Guided Tours of Suffolk's Past
On the Move
The Coming of the Car
In the austere years after World War 2, motorcycles, sidecars, mopeds, and even engines attached to cycles became widespread as more people aspired to some form of motorized transport. |
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| The car had first been seen on Suffolk roads in the 1890s, but remained a rare sight in rural areas until the 1930s - and it was not until the 1960s that houses were built with garages as a matter of course. The changes brought about by car ownership on, for example, shopping patterns and leisure activities have been discussed a good deal, but the impact that it has had on the visual environment has also been profound - not least in the separation of residential and commercial areas.
At the end of the 20 th century - in the face of pollution and rising oil prices -Eastern Electricity experimented with electric cars. There were problems though, including a lack of heating due to the absence of a cooling system to run it from, as well as their limited range before it became necessary to re-charge the batteries. In 1995, Ipswich Buses experimented with a bus converted to run on compressed natural gas, but this too was judged to be unsuccessful.
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