Road pricing is “inevitable,” a House of Commons committee has been told, with tax revenues from motorists due to plummet as a result of the switch to electric vehicles.
The call to start charging motorists to use roads nationwide was made yesterday at an oral evidence session on the issue held by the House of Commons Transport Select Committee by Toby Poston, director of corporate affairs at the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA).
He urged a trial system to be developed to help meet an estimated £31 billion reduction in revenue from Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) and fuel duty as private motorists and fleet operators increasingly switch to zero emission vehicles.
“It is imperative that road pricing is considered and trialled now to ensure a smooth transition into a new system,” he said.
“Drivers and fleet operators need clarity on future taxation as they make the transition to zero-emission road transport.”
While some road pricing does exist – notably, the congestion charging zones in Durham and London, or charges to use infrastructure such as the Dartford Crossing and the M6 toll road – successive administrations have resisted introducing a nationwide road pricing system.
Such measures have however been considered in the past, and were recommended as long ago as 1964 by the Smeed Report, commissioned by then Conservative government.
In 2005, the then Labour government announced plans for a national scheme under which vehicles, equipped with satellite trackers, would incur charges ranging from 2p per mile on the least busy roads to £1.34 on the most congested roads at peak periods.
The proposals were dropped after an online petition attracted 1.8 million signatures, and while around a third of households in the UK do not have access to a motor vehicle, any move towards road pricing is likely to be unpopular among many voters who do drive.
Wider public opinion may be changing, however. A survey conducted by the Social Market Foundation shortly before the recent fuel crisis found that 38 per cent of respondents were in favour of introducing road pricing, with 26 per cent opposed.
Research director, Scott Corfe, said: “For too long politicians have thought of reforming motoring taxes as grasping the nettle, fearful that a backlash from drivers will hit them at the polls.
“In reality, the public want to see a better, fairer system of how the UK taxes drivers. Our research shows that road pricing, often perceived as politically poisonous, is seen as a preferential option compared to our existing tax regime.”
The current government, which says it is committed to promoting active travel and trying to reduce dependency on cars, particularly for shorter journeys, has already acknowledged that ways will have to be found to make up for the predicted lost revenue, an issue mentioned in HM Treasury’s Net Zero Review Interim Report, published last December.
In his appearance before the Transport Select Committee yesterday, Poston added: “Any new road pricing scheme must be easy to pay and have the simple objective of providing a revenue-neutral replacement for fuel duty and VED.
“It should be based on a simple ‘distance-driven’ model that considers vehicle weight, emissions and use case, with discounts given to shared mobility solutions – such as car clubs, rental cars, buses and taxis – to incentivise more sustainable travel choices.”
Yesterday’s session formed the second part of the committee’s inquiry on Zero Emission Vehicles and Road Pricing.
From a cyclist’s perspective, one aspect of road pricing, should it be introduced across the country, is inescapable; it would give motorists who currently rail against people on bikes “not paying road tax” – even though cyclists are more likely than average to also own a car, and road tax itself was phased out in the 1930s – a figurative stick with which to beat us.
99 thoughts on “Road pricing “inevitable,” MPs are told as switch to electric vehicles hits tax revenues”
I’d be happy to be beaten
I’d be happy to be beaten with that stick, because it’s likely to be tiny if pricing is based on weight and emissions. If I end up spending slightly more to ride my bike on the morning after a dirty kebab, so be it.
Any system based on the
Any system based on the government tracking our location is unwelcome, and would only spawn a black market in GPS jammers. I don’t see why they can’t just slap the tax on the “fuel” (ie electricity) as before. It would be simple enough in the case of dedicated car chargers, and even for those few relying on a 13A domestic socket smart meters ought to be able to discern the usage signature and add the tax accordingly.
No need for complicated reductions for occupancy levels – just split the cost with your car-sharers as normal and the discount is right there.
Sriracha wrote:
Exactly. The usual argument of ‘you’ve nothing to fear if you’ve done nothing wrong’ is Horlicks: you would be approving legislation which assumes that our Govt doesn’t go Full Authoritiarian in the near future. What if the Govt turns Evil?
Doesn’t even need an “evil”
Doesn’t even need an “evil” government. It would start with an emotive terrorism or paedophilia prosecution (won’t someone please think of the children) which turned on the defendant’s location data, and pretty soon we’d have local authorities contesting school admissions based on school run tracking.
Sriracha wrote:
“It says here on Facebook on my phone in my smart car that the government wants us to have vaccination passports, can you believe it? That proves that they put tracking chips in them vaccines I reckon…”
That horse has bolted – it was out the door before “homeland security” two decades ago I suspect. (And recall the FOI requests turning up the use of terrorism legislation for checking on those leaving dog poo around?) Luckily for us whether corporations or governments the control tends to be tempered by infighting, laziness and plain ol’ cock up.
