Road pricing bill before Commons

[fat_chance]

Lefties and public transport fanatics love to claim Maggie said that; but it was actually Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, who was overheard saying it by Winston Churchill in the 1930s, and it was 30 not 26. See quotes

Apologies, it was not what it says here.
http://www.parliament.the-stationery...t/30702-10.htm

Regardless, the quote/misquote was merely an attempt to reflect the primary reason for Britains decline in public transport. Thatcher's blinkered support for the car has destroyed public transport outside London and even worse, has created urban areas even more heavily reliant on the motor vehicle. Any move towards re-balancing public transport throughout Britain after 20 years of neglect needs to be radical enough to make people think twice about using their cars.

[fat_chance]

[

QUOTE=Ardesco]They are alreadyy going to trial the scheme in the midlands, the lucky drivers that get caught up in the trial still have to pay tax on petrol, road tax and all other taxes. As the pilot scheme is expanded more dirvers will be forced to pay the congestion charge, do you really think the government will suddenly remove the current tax burdan drivers have after they have run it alongside the new measures for 10 years odd as the pilot schemes slowly expand accross the country??

If you do you are far too gullible to be a contractor!!

Yes. If you haven't picked up on this yet you must be a permie.

Do you not think that by accepting such a scheme early and capitalising on new government policy by increasing your knowledge and skills to suit a potentially global industry, you would be regarded as a good contractor?? You seem to be as opposed to economic evolution as a union rep.

Have you not learned after 10 years of Labour that you can kick and scream all you like, they ain't listening. So best you adapt and capitalise, or leave as you say you will.

If you are not going to stop using your car the deposit is never going to be paid back to you, so in effect a £100 deposit is the dsame as a £100 charge to have the kit fitted to your car for them to track you.

Suppose after 20 years I finally stop driving, will I be paid interest on the deposit or will it now be worthless?

Well done! That's right and it's exactly why I said you would be refunded once you are forced onto a bus. ie you will have to sell your car.

So I am going to be tracked constantly by 2012 wheather i like it or not and my privacy right are going to be disregarded eventually anyway so I may as well get used to it now hey.....

I WILL be out of the country before this happens, not because I have anything to hide but because I shouldn't be tracked and treated like a criminal just because the state thinks its a good idea.

Have fun in your police state in 2012 comrade......

Where will you be moving to avoid being monitored? Antartica? Siberia? Chernobyl?
Once again, I said you are already being tracked. CCTV, cell phones, ATM cards, oyster cards, E-passports... and guess what it's just as bad in the US, the supposed home of freedom and capitalism. Isn't it annoying how two contrasting political ideologies are so similar?

Like I said, regardless of your political stance, or mine for that matter (I hate labour at the moment btw) this is merely a sharper tool of governing the economy and the even conservatives would bring it in if the predicted effect of congestion on the economy is correct. My next prediction for those who care or who are still reading is for the government to attempt to gain tax revenues directly through consumer spending. Which of course will mean the end of cash and then you will really be tracked.

[dang65]

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/road...g/debate/facts

That's an interesting page.

I'm not quite clear about this quote though:

"Nearly one in five cars on urban roads at 8.50am in the morning during term time is on the school run."

Are they saying there's a need to target the 20% who are taking children to school, or do they mean they need to investigate what the hell the other 80% think their excuse is!

[DodgyAgent]

Apologies, it was not what it says here.
http://www.parliament.the-stationery...t/30702-10.htm

Regardless, the quote/misquote was merely an attempt to reflect the primary reason for Britains decline in public transport. Thatcher's blinkered support for the car has destroyed public transport outside London and even worse, has created urban areas even more heavily reliant on the motor vehicle. Any move towards re-balancing public transport throughout Britain after 20 years of neglect needs to be radical enough to make people think twice about using their cars.

Public transport does not work because it is not effected by the dynamics that make market economies work so efficiently. In other words there is little competition other than the car, the use of which is continually undermined by the left as personified by the "anti car" rhetoric that emenates from the likes of Dang. This way people can be herded by the state onto transport systems that are run predominantly for the benefit of those who control them.

The only way to make public transport work is to subject it to competition, which is as good a reason for keeping the car as any.

[BoredBloke]

"Are they saying there's a need to target the 20% who are taking children to school, or do they mean they need to investigate what the hell the other 80% think their excuse is!"

And this neatly sums up your probelm. If you consider the road network to be like any other network, you'll know that there is a threshold which once passed the whole thing grinds to a halt. Slightly off this max, things still work fine. So if you can reduce the numbers by a small percentage, then you bring it back down below the threshold and everything moves fine. So if you can remove a percentage as large as 20% then it should have a major effect. You see exactly the same effect on motorways during the school holidays. Chunks of the population go away for a couple of weeks and so are not driving. This brings the volume down slightly and there is a marked improvement on the motorway network. Ask yourself this, how many kids go to school via the M6. Not a road commonly used on the school run, but it is better to use during school holiday time.

