posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
purplecthulhu at 09:14am on 29/11/2006
purplecthulhu at 09:14am on 29/11/2006They were talking about road charging on the Today programme this morning. I got riled, and sent the following message to the Today message board:
There is already a method that charges drivers for road use. Better yet, it is weighted in such a way that less fuel efficient vehicles pay more, that you are charged not just for the distance you travel but for the time spent sitting in jams. The method is also anonymous, so there will be no civil liberties issues about drivers being tracked as they move around the country, and it does not require a new large expensive computing infrastructure so there will be no risks that the project will fail like so many similar government projects.
This method is called petrol duty. We have it now. It works. It could work better by increasing the duty, but the government is too cowardly to actually face up to the complaints this might cause. Instead they're going to produce a new stealth tax whose delivery will be inefficient and expensive.
I think times have changed since 2000, and the public is much more aware of climate change and why we need to reduce car usage. Increased fuel duties, with the money raised hypothecated to public transport, is a much better way of handling this, in spite of the fact that its not whizzy high tech magic. Sometimes old and boring methods are better. This is one of them.
There is already a method that charges drivers for road use. Better yet, it is weighted in such a way that less fuel efficient vehicles pay more, that you are charged not just for the distance you travel but for the time spent sitting in jams. The method is also anonymous, so there will be no civil liberties issues about drivers being tracked as they move around the country, and it does not require a new large expensive computing infrastructure so there will be no risks that the project will fail like so many similar government projects.
This method is called petrol duty. We have it now. It works. It could work better by increasing the duty, but the government is too cowardly to actually face up to the complaints this might cause. Instead they're going to produce a new stealth tax whose delivery will be inefficient and expensive.
I think times have changed since 2000, and the public is much more aware of climate change and why we need to reduce car usage. Increased fuel duties, with the money raised hypothecated to public transport, is a much better way of handling this, in spite of the fact that its not whizzy high tech magic. Sometimes old and boring methods are better. This is one of them.
(no subject)
But I hope the government understands that the combination of cheap sat-nav systems and congestion-based road charging will be to level out traffic volumes across the road network, resulting in a lot of currently quiet roads getting much busier.
(no subject)
(no subject)
Working practices (the 9 to 5 for example) will have to change, sleeping arrangements etc. There is no evidence that congestion charging can do this. It hasn't in London.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
1) It is partly a revenue raising tool.
2) It will reduce traffic especially short trips where you only want to travel once in a day.
3) It is designed not to be too expensive for tradesmen who if it was per mile would just not service inner city dwellings for the poor and in fact even for the middle income it is affordable though it discourages you doing it everyday.
4) You can never stop the rich. In London for instance there are an awful lot of people driving on diplomatic plates and they don't need to pay as they can't be prosecuted.
5) I think the congestion charge is mostly just designed to be an irritation so you take public transport just to avoid having to deal with it.
I am not convinced you can raise fuel duty much further. Already the enterprising find it cheaper to run on vegetable oil or used chip fat in their diesels. Much higher duty and and it will be worth large scale smuggling.
It is also worth remembering that governments are elected and if people get pissed off they can be replaced. Most families in Britain have a car and if the government make that too expensive then any party that promises large fuel savings will gain substantial support as happened in Switzerland a few years back.
Last point. No one likes commuting, particularly in congested traffic and this is a much bigger disincentive than any reasonable charge.
(no subject)
In most of the rest of the country where those factors do not apply - I'd tend to agree with you that it's an unnecessary complication.
Of course if Norwich Union's Pay As You Drive insurance scheme catches on half the country may end up signing up to it voluntarily (the female half probably - I suspect they're trialling it now just in case sex discrimination for car insurance is found illegal under European law).
(no subject)
a) General hassle of driving in traffic
b) The parking
I'd like to claim eco credentials too but if I'm honest a and b are enough.
(no subject)
Unfortunately with slow trains, inflexible journeys and prices 3 times what it costs a single person in a car, I didn't have the _choice_ I wanted (either on university budget or university wages). The solution is not (necessarily) making road travel more expensive, but making rail travel at least vaguely affordable and efficient. Surely the obvious solution is to feed all the extra road revenue, however gotton (preferably by what seems fairer - fuel tax), into public transport. Shame it's privatised ...
*sigh*
(no subject)
My own favoured solution would be to bring trains back into public ownership (though in a system more like SNCF than British Rail) with much reduced fares and increased quality and capacity, and for the roads (at least the motorway system) to be privatised so that the roads can be (a) more expensive and (b) screwed up by private industry. That way the rail system should be able to compete quite well!