Radical ideas to improve the travel network for all

🙂

Undo Beechings work to start with and with taxation and incentives force commercial traffic off the road and onto the railways. The country is laced with old lines. Ensure that to do so we have legislation that allows rurl lines to be run to Victorian standards such as fencing and construction. We would lose a few cycle tracks but the greater good would be worth it and the roads would be safer.
Make driving less attractive with speed limits and huge fines for breaking driving laws. Hinder recreational driving. To my mind every motorway should lose a lane each side which become a railway line. Discourage other uses of vehicles. Our shopping habits contribute to the problem. Small village shops and inner city supermarkets please not out of town retail parks. Penalise certain online shopping. I bet most of those vans deliverying are not working at capacity and are never driven economically and thus environmentally. Remove the idea that a car is a right. It won’t work however as people are selfish to their own interest . For example, how many of you who cycle commute then put the bike in the car for recreational use? How many drive commercially? How many do all their shopping on line?

Well, because if a points failure I’m late by 40 mins in a train which means i miss my connection, which means a return journey and a car to finish the journey.

This is why people don’t take the train, it doesn’t work

Agreed but nothing is perfect and a more effective system might work better. Of course you could have been stuck on the M6 for hours with no option to swap.
It has to be about convenience more than cost. For a start, pricing cars out of the game will have the lefties whining and secondly cost won’t stop many people. It will just become a business expense.
I would also like to see hotspots closed. Tourist areas would be one place, also major events. Driving to the NEC or where ever is silly.

And my pet hate. Kids should go to their closest school and the closure of schools should be reversed.
I take it that those who suggest just adding costs to fuel are a) city dwellers and b) well paid. I bet you are also those who preach fairness for all. Rural dwellers have no choice but to travel and public transport doesn’t exist in many cases or not in a realistic manner in others. Sadly. Of course we could just save the countryside for the retired and those in a keyboard pressing profession.

Matt

By shifting subsidy from cars to public transport major changes will come – but this will be slow – a generation

Local shops become more viable so you don’t have to drive to shop. Rural public transport becomes more viable

Ridiculous commutes become less viable so people change their behaviours. Commuter villages will see house prices drop in relation to city housing stopping rural workers from being priced out of living in the area they work in

In fife we have this ridiculous situation where people commute from rural villages into the cities to work but people who work in the rural areas have to live in the big towns and cities as they have been priced out of so end up commuting in the other direction

Facilitation would be a start – out and about i see so many bottlenecks to cycling, walking and mobility scooter use that would take relatively little money to solve and then open up networks. Plus pavement parking 👿 makes walking unpleasant whilst pram pushing, pavement cycling and mobility scooter use becomes impossible.
Can you tell i bought my dad a mobility scooter at the weekend 🙂

bamboo – Member
Offer tax breaks to individuals and companies to encourage working from home. Look at how much easier commuting is during school holidays.

I live in a popular holiday area my commute takes up to 30 minutes longer during school holidays.

By shifting subsidy from cars to public transport major changes will come – but this will be slow – a generation[/I]

TJ, as said previously you continuing to repeat this ‘subsidy’ idea with absolutely NO evidence at all that car drivers are been subsidised is starting to make you sound like a cracked record – please show us the evidence as I can’t find any.

How about banning all privately owned motor vehicles? Business vehicle use could still continue, but everyone would need to figure out how to get to work and utilise their leisure time without their cars.

There’d need to be a pretty stringent enforcement of the rule, and exceptions so that the Equalities Act wasn’t breached and probably similar.

You did ask for radical approaches after all!

BR – you have been shown it many times. Its completely accepted by transport experts but not the roads lobby. Its pointless debating this with you because nothing will get you to accept it.

How about this BR – from the insitute of fiscal studies

“The economic rationale for road pricing is compelling. Road use generates costs which are borne by wider society instead of the motorist”

http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/fuel%20for%20thought%20-%20ifs%20observation%20piece.pdf

in a report for the RAC – so a right wing think tank and a road lobby organisation accept it
.

Road users, particularly road hauliers, do not pay the full cost of road use.

— The road system should be operated on a commercial basis with higher charges, introduced gradually.

— Road users who have relied on long term subsidy will find change difficult and will need education and political understanding.

Taxes and charges paid by motorists (and road hauliers) do not even cover their direct costs by a large margin and fail to pay environmental costs by a larger margin. The independent Royal Commission Report on Environmental Pollution 1994 outlined the degree by which road users failed to pay their true costs by something like 100% and recommended the fuel escalator. Since 1994 road user charges have actually been reduced due to organised opposition by roads interests. Oil may have increased in costs but this is to the advantage of the oil producers rather than increased funds to the road system.

https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmtran/103/103we29.htm

Stop giving cars priority at pedestrian crossings

and cycle path crossings

Well, because if a points failure I’m late by 40 mins in a train which means i miss my connection, which means a return journey and a car to finish the journey.
This is why people don’t take the train, it doesn’t work

Of course the roads never have accidents, roadworks and traffic jams.
What you should have also said is that roads don’t go on strike like train drivers and signalmen. Jimmy Knapp is the single reason I bought a car when I lived in Putney to commute daily.

