self-sufficient public transport

[whartonski]

Hi

Not quite self-sufficiency, but moving in that direction.

I am trying to organise/promote the fellowtravellers concept, but 3 of my key assumptions have proved wrong.

1. That the national and local media would give acres of space to an environmental/ public transport story.

2. That local councils would be keen to promote a congestion-reducing, C02 cutting initiative in their areas.

3. The green and/or transport lobby woulds support the initiative.


So far, wrong on all counts. I believe that the concept is sound (or at least worthy of exploration). And over the last two years of development about 25% of everyone I've shown the idea to has been persuaded that it has some considerable merit, but since launching the concept site to all local councils and across all local and national media, I've had very poor response. Why?


http://www.fellowtravellers.co.uk

[Rod in Japan]

If you want investors and help with publicity, have you tried Triodos Bank? That sort of thing is 'right up their street'.

It looks a good idea and a good site to me.

[MKG]

Hi Whartonski .

Sheer inertia is the usual culprit. Keep hammering away.

[QuizMaster]

Hi whartonski and welcome.
I feel your pain. Last month we tried to start car-pooling in our company. Out of 250 people, 9 expressed an interest, and even they turned out not to have suitable matches.
We're not giving up though. It takes a very long time to change people's way of thinking.
My suggestion would be to work with whatever transport initiatives there are in your area. Introduce Fellow Travellers as one option among many, support other ideas and hope others support yours. And be patient. Be prepared to battle for years on this.

The quick way, of course, is to target people's sense of greed. In our company, we are short of parking spaces. We are lobbying the CEO and the building landlord to allocate parking spaces for car-poolers. Also we are reminding people of what their journey costs. People don't often think of the price of their journey when they are driving, but grumble when they have to pay for a bus ticket. Often it's cheaper than the price of their petrol.

Anyway just thinking out loud there, hope there's one or two ideas that might help.

[Rosendula]

Hi


I've had a quick look at your site and will read more of it later when I have woke up a bit and had at least two more coffees

It sounds like a good idea for long journeys, but I have to say it's a lot of messing about compared to what I can do now. I live on the edge of a city and to get to the city centre I simply leave my house and go to the bus stop which is at the end of my garden path (more or less). OK, most people don't have a bus stop at the end of their garden path (and they don't have the litter that goes with it in their front garden ), but no-one has to walk more than a few yards to get to one.

The buses come every 5-7 minutes and I arrive in the town centre in 20-30 minutes depending on traffic. Despite the frequency of the buses, they are almost always about 1/2 to 3/4 full. The buses are rarely empty yet there's rarely nowhere to sit.

I do like your idea, but it seems such a fath. If I was going somewhere further afield and planning it ahead it might work. Or I would get a train.

Maybe I'm just lucky that we have a decent service around here.

On the subject of the environmental impact of buses, I agree that something needs to be done but I think there are better ways of improving the current services. My partner came up with the idea of bus companies going all round the town collecting used cooking oil from take-aways and restaurants, free of charge (saving the businesses money and hassle) and doing all the filtering stuff that needs doing at a plant next to the bus station, then running the buses on that. This was a recent, off-the-top-of-the-head thought so may have flaws, but I think it's a pretty good idea.

Sorry to sound negative, but I prefer to give an honest opinion in the hope that you can use it in a positive way.

[Milims]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Unlike Rosendula we live in an area where the public transport system is horrendous! There is a bus every 2 hours, if we are lucky, it takes almost an hour to travel the 7 mile journey into town and it costs a small fortune in fares! And that's better than the village I used to live in - 4 miles away! There we had a bus into town in the morning and out again at 4pm. On Tuesdays and Saturdays there was a bus at about 10 am and out again at 1pm as well - although I think that may have stopped now and there's only an occasional post bus. As a result everybody has a car round here - it's a necessary evil. Most of the villages are very small - 100 houses at most - and usually don't have a shop, so even something as simple as buying a pint of milk necessitates a journey of at least 5 miles each way. One of the problems seems to be that because the buses were so infrequent every one had a car and so didn't bother with the bus - so they stopped them! Surely if the bus service had been better more people would have used it..........and so it goes round!
An obvious solution would be car sharing - the trouble is this is an area with a much older population - people come here to retire - therefore they don't travel to town on a daily basis at work time - so car sharing doesn't work. The other problem in this area is that because people retire here very few people get to know eachother - so the sense of community, history and sharing is lost. Anyone want to move to one of the most desirable areas in the country???