All road pricing like the one proposed for Manchester will just be another tax in addition to what we alpready pay. They know that public transport will not improve enough to encourage people out of their cars and that driving around with a unique identifier on show is too good an opportunity to pass up. I would fully support road pricing if the govt were to remove all other road taxes and duty.

Also, could somebody please tell me what happened to the 180billion ten year transport plan Prescott announced in 2000. Wasn't this suppsoed to have recified al our commuting problems by now? At least we should be seeing some of the benefits.

[DodgyAgent]

Hi all, long time reader, first time poster.

I am currently ‘on the bench’ so have been reading a lot of discussions on here lately, and as most of my recent work has been within London’s Public Transport sector I couldn’t help but feel obligated to jump into this debate.
I may as well continue with the openness of expression being shown in this forum, and state I am a strong supporter of road pricing. But for reasons slightly different to a lot of those being debated here.
From what I gather, a lot of you that are against road pricing live in areas with poor public transport, which due to Maggie Thatcher is pretty much everywhere outside of London. I for one would be against an additional charge to drive my car to/from if I lived in an area that did not have subsidised public transport. But the government are now trying to re-introduce public subsidy both through the Transport Innovation Fund and through returning powers to local authorities over bus route planning and operation.

But if you take a step back and understand that the main focus of the government is in trying to maintain productivity and economic activity whilst tackling ‘Climate Change’ (not a complete believer of CC but the government are, so what does it matter what we believe) and reduce reliance on foreign sourced energy by forcing people into electrically powered vehicles. To me, all the government are doing is pre-empting a tipping point in economic activity caused by private motor vehicle congestion. Road pricing to me is purely an evolution of a capitalist economy no matter what your political stance may be. All it is attempting to do is grow the economy through increasing productivity which is what governments are always trying to do.
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/road...g/debate/facts

With a little research, you will learn that only the most congested roads will be charged at a premium and at pre-set prices. This will mainly be city and town centres, of which, because of their relatively high density populations can sustain very good public transport. So assuming that any scheme introduced is tax revenue neutral (which it probably would be to initially sway drivers) you may actually end up paying less in tax than you are now if for instance you drive on an M road and avoid the city for most of your journey. The subsequent reduced congestion in town centres will allow privately run bus operators to become more economically viable and with the planned new powers to LA’s the buses will become more comfortable, more frequent and safer. The government knows that buses are pretty much the only solution to public transport in the urban environment, new rail projects are just too expensive for both the government and private enterprise.

Basically this system will make living and working in cities easier, as it should be as this is where the highest return on public funds comes from due to the economies of scale of higher density living. It will make commuting between cities/rural areas by motor vehicle easier. But if you live in the country and work in the city with a commute in a private vehicle, you will be stung. (But private enterprise will pick up the slack with Park’n’ride facilities.)

With the evolution of satellite technology the scheme will slowly become more easily adaptable to traffic patterns, so that road ‘prices’ will vary on certain times of the day or during holiday periods, but as every driver will have a tracking device, thus a GPS system, they can be made aware of any changes to road prices before or during a journey.

Effectively it is no different from using an Oyster Card here in London. If you commute more than 5 days a week, it’s cheaper to get a weekly travel card, if commute less than 4 days a week it’s cheaper to use pre-pay. The oyster card has made life a lot easier for commuters in London and encouraged public transport use, but it only became an option due to new technology. Road pricing is exactly the same thing, a more efficient method of managing and monitoring economic activity as a result of new technology.

We should be proud that Britain is leading the world in road pricing, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world follow. Of which I think Europe in general is in the prime seat to capitalise on the reduced reliance of fossil fuels. European towns and cities were built pre-automobile, thus the adjustment to the supposed carbon based economy will be a lot easier and faster than those countries, mainly the US who have grown around the automobile.

Oh dear oh dear. A lot of what you say makes common sense, is well argued and makes its point without needing the use of wild emotive remarks about cars and their users.

BUT, a lot of what you say is again based on lightweight assumptions:

First of all you naively assume that whilst govt set wonderful objectives that they are somehow linked to any form of succesful delivery.. they never are. What you say seems to imply that the govt should be implementing the necessary measures that will deliver these wondrous objectives; they never do. You sound so much like a govt spokesman with this sort of drivel: "We should be proud that Britain is leading the world in road pricing".. Total New Labour speak if ever there was.

It is easy to see that you are London Transport worker. Firstly there is the anti Thatcher bulls**t, secondly there is the assumption that everyone should want to work in the cities, and thirdly there is the air of arrogance that presumes to plan for everyone what you think they need. You work for an organisation matey that is the servant of the people, not the other way round.