‘Turns’?
‘Turns’?
Sriracha wrote:
Corporations are already tracking enough of us to know more than we think, despite the few who do choose to opt out. I suppose the TV licence is an example of an almost voluntary charging system. Once they used to advertise the ‘Detector Van’ but now they don’t bother since they have the Electoral Roll and can just send a demand on the assumption that we have a TV. Lazy but it works well enough.
Anyhow, as you say a ‘fuel’ cost is simple and effective. Improved highway design is harder. In Finland the poor public health was a reason to mandate that all new roads must have a separated lane suitable for walking, riding, skiing, skating, so flatish or gentle gradient. Thus Finns can ride to work separated from motor vehicles in the summer, or ski in the winter. Not unusual to see Grandma on her sled trolly, getting to the shop without risk of falling on the ice. Civilization.
I don’t know if this is
I don’t know if this is actually possible, but I’ve heard it suggested before that smart meters are something that would allow utilisation of charges based on how you are using your electricity. Thus, if you were charging a car’s battery the smart meter would recognise that and you’d be charged a different rate to the electricity for your tv for example. This would be a simple way to “tax” vehicles for their fuel use, just fuel in the form of electricity rather than petrol.
It certainly is possible, and
It certainly is possible, and something to consider when signing up to a smart meter. It is feasible to discern the usage “signatures” of domestic appliances, and work out what dishwasher you have etc. Sniffing your electricity supply is very revealing!
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/293488364_Disaggregating_Smart_Meter_Readings_Using_Device_Signatures
Sriracha wrote:
That’s how all the kids are getting their kicks these days.
squired wrote:
smart meters are clearly intended to enable variable pricing however it’s complex since each type of generating is different. Obviously not much Solar at night, who knows when the wind blows, or when Putin will pump natural gas. Fusion isn’t here yet, and Fission is less and less. However variable pricing will come as the suggestion that it’s just so we can understand our usage better doesn’t look to justify the costs. It’s not as if the National Grid doesn’t know demand and supply.
I’m not convinced by
I’m not convinced by additional charging for car use. It may work for very specific circumstances, but it really ought to be the last resort.
All it does is make car use more costly, which will just end up making car journeys the preserve of the wealthy.
The more money you invest in car use, be it buying the car, the space to park it, the permit to drive it, etc. the more you are inclined to use it. So, just slapping more costs on, could drive a perverse behaviour where those who can afford to, will use it more often.
I would prefer to see an approach like they have in the Netherlands, where they design travel corridors to make cycling and public transport the quicker, easier and more pleasant option compared to driving in the city. Then even the wealthy can be tempted out of the car.
I agree that road pricing
I agree that road pricing shouldn’t be considered a comprehensive solution, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be part of the solution.
One advantage of road pricing is that it adds to the marginal costs of each journey. Your logic that “the more money you invest in car use… the more you are inclined to use it” makes sense for fixed costs. Once you’ve bought a car, taxed it, insured it, got an MOT etc. and it’s sitting on your driveway ready to go, then currently each journey doesn’t add much to the cost, so you might as well use it. Even things like wear and tear arguably should be included within marginal costs, but to most people they are one-off costs as part of an annual service or ad-hoc repair.
But if road pricing means it’s going to cost £50 every morning and afternoon to do the school run, then it does change the equation.
Yes, I think that things like
Yes, I think that things like toll roads and smallish congestion charge areas with a high cost per use do have merit. But a broader, lower cost charge would likely just be absorbed. Great for a government wanting to raise some tax to replace VED, but it’s not really going to encourage more environmentally friendly forms of transportation.
If you’ve bought a Ferrari, you might be annoyed that petrol is 25p a litre more, but you’d probably still choose to drive it vs taking the bus.
HoarseMann wrote:
The manufacturers and their banks have spent the last 50 years lowering the ‘barrier to entry’ of vehicle ‘ownership’ so that it’s not unusual to see as many vehicles parked at a house as there are adults in residence. So if anything the car is too cheap and does need to be more expensive to minimise it’s impact. 90% idle time shows most are shockingly pointless (stat reference required). The motor industry marketing confuses the easily led that their choice of vehicle validates their life choices, rather than its just a means of transportation.
The point I’m (badly!) trying
The point I’m (badly!) trying to get across, is if the only barrier to car use is cost, then if you can afford it, why would you choose the alternative if the car is quickest and most convenient?
Whilst you do not need to be vastly wealthy to own a car, it is a significant investment when compared with the per use cost. The per use cost would have to be very high to upset that cost/benefit equation.
