Privatising Britain's motorways

[bazza667]

Originally Posted by ravenseft

It would never fly with the electorate. Just imagine those Daily Mail headlines...

The British electorate seem happy to pay to watch broadcast TV though no one else in the world does that
Almost everyone else in world has tolled roads

[kerouac1848]

A TV licence is still common in the majority of European states.

[ravenseft]

Originally Posted by sirfreelancealot

But motorists pay so much tax that could fund roads and public transport and have shedloads of change. Comparing public transport with motoring is an apples and oranges exercise anyway

Not sure that is true. Both motorists and rail users use facilities which are subsidised by the taxpayer.

Roads cost around £100bn per year, while rail industry costs were £11bn in 2010-11.

Funding for roads comes via fuel duty (c£30bn p/a), vehicle excise duty (£5.63bn p/a), council tax and congestion charging in certain cities.

Funding for rail is via the fare box (£6.6bn p/a), other income such as freight (£1.0bn p/a) and taxpayers' subsidy (£4.0bn p/a).

It can fairly be said that the subsidies to road transport far exceed those to rail. In fact...

Excluding environmental costs, road transport enjoys about 40 times the subsidy paid to rail but carries only about 15 times the quantity of passenger and freight. This imbalance distorts the market, resulting in reduced transport efficiency, higher total transport costs and traffic congestion. It also causes inappropriate investment decisions in favour of roads building instead of expanding the railway system.

[Rational Plan]

Originally Posted by ravenseft

Not sure that is true. Both motorists and rail users use facilities which are subsidised by the taxpayer.

Roads cost around £100bn per year, while rail industry costs were £11bn in 2010-11.

Funding for roads comes via fuel duty (c£30bn p/a), vehicle excise duty (£5.63bn p/a), council tax and congestion charging in certain cities.

Funding for rail is via the fare box (£6.6bn p/a), other income such as freight (£1.0bn p/a) and taxpayers' subsidy (£4.0bn p/a).

It can fairly be said that the subsidies to road transport far exceed those to rail. In fact...

There are some rather heroic financial assumptions in that oh so neutral analysis. I mean £32 billion from requiring a yield of 8% on return on assets. Let me have some of that action as it makes investing in property look pathetic.

Somehow parking should cost us another £7 billion and environmental damage at £24 billion. All those figures are frankly bullshit. That paper also uses road expenditure from 1993 as it's base, before the conservatives slashed their roads to prosperity project in 1994 and the even bigger cuts by Labour in 1997, and from which the roads budget has remained flat on its back.

[sirfreelancealot]

Originally Posted by ravenseft

Not sure that is true. Both motorists and rail users use facilities which are subsidised by the taxpayer.

Roads cost around £100bn per year, while rail industry costs were £11bn in 2010-11.

Funding for roads comes via fuel duty (c£30bn p/a), vehicle excise duty (£5.63bn p/a), council tax and congestion charging in certain cities.

Funding for rail is via the fare box (£6.6bn p/a), other income such as freight (£1.0bn p/a) and taxpayers' subsidy (£4.0bn p/a).

It can fairly be said that the subsidies to road transport far exceed those to rail. In fact...

£100 million subsidy? That will be the eco-propagandist perspective then given the source. By the same token this must mean that my gas and electricity bills are heavily subsidised so that I can keep warm in winter, watch the telly and use my PC. Given the number of people that fall from ladders, the £30 or so to buy a pair from B&Q must be a fraction of their real cost then? I'm sure also that the real cost of rail, with delays and knock on effects to businesses, the joy of standing in carriages etc is fully factored into the comparison?

[DeepThought]

To be fair, the £100bn is the total cost, not the subsidy. But that report is both woefully out of date and horribly biased. 1993/4 is almost 20 years ago! I'm very heavily Pro-public-transport but resorting to that kind of inaccurate analysis, if anything, just weakens the case.

A quick glance at the Government budget shows that DafT's budget is only £22bn in total, but that will exclude local council spending on roads. Does anyone know where to get more detailed figures? A breakdown of excise duty incomes (£46bn), which I assume include fuel duty, would also be useful.

[Steel City Suburb]

Im for road pricing on certain motorways but against privatisation.

Road pricing could manage the capacity of our busiest motorways.

[Rational Plan]

Originally Posted by DeepThought

To be fair, the £100bn is the total cost, not the subsidy. But that report is both woefully out of date and horribly biased. 1993/4 is almost 20 years ago! I'm very heavily Pro-public-transport but resorting to that kind of inaccurate analysis, if anything, just weakens the case.

A quick glance at the Government budget shows that DafT's budget is only £22bn in total, but that will exclude local council spending on roads. Does anyone know where to get more detailed figures? A breakdown of excise duty incomes (£46bn), which I assume include fuel duty, would also be useful.

But they are not really costs if the bill does not actually show up anywhere though. We can argue abut the true environmental cost, but all those other figures don't show up anywhere in the real world.

In the year 2007-08 spending on rail was £8.2 billion and total road spending
was £8.3 billion.