"To me, all the government are doing is pre-empting a tipping point in economic activity caused by private motor vehicle congestion." Sorry but all the government are doing is trying to stay in power and gain influence and control that will enhance their own vested interests. Let us now always remember that these scumbags (aided and abetted by their nasty little self serving departments such as London transport), whatever they do they do for their own benefit first and foremost. Let us also remember that whenever they undertake any task they do so with utter incompetence.

Whilst I agree with your arguments that support road pricing I believe that they are introducing it not as a means to tackle congestion but as an excuse to extaort more tax from the hapless public. If on the other hand they were to tot up all the money that they spend on road transport and return it to the people and THEN introduce road pricing then fine.

But you seem to forget that the most simple and efficient way of making people pay for car usage is to tax us through use of fuel. This would be an incredibly easy way to encourage people to move away from engines that burn oil, reduce the need to use the car etc etc. The problem with that is that the govt would have little need to set up new departments, build more computer systems, employ more people etc etc.

[DodgyAgent]

More from Have Your Say:


I love this logic. Children have to be dropped off at school at a specific time. The schools don't open their gates before, and you get marked on the register if you're late. Parents of those children that have to be at work for 9am therefore have a mad rush to get out of the house at the right time pile at least one kid into the car, more likely at least two, get the kids into the playground and make sure they're safely in class, then leg it to the car and get to work as soon as possible, hopefully getting to their desk just in time to not look like they're taking the p*ss.

Meanwhile, BMW man drives himself (rarely does one see more than one person in a rush hour car) 3 or 4 miles to the office, goes straight out for a Costa's coffee and a Danish pastry, then sits and reads a few websites till 9am when the woman opposite comes rushing in and dives into her chair, at which point BMW man thinks, oh well, suppose I'd better do some work. Might go for a quick fag break first though.

But it's the school run mums that have to be got off the road!

More assumptions with no proof. You sound like a New Labour propogandist. You will not answer any of the challenges to the lies upon which you make your arguments. Any challenges you either ignore or sneer at. You are a fool if you think that we can be taken in by you. As I said earlier (a point you neatly ignored) this "BMW man" of which you speak does not exist. In the real world few people if any travel unnecessarily, and few people conform to this lie of a stereotype that you speak of. Your righteous arrogance and bigotry is astonishing.

[dang65]

As I said earlier (a point you neatly ignored) this "BMW man" of which you speak does not exist. In the real world few people if any travel unnecessarily, and few people conform to this lie of a stereotype that you speak of. Your righteous arrogance and bigotry is astonishing.

Everyone I work with lives closer to the office than I do. Every one of them drives in to work, one person in each car. Two of them definitely drive BMWs, possibly more. It's been a similar story in every place I've worked for the last 20 years, including Central London. Maybe I've just worked in freak places. Is it perhaps the other way round where you work? Does everyone except you use public transport, or car pooling perhaps?

I really don't get where all this talk of arrogance and bigotry comes from either. I'm the same as most of you. I'm a contractor and have been for years. I'm pretty well off as a result of the risks I take in living this kind of life. I own a house and a car and have done for many years. As it happens I personally only use the car on occasion. Priority obviously goes to my partner with four children to ferry around to endless activities. They don't have to use the car, but it makes life a lot more convenient for them. It makes life a lot more convenient for you, and for my BMW driving work colleagues. That's what private car ownership is all about... I'm as guilty as you. But I accept that I'm getting away with a massive liberty at the moment and that can't be allowed to go on forever. It's unsustainable.

As for simply dumping all other car related taxes and putting the whole lot onto fuel, well that option is completely unrealistic:

1. The vehicles hit the hardest by that would be commercial transporters, the police, ambulance, fire, delivery vehicles etc etc. You would be hitting industry and essential services far more than the actual problem drivers - the private car owners who have no genuine justification for driving other than that it makes their lives easier. Having some kind of "red diesel" style discount for the commercial and essential users would be impossible to police and a black market in dodgily obtained fuel would take off big time.

2. The same fuel is used by generators for concerts, for lawn mowers, for pumps, for marine engines and god knows what other machinery. The price of many things completely unrelated to road damage and congestion would suddenly have to increase.

3. The process of obtaining a Vehicle Excise Duty paid license disc ("road tax" was abolished by Winston Churchill; it hasn't existed for decades) to allow you to take your car onto the public highway includes showing proof of insurance, MOT and ownership of the vehicle. Are you suggesting dumping all of those safeguards too?

4. At the moment, people are at least penalised in some way for owning more than one vehicle. If the only charge was on fuel then people could own a different car for every day of the month and only pay for the fuel they used. How tempting to have Defender for a bit of off roading, a convertable for summer weekends, an estate car for family trips to the seaside, a powerful saloon for commuting. Where the hell would everyone park?!