But making short car journeys take longer routes, with modal filters, traffic light sequences that favour pedestrians and cyclists, removing destination parking etc. Then the convenience quotient tips more towards the cycling/bus/walking option and I think that is what drives most peoples behaviour.
Yep…for my ~10 year old car
Yep…for my ~10 year old car which I’ll replace at ~100,000 miles fuel and fixed running costs (maintenance, insurance etc) are about £0.11/mile and £0.08/mile respectively. The sunk purchase cost from when I bought the car is about £0.10/mile. If you plan to keep a moderately cheap car until it’s not logical to maintain it further then the purchase cost is actually not a massive part of the cost. The problem is that most people don’t think of the purchase as a ‘cost’, it’s just a fact of life…nobody thinks ‘if I lose £10k in value on a car that I’ll run for 50k/miles then each mile costs me 20p before anything else’.
The biggest issue in my mind is that the alternatives (buses, trains etc) are more obviously expensive. I.e. I’m off to London from Wales later. The train would be £95 round trip to get me to the wrong place where I’ll need a further ~£10 of tube/bus tickets to actually get to my destination. That’s actually not much more than the total cost of running the car. But today I will only have to pay £35 of fuel to get there, and I can take a bike. The remaining £55-60 of car costs will be met in annual servicing/MOT, insurance, and replacement lump sums that I’ll just ‘have’ to meet. I think one solution would be for cars to have a ‘net cost of your journey-ometer’.
The Severn Bridge tolls (both
The Severn Bridge tolls (both bridges) were scrapped in December 2018!
I propose a tyre tax. It
I propose a tyre tax. It would be based on the load rating and mileage rating of the tyre. If a tyre fails (through puncturing or massive damage, not tread wear) before its normal life, it could be turned in for a pro-rated refund of the tax.
Advantages
Disadvantages
andystow wrote:
My next car…
mdavidford wrote:
With Challenger 3 in design and procurement, the British Army will be selling the surplus Challenger 2 that they don’t convert. So no need to settle for a surplus Warrior AFV when you can go the full Chally. It works for the RTC…
PS:Watch out for vulnerable road users in their little HGVs…
Here’s an example making a
Here’s an example making a typical car revenue neutral to replace just the 57.95 p/L fuel duty (VAT not included here) using a tyre tax.
Someone on here suggested a
Someone on here suggested a tax wrapped up in the mot. It would be a simple mileage one, so would not be popular for rural areas.
hirsute wrote:
I think it’s a lot easier to fool or disable an odometer than to drive, but not use up your tyres.
Given how many people are on
Given how many people are on set mileage lease/PCP schemes if it were that easy to fool an odometer surely such shenanigans would already be widespread?
andystow wrote:
So far Volkswagen Audi Group is looking at a €5 Billion cost for trying to mess with their OBDII data.
if you don’t actually make the equipment, it’s a tamper proof black box, so not trivial to ‘fool’. Multiple sensors are involved so unlikely to get them all. Some, like GPS are monitored as part of national defence infrastructure, so would be noticed..
You could always add a set
You could always add a set amount of tax-free miles based on your post code.
Rural postcodes would get more.
Alternatively a mileage based tax plus congestion charges for major cities would mean less tax for rural areas.
The simple mileage tax would cost virtually nothing to implement though so seems an easy way forward.
DVLA would need to chase up a
DVLA would need to chase up a bit harder on those drivers with no mot (or insurance).
I suppose there would need to be a mot at the end of year 1 as opposed to the end of year 3.
Better to have something simpler even if a bit rough and ready.
hirsute wrote:
Absolutely, the vehicle change of ownership is a fully broken system.
Typically, when new cars are sold on finance, the proof of identity and address is rigorous since their loan is at risk.
For second hand sales there is no requirement to prove identity or address so as long as the seller gets paid, why should they care what is true.
When the second buyer hits a cyclist and drives off, the police have only the DVLA record of the registered owner, a Mr Michael Mouse of Acacia Avenue, NW2.
When the police eventually attend the property there is no sign of Mr Mouse, nor knowledge of the vehicle.
Case closed. .
hirsute wrote:
Since most vehicles are older than 3 years, so subject to MOT inspection, the motor trade has industrialised inspection with ramps and OBDII diagnosis plus manufacturer specific enhancement so that the statutory fee provides a profit.
I guess they would be happy to inspect all vehicles, with the safety benefits that could arise. After all the innovation, the complexity of hybrid or electric vehicles puts us all at risk..
