Road pricing bill before Commons

[vetran]

We already pay more than France or Austria (ignoring Vat on purchase so we probably pay a lot more)

Table 2.14. Estimation of specific taxes paid over the lifetime of a car

Car purchase Annual tax Fuel tax Total AUSTRIA 1300 2000 5000 8200 DENMARK 15000 2300 5400 22700 FINLAND 12000 1000 7800 20800 FRANCE 0 0 7200 7200 IRELAND 4000 3000 5760 12760 NETHERLANDS 5000 4000 9750 18750 NORWAY 8000 2300 9600 19900 PORTUGAL 4000 300 4320 8620 UK 0 2000 9840 11840

http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/reports/eepi/policy_evaluation/fiscal.asp

Note this is 2004 so the figures for road tax are very low.
From the RAC -

Given the choice of different charging systems, two thirds of motorists would opt for a system that increased the price of fuel while removing road tax and putting on hold widespread road user charging. The idea behind the scheme would be to rack up costs the more you drive, without being tracked or charged in a lump sum.

http://www.rac.co.uk/web/knowhow/own...448D9E86FB0626

Personally I would use public transport if I were able to make the journey at a comparable cost and time in reasonable comfort. Unfortunately I can't it costs twice as much and takes 3 times as long on my normal commute. It is handy if I go for a few beers after work though!

I did travel to Tabernacle all last week for a course, it was most unpleasant, crowded on like cattle rubbing up against people that have no understanding of deodorant. No seats, trains late, rudely accosted by staff assuming I had no ticket etc. Stress of nearly missing the train because the ticket office queue was so long. Give me my old Ford any day. The only reason I took the train is the sheer cost and unpleasantness of driving into the city, however if the congestion charge was lifted and the journey including parking would have been £5 cheaper and the journey time would have been shorter.

Sort out public transport and more people will use it. Tax car users more and they will squeal. People 'got on their bikes' (or cars) to find work, now we are being penalised.

[Paddy]

You could try going as freight, but you would have to squeeze into a box...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juDPu...elated&search=

[DodgyAgent]

1.8m people clicked a button on a website. That's less than 3% of the population that could even be bothered to move their mouse a few centimetres. It's less people than actually did get off their arses to physically take part in the huge anti-war demonstrations prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

I think you might be slightly overestimating the number of people who give a flying f**k whether the rich get charged a load of extra money for clogging up the public highway day after day.

1.8 million is an awful lot for what is essentially a section of the population who are law abiding car drivers. There will be a lot more who will become more and more p***** off as the system bites. as far as the anti war protesters are concerned many of these will be anarchists and extremists from fringe groups who will do anything that will bring attention to themselves in the form of an anti govt protest.

Dang, don't you think that you should maybe give up? Though you are beginning to talk a little bit of sense, you have already been forced to make a climbdown on your personal attacks on motorists, having been exposed as a hypocrite and a fool. There have been many like you coming on to this site to promote a govt policy or promote some extreme left or right wing ideology and they have all failed; shot down by an incessant barrage of ridicule and well argued logic

[BoredBloke]

"I think you might be slightly overestimating the number of people who give a flying f**k whether the rich get charged a load of extra money for clogging up the public highway day after day"

What a stupid comment. The roads are clogged up now - not everybody driving is rich. So you price those off the roads who cannot afford the charge. The result is rich people swanning about on uncongested roads while the poor sit on inadequate public transport, or stay at home because their job is now either unreachable by public transport or has become uneconomical due to the higher public transport costs.

[dang65]

shot down by an incessant barrage of ridicule and well argued logic

Good one.

"I think you might be slightly overestimating the number of people who give a flying f**k whether the rich get charged a load of extra money for clogging up the public highway day after day"

What a stupid comment. The roads are clogged up now - not everybody driving is rich. So you price those off the roads who cannot afford the charge. The result is rich people swanning about on uncongested roads while the poor sit on inadequate public transport, or stay at home because their job is now either unreachable by public transport or has become uneconomical due to the higher public transport costs.

I think you might be having trouble comprehending what terms like "poor" and "cannot afford the charge" mean. That covers a lot of people. Poor people don't have cars. Cars cost a lot of money. You're thinking of well-off people. Just because those people might live in a council house, or be nurses or teachers, doesn't mean they aren't well-off enough to be able to buy and run a car. If you can afford to buy and run a car then you are not poor, it's as simple as that.

Also, poor people don't work miles away from home. It's too expensive to get there, so they don't. It's not the poor that are clogging up the roads. It's the rich and the well-off. And they will carry on paying, as they should. (I'm one of those people myself of course, it's just that I accept that cars do vast amounts of damage and that I have to pay if I want to drive one.)

[DodgyAgent]

Good one.


I think you might be having trouble comprehending what terms like "poor" and "cannot afford the charge" mean. That covers a lot of people. Poor people don't have cars. Cars cost a lot of money. You're thinking of well-off people. Just because those people might live in a council house, or be nurses or teachers, doesn't mean they aren't well-off enough to be able to buy and run a car. If you can afford to buy and run a car then you are not poor, it's as simple as that.

