WHILE Catriona Stewart is correct in many of her assertions relating to the almost blind use of cars especially for the school run, she has not brought out the “Catch 22” aspects of personal transport use ( “Parents are bullies behind the wheel”, The Herald, March 25).
Public transport was the norm with ease of use in urban, suburban and rural areas and it was affordable until the aspirational acquisition of a car became a reality. Congestion increased, passenger numbers dropped and routes and time tables were adjusted, including maintaining services at a much reduced rate and timed to be useless to possible users.
The user’s answer was to get a car. The bus operating company could then argue for increased subsidies to service the fewer passengers prepared to use the service. In cities the deregulation encouraged silly competition and sometimes gridlock. Another aspirational move for many was to move to the country or seaside, meaning that the car became essential as schools were not moved about in the same way as housing.
Rail transport is somewhat easier as, apart from occasional faults, there is no congestion. But it is expensive and old routes and joining up missing links remain idealistic. Public reaction? Keep to the car. Government reaction? Spend enormous amounts of money to improve road networks
Who has the answer to changing attitudes? Maybe the construction of large peripheral car parks with interchange facilities onto buses and trains and cycles on their own dedicated routes could be the answer. Then cars could be banned within a certain radius of cities.
This still leaves a rural problem. But experts would be capable of producing a solution, I believe.
For what it is worth, when I was a seven-year-old, I was issued with weekly bus and tram passes by my primary school and, for two years, I and classmates used the bus and tram services to get to and from school with lots of walking. Secondary school was a three-mile bike ride except in really bad weather and until bikes were vandalised or stolen.
Cars are still the only means of transport that is whole-family inclusive and that can be used when wanted or needed. If alternatives to these benefits can be found Ms Stewart’s argument and pleadings may lead to a societal change, but not any time soon.
Ian Gray,
Low Cottage,
Croftamie.
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