Range anxiety trumps battery durability anxiety, but only just, so regular expert checking is good.
hirsute wrote:
Yes, I thought that was a genius idea too 😉
hirsute wrote:
it would also not be popular to be hit with a bill for 3 years worth of mileage once the car gets its first MOT. Or I can sell if at 2 years and 10 months and let the unfortunate buyer pick up the tab for my road pricing.
Pricing on fuel is convenient, easiest way to replicate this is by pricing onto the car charger, so electricity for cars is not cheper than electricity for general use. (considered against use at the same time) off peak charging may still be cheaper than on peak clothes washing per kwh.
It would be incredibly easy
It would be incredibly easy to bypass such a charge though.
Most EVs will charge from a standard plug (albeit slowly).
Given most will need charging less than once a week plugging in on Friday evening will give you all the range you need at very low cost.
Most car leases etc have an excess mileage charge so the concept is familiar to people. You could arrange a direct debit to cover your expected mileage every month and simply pay the difference at MOT.
Selling a car just prior to MOT would obviously negatively affect the price much as it does now.
wycombewheeler wrote:
You could always make it a pay in advance system, based on average usages. Then people could claim a rebate at the next MOT if they’d used less than that. That would have an additional benefit of reducing the attractiveness of buying a car in the first place by effectively increasing the purchase price by three years worth of duty.
Or you could have ‘mot lite’
Or you could have ‘mot lite’ at the end of each year for the first 3 years. If don’t turn up, then you get stung for an above average charge.
hirsute wrote:
TBH I’ve never really seen the logic of the no MOT for the first three years thing anyway. I mean, I get that it’s less likely that parts will fail through wear and tear early in their life, but it’s not impossible, and in any case you could drive straight out of the showroom and into an accident. And then you could be driving around in a dangerous vehicle for three years.
Seems to me there ought to be some sort of checks in that period, even if it’s less comprehensive than a full MOT.
mdavidford wrote:
If you have a historic vehicle, there’s no MOT or VED requirement.
(We have two; but we also get them serviced/”MOT-equivalent”ed every year anyway, otherwise how would you know if anything’s wrong?)
Also you know new cars are
Also you know new cars are about as normally the lights are more dazzling. I expect most failures / warnings on the first MOT is because the lights are misaligned.
hirsute wrote:
Awesome idea!
hirsute wrote:
Nobody important.
But let’s not confuse the data with the pricing.
HMRC knows what we get paid (PAYE) but operates a complex tax regime on that as decided by various legislators to be fair…
What has income tax got to do
What has income tax got to do with road pricing?
Most people are on PAYE which is effectively outsourced to the employer. Collecting the base data is easy.
If you want complex road pricing, you need to equip all cars with some hardware and develop software to collect and charge people.
Do you think that is easy peasy ?
hirsute wrote:
It is an example of a small set of data driving a price (tax) that is not directly related, i.e. tax free allowance, base rate, higher rate, super rate, all of which are supposed to achieve an agreed outcome.
So simple data collection doesn’t mean cost per mile is the only possible outcome.
Easier than PAYE, NI, yes. Most vehicles already have many sensors on their CANbus and report usage to OBDII diagnosis so that part is largely built. Mobile data networks are built and getting better, 5G. Many vehicles already have remote assistance using a SIM. Likewise most have SatNav so know where they are. So the pieces are largely built and the statutory requirement for them to be integrated is missing. A conversation between government and manufacturing is needed, and both will delight in their environmental responsibility, especially VAG AG!
andystow wrote:
A lot more of this.
Good point. Thieves ruin
Good point. Thieves ruin everything.
andystow wrote:
Hmm, so less moving vehicles, and I never leave a bicycle in the street….
Safer riding and low costs, I’m liking that more and more 😉
Quote:
What does that even mean though?
The existing system isn’t revenue neutral – that’s the whole reason they want to replace it – take it away and it leaves a big hole in the general public purse.
And if what they really mean is ‘raise as much tax as the existing system’, that’s equally ill-defined, because that fluctuates according to the whim of the Chancellor and, more pertinently, according to consumer behaviour, as evidenced by the current fall in revenues. There’s no particular reason why it should raise as much as it does now, as much as it did ten years ago, or any other amount.
Surely the amount of revenue it generates shouldn’t be the driving* consideration – rather it should be what you need to charge to effect the kinds of behaviour patterns you want to see?
[*pun not intended, but gleefully embraced]
Interesting and possibly
Interesting and possibly beneficial for other road users, but how would it avoid taxing ICE vehicles twice? The driver already pays a significant amount in fuel tax, which electric vehicles don’t, and they’d be paying to use the road as well. To be fair, surely the only way is to tax electricity used for evs at about the same as ICE fuel?