Also, poor people don't work miles away from home. It's too expensive to get there, so they don't. It's not the poor that are clogging up the roads. It's the rich and the well-off. And they will carry on paying, as they should. (I'm one of those people myself of course, it's just that I accept that cars do vast amounts of damage and that I have to pay if I want to drive one.)

Cars do not do vast amounts of damage and over 90% of traffic consists of local drivers. Cars are very much part of what creates wealth, they enable people to move freely, thus giving people and businesses choice independence and flexibility.

So are you now saying that people should pay strictly according to how much they use the roads, or by their ability to pay? If you are a New labour stooge who is simply trying to save ill gotten tax revenus then what are you intending to do with the tax that we pay that goes towards supporting the transport infrastructure?

[dang65]

Cars do not do vast amounts of damage and over 90% of traffic consists of local drivers. Cars are very much part of what creates wealth, they enable people to move freely, thus giving people and businesses choice independence and flexibility.

So are you now saying that people should pay strictly according to how much they use the roads, or by their ability to pay? If you are a New labour stooge who is simply trying to save ill gotten tax revenues then what are you intending to do with the tax that we pay that goes towards supporting the transport infrastructure?

People already have the ability to pay, so yes this is about how much they use the roads. The vehicles which are causing congestion, which is everyone on any congested road, will be charged for doing so. Whether they are local traffic or not, they are still on that bit of road and they are congesting it.

As far as I am aware, this new scheme is directly tied in to public transport improvements, so towns and cities which initiate congestion charging will be eligible for money from the Transport Innovation Fund, as it is called. It's all a bit vague so far, but it looks like Greater Manchester are about to announce their plans. As far as I can make out, these places still have to bid for the TIF money, so it does seem to have government bureaucracy stamped all over it.

I'm not a Labour stooge, no. Got no particular political affiliation, just enjoy a good argument, and this is the place to come for that.

I'm not clear what you mean by, "Cars do not do vast amounts of damage" though? Can you clarify that?

[Ardesco]

List the damage that cars do then!!

(And don't mumble on about carbon footprints, thats the biggest load of crap I have heard in a long time)

[DodgyAgent]

People already have the ability to pay, so yes this is about how much they use the roads. The vehicles which are causing congestion, which is everyone on any congested road, will be charged for doing so. Whether they are local traffic or not, they are still on that bit of road and they are congesting it.

As far as I am aware, this new scheme is directly tied in to public transport improvements, so towns and cities which initiate congestion charging will be eligible for money from the Transport Innovation Fund, as it is called. It's all a bit vague so far, but it looks like Greater Manchester are about to announce their plans. As far as I can make out, these places still have to bid for the TIF money, so it does seem to have government bureaucracy stamped all over it.

I'm not a Labour stooge, no. Got no particular political affiliation, just enjoy a good argument, and this is the place to come for that.

I'm not clear what you mean by, "Cars do not do vast amounts of damage" though? Can you clarify that?

You made the statement that "cars do vast amounts of damage". To me this is a meaningless cliche (not put into any context) that you are using to lend weight to your arguments. Unfortunately I do not buy your basic assumption so I am asking you to explain what you mean by it.

To me this is an additional tax over and above everything else that we pay. What is worse is like all the rest of our taxes the money will be poured into lining the pockets of the supporters (private and public) of NL thus ensuring that they remain in power. How many directors of companies like EDS and Capita can afford for a change of govt to come in and put a stop to all these wasteful and useless IT projects.

[BoredBloke]

"I think you might be having trouble comprehending what terms like "poor" and "cannot afford the charge" mean. That covers a lot of people. Poor people don't have cars. Cars cost a lot of money."

Have you checked autotrader? Cars do not cost a lot of money. That is why there are 20million of them on our roads. Yes, some cars do, but not all. Mine for instance significantly increases it's value when I fill it up.

"You're thinking of well-off people. Just because those people might live in a council house, or be nurses or teachers, doesn't mean they aren't well-off enough to be able to buy and run a car."

Who brought that into the argument. Not once did I say that people in council houses are poor, or that a teacher or nurse couldn't afford to run a car. But what you want to do is further increase the cost of running a car and remove the prospect of owning a car from more people. And you base this purely on your odd commute.

"If you can afford to buy and run a car then you are not poor, it's as simple as that."

Bolloxs - There are 2 million untaxed and uninsured cars on our roads. Do you thenk the people who own thses built them in their garages. I suspect a fair percentage of these cars are ran in this way because their owners cannot afford to tax and insure them. Road pricing will not effect these, but it will encourage more to do this as it increases an already expensive practice.

"Also, poor people don't work miles away from home. It's too expensive to get there, so they don't."

I never said they did. But everybodies circumstances are different. There will be people right now struggling to make end meet and who do have to drive to work for whatever reason. Increasing their costs to get to and from work is hardly going to help is it. There will be a number of people where your increased costs make in uneconomical to do a particular job. Oh well the congesstion will be reduced while they sit at home drawing the dole.

"It's not the poor that are clogging up the roads. It's the rich and the well-off."

No it isn't its everybody - rich and poor. When the CC was put in place in London, which people do you think stopped driving in. Was it the guy from the city on £200k a year or was it the person on £30k The person on 30k may not fit with your description of poor, but I'd hardly say that person was rich either. But as I said earlier - London is an exception to the norm as it has relatively good public transport.