Road pricing bill before Commons

[IR35 Avoider]

I think London should be seen as a special case, mainly because it has fairly good public tranport and because there are a lot of large employers who still employ lots of people within its centre. Most cities though are simply shops and businesses to service these shops. The big office blocks have long since moved to out of town developments where public transport is non existant. So as I said before, London works to a point because you are moving people in and out only. Manchester for example would requre the ability to move people around the edges. And it is this around the edges which doesn't work.

I don't know what you are trying to say, but I've decided to argue against you anyway.

It's irrelevant to the case for road-pricing what roads are used for and whether or not a public transport alternatives exist. If there are roads that are so congested that desired journeys cannot be made, or cannot be made reliably, then road-pricing is the mechanism that should determine who gets to use the roads. (Building more roads is also a perfectly sound theoretical solution to the problem, but probably not practical in 99% of locations.)

[dang65]

It is ridiculous to come on a contractor’s site and bang on about how cars are not needed, flexibility is key to contracting and cars make this possible.

I suppose this depends on what kind of contracting you do. Everywhere I've worked has been perfectly accessable by public transport or bicycle, but there probably are I dunno military establishments out on the moors somewhere which might not have a bus going past. Is that what you mean?

[Zorba]

Have I missed something?

I think there's a certain set of criteria for finding public transport worthwhile:

1) Distance to the station at either end (i.e. amount of faffing to get to the main part of your journey)

2) Number of changes in the journey (i.e its complexity and risks for delays).

3) Time.

Basically if you need to get 4 buses and it takes twice as long as driving, you're never going to bother. If you can jump on a train and jump off at the other end with a short walk, why not?

[IR35 Avoider]

How anyone suggest that a contractor mover nearer to his workplace?

I don't care where anyone lives in relation to their workplace. If you want to live in Bulgaria and commute by private jet and limo that is fine with me. If you expected UK society to pay for the jet and limo that would be a problem though.

Getting back to reality, and to explain my analogy: when you use congested roads you consume an economic good which UK society rather than you currently pays for. Road pricing redresses this error in our infrastructure by forcing you to pay for what you use. If paying this cost makes the journey not viable for you, that is your problem that you need to solve by choosing among the options available to you. Working or living somewhere different are just two of the options, there may be less extreme ones. If the non-viability of the journey means you end up unemployed, so be it. We can't build an efficient economy by subsidising "employment" relationships where what the worker produces can't pay the expense of getting him to work.

[Ardesco]

Over the past 6 years of contracting, only 2 places I have worked have been realistically communtible on public transport. Of those 2 places I drove to one as it was quicker and cheaper, and I communted on public transport to the other(But that is because I would never drive through central london congestion charge or no congestion charge).

You may like to spend an extra couple of hours commuting every day but I do not, I have lots of things to do with my life that i could spend that time on rather than sitting in public transport being bored out of my brain. For example seeing my wife and children, working on plan B, relaxing at home/in pub with a nice cool alcholic beverage, etc.

You can shout it's only fair as much as you like the simple truth is that in the vast majority of cases it is quicker and cheaper to drive. In a built up metropolitan area that changes but the majority of my contracts (and i suspect most other as well) are not in built up metropolitan areas

[gingerjedi]

I suppose this depends on what kind of contracting you do. Everywhere I've worked has been perfectly accessable by public transport or bicycle, but there probably are I dunno military establishments out on the moors somewhere which might not have a bus going past. Is that what you mean?

Yes, that’s exactly what I do! Every gig I have had for the past 3 years has been on MoD sites so that’s my argument for needing a car, my current gig though still with the MoD is commutable by train but I give my wife a lift to her workplace that is not, so I think I should be let off on this occasion!

[Vito]

Who'd have thought we lived in a democracy??? The only thing we get to decide is who gets to dictate us!!

Although to be fair...I'm not really bothered...the rich will carry on regardless and the poor will no longer clutter the roads with their crap cars.

Its all a load of fuss about nothing...everything costs more than it used to and new charges are introduced every year for something or other, and yet the vast majority of us are much richer than we would have been 20 years ago.

I object to paying road tax and then road tolls as well...it sounds like double charging to me...but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it because if they don't take it off me this way they will think of another...and double charging already exists...you pay more road tax if you drive a big engined car...but you are already paying more tax because you are buying more petrol (whiic of course is heavily taxed)...

As for the merits of owning a car...I'm not going to justify that to anyone...I'd have a helicopter if I could afford one!

[IR35 Avoider]

Since I've been bashing the anti-congestion charge people, I would just like to ensure I have absolutely no friends in this thread by bashing the pro-public transport people as well.

While I'm happy for their to be as much public transport as makes economic sense, i.e. as much as the public will pay for without one penny of their journeys being subsidised by the taxpayer, I personally would do what I can to avoid travelling on it, and when I become dictator my utopia will allow as much private motoring as can be forced into the available road space. Of course that will still be less than people want, so those who are willing and able to pay for roadspace will get it at the expense of those who can't.

Sop to the environmentalists: the cars will all be electric and recharged from nice clean nuclear power. Do a Google for Lotus Zap-x to read about an SUV costing 30K, with 644 bhp, 0-60 in 4.8 seconds, all-wheel drive with electric motor in each wheel, 350 miles on one recharge, recharge takes ten minutes, car available in a year or two. OK, it's vapourware which probably won't arrive, but there has apparently recently been a big breakthrough in battery technology, so we could all be going electric quite soon.

[dang65]

Basically if you need to get 4 buses and it takes twice as long as driving, you're never going to bother.

That's right, yes. People will carry on paying whatever it costs to drive, because they can't be bothered to travel less conveniently. I would say that's a pretty good definition of 'luxury' really.

[BoredBloke]

"This is just daft. Why would you use a bus to go a mile and a half? If it's 3 miles from home to the station then use a bike. You're doing the typical addicted car driver thing of finding any possible excuse not to use public transport when it's there, easy to use, and thousands of people do use it every day, no problem."

In a more extended format.

1 - walk to the bus stop in the village from home (0.5 miles)!
2 - get the bus into Rochdale from the village(3 miles)
3 - walk the mile from Rochdale bus station to the train station(1 mile).

So that is a 1.5 mile walk and a bus journey to add to the route you specified. Plus the same back again.

You are lucky because you have a means of public transport which suits your role and location. Not everybody is in that position.

I'd actually go for road charging if it meant No Road Tax and No Duty. That is, it replaced all motoring taxes. But you know that it will be in addition to the current taxes.