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Should cyclists pay road tax?

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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?
 
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#100 ·
I have explained my position. My view is that significant improvements to the public realm for cyclists are highly unlikely to happen without some kind of other measures. A contribution from the cyclists themselves is one possible solution.

Re: the poll, I wasn't even going to bother including one because the option for "cycling great, cars evil" would clearly bag most the votes on a site like this. I am however interested in how the vote of those who DO support a cycle tax divides between it being used for targeted expenditure or just falling into a general pot. It's an important distinction already being made by policy makers when discussing the topic. It's pretty clear that the supporters of the tax would like it to be ringfenced for cycle infrastructure spending.

Finally, on the issue of who pays for our roads, that has been covered. I refer you to JGG's posts where he demonstrates the massive subsidy to the exchequer from the motor industry via fuel duty (among other things) and how it vastly exceed road expenditure. Motorists pay for their roads - and a lot of other things besides.
 
#101 ·
Finally, on the issue of who pays for our roads, that has been covered. I refer you to JGG's posts where he demonstrates the massive subsidy to the exchequer from the motor industry via fuel duty (among other things) and how it vastly exceed road expenditure. Motorists pay for their roads - and a lot of other things besides.

What's the total tax revenue from motorists and the total cost of accidents, deaths,injuries, congestion, pollution, damage to infrastructure, disposal of vehicles etc? Do you have any actual figures please?

Can you say how the tax would be levied and collected? What happens if you have two bikes? What happens if you borrow a friend's bike? What about children cycling to school? When you completely ignore these questions it makes it look as though you secretly know your plan is unworkable, illogical and is directly counter to stated government policy of encouraging cycling.

There will never be a cycling tax because not even you can explain how it would work, you may as well campaign for a tax on rain or VAT on poodles.
 
#106 ·
What's the total tax revenue from motorists and the total cost of accidents, deaths,injuries, congestion, pollution, damage to infrastructure, disposal of vehicles etc? Do you have any actual figures please?
Why are you brining in all these vague, unquantifiable costs? I notice you don't include the cost savings of freight delivery. Do you really think your weekly shop would be cheaper if everything was delivered by train and tube? Would you like to be taken to hospital by tube train if you suffered a heart attack? How about the fire brigade takes the 7.32 from waterloo if your house is on fire? Would you like to transport your furniture on the local double decker if you move house?

The revenue from motoring also includes things like parking charges, toll bridges and tunnels, toll roads, parking fines plus the economic activity surrounding servicing, MOTing, repairing and producing motor vehicles.

Like I keep saying, if you like bicycles and want better facilities then fine. But you won't get them if your starting point is an anti car tirade every time. Be pro bicycle and be prepared to contribute to the costs of the facilities you use. Put some of that money you save in fuel to good use for the benefit of others like yourself.
 
#102 ·
To extend the debate beyond "road tax", it is true that in total motorists pay more than just VED: revenue from fuel duty in 2004/05 was £23bn (Table 7.15 in DfT 2006, 129).





Does this additional taxation mean that drivers pay a fair price after all?

To make a meaningful comparison, if we take into account these additional taxes on motorists, we must also take into account the wider cost of motor vehicles to the economy as a whole.

The economic cost of road accidents, for example, was estimated in 2004 to be some £18bn per year (DfT 2004, 5) and the cost to the British economy of road traffic congestion was estimated to be £20bn, rising to £30bn by 2010 (Goodwin 2004, 2).


In 1998 it was calculated that between 12,000 and 24,000 deaths may be may "brought forward" each year in the UK as a result of air pollution, and that between 14,000 and 24,000 hospital admissions annually result from poor air quality (COMEAP 1998), to which road transport is by far the largest single contributor (FoE 1999, 1), and although the resulting economic cost is not estimated it must be considerable.


In this light, and without even factoring in the less easily established costs of damage to wildlife, noise pollution, contribution to climate change, and end-of-life disposal of motor vehicles, it is already clear that motorists do not currently pay anything like the full cost of motoring.

http://www.jake-v.co.uk/content/54.php

Motorists are freeloaders, subsidised by the rest of the population.
 