It wouldn’t, and that might
It wouldn’t, and that might be the point.
If electricity is much greener than petrol/diesel (which it should increasingly be) then it wouldn’t seem sensible to tax it in the same way as fuel. I also don’t think that it would be feasible to have different rates of tax for domestic and transport electricity.
AidanR wrote:
Smart Meters are for demand based pricing. So the supplier has access to your usage data and if obliged by OffGen would tell HMRC too…
And the capital cost in £ Bn
And the capital cost in £ Bn is what exactly?
Fairly easy to come up with a high level concept. Realising the concept in detailed terms is something rather different.
Have you ever implemented anything at all ?
hirsute wrote:
Not in £Bn, since the Smart meter infrastructure is already the industry plan, and making further use of the same data is an IT opportunity, thus £Mn only.
Only 30+ years implementation
work with industry and government. So I’ve seen quite a bit of expediency and low ambition.
Most of the more successful organisations now didn’t exist when I started so that suggests there are some who can innovate and deliver.
Two points to make, 1) you’ve
Two points to make, 1) you’ve missed Duncan Buchanan of the road hauliers association taking aim at LTNs in the same session and making some exaggerated claims about less than 1 mile travel is like 0.04% of mileage that needs to be fact checked.
And possibly bigger problem 2) they were talking about road pricing in the session as a means to cover the drop in revenue from VED & fuel duty when we all switch to electric vehicles…specifically to pay for the ongoing upkeep of the roads !!! In other words the select committee is working on the premise VED & fuel duty are road taxes which pay for our roads and what can they do to fill the funding gap & use road pricing to pay for roads in the future
I don’t think it is to pay
I don’t think it is to pay for roads it is part of the general tax take to pay for all services.
The current preference to keep direct taxes low and increase indirect taxes, so of course they are going to replace ved with a tax linked to driving. The tax base is so huge, they can’t afford not to and ideogically haven’t much choice (NI aside).
We will still be paying for roads via council tax to the county council or unitary council for where we live.
it shouldnt be, but in that
it shouldnt be, but in that hearing session, at least the first hour,I gave up after that, no one once clarified roads were largely funded by other taxes as well and VED/Fuel duty was a tax on emissions, road pricing in the way questions by the MPs were put and even the answers by the people giving evidence back, was very much that VED/Fuel duty was a road tax, and road pricing was the alternative way to keep our roads paid for to replace it.
So instead of not paying road
So instead of not paying road tax (VED) for the smoke I don’t generate I’ll now have to not pay road tax for the wear and tear on the tarmac I don’t cause?
A pet peeve: “zero emission vehicles” are actually “emit somewhere else vehicles”. This can certainly be a health-improver but doesn’t necessarily sort our environmental problems. Yes some of that electricity may come from wind turbines, hydro and
woodchips and cow chipsbiomass but not all yet. And by the time the amps get to us we can’t tell where they’re from. (Nuclear is “we’ll hopefully keep those emissions local but emit for a very long time”).Well I think that the
Well I think that the solution is quite simple and has been suggested by a number of people and media commentators over the years. It would be a popular choice and vote winning decision that would solve several issues that are often reported on this website.
That is to remove all tax or duty from car purchase and ownership. Remove all tax from petrol and diesel fuel. More tax relief for hard working lorry operators and hard working and loyal taxi drivers (especially in London) and make all and only cyclists pay road tax.
As a cyclist I think that this is the only fair solution.
I’ll get my straight jacket.
I expect driverless cars to
I expect driverless cars to be quite common by 2030 (when new ICE vehicles are banned).
Given most will likely operate like taxis it will be fairly simple to add a per mile tax to the fee.
And extra costs per crash?
And extra costs per crash? per killing? Especially as non driverless vehicles would also be around. (and bikes, scooters, pedsestrians,).
Although I suppose 10 years of “Are you human” Captcha tech has been mass group teaching the AI involved, how many times have you clicked on the wrong picture because it is all American types normally?
Do driverless cars have a
Do driverless cars have a higher rate of crashes or killings than cars driven by humans?
I don’t think there’s been a single fatality in a level 4 car so far. Just one in a level 3. Add up all the miles driven by all the companies and it’s probably already safer per mile than a human.
By 2030 it’ll be no contest.
I’m actually quite hopeful
I’m actually quite hopeful for a future of driverless cars. At least most of the cars on the road will then be more ‘predicatable’ for the rest of us on bikes!
Me too, I think it will be
Me too, I think it will be absolutely transformative for urban living.
Rich_cb wrote:
Depends what you mean by transformative. In most senses I don’t think that makes much difference. Cars with electricity without a drivers seat replacing cars with petrol and a drivers seat? Might be a bit quieter at low speed but it’s still a car, driving round an urban environment.
