Road Pricing

[woodbloke]

Seems like a sound reason not to visit the MIL :lol: :lol: - Rob

 

[Anonymous]

You chaps have an easy life. If I drive to my mother-in-laws across town, which is 40km away, it costs me almost exactly 10 quid each way in tolls. :shock:

Double whammy eh Chiba :lol: :lol: Do you have mother in law jokes in Japan :wink: :lol:

Where do all those 10 quid's go and what do they pay for :?:
Cheers Jonathan :lol:

 

[Jake]

I thought it was you who said road acess had to be rationed, so why are you asking me how it should be done :roll:

Are you saying it doesn't need to be done? Have you tried the M25 or the M6 at rush hour lately? And imagine that with twice as traffic.

You have to plan for the future, you can't just stick your head in the sand.

Are you a civil servant?

No.

You havent yet given a solid sudgestion as to how roads should be rationed apart from some sort of filter system which would only create worse bottleneck's at the acess points.

If you recall, I'm the one saying that road pricing is a sensible way of rationing a scarce resource (i.e. one where the demand is greater than the supply), which is going to get scarcer.

You are the one who opposes it, so you should be proposing an alternative way of rationing use. The only one I could think of was, as you say, obviously a very stupid one.

What your trying to avoid is the reality that road rationing will favour well off people who are in a position to pay (or have it paid for them by employer/civil service/local council etc), or people who have alternative public transport options available to them. It would definately discriminate against folk who are not well off, or are living in location's with no alternative modes of transport.

So does VED and fuel duty.

Granted maybe they will have a range of price's for different regions or types of roads. But EG even if your driving round say Peckham/Walworth/Camberwell green/Lewisham/New Cross/Hither Green etc etc, they arent motorway or trunk type roads (are they?? maybe in the last 20 odd years they put a 6 lane higheway from Victoria to new Cross?? :lol: ),

I'm sure the A2 will be near the top of the scale, and I'm willing to bet that London roads would on average be much more expensive than rural ones.

maybe you'd get to pay only 2p a mile on them, but you would STILL have decent available transport option's wouldnt you. Rural folk might "Only" have to pay 2 p a mile for the privelidge of driving on their idyllic lanes

And pay less fuel duty and VED.

:roll:

I find those smilies really quite offensive, you know. "rolls eyes"

they dont have any realistic alternative, and are unlikely to ever get one no matter what you might say about road pricing stimulating commercial investment in transport, theres small number of people spread over large area's=commercially unattractive.

2p a mile doesn't seem bad to me. Even with a 20 mile commute that would be 80p a day - much less than the bus fares for that distance.

And they'd still be paying road tax/fuel duty as well.

That isn't the tentative proposal at present, so you are objecting to a chimera of your own making.

As for revenue neutral what sort of jargon is that :roll: ?

It means they would only raise the same amount of tax from drivers under the road charging scheme as they do now under fuel duty/VED. It's political jargon, but it is a lot faster to say or type.

If you think the fueltax and road fund tax would be scrapped or reduced you must be mistaken the govt wants more money, this scheme gives them a convenient opportunity to grab it :wink:

That may be the case in the end, but they can just as well do that through VED and fuel duty. That makes "them" wrong - not the policy of road charging.

Dont get me wrong, I recognise there is a problem with road over crowding etc

What are we going to do about then?

BUT I think this chiselling crook/green type rheoric about road rationing is unfair, ill conceived and designed only for a bit of short term political popularity.
Cheers Jonathan

I think that popularity is the last thing that this policy will achieve - it is much more likely to be extremely unpopular - that doesn't mean it is wrong.

Cheers, Jake

 

[dedee]

Since when is owning a car a good given right?
The idea that it is the less well off who will suffer is also the reason given for not increasing taxes on air travel.

Could it be argued that this idea of everyone, no matter what their financial standing, has the right to everything that the well off can easily afford is surely part of a much wider problem that our materialistic consumerist society is facing?

Something has to be done to cut the number of cars on the roads making it more expensive is one solution.

I favour tougher planning laws that would demolish out of town shopping centres and force a return of the local shops.

I would also favour abolishing all private schools - is private education a peculiarly English thing? IMHO my local school run congestion problem is centered around the local private schools eg parents who can afford private education can also afford to live miles away from the school

I would also favour tax breaks for companies that stayed put rather than encouraging them to up sticks and move to areas prepared to offer them cheaper rates etc.

