As someone who drives a car in the UK, I’d like to point out that this is a load of old bollocks designed to drum up votes from Boomers ahead of what’s looking to be an absolute embarrassment of an election for the Tories in the next year or so.

Almost none of these promises have any actual substance to them, and are largely just meaningless slogans designed to rile up the Boomers* who have spent their lives being taught that public transport and bikes are what poor lefties do.

If Labour have been quiet on these issues, it’s because they know that their best election strategy at this point is to just let the Tories flap on, doling out enough rope with which to hang themselves.

*not all Boomers, obviously, but they really are the majority of Tory voters

Well I’m not a UK driver but all of those ideas sound good to me, because cars give people freedom to go wherever they want and help the economy keep going. Tons of people don’t have access to public transit and they do have cars, and they need them to get to work and the rest of the places they go to live their lives.

Sure, build more public transit to help out too, and create incentives for pollution reduction and all that. But if you want the regular people on your side you will have to stop trying to take their freedom to drive away.

Boy oh boy are you in the wrong community…

I don’t care, I’m just scrolling the Lemmy World feed for entertainment and this one came up. Now you get to hear my “boomer” thoughts on the matter haha.

I mean, all power to you for having your opinions, and what you say about public transport is absolutely correct.

But here’s the thing; no one is taking people’s “freedom to drive” anywhere. At the very, very worst, some councils are making it more expensive to drive within their jurisdiction, because they want to insert a moment of friction to make people wonder whether the car journey they “have” to take could be taken with public transport instead. I drive places (much less than I used to), and I see that as a Good Thing. We had the same grumbles back when Ken Livingston’s council introduced the original scheme 20 years ago, but people very quickly adapted and got over it.

As for the 20mph zones; they just make sense in built up areas. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I live in an area that has 30mph limits in residential areas, but I’ve taken to traveling at 20mph anyway, because there are kids who live near me who have a tendency to run around without paying enough attention. Sure, I’d be legally in the clear if I hit one at 30 and seriously injured them, but that wouldn’t help my conscience one bit.