SkyscraperCity Forum banner

Should cyclists pay road tax?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Should cyclists in London pay some kind of road tax?

25K views 321 replies 34 participants last post by  ill tonkso 
#1 ·
This is a topic that has been cropping up repeatedly in the media over the past few months.

The mayor isn't considering it at the moment but he did concede on the radio the other week that if the revenue raised could be ringfenced for building proper, segregated cycle lanes it might have some merit.

I doubt politicians would do this - they all want to paint themselves as ultra green, eco friendly cycling fanatics. however, this might be the answer to getting some real progress on the cycle infrastructure here.


Bicycles and cars don't mix. In fact, slow moving transport and fast moving transport dont and shouldn't mix. Cyclists in London are in constant danger and pose a menace to other road users.

We could raise funds from cyclists to build them the segregated cycleways they need. Once they are in place cyclists should only be allowed to use roads where no alternative exists. Everyone ends up with what they want, everyone is a winner.

Agree?
 
See less See more
#59 ·
Car tax is based on amount of CO2 emitted so, if a fee had to be paid, cyclists - who are sometimes branded as 'tax dodgers' - would pay the same as 'tax-dodgers' such as disabled drivers, police cars, the Royal family, and band A motorists, ie £0.

No road tax:



No road tax:



No road tax:



No road tax:



No road tax:



No road tax:



No road tax:



No road tax:




I expect you have a go at the drivers of those vehicles and tell them "You don't pay road tax!"
 
#62 ·
should you want to indulge - the drill is to lurk discreetly, engage eye contact, and then pay for the shoes she is trying on - kerb crawling sloane street style - a huge number are escorts for whom this works.

of course you might just get a non working girl like myself who merely wants a free pair of shoes and will swan out with them after you've coughed up. done it a few times, always a laugh - trying to get in the lift a bit quick.

beware of knightsbridge girls - it isn't just divorce settlements we're after :lol:

although i've never heard of the 'cafe rogue' - presumably the person means cafe rouge.
 
#65 ·
Let's assume scouseinmanc isn't trolling and he really does want cyclists to pay VED.

How would it work?

If a VED-paying driver leaves the car at home and cycles in, does he or she get a refund? After all, they've already paid!

What about children? Does scouseinmanc really want to tax children for having the temerity of using a bike to get to class?

Who enforces the rule? How much would it cost to implement the tax? How much is the tax?

Nobody can answer these questions because it's ridiculous idea, you might as well try to ban the word "Thursday" or make cheese illegal.
 
#69 ·
I find that difficult to believe. I don't think I've ever met anyone or heard anyone express a desire to cycle coupled with a crippling fear of death stopping them from doing it. People just generally don't want to be peddling a bike in mostly shitty weather when they can be sat on their arse in a nice comfortable car.
 
#73 ·
I will say though, Cycle to work and you feel so much more alert and motivated. It really does wake you up. I stopped Cycling because I need to take my Bike for repairs. Just not got around to it.

If I lived on the Island again, I wouldn't use any other form of transport (unless I was leaving the city, and then it's train). There really is no excuse not to Cycle in Portsmouth if you are fit to do so (my friend has Epilepsy so is driven to work, this is a good example of those who DO need a car).
 
#76 ·
Every time we use the tube we pay for it, even if the tube is empty. The government tops up our fares with generous subsidies.

I would like to pay a cycling tax if the money raised were topped up by government subsidies and all invested into some decent cycling infrastructure, which currently does not exist in London (other than for blue coloured asphalt).

We should be able to direct much more of our tax towards what we want to get in return for it.

Today everybody is paying tax for some useless wars and how many people complain about that?

Furthermore, as road tax and petrol duty far exceed what is spent on roads, instead of it going to general government expenditure, should be spent on cycling infrastructure so that more car drivers will leave their car at home and cycle.

Cycling is the cheapest way for the government to fight congestion, much cheaper than building tube lines, yet it does not promote it in any way.

For me cycling in London remains a week-end hobby and is not a serious transport alternative because it is just too dangerous considering the many junctions I have to navigate. Cycling tax or no tax, one needs to start to invest in something beyond blue asphalt. And yes I believe it is so important I'd gladly pay tax for it.
 
#77 ·
ill tonkso said:
I will say though, Cycle to work and you feel so much more alert and motivated. It really does wake you up. I stopped Cycling because I need to take my Bike for repairs. Just not got around to it.

If I lived on the Island again, I wouldn't use any other form of transport (unless I was leaving the city, and then it's train). There really is no excuse not to Cycle in Portsmouth if you are fit to do so (my friend has Epilepsy so is driven to work, this is a good example of those who DO need a car).
Or a bus/train/taxi ?
 