I'd force companies into using video conferencing. Certainly around here ( and I work for one of Europe's top IT services companies) Vid Conf is barely used. The kudos of having and justifying company cars means there is little incentive not to travel.
Come to think of it I'd ban company cars (as a perk).

I would also favour proper secure cycle lanes in urban and city environments. Two feet (600mmm) wide green painted tarmac does not encourage me to use a bicycle.

I'd also support laws that restricted car ownership to those who had a garage or designated off road parking.

All of the above, even to me sounds draconian, but something very radical has to be done. My fear is that neither politians nor society as a whole would stomach such a redical approach.

Andy

 

[Nick W]

Surely if its supposed to be congestion charging then it should be related to how many mph below the local speed limit (or max speed of your vehicle - I ride a moped :roll: ) you are travelling at?

In principle I'm (reluctantly) for it as somthing has to be done. Just so long as big brother doesn't know where I've been and when. Its a privacy thing.

 

[Jake]

Just so long as big brother doesn't know where I've been and when. Its a privacy thing.

I can understand that, but if you have a mobile in your car, they can already track you if they need to (like the police did with at least one of the Norwich murder victims). There need to be safeguards.

The speed thing is a good idea - but you'd pay through the nose for road-works!

The speed thing is what I fear most - automatic tickets. They'd need to readdress the motorway limits...

 

[mudman]

I'm not going to bother sorting out all the quotes and what-have-you, I'll just make a few points.

I'll start by saying that in all this I do suspect the government's motives. I don't trust them to do what they say and I don't think that they will be able to put this in place anyway.

So, revenue neutral? I don't think it is possible. The chap putting the petition up was quoting a cost of £60 billion pounds. That is a phenominal amount that will go to private companies. To be revenue neutral, the tax will have to raise enough money to provide the private companies running the scheme with a profit and to cover the cost of the fuel duty and VED if removed. The equation is already out of balance and then you add in the companies recovering the £60 billion cost and you can see that we will all end up paying substantially more.

I don't have a problem with paying for road use to discourage congestion, but, there has to be an alternative. If there is no viable alternative to getting into your car, then you still have to use the car at peak times and the congestion will remain with the result that you have to pay more tax.

The answer to most problems in this country at the moment is to tax it out of existence. But this doesn't work as people either have no alternative or find a way around it. An example of this was the cost of scrapping your car. The £100 it costs to scrap your car is added at the end of its life when it is owned by a person who probably can't afford that £100. So, what happens? It ends up in a quiet patch of countryside, burnt out and the result of a bogus insurance claim. The same will happen with charging for bin bags, the increase in fly tipping will be horrendous. But I digress.

We simply need to get the cars off of the roads and there are better ways of doing this. Two that come immediately to mind are:

• 1. Invest the £60 billion in recreating a public transport infrastructure that can get people quickly and efficiently from home to work.
  2. Encourage British management to allow people to work from home if they want. This is easy to do. Most companies are already geared up for it. The trouble is that they so distrust their staff or need to have a little visible empire that they won't do it.

 

[Nick W]

And
3. Encourage British management to move their businesses away from the current population hot spots.

 

[Scrit]

Right, and who will you blame when the roads seize up completely with too much traffic for the network to cope with because no-one thought to think about it - the state and its incompetent non-job civil servants, perhaps? The problem is that traffic is growing and will continue to grow. Either you ration access somehow, or you cover more of the country in tarmac, which encourages more traffic, and so on.

You are presupposing that the stick is the only method which will work, a common misconception in our society in this country, I feel. Where is the national and regional planning policy which would stop and reverse the trend for out of town shopping which can only be accessed in a car? Where is the political will to set-up "walking omnibusses" to get children to and from school as opposed to the Chelsea tractor milk run approach now prevalant? Where is the social responsibility in the governing classes to lead by example and make a show of using public transport at all times - as opposed to jetting off all over the place on a whim? Perhaps if we addressed the fundamental underlying issues more could be achieved

Scrit

 

[Jake]

Carrots are good as well, and I agree there is a bigger picture.

Road pricing is both stick and carrot, though. To call it a stick is only to look at the rush hour pricing. There's a carrot in the off-peak charges - that's the point of it.

