Nigel Stanley <[email protected]> wrote: >2009/12/11 Adrian Stott <[email protected]>: >>>> In fact, the way we pay for road tax and car insurance tends to make >>>> the per-journey cost by car cheaper than most transit. Hence one of >>>> my reasons for supporting road charging (to replace road tax and fuel >>>> duty), which would transfer that cost from the vehicle to the trip.
>Fuel duty is better than road tax because it has some relationship to >use - and encourages more efficient vehicles. >It rewards those who drive efficiently and avoid congestion because >they will get a higher mpg from their vehicles. People who live in >rural areas may drive much longer distances but consume less fuel than >us Londoners But the differential generated by fuel consumption cost is in general too small to discourage people from driving on congested roads. And what about those with electric cars, who pay no fuel duty at all? My preference is to *replace* fuel duty with road pricing. >The congestion charge adds a further disincentive to driving in >central London But it has two fatal flaws. First, it is a charge per day, not a charge per km. Once you have entered the charge zone, you can drive as much as you like without paying any more. Surely that's the opposite of what is needed. Second, it is stuffed with exemptions and discounts (e.g. for residents of the zone, who probably drive there more than anyone else and so definitely should not get one; for taxis and buses which clog up the roads as much as any other vehicles, etc.) >But using markets to ration can be unfair. Given the great differences >in wealth and income in the UK, this kind of market pricing for public >policy reasons can completely exclude some people and not be noticed >by others. Poorer people generally don't drive, so they will be little affected by road pricing. >Part of the answer is better public transport - and another merit of >the congestion charge is that its proceeds do help improve public >transport in London. But it's subsidisation (and constraints on fare levels) that results in transit's poor quality. >the free market stopped cross-subsidisation from busy routes >to socially necessary but unprofitable ones. There's no such thing as "socially necessary but unprofitable" routes. >People, particularly it seems men, put a very high emotional >value on being in their own car Then they will surely be willing to pay a road price, eh? >This - in my view - is one reason why road pricing always provokes >such a strong and visceral reaction. The UK government has presented it very, very badly. If it had emphasised the revenue neutrality (by using road pricing to replace, not supplement, fuel taxation) and proposed a system that did not track vehicles (tracking has serious privacy implications), the reaction would probably have been very different. >Oddly some of its biggest >opponents come from the same free-market, small-state bit of the >forest in which Adrian lives - that's because he is more free-market >than he is small state I guess, You guess wrong. He's "market" but not "free market", and is "small state" too. >There is no guarantee that things will be adopted unless the existing less >good alternatives are banned or priced out - with little likelihood of >political support. "Pricing out" is a synonym for "out-competed"? >But what do the rest of us conclude? There's no easy >politically-acceptable way to reduce congestion. Political acceptability in this case is largely a function of system design and presentation. >Electorates get the politicians they deserve. Now there's something we do agree on. Brian on Harnser <[email protected]> wrote: >But how would that help congestion, if we are in a taxi or a private >car there are still as many cars moving and when we reach our >destination the taxi is then travelling with only the driver in it >causing more congestion. 1. You would pay by the trip to use an automated taxi, so the result would be fewer trips than now occur by private car. 2. Automated taxis would not need on-street parking, so it could be eliminated thus increasing the number of usable lanes of road and easing traffic flow. 3. Automated vehicles would coordinate their speeds, routing, and behaviour at intersections, and would travel closer together on faster roads, thus increasing traffic efficiency. 4. The charge per trip for an automated taxi need not vary with the number of people in it, so there would be an incentive for more than one people to share it (sort of like car pooling), so there would be fewer vehicle trips. Captain Beeky <[email protected]> wrote: >In fact there would be a huge number of taxis causing congestion on >the roads, running empty to collect their next fare. Whether it has a >driver or not does nothing for the traffic volume. If there were no immediate local-enough demand for an automated taxi after it had deposited its passenger(s), it wouldn't just drive around. It would park itself until next needed. In one of the large car parks which now exist but would no longer be needed for private vehicles. OTOH, if the demand at any time is heavily skewed (i.e. almost all going from the same place A to the same place B), then the roads from B to A would be lightly used and so could handle the return journeys by empty cabs without congestion. "roger_millin" <[email protected]> wrote: >Don't worry though, the infrastructure costs are massive The preferred approach is actually to reuire minimum changes to infrastructure. The required equipment would almost all be on board the vehicles, which would be built with it already in place. Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
