497 – Nottingham tops least car-dependent city league

Audi A6: motorway trip plagued by roadworks on the way to the most car-dependent city in Britain

Business Car Manager: Editor’s Blog

NOTTINGHAM is the best place to run your business if you want to reduce your dependency on cars; Milton Keynes is the opposite.

Having driven my Audi A6 up the M1 towards Milton Keynes yesterday to meet Martin Burke, head of Skoda’s fleet sales, I can report that the M25 and M1 is one continuous ribbon of roadworks and 50mph average speed limits. And MK is a dizzying criss-cross patchwork of straights and roundabouts.

So I can believe MK being at the bottom of the league. But Nottingham at the top?

Apparently it bested London and Brighton in a new study by the Campaign for Better Transport. While Milton Keynes held up the bottom of the table, supporting Luton and Peterborough.

The report was published, says the Campaign for Better Transport, to examine how dependent we are on cars in major cities, suggesting that providing sustainable transport choices would be a solution, creating a greener and less congested urban environment.

Personally, I’m all for having a wide variety of transport choices. As you know, I love my bicycle. I love my car too. But they are not mutually exclusive. And neither is walking, taking the train, or catching a bus. And any business that wants to keep its travel costs down should ensure it embraces as many alternative choices as possible.