#82 ·
What a depressing read this has been. This sums it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Fyj2GMxgo

"No pay, no say"

What a crock.

Well done above for pointing out that so called 'road tax' isn't paid by quite a lot of cars either.

I suppose they also have 'no say'.

Say or no say, what the **** gives someone the right to behave dangerously to other road users because they consider that they have 'no say'?

For goodness sake, what does it matter what machinery we are on or in? Can't we all be a bit more civil to each other?
 
#83 ·
Cyclists are prepared to pay to cycle in central London as evidenced by the uptake of the pay for use cycle hire scheme. We should leverage this by placing a cycle tax on the central London areas to invest in better cycling facilities. Rightly or wrongly these facilities will not be built any other way. Cyclists will continue to get killed sharing the roads with buses, lorries and cars or just disrupt traffic flow.

Cyclists fall into two broad categories. The first are mindless zealots who think that they are special because they travel on a human powered mechanical contraption and that irrespective of any other factor in their lives consider themselves superior. I consider them basic people and I couldn't care less about their opinions.

The other category are ordinary people who simply prefer to cycle and are in no way self obsessed. These people deserve to be listened to and be helped to cycle safely. They would be more likely to work collectively to find a funding solution, part of which may or may not come from a cycle tax.

I do think it is overdue that cyclist pay for insurance. Perhaps an insurance scheme can be devised that includes an infrastructure component.
 
#85 ·
None of that is going to happen, your argument is based on a profound ignorance about how roads are paid for, you cannot find a single example of a cyclist causing an unrecoverable loss and you are as prejudiced and ill-informed as a common-or-garden racist who thinks black people should pay an afro-tax.

And cyclists are traffic, congestion is caused by vehicles, not cyclists, your rantings are a symptom of a dumbed-down x factor obsessed hate-filled Britain.
 
#87 ·
I'm basing my opinion of him as disturbingly ignorant and prejudiced on the load of old trousers he's writing here. The idea that cyclists can be categorised into two groups is laughable, a third of the population have a bike, there are as many different types as there are drivers.

That octoman's prejudice is similar to racism is a noted aspect of people's attitudes towards "out-groups":

A report from the Transport Research Laboratory and University of Strathclyde a few years ago led by Lynn Basford (PDF via tinyurl.com/7qk877b) suggested that there’s some classic social psychology at work here – cyclists represent an outgroup such that the usual outgroup effects are seen, particularly overgeneralisation of negative behaviour and attributes – ‘They all ride through red lights all the time’. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that something of this sort is going on.

However, there has to be more to it than just this. For a long time I wondered if the outgroup status of cyclists was compounded by two other known social psychological factors: norms and majority vs. minority groups. Not only are cyclists an outgroup, they’re also a minority outgroup. Moreover, they are engaging in an activity that is deemed slightly inappropriate in a culture that views driving as normative and desirable and, arguably, views cycling as anti-conventional and possibly even infantile.

But even adding these factors into the mix does not explain all the anger that cyclists experience. It’s easy to identify other minority outgroups whose behaviour similarly challenges social norms but who do not get verbally and physically attacked like cyclists do: vegetarians, for example. So there’s clearly one or more important variables that we’ve not identified yet. Any social psychologists looking for a challenge are very welcome to wade into this.
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=25&editionID=217&ArticleID=2136
 
#89 ·
I cycle and drive , about 50/50. Cyclists should be compeled by law to wear a helmet and high viz - and fined if they don't. Drivers shold stop whinging ( probably because they are lazy fay fooks who feel shamed and confused by peoples willingness to make a physical effort to get from A to B) and take a lot more care in looking out for people on bikes. Cyclists should not have to pay a road tax - maybe people found to have a car but no bike should pay double as they no doubt conjest traffic all the time!
 
#103 ·
I cycle and drive , about 50/50. Cyclists should be compeled by law to wear a helmet and high viz - and fined if they don't.
that is exactly the same attitude that created the whole post war urban mess in the first place!

Urban segregation with the sole purpose of increasing the speed of human controlled motor vehicles to an infinite value but could never work because of the guarantees of congestion and human error!

human controlled motor vehicles above a certain speed need such high safety margins that over the past 50 years we spent billions upon billions of pounds re-organising every urban environment in the country to achieve an ill-thought vision of a motor vehicle economy.

In the city it didn't work. No one likes the result, there is still congestion, traffic speed is as slow as it was 100 years ago, people are unhappy about their urban environment, social cohesion of the neighbourhood and child play is at an all time low.

And to scrape back the money and to keep an unresolved status quo, Octoman wants to tax cyclists! No grasp of the crux of the problems, no vision of how our urban environment can be even on an internet forum.
 
#90 ·
High-vis should be a legal requirement for on-road cycling I totally agree. Especially at night.