During the same period total passenger km was 59 billion for rail and 749 billion for road


This meant total spending per 1000 passenger km was £138.7 for rail and £11.1 for road. Therefore rail transport received 10 times more spending per passenger km compared to road transport.

There was a similar pattern in freight transport, where rail received eight times more spending per tonne kilometre.

Motorists pay £30.3 billion in Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty, £18.4 billion more than the combined total cost of road transport greenhouse gas emissions and road spending.

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/transportspending.pdf

These figures can not be dismissed just because they came from the tax payers alliance, the figures are drawn from the governments own accounts.

[Engels]

I'm all for shadow tools and DBFO (Design Build Finance Operate) contracts but not any thing that resembles the farce that is the M6 Toll - lets learn the lessons of why that has failed to relieve congestion or promote any real spin off economic growth along is corridor - put simply premium routes don't save the motorist enough time of their journey add real economic value that the user will pay for

In contrast the M40 is very effectively managed and the shadow toll system works really well - no nasty unwanted side effects or inefficient travel patterns - more of this would be welcome

[DeepThought]

Originally Posted by Rational Plan

But they are not really costs if the bill does not actually show up anywhere though. We can argue abut the true environmental cost, but all those other figures don't show up anywhere in the real world.
...
These figures can not be dismissed just because they came from the tax payers alliance, the figures are drawn from the governments own accounts.

I had a thought about this over the weekend. I'm not going to dismiss those figures, mainly because my browser won't open that link But does it include the cost of buying, maintaining and insuring a car in the costs of motoring? I know many people actually look forward to spending money on a car, and it gets amortised over a few years, but it is definitely part of the total price of travelling from A to B via road. Once that's included, I have a hunch that rail ends up competitive on a per passenger mile basis. Spending is spending, whether it's done by the public or private sector.

Originally Posted by Engels

I'm all for shadow tolls and DBFO (Design Build Finance Operate)

While I'm not totally averse to these kinds of contract there is the large problem of borrowing being much, much more expensive for Private companies than the Government. We've just seen the problems with this manifest on the contract for new Thameslink trains - Bombardier lost the contract because they have a lower credit rating than Siemens and hence higher borrowing costs. If the Government was providing the cash up front the trains would still be being built in the UK

[Glom]

But admit it. Siemens trains are better.

[DeepThought]

To be honest, I don't have a clue which are the better trains. But that wasn't what the decision was made on - Bombardier's credit rating ruled it out almost immediately, despite only being a notch below Siemen's if memory serves.

[Rational Plan]

Bombardier trains break down. Siemans trains are lardbuts that guzzle electricity.

[heatonparkincakes]

Forget trains.

I listened to BBC Radio 4's Any Questions this weekend and heard cabinet minister Francis Maude says he was instinctively a libertarian,

I am sure he thinks he is, but as often with the right wing bastardized form of an essentially leftist ideal, the Tory version is selective.

As another spoken aspect of toll roads is Big Corporate Brother has another way to track Mr and Ms Average.

Bad.

Instinctively un libertarian Tory boys.

[WatcherZero]

Originally Posted by DeepThought

To be honest, I don't have a clue which are the better trains. But that wasn't what the decision was made on - Bombardier's credit rating ruled it out almost immediately, despite only being a notch below Siemen's if memory serves.

Its generally accepted in the industry that the Siemens offer was better than Bombardier on all fronts not just cost. All the noise is coming from the union and local council.

[DeepThought]

Fair enough, I stand corrected on the reasons about why Siemens won. Point about higher Private Sector borrowing costs still stands though

[streetquark]

Originally Posted by DeepThought

Yup. Although apparently the Chinese were mooted as buyers. I wasn't aware that they donated to the Tories.

Don't forget the budget. Cameron probably wanted some headlines for himself rather than letting Oiky Osborne hog the limelight.

The Chinese might be the investors. The former government ministers will have a cushy job on the board of the new road trusts paid for by the taxpayer through grants. But at least jo public will not see that those roads are subsidised.

Originally Posted by Steel City Suburb

Im for road pricing on certain motorways but against privatisation.

Road pricing could manage the capacity of our busiest motorways.

Restricting vehicle users on motorways by pricing them out will surely damage the economy and force them onto non-tollway alternatives.

[robbierunciman]

Motorways are designed as high volume roads and are explicitly for motor vehicles - surely they should always be free - the cars are where we want them. I always think this when some moron suggests concreting Kent countryside to not big enough parking lot for international lorries during operation stack (when there are no ferries), so that some fat councillor and a few locals can get from the little town of Dover to Maidstone.

Surely it is better to impose tolls on roads where there is congestion and/or alternatives? Air quality is poor in cities and there is a better rationale for tolls on cars particularly polluting sooty diesels in these circumstances. Maint of roads and the management of the system could still be outsourced like they plan for motorways

[WatcherZero]

You been around Cambridge? pretty scary non-segregated bike lanes on a major dual carriage with cars doing 60mph.