New car TravelTax

I know this is proably a bit late, but did anyone catch the Trevor macDonald programme about road pricing earlier this week?

From the outset I do not normally watch his programme as I find them as offensive as some tabloids, however he made a very small appearance whilst some "reporter" did the story.

Taken on Tyneside they took a factory and got 10 volunteers to work out daily travelling time of travel distances etc. They then had a road pricing expert (the hint was that this chap was involved in government studies and projects)made a best estimate of how he thought the pricing would go.

It was all rather predictable, chap does 10K miles per annum and was at best £1200 worse off because he went to a city centre Gym at 1700 hrs. Most of the other stories were about the same a few hundred worse off.

Then they removed part of the fuel duty (33%) and recalculated. Everyone did a little better but still a few were worse off and a few better off.

Of notable exception was one of the company directors who worked in the northeast and at weekends returned to suffolk, in his range rover, and because he went at "quieter time" was over 2K better off, doing 35K miles.

So environmentally, the more miles you do the better it is, more pollution, impact upon sustainable development etc both faired worse and the bloke is £2K better off.

This brings out the cynic in me especially reading Blairs response.

Put the investment in public transport and de bottlenecking now, and when we still can't cope then tax us off the road. But by not giving us an option on public transport we have few alternatives. For those outside London there is very little usefull public transport to be had. I neeed to travel 4.5 miles to work. I would have to leave my house at 06:50 to get to place of work for 08:30. I work in the largest industrial estate in Northampton and live in an area adjacent to the towns ring road.

This is not a case in my opinion where you tax people first and then give them a crap un workable alternative second. The investment needs to happen first and realistically get motorists off the road at times of heaviest congestion. Oh and ban car parking and dropping kids off within 1 mile of any school.

This is such a prickly subject. Of the 20 million motorists over 1 million voiced objection. Motorists are generally tax payers and voters. A minority? Possibly, but an alternative that can work outside the nations capital has to be found.

Tony

quote:

Of the 20 million motorists over 1 million voiced objection

You don't know that.
I have 5 email addresses. I registered all of them and voted 5 times. How many others might have done the same, with even more email addresses?

Beyond the considerable anti reaction to a road pricing scheme, I don't think that anyone can deny that something needs to be done about road congestion. I live in S Wales and weekday mornings the M4 from Cardiff west to east of Newport is one big car park - the cost to the economy must be fantastic. I know that it is the same elsewhere - the West Midlands in particular.

So, in broad brush terms, the options seem to be:

1. Leave things as they are and accept that things will get much worse with the growth of cars on the road. The end result being total gridlock - where's your basic human freedom to travel then?

2. Build more roads until you tarmac over the whole country.

3. Legislate people off the road. For example max 2 cars per household.

4. Price people off the road. Road pricing or increase in petrol duties etc.

It seems to me that those are the options and whilst this anti petition is all well and good alternative suggestions seem to be thin on the ground.

Let's not forget, some of us are in favour of the transponder-based road pricing (taxation). Assuming tax is inevitable, this seems a reasonable way to pay it. When my car is sitting on my drive I pay less than when it is on the road, seems fair. Also, regarding the tracking potential, this has obvious benefits or else people wouldn't buy "Trackers". If the objection is that they will make it harder to break the law and drive too fast, who cares?

quote:

Originally posted by labrat:
Put the investment in public transport and de bottlenecking now, and when we still can't cope then tax us off the road. But by not giving us an option on public transport we have few alternatives. For those outside London there is very little usefull public transport to be had. I neeed to travel 4.5 miles to work. I would have to leave my house at 06:50 to get to place of work for 08:30. I work in the largest industrial estate in Northampton and live in an area adjacent to the towns ring road.