Re-nationalise trains and buses, increase Council Tax to cover cost of using them by local residents

Don’t need to be nationalised. “State ownership” can also be at a more regional or local level.
Local/regional transport union co-owned by the relevant local and county councils or unitary authorities. Bus, train, tram etc. companies provide services within a single ticketing/fare area. Doesn’t matter where you buy the ticket from, it’s valid on any transport between the start and end fare zone.
TFL, and I imagine manchester are the closest to that (can’t speak for Scotland).
That’s how it’s done in Germany.

Scotland – In Edinburgh and Glasgow the buses are run by council owned arms length companies and have a monopoly in their areas

Looks like we might be able to take scot rail back into state ownership in a similar form now

BR – you have been shown it many times. Its completely accepted by transport experts but not the roads lobby. Its pointless debating this with you because nothing will get you to accept it. [/I]

But again, you are putting all the cost of the roads on the private/business motorist and conveniently forgetting that you need roads for public transport to drive on. So no, not ‘proved’.

From your link:

Q1  What taxes and charges are currently paid to government by road users, how much revenue do they raise and how does this compare with national and local government expenditure on the roads network and ancillary services?
  A1  Road fuel duty and vehicle excise duty are direct charges on road use. VAT on fuel, MOT charges, “ordinary” fuel oil duty, etc. are part of general taxation and not a road user charge. Parking and congestion charges are debatable but probably are road user charges. Traffic regulation infringement penalties are, in principle, not road user charges but possibly should be commercialised or civilianised given the inordinate cost of policing the road system. The evidence, see Q3, is that true road charges fail to pay the costs of the roads by a very large factor, even excluding environmental costs.

So the only things that vehicles owners pay that this accepts as costs are road fuel and VED – no wonder it comes to its conclusions…

I knew that would be your reaction!

a right wing think tank believe it to be true. The RAC have accepted it, the UK government accept it. Its accepted by almost all transport experts.

These “car use is subsidised” reports all seem a little vague to me.

When will drivers start paying the full costs of motoring?

Income from motorists – 48 billion
Expenditure on road – 8-9 billion
Expenditure on external costs – 43-56 billion?

So all of the subsidised arguments rely on quantifying the “external costs” otherwise motorists would be paying way over the odds. This is where it starts to get tricky.

A graph from Carlton

What does “excess delays” mean? A cost associated with being late due to traffic, but a delay compared to what? Driving when there is no traffic? Scraping the all private motor vehicle use and replacing it with something else? How do you calculate a cost for noise? Is that the cost of sound insualation or ear plugs for everyone?

It’s the same in this report…

https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmtran/103/103.pdf

Cost Type Weighted Average (p/km) in 2010
Congestion 13.1
Infrastructure 0.1
Accident 1.5
Local Air Quality 0.4
Noise 0.1
Greenhouse gases 0.3
Indirect tax (fuel duty and VAT on fuel) ” 3.6
Total 11.9

By far the biggest cost is congestion, but theres almost no information on how they calculate that driving 1 mile causes 13p of costs in terms of “congestion” (this is separate from pollution or enviromental damage etc.).

I suspect they just multiply the time by the average wage or something??

These external costs seem absolutely crucial to the arguments but quantifying their effects seems to be glossed over completely.

… and I suspect the reason “congestion” is shown to be so expensive is that these reports were produced while trying to justify road pricing, aka congestion charging.

TJ – wrong again. Unless you count the few SPT run routes (the sole users of electric buses in Glasgow) that First or McGills have slung because the subsidy wasn’t enough. Again, Edinburgh is the exception, not the rule.

Squirrelking? Sorry I though SPT ran all the urban busses in Glasgow as well as the commuter trains. I just checked and you are right. I hadn’t realised as the buses are all still painted as if they belong to the SPT are they not? Not been on a bus in glasgow for a long time – just seeing them on the street.

Ban the school run and change public perceptions about walking so they don’t view walking a mile or 2 each way as some alien concept.

No, the only SPT services are the ones that follow the subway above ground and out to the unprofitable schemes. The rest are mostly First and McGills with a couple of wee operators thrown in the mix. Glasgow buses are a model of everything wrong with deregulation.

As for suburban rail, SPT got out that when they got a hoofing for essentially embezzling public funds, remember the “fact finding” trips to Manchester that just coincidentally fell over the same dates as the Rangers v Man U games? SPT do nothing more than a minibus service and operating the Subway now. Toothless and useless.

Make car doors only open 10 inches wide. That would sort it overnight

Ta squirrelking

Building new and bigger roads isn't working. Watch to find out why: pic.twitter.com/hi4bptdbhK

— CPRE The countryside charity (@CPRE) March 20, 2017

The video on that tweet above is interesting. Basically, building roads causes more traffic and doesn’t create the economic benefits claimed.

Watched Bikes vs Cars[/url] last night. Some interesting stuff in there, not especially in-depth, but shows some of what we’re up against. I was supprised to find out that the system used in the EU for classifying how green a car is, means that a tank is considered more green than a Fiat 500. Wasn’t surprised to discover this is due to lobbying by the car industry.