Our street is almost full of parked cars at night and
roughly 50% full during the day. So ~40% are used daily and 50% are used for
used intermittently for frequent short or rare long trips. A high proportion of
the 40% used daily are for short trips to work and back. There are near 26
million cars licenced in England. So roughly two thirds of the 50% (35%) and
three quarters of the 40% (30%), i.e.65%. are not in use at any one time so a
comprehensive taxi service could cover all private car usage making 50 to 70%
of private cars obsolete, i.e. ~15 million, an overall value saving of very
roughly £400 billion. (the cost of buying and running a private car) But this
doesn’t cut the overall emissions of all car journeys. If though a proportion
of these saving were spent on electric taxis and busses to cover the actual 35%
car usage, (100%-65%) we could get to zero emissions by making 2.4 million electric
cars as opposed to 26 million. And if bus services were upgraded to provide say
50% of this mileage and a bus carries say 6 car loads this would need 1.2
million electric taxis and 200,000 busses. The conversion to electric of 1.2m taxi
cars as opposed to 26m private one’s will be far quicker and save several
hundred billion in private expenditure. Yes we would lose our own private car
parked out front but gain clear streets. Yes we would pay for taxis but save
all the hassle and expense of owning a car. Yes we might walk a bit more but
that’s good. And yes there would be zero emissions and that’s good too.