What I do think is transformative is when you barely have any motor vehicles in an urban environment. The first thing is – listen! You can hear people, wind, birds etc. There’s a great article about someone’s first impressions when experiencing something like that.
I’ve just found that “low car” is the case in the centre of Cardiff too. (Not been so would welcome comments about that!) In fact there is a very old example of this- I give you Venice. More recently there are Catalonia’s “superblocks” Utrecht’s pedestrian zone [1] [2] and Merwede district.
Slight aside but there’s an interesting Wikipedia list of car free places – that’s mostly “islands and villages where there are no cars” though.
There are some UK-focussed ideas for managing the urban traffic environment too.
Cardiff is pretty easy to get
Cardiff is pretty easy to get around by bike, the infrastructure has improved massively in the last 5 years too (Kudos to Cardiff Council). Some decent stretches of genuinely high class segregated paths now and good plans to link them up. That being said there are still cars everywhere!
With driverless cars I think private car ownership will fall and most will use them like taxis. Given your average car is idle 95% of the time if driverless cars can be utilised only 50% of the time that means each driverless car could replace 10 regular cars. If occupancy rates of driverless cars were higher than those of regular cars that number could go even higher.
Imagine your town/city with the number of parked cars reduced by 90%. That’s what I mean by transformative.
Where are all these
Where are all these driverless taxis when not being used?, if they are only being used 50% of the time are they endlessly driving around waiting to be needed or parked somewhere waiting to be needed?. Another problem with the driverless taxi replacing private cars idea is utilisation. Yes it may be true that a car is idle 95% of the time but I suspect it’s also true that it’s the same 95% for lots of people i.e. people use their cars to get to work where it sits in a work car park for say 8 hours and then they drive it home where it sits outside their house overnight. That means that during rush hours many more driverless taxis would be required to take people to/from work at the same times. Then they would be idle for the rest of the working day as there’s probably not going to be enough other business to keep them fully utilised. Then you’re back to the where do they go in the meantime question, do they park up or just drive around.
I would suggest some on
I would suggest some on street parking, perhaps 10% of what we have now so that cars are available instantly for most people, the rest would be parked in existing off road car parks.
As there would be no need for people to access them whilst parked they could park far more efficiently in terms of cars per m2.
You’re right that a lot of car utilisation takes place at the same time but that is an opportunity to reduce the number of cars even further.
The current car occupancy rate for commuters is 1.1 so even with just 2 people per car you could reduce rush hour commuter traffic by nearly 50%.
With specifically designed cars you could easily get occupancy higher than that with commensurate reductions in traffic.
If you take the busiest time of the day for traffic currently then that should be the maximum number of cars you’ll ever need on a standard day. Any cars currently parked at rush hour would be surplus to requirements. That alone would see a huge reduction in the overall number of cars. Increase commuter occupancy and the reduction would be even greater.
schlepcycling wrote:
The new normal of work from home for many office jobs shows that commuting to work is last century. The minority who feel the need to meet in person are probably the current customers of hackney cabs so will continue to travel and meet. Given the tools to tell who is active remotely, I doubt many businesses will want to pay the cost of empty offices. Flexible working should work with demand based pricing to deal with the rush hour. Mobile network improvement required for working on appropriate modes of transport, regardless of location. So 5G & GSMR will do that…
Rich_cb]Cardiff is pretty
Sounds hopeful – the linking up is as important as the segregated bit (I’m extremely lucky in living at the end of a car free mini-network which can get me to many of my destinations.) I’ll have to have a look sometime.
Indeed there is huge scope to reduce the acreage / hectarage taken up by static motor vehicles and that would be a good thing. I’m not sure that simply having autonomous vehicles will change the ownership pattern though. After all, taxis exist right now and are already used by drivers who own cars. In urban areas specifically there are generally multiple alternatives to the private car albeit of varying “attractiveness”.
Much private vehicle use occurs at the same time. So the “automonous taxi” system – if it coped with those peaks – would not reduce the number of vehicles in motion. Unless you’re really saying “we need more carshare and people back on buses” e.g. travelling together to work, school etc.? Carshare is of course used now, and buses to locations were and are a solution. Again the “autonomous” factor doesn’t change anything here.
There’s also the “I’ll just nip to out to x now” factor with the car. I appreciate this is self-fulfilling but when I talk to people they rate this convenience highly. So any replacement would have to address that.
I think it would take a combination of a) “culture” / “fashion” changing (never underestimate…) b) regulation restricting private vehicle use (not just the type of vehicle) and / or a substantial cost increase to owning and using one and c) the barriers to using other modes of transport being lowered.
