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"Road Tax" - Pay As You Go
Very interesting article here and I'm not 100% sure what I think about it.
Eventually, I think we will all be driving electric vehicles, which produce 0 emissions (ignoring how the electricity was produced - but that's not the point), this means we won't pay VED, so the money must be raised somehow.
I very much like the idea of charging more to those who drive more (particularly in congested areas and during peak hours), this should promote the use of public and active transport.
However, there is a part of me that wonders if it is the right thing to do. Imagine the uproar if healthcare was charged on a pay as you go basis (charging those who need it the most - which I certainly don't agree with). I suppose this raises a more philosophical question of whether we NEED to use roads at rush hour in congested areas or if we choose to use them.
Personally, for me, it is would be a choice whether I sit in my car adding to the congestion or if I cycle.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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26 comments
Battery cars: I wonder where the materials to make all these batteries are going to come from in the first place, and that is apart from replacements that will be needed in the future. Batteries only have a limited number of charging cycles. Personally I think we need to look at a different way to get propulsion in vehicles because batteries are not the long term answer...
I'm still waiting for my Mr Fusion home reactor...
Pre-pubescent boys in Sierra Leone are going to get the raw materials from unsafe mines, someone in the far East is going to turn them into batteries and a dirty factory and then we'll chuck em underground when they're knackered.
Fred Flintstone had a car made from raw materials: zero emissions.
Maybe my ignorance shows yet I couldn't recognize a leverage allowing him a mechanical advantage such as our bicycles.
Wondering.. ... Did they pay road taxes to use pulley systems designed to move their oversized Billy carts up the gradients??
Road tax sucks. Ride a bike.
The trouble with this argument is it forms a very strong case against carbon fibre. Carbon fibre cannot be practically recycled, it requires a lot of energy to burn off the toxic resin which then leaves lots of very small carbon fibres which aren't very useful.
So based on that premise, we shouldn't ride carbon fibre bicycles.
And aluminium is fearsomely expensive to smelt and recycle. Ditto Titanium
Steel is real... ...ly good for the environment it would seem. Or bamboo
Titanium looks tough as in clear lacquer.
+1 towards titanium want. Real steel yet 6* lighter 6 times stronger.
I find it sad that VED is as cheap as it is and only paid for by small amount of people. Charge properly and charge everyone, we need a way of charging everyone based on miles ( ie foreign drivers etc ) and doing it fairly, outside of tolls I cannot see how this can be done due to things like electric cars.
Heck if we had some proper infrastructure I would happily pay to use my bike, sadly all we get is shit piled on shit.
If we reduce congestion too much then we will get less of that ever so smug satisfaction of breezing past scores of vehicles filled with frustrated motorists.
Love ya work.
Meanwhile as we approach a nullified road tax we continue to appreciate bicycles per the non written benefits. Location has yellow bikes standing around which are near free public use; fix puncture is cost as per what I'm told.
Big tyres, no tread cost, no chain wax, I recon road tax approaching 50 cents a year. Lol.
I guess this is a really tricky subject for many and of course many reasons for the heavy traffic congestion has been raised here. Clearly we have to look back at the time when Buses were common place everywhere, people worked closer to home, many in Industry and communities were tighter knit and more social. Over the years since the 1980's we have had deregulation of bus services, privatisation of trains and other services. During the 80/90's Industry was badly affected and many companies went to the wall, this led to the "get on your bike and look for work" mantra from the government of the time as so people did. As we now know much of this work is in a different area to the home and the Bike looking for work became the car as default transport and the attitude of the car being a symbol of your status. Over the subsequent 3 decades it has become "normal" and default to use a car for any journey.
Clearly we are now at the point that Holland was in the mid 1970's when they decided to adopt cycling and public transport and reduce car use, these days they have plenty of cars and like other EU cities and towns the car gets used out of town and not so much inside as those journeys are done by bikes. Obviously the attitude of the local, national and policitians as well as the public has to be willing for this kind of approach. We also find that Obesity is worsening, diabetes is also on the rise but all of this is not just due to sitting in cars travelling however many miles to work and back everyday but to sit in the car for an hour a day, 8 hours sitting at work then another hour home as an example doesn't help.
Locally we have the Facebook pages and all the time there are constant whinging over congestion and pollution but not one of the posters appear willing to take their hands off of their steering wheels and travel alternatively , but of course this can be limited in places like our Market town with poor public transport.
So....what is the answer..... Pay Per Mile may work to reduce some local trips and may also make some of the population consider their journeys more but I fear that like others have mentioned the less well off could be affected more than those who have better means. When I go to fill up my vehicle I fill from a quarter tank to the brim, many I see at the pumps pop £5 in to get them by...... A Pay per mile system is the obvious simplistic "solution" for the future with electric vehicles and when the fuel duty tax take is reduced....one has to wonder when we will have the adult conversation as to How we got here, what needs to change, how to implement Pay per Mile, public transport provision, cycling and walking provision.
It could happen but society and attitudes would need to dramatically change as to how we travel smartly
Both VED and simple 3rd party insurance should be on road fuel.
About 65% of the cost of petrol is tax anyway so the more miles you do in any type of petrol car the more tax you pay.
And yes BTBS does seem to be the resident Mr Angry round here.
Fair point.
I'm paying £305 on my car so I have more right to use the road than most of you.
Joke.