This is not a case in my opinion where you tax people first and then give them a crap un workable alternative second. The investment needs to happen first and realistically get motorists off the road at times of heaviest congestion.
Tony

I agree, lets see the carrot first, and then bring out the stick. When Ken Livingston ran the GLC he made public transport so cheap you had to be a moron not to use it. You have a similar situation in Paris, where they have the added bonus of an extremely efficient transport system. Of course it couldn't last, it was the Bexlyheath tories who took him to court and forced the fares back up.

As to the 100 minutes it takes you to drive to work, perhaps now that the weather is getting better, you might want to consider doing what I'm going to do, get the bike out and blow up the tires.

quote:

If the objection is that they will make it harder to break the law and drive too fast, who cares?

The innocent have nothing to fear, do they?

If public transport was even 'reasonably' ok in places other than London for once, I'd try to use it.

Heck, I only live 2 mins from a 'main' road, and cannot get a but to get me to work for the required time.

If there was a "pay as you whinge" levy, some of the motorists on this forum would be among the heaviest-taxed people in the country.

What is it about motorists - who, despite their constant blathering about their "persecuted minority" status, are in fact in the majority -and their ceaseless whining? You are among the richest, most privileged people in the world. Enjoy your cars while you can (before the oil runs out) and just give it a rest, eh?

K

(I don't have a car nor do I drive)

quote:

(I don't have a car nor do I drive)

The whole of your post could be summed up in this statement alone.

You don't drive so until you do you'll never understand.

You also live in London. 'Nuff said.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Toy:

quote:

(I don't have a car nor do I drive)

The whole of your post could be summed up in this statement alone.

You don't drive so until you do you'll never understand.

You also live in London. 'Nuff said.

You didn't read (or perhaps understand) the post. I have nothing against drivers or cars or motorists per se, only those drivers who whinge on and on (often about not being able to break speed limits). Nobody likes paying taxes, including me. But we all have to, and there is usually a price to pay for any privilege, including being a car owner.

It's rather boring to keep moaning about it.

And you are NOT a persecuted minority. Unless, of course, you are telling me you're surrounded by hordes of braying public transport users who shove shit through your letterbox and want you to "go back to where you came from" (the BP garage or DVLA presumably).

All the best

K

We are a persecuted majority.

Interesting Article in today's Daily Telegraph.