 

[mudman]

Since when is owning a car a good given right?
The idea that it is the less well off who will suffer is also the reason given for not increasing taxes on air travel.

Problem is that it will be the less well off that will suffer. They will still have to get to work at a certain time in a certain place. There will be no alternative as public transport is ineffective. They will not be able to move closer because even if house prices aren't too high now, they will soar around the outskirts of towns when charging comes in.

Could it be argued that this idea of everyone, no matter what their financial standing, has the right to everything that the well off can easily afford is surely part of a much wider problem that our materialistic consumerist society is facing?

I think a lot of society's problems are related to this. But in the past the only way to achieve them was to work hard. Now, we all expect to pay peanuts for everything and this is creating a whole different set of problems.

Something has to be done to cut the number of cars on the roads making it more expensive is one solution.

I favour tougher planning laws that would demolish out of town shopping centres and force a return of the local shops.

I would go along with that. We are seeing the death of town high streets which is a terrible thing.

I would also favour abolishing all private schools - is private education a peculiarly English thing? IMHO my local school run congestion problem is centered around the local private schools eg parents who can afford private education can also afford to live miles away from the school

I'm sorry but that is a specious arguement. You are saying that private schools cause congestion because the rich kids are ferried in by their rich parents. The real issue is that the terrible state of the public educational system causes a lot of parents to try to do the best for their children by taking them out of the state-run sector and placing them in a school that will deliver the sort of education that they had or whished they had as children. A lot of parents endure real hardship to do this and I find such attitudes really quite annoying. (And yes, I have taken my son out of the state system).

I would also favour tax breaks for companies that stayed put rather than encouraging them to up sticks and move to areas prepared to offer them cheaper rates etc.

I would go along with this but maybe go a bit further and have some of the industry that was killed off to be put back into communities to allow them to work near to their homes.

I'd force companies into using video conferencing. Certainly around here ( and I work for one of Europe's top IT services companies) Vid Conf is barely used. The kudos of having and justifying company cars means there is little incentive not to travel.
Come to think of it I'd ban company cars (as a perk).

I don't think it would make much difference to the bigger picture and I really hate to hear people using words like 'force'. We are supposed to have freedom of choice.

I would also favour proper secure cycle lanes in urban and city environments. Two feet (600mmm) wide green painted tarmac does not encourage me to use a bicycle.

I'd also support laws that restricted car ownership to those who had a garage or designated off road parking.

I can see that one going down a storm. Not a very fair idea I'm afraid.

All of the above, even to me sounds draconian, but something very radical has to be done. My fear is that neither politians nor society as a whole would stomach such a redical approach.

Andy

 

[dedee]

Barry,
I can see linking the congestion problem with the failure of our education system is pushing the debate in a different direction. My question as to whether private education (on such a scale) is unique to the UK is however, I think, quite valid.
After all if we did not have any (or fewer) private schools the state system would be greatly improved. It is sort of chicken and egg. Is the reason that (some of) our state schools are so poor beacuse we have an alternative? Is it possible that we have (some) poor teachers in state schools because all the good ones go to private schools?

I've benefited from a private education but my wife (french) just cannot understand why we have this two tier system.

As for freedom of choice. Alongwith such freedoms come certain responsibilites and companies participating in effectively encouraging staff to travel when there are technical (possibly even cheaper) alternatives is not being responsible. In my office alone I would suggest that at least 20 people every day travel to another internal company location for a meeting that do not involve customers.

Andy

 

[StevieB]

After all if we did not have any (or fewer) private schools the state system would be greatly improved

Erm, how exactly?

Are you suggesting all public school pupils are brighter than state school ones so the collective average would increase?

Are you suggesting public schooling is that much better in quality that all ex-public school teachers would work in the state sector and raise standards?

I cannot think of any conceivable reason for the state system improving if public schools are abolished. (I am state school educated for reference).

Steve.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm sure the A2 will be near the top of the scale, and I'm willing to bet that London roads would on average be much more expensive than rural ones.

Are you sure thats not a chimera of your own making? I find it astounding that people still give the benfit of the doubt to these sort of proposal's and trust that the govt doesnt have dodgy motive's, but maybe I'm just a battle scarred cynic??.

