"Roger Millin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Steve addded: >> No, not only his. Mine too. >In my post the word 'only' referred to 'opinion', Steve, it was not >meant to imply that Adrian was the only person to hold such views. >Although it is true to say that, as of a few minutes ago, you and >Adrian were in a minority of 2 to 1,004,171. ;-)
Compare to "informed consent", a concept common in medicine. The patient is first educated about the operation the physician is proposing, and only then is asked to decide whether he wants it. There has been no such process wrt this petition. Supposing I said loudly and publicly "eating broccoli will kill you" (it won't, for those who may wonder), and then asked people to sign a petition banning broccoli, I bet many many people would sign it. And they would be in a majority, of course, because there would be no-one saying "eating broccoli is actually good for you" to these people before they voted, and encouraging them to vote the other way. In fact, most petitions (including this one) do not even have a mechanism that lets you vote the other way. The petition is a farce. Worse than that, road pricing is just what we need IMHO. Indeed, it is probably the only way to reduce congestion and to reduce the over-use of cars (and the resulting pollution) in general. (a broad statement, which I can substantiate, but not in a sentence or two so I won't try here) Julian Tether <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Adrian Stott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >>AIUI, it is intended that the revenue from road pricing will be >>matched by a decrease in road fuel duty, so the measure will be >>revenue neutral (i.e. not a tax increase). >You are really naive if you believe that............ The road lobby was on to this point from the start of the discussion of road pricing (several years ago), and has been vehemently and effectively pushing it. Check out the AA's position, for example. >From the reactions over the years, I think the only way the government is going to be able to introduce road pricing is if it at the same time reduces road tax or (much better) fuel duty at the same time to make it revenue neutral. Not that we don't need to be vigiland, I agree. Incidentally, fuel price is a very poor stand-in for road pricing as a measure for controlling congestion, because different vehicles of the same size (length x width) use different amounts of fuel, and the same vehicle uses the same amount of fuel (roughly) on congested and uncongested roads. Julian Tether <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >The problem is not with the pricing but the fact that big brother will >be able to track you wherever you are and if you speed even by 2mph >accidentally a ticket will come through your mail a few days later Yes. YES! This is very, very serious. The proposal to have a compulsory locator device in every car is very worrying from a liberty and privacy viewpoint. Which is why, although I agree strongly with pay-by-km insurance, I won't buy it at present because it includes a requirement to install such a locator. Fortunately, though, there are other feasible ways to implement congestion road-pricing, that do not have this fatal drawback. For example, an on-board device which accepts units from a card (think "phone card"). Then, if your car averages less than (say) 10 km/hour for long enough, or if it stops more than X times in any (say) two minutes, it is deemed to be travelling on a congested road and a unit is deducted from the account in the device. If the account drops below zero, nothing happens! Except that the car won't start the next time you try until the account has been brought back into credit. Quite a lot of research into this scheme was done at Cambridge, and it appears to be workable. Note that the on-board devices do *not* give away location, and there is no need for roadside infrastructure. The devices would be inexpensive, so the overall set-up cost of the scheme would be quite feasible. The devices would be sealed, and checked at MOT time to make sure they have not been tampered with. Note that this does not require anyone to define where the congestion is. It is where it is occurring at the time. It is up to individual drivers to decide whether their route, or their timing, is likely to take them on to congested roads. It turns out people are rather good at predicting that. This would quite effectively encourage people to change their driving habits IMHO. (note that buses, taxis, etc. would also have to pay, and bigger vehicles, trucks and buses again, should pay more because they slow traffic more). Captain Beeky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >On 10, Feb 2007, at 10:47, Bruce Napier wrote: > >> Agreed the road pricing proposals have their downsides, but on balance, >> why shouldn't people pay by use? > >God forbid that kind of idea should ever spread to the waterways ! Why? In fact, BW has been thinking about it. However, so far, it appears that the marginal cost of a vessel navigating a km of waterway is very very small, perhaps too small to charge for economically. OTOH, congestion charges at (e.g.) busy locks on busy summer weekends look to me to be a very good idea. They would encourage the traffic to go elsewhere, which would both reduce the congestion and get boats on to under-used routes. Yet they would allow those who really need to to use the (previously) congested routes at any time, by paying the charge. I'm strongly in favour of this. graham wagdin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The object presumably is to force cars off the road and the effect will be > dis-proportionate against those who can least afford the increased costs and > those in rural > areas where public transport is not an option. There must be a fairer > sanction than pricing. No, the object is to force cars off *congested* roads. There is no argument for not using un-congested roads. What would have been the point of building them otherwise? Most rural roads are uncongested most of the time, so use of them would be uncharged most of the time. Pricing is much fairer than fiat (not a car pun!). It lets the individual decide whether and where to drive, rather than Big Brother to say "You're forbidden". > What happens about visitors from the continent? I do not see how the scheme > could work unless it is Europe wide See the method described above. Such a device could be quickly installed in visiting vehicles. Such installation would be a requirement if you bring a car into this country. There would be no need for other countries to adopt the system. Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
