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The meter is ticking whatever vehicle you are in

Transport is a serious issue in Bristol. It is easy to look at other cities and be envious of aspects of their transport systems. But the grass is always greener and a regular tube rider in London will tell you it is not the favourite part of his day.

A common line of thinking is "buses are rubbish, I have no alternatives, I must drive." But solutions lie not in absolutes but in small changes and a mixture of alternatives that are right in the different situations.

Road space required for 60 cars

If and when Bristol gets a rapid transit system, it will largely follow existing bus routes and will replace some of the more frequent and regular bus services. It will be an improvement certainly, but it will not instantly solve local transport problems. In fact it may only delay the progression of an ever worsening situation.

The other problem with large infrastructure changes is that they take lots of money and time to bring into service, cause controversy and they disrupt the existing network while they are being constructed.

Road space required by 60 bikes

Ultimately, transport problems are going to be solved more by the decisions we make as individuals and not by the government or grand transport schemes.

Everyone is part of the problem and everyone can be part of the solution.

Cars will always be one of the transport options open to people, but owning and using a car does not stop one from using alternatives some of the time. Every journey not made by car helps.

So what are the alternatives?

• Walking - There are numerous short journeys that could be made on foot rather than driving. Trips to the high street, corner shop, post office, local church or community centre are all good candidates.
• Cycling - Journeys of up to four or five miles are ideal for cycling and can be done by virtually anyone. Once people actually give cycling a chance, they quickly find how liberating it can be and realise that the perceived problems of weather, dangers and hills are much less of a problem that they thought.
• Buses - Ask any pensioner with a Diamond bus pass what they think of the buses and they will say they are fantastic, which shows that one of the main perceived problems of buses is the cost. But the cost of running a car can easily be higher than a daily bus fare. Off-peak travel on buses can also be far more pleasant than during the rush hour as there is a bit more room on the buses.
• City Car Club - If you don't need a car every day, then joining the City Car Club can be a good way to have access to a car when you need it but without the normal overheads of owning and running a car. The cars can be booked ahead of time on line or by phone, or you can go to their reserved parking spaces and pick one up so long as no one else is using it at the time.
• Car Share - Wherever you work or live there is a good chance there are other people making similar journeys at similar times (tip: they are the other drivers in the traffic jams you sit in). Some larger companies in the city centre may have car share schemes set up within the company but the 2CarShare.com web site (which is set up specifically for the greater Bristol area) makes it easy for anyone to register and then find other people you can share with.

Road space required by 60 bus passengers

All of the above could save you money, even the buses, especially if you reached a point where you could give up a car entirely. If that is a bridge too far you may consider sharing a car with a neighbour and splitting the operating costs.

If you work out what you are saving, it can become much easier to justify hiring a car when you do have a road trip or need to transport stuff around. You might also find getting a taxi more often is a nice treat you can afford because of your other savings.

Talking of taxis, there are a number of schemes (see BBC article and Texxi) going on around the UK where people are sharing taxis. This is good all round because it reduces traffic, and waiting times at taxi ranks, reduces the trip cost for passengers and even nets the driver more money (because the share schemes usually work on a flat per head rate which is lower than a normal taxi fare but because there are multiple passengers adds up to more than a basic fare for the driver).

Fundamentally, people travelling alone in their own metal boxes just takes up too much room on the road (as the pictures in this article illustrate). The only way we will solve transport problems is by not getting into metal boxes (walking or cycling) or by sharing metal boxes with other people. Driving a car is far less detrimental when there is more than one person in the car.

As a society we are less and less willing to mingle with other people and strangers, but we need to overcome this if we are ever going to improve traffic conditions. Using cars less often is part of the solution, sharing cars more often with more people is the other part of the solution. It is all in the balance that we strike, but fortunately we do not have to wait, we can do this right now.

The pictures in this article come from the city of Münster in German