Bikes are individually owned and operated “door to door” vehicles within the budget of most people. They can be operated by a wider range of people than cars currently. As such they are a good substitute for many of the functions of a car especially in urban environments. Ways we could change the current situation would be (b) and (c) e.g. the push / pull balance of reducing convenience for cars (difficult!) and increasing convenience for non-motorised transport (cheaper than most other transport interventions).
I’m no futurologist so what we get may well be d) everyone gives up travelling and mostly meets virtually.
Car share is essentially the
Car share is essentially the solution. Once a car is driverless the design can be radically different from current cars, private pods with separate doors could easily be designed reducing barriers to car sharing.
If most people are booking via an uber style app then the journeys could be shared automatically without any input needed from the commuter themselves.
Such a vehicle would have huge advantages over buses and would be far more appealing to most people.
Once driverless cars are established I think car ownership will naturally decline, why would you pay thousands of pounds a year for a car when a substitute service costs a fraction of that?
That mini network looks really good, Cardiff is not quite at that level yet but it is getting there!
everyone meeting virtually..
everyone meeting virtually.. what a horrible dystopian future you envisage..
I’m afraid it is already here
I’m afraid it is already here. Anyone office based will have suffered death by Teams.
Lacking the imagination to
Lacking the imagination to furnish you with a fever dream beyond your imagining I can only suggest an existing nightmare vision of what could be. For your delictation: the traffic-sick suburbs of america, the air pollution of Jakarta, the fuel poverty of parts of africa, the awfulness of 4chan. And of course one specially for our Nigel.
As for virtual meetings – it sounds like some people in the UK – England especially – are so horrified by the prospects of lack of normal social engagement they’re willing to risk their own health and that of others.
Driverless cars common on
Driverless cars common on public roads by 2030? Care to make a bet?
Seeing as they’re already
Seeing as they’re already common in two US cities and Munich is launching a service next year yes I will take your bet.
They will be common in cities/large towns/motorways by 2030.
Unfortunately most people
Unfortunately most people here don’t have a scoobies about the aims of road pricing. The idea is to introduce economic efficiency rather than simply raise revenue at a flat rate, and as such there needs to be an extremely large “congestion charge” element to pricing as opposed to any other element, because congestion is by far the largest externality of car travel.
It would therefore make sense to have a low flat rate fixed cost per mile, and a highly variable rate for location and time of day travelled.
Nige? Garage wrote:
…Shouted some drivers loudly as they and the noise of the vehicles drowned out the dismayed sqeaks of wheelchair users trying to navigate blocked pavements, the muted coughing of the asthmatic, the soft gasps of those with COPD and heart conditions, parents’ peeps of alarm as little Mary toddles towards the road and the tiny wails from those who’ve just been told their loved ones aren’t coming home in the same shape – or at all.
Did I miss anyone? I’m a bit deaf nowadays what with all that congestion.
I’m not sure that economic
I’m not sure that economic efficiency is the aim.
The aim is simply to replace the takings from VED and Fuel Duty, neither of which are specifically designed to increase economic efficiency.
Rich_cb wrote:
You’re correct about fuel duty and VED, but those were blunt tools as we didn’t have the technology to pursue more sophisticated solutions. With GPS and similar we nw have the opportunity to pinpoint congestion and price accordingly. And there’s no reason not to.
Nige? Garage wrote:
Cost of Congestion – £7.9 Billion per year (ref)
Cost of Road Accidents – £15.1 Billion per year, possibly as much as £34.3 Billion (ref)
Cost of Air Pollution From Roads – £10.3 Billion per year for London (ref)
Tom_77 wrote:
I’m talking about real costs, not fake Guardian costs. Congestion is the largest cost. Also both accidents and air pollution are positively correlated with congestion in any case.
Nigel Garage wrote:
If I were to run you over in my car and kill you, there would be no costs (other than the real cost of repairing my car) associated with that? Your life is worthless?
Tom_77 wrote:
Er no, I’m not saying that, I’m saying that congestion is the larger cost than accidents. This is the standard, orthodox, economic position evidenced by voluminous data.
The London congestion zone itself is an example of congestion-based road pricing, but again that’s imperfect, as it isn’t time-based or road-specific. GPS data and big data can solve this.
Tom_77 wrote:
well there might be a £50 fine for causing death by careless driving.
The value of human life
The value of human life should not be equated with money.