There was a cyclist on Traffic Cops who was killed. Cycling at night, no lights, black jacket, no helmet. Not to sully the poor guys name but this should be used as an example of the dangers.
 
#92 ·
It isn't over-regulation, hi-vis at night is a no brainer. I used to cycle without a hi-vis jacket and I wonder now what the hell I was thinking. On quiet residential streets you are usually easy to see, but this is not always the case. Plus, if someone DOES hit you you can sue them into the ground.
 
#94 ·
I think people would be mad not to wear high visibility clothes at night (whether a pedestrian on a dark country road or on a bike), but I don't think making laws is the solution either.

All vehicles are supposed to be fitted with lights. If you're travelling down a road which is dark, then you might encounter a pedestrian, so you should be travelling at an appropriate speed and paying attention to the possibility of people walking or cycling who aren't as easy to see as a car.

I know that people often drive cars at night fast on the basis that the headlights of other cars are easy to see. It reminds me of pedestrians looking only with their ears when deciding to cross the road.

These drivers don't think about other road users. They're not 'bad people'. They just rarely encounter other road users in such situations other than cars, and so when occasionally they have a near miss with said other road user, they tend to put the blame on them, which I think is wrong. Nevertheless, there will always be inattentive drivers and there will always be people who drive too quickly for the visibility they have. That's why I wear high-vis gear if I'm walking back from the pub along a country lane or am on my bike. It's also why I've got a white car :)

What we want is a significant change in the landscape (literally and metaphorically).

We want:

* Councils that actually understand what safe cycling conditions are, and how to change the roads to make this happen. (See below) The dutch and germans can teach us a thing or 20. Force all councillors to cycle to work if they are able... that might help! (Joke)
* Road users (of all types) to relax a little bit, make space for each other, and stop blaming other people for their frustrations when trying to get to work or back
* An end to the pig-headed idea that if someone doesn't pay vehicle excise duty, then they should just have to take rude or dangerous behaviour on the chin

Croydon council decided to leave this massively wide road alone and instead inflict this disgrace of a cycle lane on the residents:



There would have been local uproar had that sort of stupidity affected car drivers. We have to stop accepting this sort of thing, otherwise we'll never reap the benefits of increasing the number of journeys made by bike - benefits that will be felt by all types of road user.
 
#118 ·
I think people would be mad not to wear high visibility clothes at night (whether a pedestrian on a dark country road or on a bike), but I don't think making laws is the solution either.

All vehicles are supposed to be fitted with lights. If you're travelling down a road which is dark, then you might encounter a pedestrian, so you should be travelling at an appropriate speed and paying attention to the possibility of people walking or cycling who aren't as easy to see as a car.

I know that people often drive cars at night fast on the basis that the headlights of other cars are easy to see. It reminds me of pedestrians looking only with their ears when deciding to cross the road.

These drivers don't think about other road users. They're not 'bad people'.
They just rarely encounter other road users in such situations other than cars, and so when occasionally they have a near miss with said other road user, they tend to put the blame on them, which I think is wrong. Nevertheless, there will always be inattentive drivers and there will always be people who drive too quickly for the visibility they have. That's why I wear high-vis gear if I'm walking back from the pub along a country lane or am on my bike. It's also why I've got a white car :)

What we want is a significant change in the landscape (literally and metaphorically).

We want:

* Councils that actually understand what safe cycling conditions are, and how to change the roads to make this happen. (See below) The dutch and germans can teach us a thing or 20. Force all councillors to cycle to work if they are able... that might help! (Joke)
* Road users (of all types) to relax a little bit, make space for each other, and stop blaming other people for their frustrations when trying to get to work or back
* An end to the pig-headed idea that if someone doesn't pay vehicle excise duty, then they should just have to take rude or dangerous behaviour on the chin

Croydon council decided to leave this massively wide road alone and instead inflict this disgrace of a cycle lane on the residents:



There would have been local uproar had that sort of stupidity affected car drivers. We have to stop accepting this sort of thing, otherwise we'll never reap the benefits of increasing the number of journeys made by bike - benefits that will be felt by all types of road user.
so the same can be said about cyclists or pedestrians. some are just idiots. not every accident involving a car and a bicycle will be the fault of the car driver. there is also, as most people including you have pointed out, a huge crossover between drivers/cyclists/pedestrians - they are the same person, they are each other. the whole argument is ridiculous.

that picture is not in croydon. on your own link it says 'stretford bus stop' which is i think, in manchester.
 
#98 ·
Octoman, you are about as neutral as citric acid. The way you phrased the question on the front page was probably the most biased and loaded way possible. Short of saying "Should murdering cyclists be given free reign to destroy the world?", it's hard to imagine how you could have made the question more biased.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top