Beat those rising fuel prices - just ditch the car

The old banger's already had her parking fee doubled by Islington council for having a whopping carbon tyre-print. And if the Government goes ahead and ramps up vehicle excise duty, we'll be dealt the double whammy of higher road tax and plummeting car value.

We've long questioned the logic of keeping a car in London but this could be the last gasp for Betty the Beetle. It's like keeping a mistress on the off-chance you get to see her once a month - usually for a trip to Waitrose.

The craziness of running a car was driven home further during a trip to New York last week. None of my friends there own cars. Everybody walks or takes the subway. In Brooklyn, where all the middle-class trendies live, the streets are pleasantly deserted. When my friends want to leave town, they hire a car.

Returning to London this week I cycled to work as usual. It took me two days to realise what was wrong. Half-term equals half the traffic - because parents aren't ferrying their children to school. I'm often told I'd feel different about driving in town if I had children, especially at private school - which tends to be further from the front door than the local state.

I can almost see the point but then I think of friends in Primrose Hill. They have three children at three different schools. The eldest goes private, so his dad cycles there with him in the morning, while mum walks the younger two to school. Like everything else in life, getting your family to school on time is a matter of juggling. That's not a physical impossibility if you don't have a car chugging in the drive.

I know it's not easy, especially if you have a family, and many people may have voted for Boris because they dreaded Ken's £25 gas guzzler charge. But the congestion charge has already changed our habits.

And there are options galore. City car clubs work better than they did when they were first introduced, cycling to work makes you feel good, even in the rain, and buses are far more frequent than they were.

That's the message politicians should be pushing - especially in our overcrowded, polluted cities. Because, ultimately, learning to live without a car is the only way to beat the rising cost of running one.