#107 ·
You really do need to learn to chill out a bit and take more nuanced look at the world.

Motorists are the majority of the population and pay other taxes.

Cyclists and public transport users also receive subsidies in different ways so most transport users are freeloaders by your definition, subsidised by each other.

Motorists, cyclists and public transport users are more often than not the same people.

Costs to the economy of congestion is the cost of time lost due to traffic delays.

A portion of the damages caused by accidents are recovered from insurance.

This is not the Baku planet from Star Trek: Insurrection.
 
#105 ·
ah yes freight that old forum favourite straw man.

Boxes! Even more easily managed than humans but you wouldn't have guessed.

Some people still have the modernist dream of fruit and veg travelling at 70mph through the streets.

As long as its all whizzing past those mock-traditionalist facades of course ;)

Keep the humans moving like cattle on the tiny pavements, tax the cyclists who dare to get in the way so that the boxes can be free!
 
#114 ·
Well actually British cities and especially London are traffic calmed to death. Speed bumps, chicanes and islands are increasing in their numbers even on main trunk roads. Traffic volumes in cities have actually been decreasing but congestion has been on the increase. In continental European cities you are far more likely to find 3x2 main roads with little to no traffic calming. There are far more cars on the roads of Paris and Berlin than on those in London.
 
#115 · (Edited)
well traffic calming is just an extra expense on top of the huge expense of converting the towns and cities to try and accommodate a car culture and when they realised actually we have just turned all the residential streets from social play areas to danger zones, we had to pay for an expensive hack.
 
#116 ·
Yesterday the City Of London proposed a 20 mph limit for the whole of The Square Mile:

the City of London which earlier today approved a budget to investigate the benefits (or 'disbenefits' as the report calls them) of applying a 20mph speed limit across the whole of the Square Mile.

What is particularly interesting about the investigation is that the City intends to review a broad but important range of possible outcomes. These include:

The impact on average and maximum journey times for all users (so far so expected)
The impact on the frequency and severity of road traffic collisions (again, fairly expected)
The impact on air and noise quality from various types of emissions from motor vehicles (as above)

But then, interestingly, the City includes a couple of categories that go slightly beyond these usual measures:

The City officers say that they would like to measure the impact of 20mph on enabling people to shift from private motor vehicles to cycling, walking or public transport. Very specifically, in other words, the Square Mile is trying to work out whether by creating a 20mph environment, it can create a space in the centre of London that actively encourages more walking, more cycling and more use of public transport. The City expects to see "continuing strong growth in the numbers of pedestrians and the numbers of cyclists; and therefore in the proportion of City road traffic that these groups comprise".

This is quite an interesting approach. The theory being that if motor vehicle speeds are lower, more people might feel the streets are safer to cycle on, which in turn might lead to fewer motor vehicles on the streets in the first place.
http://cyclelondoncity.blogspot.co.uk/

The main roads are down to TFL so wouldn't be affected. I think it's a great idea, it should apply to Soho and Fitzrovia too, a much more civilised urban environment.
 
#120 ·
Yesterday the City Of London proposed a 20 mph limit for the whole of The Square Mile:



http://cyclelondoncity.blogspot.co.uk/

The main roads are down to TFL so wouldn't be affected. I think it's a great idea, it should apply to Soho and Fitzrovia too, a much more civilised urban environment.
There is no reason why Soho shouldn't be 100% pedestrianised, it kills me whenever I go abroad and see huge areas handed over to outside eating, drinking, and obviously smoking.

Instead we have crammed pavements with tiny smoking areas pushing people onto the roads, whilst taxi's, vans and private cars race down the street, usually slamming the brakes on every 5 seconds.

Pedestrianisation of Old Compton Street with a cycle lane through the middle would work wonders here.. Westminster council need to open their eyes. The rest of the world is moving on and theres a chance in 15 years time London will be left behind.
 