Since when is owning a car a good given right?
The idea that it is the less well off who will suffer is also the reason given for not increasing taxes on air travel.

Whoever said it was? Of course its easy to say nice little sayings like that when your in London with the well established variety of transport infrastructure in place, and you have the luxury of choosing one or the other....but thats already been discussed. Car ownership could well become a State given right instead.

What are we going to do about it?? Well if charging is adopted, then charge the highest whopping road tax in places (Like London sorry jake and Dedee) where there IS very good transport options other than cars, and if people still insisit on using cars then they should pay top rate, but in places where there is no practical or useful transport alternatives, pay next to nothing road charge wise. Charging should be proportionate to availability (or otherwise) of a realistic alternative. Wether you like it or not though, road rationing is a discriminatory action and someone will lose out and it wont be the well heeled. Do you think people endure rush hour traffic for the sheer pleasure of it? They have to get to and from work, make deliverie's etc Maybe it should be like WW2 "is your journey really necessary"

Jake, Sorry if my use of the :roll: word is offensive, your use of step by step quote quote quote I find tiresome, but I apreciate thats your style. probably I just get riled at my perception of metropolitan liberals and some of the cack handed schemes they come up with and its my way of releasing a bit of agro. No genuine offense was intended Yorkshire people are blunt and to the point, this is often construed as ignorance or rudeness but we are lovely people really :lol:
cheers Jonathan

PS And we still havent found an explanation as to why the govt needs to keep track of all vehicle's at all times, regardless of the charging scheme?? Why do the 2 need to be linked. If they can track you with existing technology (mobile) why bring in a new one??

 

[dedee]

Steve,
I can see that I am in danger of getting out of my depth here and am beginning to regret raising my head.

I think what I am trying to say is that there are other countries that do not have an alternative to state education and their academic standards do not seem to suffer as a result (colloquial evidence rather than statistical facts so flame proof suit on).

A look at the just published league table (another can of worms I know) certainly shows that state schools are right up there with the independants. And of course I suspect that many private school teachers would not want to work in the state sector due to poor discipline, investment, facilities etc but I do believe that the fact that we do have an alternative is part of the reason for declining standards in the state sector.


I'll crawl back into my hole now.

Andy

 

[Jake]

Are you sure thats not a chimera of your own making?

It was a guess - as was clear.

What are we going to do about it?? Well if charging is adopted, then charge the highest whopping road tax in places (Like London sorry jake and Dedee) where there IS very good transport options other than cars, and if people still insisit on using cars then they should pay top rate,

That's going to happen, I'll bet on it (see above).

but in places where there is no practical or useful transport alternatives, pay next to nothing road charge wise. Charging should be proportionate to availability (or otherwise) of a realistic alternative.

I agree with that.

Do you think people endure rush hour traffic for the sheer pleasure of it? They have to get to and from work, make deliverie's etc Maybe it should be like WW2 "is your journey really necessary"

Part of the point of it is to redistribute traffic timewise, to give economic incentives to businesses to change work hours, etc, to reflect the actual costs of congestion.

Jake, Sorry if my use of the :roll: word is offensive,

Do you roll your eyes at people when you don't agree with something they say when you are talking to them? If not, then it probably isn't an appropriate emoticon to use.

your use of step by step quote quote quote I find tiresome, but I apreciate thats your style.

Tiresome maybe, but not offensive, I hope!

probably I just get riled at my perception of metropolitan liberals and some of the cack handed schemes they come up with and its my way of releasing a bit of agro.

Erm, OK. Sorry to have riled you and thanks for the stereotyping.

No genuine offense was intended Yorkshire people are blunt and to the point, this is often construed as ignorance or rudeness but we are lovely people really :lol:

None taken, it just seems a bit unnecessary.

PS And we still havent found an explanation as to why the govt needs to keep track of all vehicle's at all times, regardless of the charging scheme?? Why do the 2 need to be linked. If they can track you with existing technology (mobile) why bring in a new one??

I guess because the mobile network wasn't designed for it, and it takes some complex trigonometry to work out where the mobile was from the signal strengths. Probably isn't accurate enough to discriminate between a motorway and a B road running alongside it, and probably a hundred other reasons.

 

[StevieB]

No problem Deedee, flame proof suit not needed

Steve.

