Should cyclists in London pay some kind of road tax?

[spindrift]

Originally Posted by Octoman

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.

[spindrift]

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.

[potto]

Originally Posted by randolph

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.

[ill tonkso]

That takes no account of the economic benefits of road freight.

[potto]

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!

[Octoman]

Originally Posted by spindrift

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.

[Glom]

Originally Posted by spindrift

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

Motorists are freeloaders, subsidised by the rest of the population.

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.

[cnapan]

Originally Posted by Octoman

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.

It isn't motorists' roads. It's *our* roads. Collectively. And motorists would benefit hugely were the roads changed to make it vastly more attractive for people to cycle.

To me, you still seem to be stuck in the mindset of 'motorists versus cyclists', with the former paying a tax and that pays for roads (and more!) and the latter not.

I'm a motorist who leaves his car at home most days. I pay all the taxes relating to cars that you do. Perhaps I should have a refund for paying for all those roads I don't drive on?

No! Of course not. Because it's all just money into the pot that pays for our society. Not just roads, but hospitals, schools, foreign wars of aggression(!) and so on.

We can all have a view on how taxation should be spent, and influence the debate with our votes and campaigning, but none of us have a greater right to say what the tax money is spent on simply because we happen to generate taxation from doing certain things.

To put it in a different context, it is a bit like smokers demanding the rights to choose what the NHS does with its cancer research funding.

VED is a tax on car ownership, whether you drive it a single mile a year or 100,000. Fuel tax is a tax on fuel consumption, levied solely because, primarily they can (travelling by car is still the cheapest form of long distance transport for many people), and also because they're trying to encourage people to purchase cars which use less petrol per mile, which I think is a jolly good idea myself.

None of these taxes that I pay gives me the right to a greater say over the way our roads are managed than you or the next person - be they a car owner or not. We all live in this society and rely on the road network for so many things.

Finally, on your point about cycling zealots, well yes, of course there are some. But there are zealots in every field of human endeavour. It isn't saying anything particularly profound to point out that among cyclists are the same types of hotheads you find in other walks of human life, and I don't agree that their presence should in any way change my view of cyclists whether I am one or not...

Hope this makes sense.

[cnapan]

Originally Posted by Glom

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.

Well said. Attacking motorists isn't the way to make our streets more cycle-friendly. And there are other things we might be doing that help both cyclists and motorists... E.g. turning left on red (similar to what they do in the States).

[cnapan]

Originally Posted by potto

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!

I like the whizzing boxes. They are what makes a modern society possible at all.

[cnapan]

Originally Posted by spindrift

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

Motorists are freeloaders, subsidised by the rest of the population.

That link wasn't very compelling. People without cars rely very heavily indeed on the road network like the rest of us.

I really don't think this antagonistic approach to the situation is likely to help. It just winds people up.

[potto]

I think its a good idea to clarify we are talking about an urban context here

[potto]

Originally Posted by cnapan

I like the whizzing boxes. They are what makes a modern society possible at all.

Hardly. Anyway they dont whizz, thats the point, the vast majority of the urban fabric including its laws and regulations are built around the vein past hope that they would. Treating cyclists and trying to put off potential cyclists by perpetrating the greatest modernist myth still alive is utterly bizarre, what exactly are we hoping to achieve?

[NCT]

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.

[potto]

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.

[spindrift]

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.

[ill tonkso]

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.

[cosmictanya]

Originally Posted by cnapan

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.

[ill tonkso]

The GMPTE sign is quite clear too. Greater Manchester Public Transport, the manc version of TfL.

[.Adam]

Originally Posted by spindrift

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.