The technology to make this happen already exists, and even if it was pitched so that it cost the average driver about the same as at present it would still have a powerful effect on behaviour. 10p is nothing but plastic bag use has plummeted.
It would make people think more seriously about cycling and public transport, would make them more likely to combine multiple journeys into single ones where they could, and perhaps even not make unimportant journeys they might otherwise have made.
The other thing it has the potential to do is monitor vehicle speed, so drivers would (shock horror) have to stick to speed limits everywhere.
Certainly has the potential to make cycling safer and more normal / popular, but can imagine the road (and possibly the civil liberties) lobby would squeal like stuck pigs if it was put forward as a serious proposal.
It was - just over 10 years ago - and they did. Not just specific "lobbies" but large numbers of people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_pricing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Nationa...(2005-2007)
That somehow passed me by, but its not surprising. The answer to congestion is always for someone else not to use their car, or to build more roads, neither of which work. We'll have to wait until it all becomes so awful that people start to change their minds. Unless a good hard Brexit takes lots of traffic off the roads of course...
All it would do is price poorer people of the roads.
I've worked in countries with higher taxes on cars and it doesn't stop people driving unnecessarily. What does decrease numbers is not building office blocks in the middle of no-where.
I think you might have a point here. We've had forty years of "out of town". Business parks and retail parks are all built out on the city fringe or miles away in the middle of nowhere, where property prices are lower, with no public transport links, and then people wonder why there are so many claims of "But I can't survive without my car!"
This is the larger problem we face, most people live far from where they work. I live 20 miles from where I study and 10 miles from where I work (as it is, I'm fit enough to cycle most days).
This is the larger problem we face, most people live far from where they work. I live 20 miles from where I study and 10 miles from where I work (as it is, I'm fit enough to cycle most days).[/quote]
Admirer!
Australia, I don't know current taxes yet about 10 years ago with trucks.
Double articulated trucks; B-doubles and triple articulated trucks; b-triples use lead trailers: Trailers with a turntable behind freight. Although they carry about half of a normal trailer (B indicates chassis length dimensions, both b trailers) the registration of such was >$10000 compared to $800 per rear trailer per annum with hear say of reason being rapid axle road impact as such configuration hit the road with heavy loads in bursts of 2 or 3; double, triple.
I haven't a clue, that's road tax down under from my hear say.
Leviathon, you utterly missed the point of the post, putting VED on the fuel would have been the fairest way for everyone and make people think to using their cars less often or even not hammering the accelerator pedal so much.
I do/did very low miles hence I pollute less than someone in a zero rated combustion engined vehicle doing only circa 4500 miles a year based on my last 10 years, though haven't driven at all since September.
Average UK driver does roughly 9000 miles/year, even at 99gCO2/km that would mean they are producing twice the amount of pollution of a vehicle at 150g CO2/km doing 3000 miles yet paying zero emissions tax!
With that system those who pollute the most pay the most, why is that so difficult for you to understand!
The mistake was not changing to tax on the fuel to start with, so that even low emission vehicles get to pay.
I found it massively angering that doing 3000 miles a year in my 151g /km co2s (officlal) meant I was paying a wedge for emissions tax yet some herbert in a 99g/km job who only had to drive about 4500 miles paid nowt and yet produced the same amount of pollution.
This tax at fuel source could easily be passed onto electricty but oh no, it'll be, you told us to go to Evs but now you're taxing us again so there'd be an uproar, missing the point about gridlock and still the same number of knobbers crashing and killing/maiming.
Fuck em, should be a simple tax that equates to about £150 per car per year for EVs, still wondering where all this electricty is going to come from and how much it's going to cost to produce it, oh wait, nuclear at at a fuck ton because some twat in government promised a ridiculous rate to the leccy company for the next billion years! It's far too cheap at the moment IMHO for the electricty but the batteries are extortionate and one of the reasons I won't buy an EV because I simply cannot justify the cost.
Also the only journeys I'd need a car for (well mostly) are to drive up to see the folks which is a 155 mile each way drive. There simply are no cars that can do that comfortably (and no I don't want to stop halfway on my journey for a 45 minute break!) and are even within reach cost wise. The trains with a bike are a fucking pain in the arse and costs no less not take less time door to door.
BTBS you seem to be 'massively angry' about many things. You don't see why it is fair that someone else bought a less polluting vehicle and therefore pays less? So you picked a figure for this strawman's mileage that seems to justify you ire; however if everyone bought less polluting vehicles or drove less then we would all benefit. Mr Herbert would say, Hard Cheese, you chose your 4x4 polar bear.
Taxation is and always will be a means of social manipulation as well as a source of revenue for the government. I think duty on fuel would accurately reflect just who does the damage to our roads (HGVs) but would have the haulage companies howling, even though they would pass it back to supermarkets, etc. Top this off with some city congestion charges to discourage the lazy commuters and Bob's your Uncle. Eventually we all pay, somehow.
I was thinking you could have just bought a less polluting car in the first place
It's highly likely that we will see the cost of the batteries fall as the industry pursues new technologies. I, personally, can't wait to have an electric car. I only drive about 100 miles a week and rarely do trips of more than 20 miles, at least half my driving is sat in Bristol city centre in first (maybe second at a push) gear, poisoning the residents.
I certainly agree on taxing HGV's, having seen just how destructive they are to the roads. I also agree with a congestion charge, I'd very much like to see that in Bristol.