An end to free parking?

I'm a civil servant. I have flexi, which means I have to be in work at 10:00 at the latest, which is a god send the truth, I'm blessed to have it. Myself and herself work it between us dropping the kids to creche and school (their grandmother collects them after school, luckily for us). We live out the country.

The nearest bus stop to me is 3 miles away. The earliest bus I can get that goes near my work is at 9:50 and it drops off at around 10:15 at the main bus station, which is 2.5 miles away. There's a cross town bus there, but that's another 20 minutes. So using the bus to get to work is out of the question.

The kids school is about 4 miles away in the opposite direction from the bus stop. No bus route, or public transport. There's one bus in the school, it comes from the other side of the school from us, and it's organised between the parents themselves with a lad who's a semi-retired bus driver in his 60's.

To shorten it, there's simply no public transport near us that is of any use to us, or simply none at all. Our cars are an absolute necessity to bring the kids to school, and to get to work.

I have free parking at work. Banning free parking for people when the free parking is already there is beyond **** stupid. It makes no sense, as that free parking means there's cars not taking up other car park spaces, and thus easing congestion. Even if it was changed to €2/€3 a day, such as it is in the nearest pay for the day car-park, that's fine, I'll pay that if I have to, but banning parking (free nor not) in places that can be used for parking is simply out-of-touch madness.

The reason Irish people use cars so much compared to other countries is because instead of building up in our towns and cities we build out so we have further to travel, and our public transport options are, outside the cities, pretty much useless to the population. They can barely function properly for the cities either, but at least they have them.

So either put public transport that does by schools and links towns and villages, at times that give them opportunity to go to work or drop kids to school, or stop lecturing about (and more importantly stop punishing) people for needing to use their cars.

One last thing. Being out the country, we have some incredible public facilities. There's a wood near us that has about 15 different walks in that go for miles, but that's about 2 miles away. There's 2/3 playgrounds near us, the closest is 4 miles away. There's a few rivers to walk along the closest 2 miles away. The beach is half an hour away by car. We do these things as much as we can, or things like them, the kids love doing them. But without the car, we wouldn't be able to do them. That's not mention the sports they're involved in. But again, no public transport.

It's not always about work/school, as while they're necessities, they're not the only things in life that matter. I often think that the people who are part of the anti-car brigade seem to completely ignore that aspect of what driving a car can give to people.

People should be free to live in the middle of nowhere miles from anywhere and have a train outside their door. They are entitled to it.

The drive everywhere brigade already brought parks up previously. How will I get to a forest unless they build me a railway.

Well this is what drive everywhere leads to. Housing everywhere and concrete over everything.

Some on this thread have moved so they are not near anything and are waiting for PT to pass their door. Good luck with that.

Time to grow up and realise that everything has a cost if we want to keep taking our polluting space taking personal property into public areas, it's not sustainable and that's a fact, so ignore the realities of life but they will come and you will pay so no point in frustrating yourself any further..