 

[RogerS]

Since when is owning a car a good given right?
The idea that it is the less well off who will suffer is also the reason given for not increasing taxes on air travel.

Could it be argued that this idea of everyone, no matter what their financial standing, has the right to everything that the well off can easily afford is surely part of a much wider problem that our materialistic consumerist society is facing?

Agreed - ban budget airlines

Something has to be done to cut the number of cars on the roads making it more expensive is one solution.

Agreed - but it has to factor in the availability or not of alternative viable public transport

I favour tougher planning laws that would demolish out of town shopping centres and force a return of the local shops.

Spot on. That way we might encourage a return to the appreciation of quality and choice over cheap tatty food/stuff/build 'em high/sell 'em cheap.

I would also favour abolishing all private schools - is private education a peculiarly English thing? IMHO my local school run congestion problem is centered around the local private schools eg parents who can afford private education can also afford to live miles away from the school

Not having children I don't really feel qualified to comment. The only observation I have is that if parents feel that they need to go to the lengths that they do in order to go send their to the school (private or state) of their choice then surely something is seriously wrong with the education system in this country and an indictment of whichever government is responsible.

I would also favour tax breaks for companies that stayed put rather than encouraging them to up sticks and move to areas prepared to offer them cheaper rates etc.

Good idea but open to abuse surely? Quick ring to the Dept. of Stay-put Incentives to say you're thinking of moving to Wherever and bingo...loads of money to stay put.

I'd force companies into using video conferencing. Certainly around here ( and I work for one of Europe's top IT services companies) Vid Conf is barely used. The kudos of having and justifying company cars means there is little incentive not to travel.

Never took off, did it? Not sure why.

Come to think of it I'd ban company cars (as a perk).

How do you define 'perk'?

I would also favour proper secure cycle lanes in urban and city environments. Two feet (600mmm) wide green painted tarmac does not encourage me to use a bicycle.

Agreed - provided that we have an increased police presence on foot and on the pavements and any cyclist found cycling on the pavement has their legs chopped off and that cyclists are taxed and carry insurance like other road users.

I'd also support laws that restricted car ownership to those who had a garage or designated off road parking.

Definitely don't agree with the last suggestion. The major reason why the SE is low in water is that they've concreted over their front gardens to park cars. I would revoke permission for all off-road parking other than a driveway to a garage and insist that grass or earth/garden was reinstated.

All of the above, even to me sounds draconian, but something very radical has to be done. My fear is that neither politians nor society as a whole would stomach such a redical approach.
Andy

Agreed something radical does need doing but no-one is going to do anything or agree anything and the polar icecaps and greenland are going to melt. The one piece of video footage that has had the greatest impact on me and made me go round switching off light bulbs everywhere was the video of the polar bear on Planet Earth struggling to make its' way across the very slushy ice covering ...courtesy of man.

 

[Adam]

(Like London sorry jake and Dedee) where there IS very good transport options other than cars,

Only comment on that is have you ever tried traveling on the tube at rush hour? You get to a platform only to find its full. The train arrives. Its full. Everyone in front pushes on anyway. No point not getting on as someone will simply barge you out the way to get on the next full train. I've found that if you get both hands inside the carriage, hang on, and simply heave your way in, using every last ounce of strength, you can just squeeze in without getting nipped by the doors. Then, as you are at the edge, you can stand for the next 30 minutes with your head cocked to the side due to the curve on the roof. Then, approximately every 2-5 minutes, it slows down violently, the person next to you falls against you and clumps you in the ribs with their elbow, but that pales into insignificance to when the doors open, and despite you thinking it impossible to get another soul in as your face is smeared against the window, another 30 people try to get on.

Very good transport links yes. Very good public transport for users? Probably not.

Adam

 

[RogerS]

(Like London sorry jake and Dedee) where there IS very good transport options other than cars,

I've found that if you get both hands inside the carriage, hang on, and simply heave your way in, using every last ounce of strength, you can just squeeze in without getting nipped by the doors.

Adam

Ah.. I can see you're a novice, Andy. The cognoscenti wait with their backs to the wall at the back of the platform. Then, just as the doors are starting to close, they run full pelt and throw themselves into the carriage. Momentum carries them inside enough to compress the other passengers sufficiently for the doors to close behind them.