The Government’s road-pricing petition closed this week with more than 1.8 million signatures against. Former Labour transport minister John Spellar MP thinks ministers need to stop trumpeting the ‘big idea’ and get on with the small, unglamorous things that reduce traffic
In many parts of the country we have just finished the half-term holidays. Everyone will be commenting about how easy it has been to move about, even jokingly suggesting the schools could be closed all year round. Yet the volume of traffic will only have been down about 15 per cent, while delays and congestion will have been cut by about 40 per cent. So the benefits of a reduction in traffic are clear. The question is, do we achieve it by taxing workers off the road, or by managing the system better? The problem is that for civil servants and ministers, the "big idea" is more exciting and higher profile than the boring, detailed job of making small, local improvements that add up to real change.
What are the problems with road-user charging? First, it's a massive administrative task. It involves putting units into 32 million vehicles, setting up accounts to collect money from them and looking at how we deal with the more than two million cars that are already on the roads unlicensed and untaxed. All this expenditure in setting up the system is upfront money before the Government gets a penny back in revenue, and The Daily Telegraph has reported that the costs could reach £62 billion in capital expenditure and £8.6 billion in annual running costs.
It's not surprising that the Midlands Study indicated that the scheme proposed for road-charging won't even reach break-even point for about 17 years. It's also a very inefficient way of collecting tax. The London congestion charge makes a very considerable amount of its money from disproportionate fines when people forget to pay the initial charge, yet still nearly half its income is swallowed up in administrative costs. Compare that with fuel duty, which yields £24 billion to the Treasury and collects 99 per cent of this from just 20 companies through a well established, well understood and well regulated system.
One of the questions that hasn't been answered is whether the road-user charges will be an additional tax or whether there will be a reduction in fuel duty or Vehicle Excise Duty to compensate motorists generally. We also need to know how much motorists will be charged in each area, because this scheme is designed to get drivers off the roads at peak hours and in congested areas - in other words during urban rush hours and on inter-urban highways. It is, in effect, a tax on going to work, particularly falling on those in urban and suburban areas, which can only work effectively if it taxes off the roads those least able to pay.
It will also fall heavily on particular groups, not senior civil servants commuting into their central London offices, but what about building workers who, by definition, have to work from site to site, often carrying tools and materials. What about those employed in out-of-town industrial estates or who work anti-social hours? What about medical staff and care -workers?
The challenge thrown out by transport ministers is to ask for alternative policies while they are claiming there is no alternative. The cultural problem in Whitehall, including the DfT, is that there is a preference for "grand strategies" and "big ideas" at the expense of relentless grinding away at the detailed implementation of policy. So while road-user charging is 15 years away as a possible scheme, it will be the main focus of the DfT rather than any attempt to improve the current use of road space.
Rather than going to management and traffic consultants, the DfT would be better off talking to the likes of Tesco and Toyota as to how continuous attention to detail adds up to major improvements in the system. Part of that is accelerating the pace of change and rolling out of ideas that have already been successful.
A classic example is active traffic management and hard- shoulder running. The M42 to the east of Birmingham was the pilot for this. Last year, I asked when it was going to be activated and was told March 2007. In the summer, I asked how much of the equipment necessary for operation of the scheme had still to be installed. In fact it was all there and, to his credit, Stephen Ladyman pushed the Highways Agency to get on with it.
The scheme started last September and early returns show a 13 per cent increase in road space, a very considerable benefit. Yet clearly the Highways Agency was extremely reluctant to take the step, even though hard-shoulder running has been working successfully in the Netherlands for many years. Even now in the face of this improvement, the Highways Agency still wants to spend the best part of the year evaluating the pilot before it will roll it out in other areas. Unfortunately, this is only too symptomatic of Highways Agency thinking in this country.
Another frustration for motorists is the way in which roadworks, particularly by utilities, can cause considerable congestion. While everyone accepts that the task is necessary, the time taken is often disproportionate to the amount of work required. Legislation has been put through Parliament, but the enabling regulations still don't seem to have been produced and councils don't seem geared up to take action. They now need to develop a sense of urgency to catch up with the long-standing practice in cities such as New York, which very actively manages its urban road space.
We should be asking why schools in many areas all start at the same time, which simply adds to congestion on the school run. And why do many companies that are not on flow-line production not have flexible working?
We must also question, at both urban and inter-urban levels, whether nearly enough use is being made of modern technology. We could look at whether the Highways Agency is using the National Traffic Control Centre to its full capability. We should be examining whether traffic information carried through variable message boards is helpful enough or, indeed, accurate.
The Highways Agency should also look at lorry bans, and particularly restrictions on unloading at supermarkets. Many of these now operate 24 hours, so it seems strange to insist that delivery lorries move around during the rush hour, which adds to congestion.
You can undoubtedly add to this list and one of the great benefits of the response to the anti-pricing petition is that these issues are now being properly discussed rather than brushed aside.
It seems to me that the DfT could only make a credible case for road-user charging if it had made an attempt to try to implement many of these other measures. Unfortunately neither at national level nor through local councils has there been anything like the focus and urgency that is required.

That is a brilliant article. I think it overlooks the fact that the government has a hidden agenda though, where road pricing is concerned, the aim of which is priceless i.e: worth more to them than the 62 billion costs to implement and 8.6 billion per year to run. This agenda is one of arbitrary control and this is reflected in the likely penalty for tampering with the tracking device - 6 months in prison. Thus an obsession with control regards such transgression as more serious than burglary or assault.

62 billion or even a fraction of that would go some way to increasing our road space to be broadly equavalent to that in Belgium, Germany or France - nations that as we all know are just covered in tarmac.

quote:

2. Build more roads until you tarmac over the whole country.

Hyperbolic tosh.

