle hire scheme, investment in rail and the Olympics (with its emphasis on sustainable travel) has been huge.

Younger adults no longer see the need to learn to drive and to own a car. In fact, the majority view is that with high insurance and running costs, car ownership is no longer desirable. A mix of cycling/walking, using taxis and trains is viewed as being more cost effective.

It is an interesting bit of research. One thing I have noted is how few of the young people I know have taken their driving test. One of my nieces just passed her test and bought her first car, but I have two other nieces and two nephews, all of whom are old enugh to drive, and none of them yet has a driving licence.