Nigel Garage wrote:
Tom’s helpfully supplied statistics (we note you supply none) come from a) INRIX (“INRIX analysed 500 Terabytes of data from 300 million different sources covering over 5 million miles of road. The data used in the 2018 Global Scorecard is the congested or uncongested status of every segment of road for every minute of the day”); b) Department for Transport official report; c) Guardian report on EPHA study using Eurostat data. But because they don’t agree with your somewhat confused points, they are “fake Guardian costs.” Fortunately you have no credibility left to lose round these parts anyway, but still…
Disappointing but
Disappointing but unsurprising that you’re questioning the knowledge of an Economics Masters graduate in favour of a newspaper hack. Anyway, a quick lookup of reliable research shows:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/940960/tag-a5-4-marginal-external-costs.pdf
Page 18 shows the marginal cost (pence) of car travel (KM). As you can see, it is completely unrelated to the fake figures that your mates produced, and shows congestion to produce a far higher negative externality than all other factors combined.
Additionally – as already stated… twice… – accidents, pollution and congestion are all correlated with each other in any case. Target congestion and accidents will reduce in parallel for example.
Nigel Garage wrote:
In fact page 18 shows, and only shows, “Deriving rail diversion factors”. Did they not teach you how to read page numbers on your course?
The study is related to
The paper is related to reducing car kilometres travelled, but the top figures are real estimates of a time series of costs of the various externalities. Anyway, it feels like I’m being drawn in to playing a game of monkey tennis (as per usual) so I’ll leave you to your thoughts. Have a great day.
I’m sure Boo will explain his
I’m sure Boo will explain his mistake in page numbers away and not just run away when shown up again……..Oh
He is so sad, he has had to
He is so sad, he has had to change his username again.
How pathetic is that.
Nigel Garage wrote:
Firstly, a degree don’t mean nuffink. Anyone can get hold of one of those, and it doesn’t mean you can interpret the figures better than a journalist, a vicar or a refuse collector.
Secondly, there is truth in the statement that statistics can be made to say what you want them to say.
And thirdly, you spout so much ridiculous trolling bollocks on here that your reputation is that of being combative, baiting dickhead. If you’re genuinely clever and can construct a reasonable case then why do you resort to that behaviour which results in virtually none of us taking you seriously?
I’m sorry to hear you feel
I’m sorry to hear you feel like that Simon – you’re held in extremely high regard in the Garage household. As I’ve already mentioned, congestion is usually factored as causing between 70 and 80% of car externalities in orthodox Economics, but as you pointed out it’s based on statistics (and interpretable ones at that) which always makes a consensus difficult to achieve.
I’ve never heard of the organisation stated in the Guardian article, which usually means their figures aren’t going to be respected – especially when they have been cherry picked to push a badly motivated newspaper agenda. By contrast, I can point you to the congestion consensus in a number of regarded journals and research papers from the IFS (UK), to NBER (US), to the World Bank and the IMF internationally, through to UK government. Just do a Google search, because to be honest I’m getting bored of spoon feeding this stuff now.
Nigel Garage wrote:
I have absolutely no idea why that would be the case.
— Nigel GarageThe last sentence spoilt what appeared to be a constructive factual contribution.
It’s not “spoon-feeding”, it’s sharing information you have found that the rest of us are likely not privy to. If you don’t want to share it then that seems counterproductive. Even if I did go searching I’d not be confident we both found the same data and may still not be learned enough to interpret it.
Nigel doesn’t like The
Nigel doesn’t like The Guardian, which makes him a good bloke in my book..
Nigel Garage wrote:
Oh, the deep irony of YOU talking about real facts and fake facts…
Oh dear, Nigel. They aren’t
Oh dear, Nigel. They aren’t “Guardian” costs. The Guardian is merely reporting the results of research done by the mobility analytics organisation INRIX Inc. Of course, you know better than they do, right ?
Ah, another tax, which will
Ah, another tax, which will be additional to VED rather than instead of it.
Just what everyone wants, more taxes.
Maybe we should try properly taxing the insanely wealthy to raise the necessary treasury funds?
You raise an issue of fair
You raise an issue of fair taxation according to wealth, whereas this issue is about fair taxation according to road usage for motorised vehicles.
Tire excise taxes are
Tire excise taxes are probably already in place. Tires are being reduced to rubber dust and thats bad. Vehicles supported by them tires are beating the roadways pretty much on a weight basis. Tires are also rated as to durability according to wear and speed ratings. Tires are the most regulated things i can think of; Every aspect is calculated. Our bicycle tires are weighed by the gram, and we would pay tax by weight. Paying the tax would elevate us all to road tax payers and that tax would be based on tire weight or tire weight capacity.
Clever way to defeat
Clever way to defeat motorists that claim cyclists use roads for free but having any form of tax applied to pedal cyclists would be a thin edge of a wedge for further taxation measures.