Pick up a road atlas of Europe and on most pages you will see dotted blue lines where motorways and other major roads are either planned or under construction, especially in France. Pick up a road atlas for the British Isles and the only reason for buying an updated version you'll see is where the new camera sites are.

The writing is on the wall. If the government comes any closer to implementing the road pricing nightmare we should all take to the streets, block the roads and bring the government to its knees.

So, then, what is to be done about the problem of congestion?

Assuming that taxation is not the answer to the problem what is? Or does one simply hide one's head in the sand, buckle to the whingeing of the road lobbyists and accept longer journey times, more pollution and more ofour countryside despoiled with tarmac?

Can someone tell me what the solution is? Mr Toy?

Laters

K

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin-W:
So, then, what is to be done about the problem of congestion?

Assuming that taxation is not the answer to the problem what is? Or does one simply hide one's head in the sand, buckle to the whingeing of the road lobbyists and accept longer journey times, more pollution and more ofour countryside despoiled with tarmac?

Can someone tell me what the solution is? Mr Toy?

Laters

K

If you read the Telegraph article above it might give you a few ideas.

This topic has gone beyond rational debate into the realm of paranoid conspiracy.

Most of the ideas for these government schemes (road-charging, ID cards etc) are actually generated by consultants from the major consulting firms, who convince ministers/senior civil servants that their ideas are smart and technically viable. The fact that they are often neither is irrelevant, as the consultancies make a fortune from either running the procurement or undertaking the projects. Only rarely does government pull the plug on a project once it has started.

We actually need to bite the bullet on road capacity and increase it pure and simple if only to bring us in line with most of Northern Europe. If 60 odd billion quid can be squandered on movement control it can be used to build more roads where they are needed.

Forget the hyperbole relating to tarmacing the whole of the UK, if we can be prepared to build more houses that cover the size of Hampshire we can build roads that will cover a fraction of that.

Fact: Northern Europe doesn't endure the congestion headaches that we do simply because they enjoy geater road capacity per square kilometer than we do.

We have more cars per road mile than anywhere else in the world and it isn't because we have more cars per capita. It's because our road capacity is the lowest in any developed nation. We need to increase road capacity and doing so will cost a lot less than the dystopian solution of movement tracking.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Toy:

We actually need to bite the bullet on road capacity and increase it pure and simple

Ahhh, kind of reminds me of Wellington, NZ. Sigh.

The roads get congested, making them difficult to use.

They build more roads/overpasses/onramps/etc.

The roads are easier to use.

More people use the easier-to-use roads.

The roads become congested, making them difficult to use.

They build more...

While this is a gross simplification of the problem, it is quite certainly the case that if regulating bodies avoid confronting behaviour with regard to the use of automobiles and keep addressing the problem by building infrastructure instead, then the behaviour change will eventually be forced upon us.

Why not just ban the manufacture and import of cars. Limit new vehicles in the future to trade delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles, & ministerial armoured limosines. There could be a referendum on whether taxis should be permitted, as a sop to the middle class, or mini-cabs for the workers/layabouts/spongers.
Ten years or so of that should do it, old cars would gradually decay, irate customers and natural wastage would errode the motor repair industry, with the additional benefit of freeing up many large premises to be used as bus garages, for the National Bus Cooperative.

It'd be just like living in the fifties again.

quote:

Originally posted by Diode100:

...old cars would gradually decay

But not Cortinas, surely?

The mark one Lotus version, with the aluminium doors, boot & bonnet panels would hang on a bit longer, but not much.

Dean,

Whilst increaed road capacity is often filled up by even more cars over time this happens because the increase in road capacity facilitates economic growth. Also new roads often bring with them new development alongside them. Indeed in the UK that is how many of these new roads are funded. The extra traffic is ultimately what pays for them.

Northern Europe enjoys lower levels of congestion because their road capacity is greater. They also have a hierarchy of road networks so there is always a choice of route. Often in The UK there is only one road going where you need to go so when that road gets full, tough!