A conversation my wife had with a mother at a child group:
Other mother: The traffic’s terrible when I drive [child] to [Nursery X, 4 miles across town from home], so we’ve moved him to [Nursery Y, 2 miles from home (in a village outside town)]
Wife: Why not move [child] to [nursery Z, 0.7 miles from home]? We did that, so we could walk.
Other mother: Walk? I can’t walk! I have things to do after dropping [child] off.
I’m afraid that this is what we (and the Local Motion campaign) are up against when trying to get people to consider alternatives to cars. The round trip walking to the closer nursery would take about 30 minutes, which wouldn’t be too different to driving to the other nursery and back, but it just wasn’t considered as an alternative. Another generation lost to car culture.
Oh dear. How long before more people include social/environmental considerations in their “personal” choices? Maybe this is another reason why people have to be taxed out of their cars.The silly thing is, once you get used to another way of doing something – like walking to the nursery – it becomes completely normal. As long as people find reasons to stay in their cars, like smoking they’ll never give up.