#117 ·
This works, they did it in Portsmouth. Dual Carriageway roads are still 30 but everything else is 20. That's probably why Portsmouth is so good for cyclists. They even lowered the Motorway to 50.

In Londons case, we aren't realistically going to get rid of trunks like Euston, just as we still have Winston Churchill Avenue down here*. Cutting the speed limit on Euston to 30 would go a long way in making it more cycle friendly, 20 for surrounding roads.

*It creates a huge barrier between Southsea and the City Centre and they demolished swathes of stunning cityscape to build it :( I can't see a way to get rid of it though, much as I would like to see it gone.
 
#127 ·
Reductio ad absurdum.

Between restricting the use of motor vehicles in London, reducing speed limits and increasing pedestrianisation, you see no increments in changes between the status quo and sedan chairs?

Oxford Street is London’s most dangerous street, with 35 times the number of accidents when compared with the average London street. With over 1000 bus-pedestrian accidents since 2000 and over 200 people seriously-injured London seems to be dragging its heels over what should be a human rights issue.

I can't do the Danish alphabet so sorry if I spell it wrong, but Stroget turned fifty this year:

In the early 1960's Strøget, the main street running east-west through the city centre, became quite famous. It was closed off to cars and transformed into a pedestrian zone.

There were protests back then. Cries of "we're not Italians! We don't want to walk!" were heard in the city. Shopkeepers feared for their businesses. Fortunately, the idea was implemented and the architect and urban planner Jan Gehl was instrumental in making it happen.

This was a turning point in the modern life of Copenhagen. Cars were taking over, fewer people were cycling and the city was congested and polluted. Visionary political decision-making and urban planning was needed and it arrived.

Since then, Copenhagen hasn't looked back. The fears of the shopkeepers were soon allayed - indeed there is nowhere in the world where pedestrian zones or bike lanes have caused commerce to suffer.

These two urban planning instruments only serve to increase the number of pedestrians and act as a form of traffic calming.

Streets become, quite simply, nicer places to be.
Before:



After:



When Strøget in Copenhagen was changed into a pedestrian street in 1962, it was after much debate and with considerable reservations. If, at the time, anyone had predicted that the city center would have six times as many carfree areas 34 years later, and that car traffic and parking possibilities would be substantially reduced, it would have been met with a great deal of skepticism. That life in the city center could flourish markedly would simply have been too unbelievable.
 
#136 ·
Flat screen TV's produce over 680kg of CO2 per year. Modern cars produce that for each 5,000 miles travelled. I doubt a city centre driver would cover anything near that in a year. Do a bit of googling and you will see that a fuel efficient car has about the same annual carbon footprint as a modern TV. TV's now produce 4 times as much CO2 as they did prior to flatscreen tech while cars produce roughly half of their pre fuel efficient models.

So, they are both as bad as each other and one is improving while the other is getting worse. Why arent the eco warriors out there banging on windows and berating people for watching television and destroying the planet? Then add the fact that a hell of a lot of people have more than one television plus a PC. Modern refigerators produce the same CO2 as a television and older models are worse. Shouldn't we all be outraged that people stocking up on cheap frozen food are destroying the planet?

No.....it's just cars cars cars cars cars. I'm assuming nobody here owns TV or a fridge and everyone buys local sourced food? If not, they have no right to criticise anyone for driving a car on the grounds of their carbon footprint.

The ONLY argument is aesthetics which basically makes car haters NIMBYs :)
 
#139 ·
How do you know that? Some of your assumptions about why cars are bad is because drivers are fat and lazy and unhealthy. Is sitting in front of a TV healthy and life extending?

Look at the conditions sweatshop workers suffer producing these things as well.

If you have been on a single flight this year BTW you have produced the same amount of CO2 as driving to Edinburgh and back 350 times. I assume you never fly anywhere?
 
#143 ·
Rigghhhttt I have no idea what you are trying to say by listing various dislocated bad things!

And if the only carbon footprint was air travel then we would be in much less precarious position in regards to C02 emissions. However city pollution has always been more concerned about the direct health issues such as a variety of biological pollutants.