5. How about tourists and commercial vehicles from the continent? They'd pay their own local vehicle taxes over there, then come over here and have to pay absolutely enormous prices for fuel to get around? No one would come. Not only that, but they'd probably close their borders to us that wouldn't be paying any taxes to own a car, but would be taking extended motoring holidays around Europe using their comparitively almost free petrol.

You could always try persuading the whole of Europe to follow the same scheme, but I suspect that Point 1 would be the decider there really.

[DodgyAgent]

I really don't get where all this talk of arrogance and bigotry comes from either. I'm as guilty as you. But I accept that I'm getting away with a massive liberty at the moment and that can't be allowed to go on forever. It's unsustainable.

Look we all live and share this planet to be happy and to achieve this objective we need to interact and cooperate with one another. There is no need to feel guilty as much of out guilt is foisted upon us by others in order that they may control us. We have every right to use roads, as much as emergency services and haulage firms. There is nothing to feel guilty about. You are either a victim of "guilt by maipulation" or you have a vested interest of your own by supporting new tax raising measures from the govt. I will presume the former.

If we want to use the roads far whatever reason (within the law) then we have every right to do so. Who judges as to who has a more legitimate use than the next man? The laws of the markets dictate that congestion will sort itself out. If roads are too clogged then people wont use them which in turn creates new alternatives for technology and business to deal with problems (which is all that a business does).

So going on to your points I will counter as follows:
As for simply dumping all other car related taxes and putting the whole lot onto fuel, well that option is completely unrealistic:

1. The vehicles hit the hardest by that would be commercial transporters, the police, ambulance, fire, delivery vehicles etc etc. You would be hitting industry and essential services far more than the actual problem drivers - the private car owners who have no genuine justification for driving other than that it makes their lives easier. Having some kind of "red diesel" style discount for the commercial and essential users would be impossible to police and a black market in dodgily obtained fuel would take off big time.

Industries and essential services only run if the employees can arrive at work efficiently in the first place. Congestion charging just adds to costs thus contributing to inflation.
2. The same fuel is used by generators for concerts, for lawn mowers, for pumps, for marine engines and god knows what other machinery. The price of many things completely unrelated to road damage and congestion would suddenly have to increase.

What are roads built for if no one expects them to wear FFS? Why use a concert hall if all that is going to happen is that it is going to wear out over the years? Why are lawn mowers more important than cars? cutting a lawn is very low down on "human needs"
3. The process of obtaining a Vehicle Excise Duty paid license disc ("road tax" was abolished by Winston Churchill; it hasn't existed for decades) to allow you to take your car onto the public highway includes showing proof of insurance, MOT and ownership of the vehicle. Are you suggesting dumping all of those safeguards too?

Where on earth did I say that?4. At the moment, people are at least penalised in some way for owning more than one vehicle. If the only charge was on fuel then people could own a different car for every day of the month and only pay for the fuel they used. How tempting to have Defender for a bit of off roading, a convertable for summer weekends, an estate car for family trips to the seaside, a powerful saloon for commuting. Where the hell would everyone park?!

So what? as for parking. If they cannot park a car they wouldnt buy one in the first place. And why this obsession with penalties?
5. How about tourists and commercial vehicles from the continent? They'd pay their own local vehicle taxes over there, then come over here and have to pay absolutely enormous prices for fuel to get around? No one would come. Not only that, but they'd probably close their borders to us that wouldn't be paying any taxes to own a car, but would be taking extended motoring holidays around Europe using their comparitively almost free petrol.

They already do. If you read any publication in the haulage industry then you will see that the likes of Willy Betz are already playing this game as well as employing cheap Romanian drivers who "double up" on trips in order to bypass the working hours limits.You could always try persuading the whole of Europe to follow the same scheme, but I suspect that Point 1 would be the decider there really.

I actually agree with the principle of charging for road use, but the prospect of these self serving idiots in government getting their hands on another large infrastructure project horrifies me.

We as a society have moved beyond regarding our government and state instituions (or at least we should have) asa great big nanny (though they see themselves in this role), there to pat us on the head if we do some good and there to spank us or penalise us if do something wrong. Unfortunately their vision of what is right and what is wrong is driven entirely by their own self interest.

[fzbucks]

I did say before that public transport for commuting obviously caters for normal people. If you choose to work such odd hours and about 170 miles away from home then you're hardly likely to be considered normal and will have to accept the penalties for choosing such a bizarre way of life. In fact, you're exactly the sort of person who will hopefully incur massive extra penalties just for being such a blatant moron!

Is that a NO then?


Silly me thinking I could better my income by looking or work outside my own backyard.