Londons economy is based around mass footfall (retail leisure and tourism) and prestigious knowledge and creative industries which cluster and demand face to face interaction in an attractive environment.

The city has pioneered and invested in a vast mass transit system over the past 100 plus years to enable people to get about without causing congestion so it just needs to keep pushing forward with new innovations and build on its strengths to offer an attractive environment to be in, you know as a human.
 
#140 ·
Octoman - I think your playing dumb on purpose here, you're as far as I'm aware a clever guy who can surely see the difference in what is being discussed.

Lets face it, you like your car and want to drive it around despite what it is doing to the environment, and by that I don't just mean 'eco-warrior' I mean the visual environment and noise pollution all that have damaged the city.

If you look at old and now photos of many cities, the architecture hasnt changed all that much at all - what has changed is the amount of space/furniture/roads given over to the motor vechicle which have ripped the heart out of entertainment and shopping districts.
 
#141 ·
Just done a bit of 'research'. 153 pedestrians died in car accidents last year. 4 times as many people die falling down the stairs each year. Should we ban stairs?

Respiratory diseases due to external agents is 3,198 which is what I assume you refer to - although that covers all external agents not just cars. It seems a bit harsh to assign 60% of the deaths to just car drivers when we have so many other sources of pollution (including voluntary ones like smoking) in that statistic but even giong with the 2,000 estimate over 12 times as many people died from flu last year!

 
#142 ·
Works in Manhattan:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/plazas_weet_for_city_biz_mJqQxwLn4BnFAxB0VGhNNO

Pedestrian plazas and bike lanes may be annoying for drivers — but they’ve been a bonanza for businesses, according to a new Department of Transportation study.

Retail sales around the DOT’s very first pedestrian plaza on Pearl Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn — which was transformed from a dingy parking lot in 2007 — increased by 172 percent three years after it opened, according to a DOT analysis of tax receipts.
 
#146 ·
right so why are you so against making the various centres London a more attractive place to be, to visit and to spend time in? This is after all the core function of an urban economy. London is going to get so much competition over the next 50 years it really needs to constantly innovate and improve.

I really have no idea where this obsession and desire to maintain basically a British 1970s streetscape comes from. It is utterly bizarre.
 
#149 ·
right so why are you so against making the various centres London a more attractive place to be, to visit and to spend time in? This is after all the core function of an urban economy. London is going to get so much competition over the next 50 years it really needs to constantly innovate and improve.
More attractive based on what? Surely what you mean to say is more attractive to YOU. Removing cars will fit in more with the type of London that suits your personal preferences. Others however have different values or priorities.

As has been said, the city is for everyone and not everyone has the same likes and dislikes.

it shouldnt be stored on the street!!!!!
Again, I think what you mean to say is that it shouldn't HAVE to be stored on the street. I agree. Parking facilities need to be improved in London and new builds should provide parking spaces for at least one car per dwelling. Building flats without parking leads to the kinds of issues you are complaining about.
 
#147 ·
Oh well Octoman you continue to be all for cars and the status quo as the rest of the world and its urban planners and studies saying we need to move away from cars are all just wrong you know? Octoman for Mayor yeahlol!

For an urban and architecture forum it is incredibly worrying the numbers here who have a rather twisted logic of contemporary urban and architecture studies.
 
#170 ·
There is a problem that needs to be resolved first. The Tube seems to only work during office hours. In order to cater for those entertainment bits, it needs to be more reliable as a service in the wee hours.

It is offputting for some people to need to get a taxi or navigate the treacherous limited network of night buses. So they'll just drive instead. And even if they don't, taxis and buses uses the roads too.

And if people are dressing up to go to the theatre, or a fancy bar, of whatever, they're not going to cycle.
 
#175 ·
Also how many people drive into central London for a night out? apart from the few (very very few) people who go to the theatre.

Also there's a hilarious scheme by Westminster council which helps you with car parking charges if you're coming to watch a show in the West End. I'm not even kidding.
 
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