Cameron wants to privatise roads (again)

[muffinmenace]

thinfourth2 said:

Okay lets look at the horror of the European lorry in the uk

Where are they going?

Well it has to be somewhere in the UK as we are an island so they can't get anywhere from here


Why are they in the UK?

To deliver or pick something up from a UK business


What happens if we charge them a million pounds to use UK roads?

They pass the costs onto the business as they aren't operated by eccentric rich idiots


Would this extra costs effect UK businesses?

No st sherlock

What's that Skippy, the UK hauliers can do it cheaper? To the batmobile!!

[thinfourth2]

muffinmenace said:

What's that Skippy, the UK hauliers can do it cheaper? To the batmobile!!

Sadly being the only country that is stupid enough to follow europes laws

If we charge french lorries a million pounds a day we would also charge UK lorries a million pounds a day


As we are lead by people without any backbone

[Funkateer]

Stop fighting wars, stop wasting money on Olympics, plough the money into the road infrastructure.

Oh. Too late

I'm sure there's plenty of other waste out there that could be curtailed in favour of the roads that we already pay for over and over again.

[Use Psychology]

spending on transport infrastructure is a sensible thing for the government to pay for without passing the cost onto the direct users - everyone benefits from the roads.

[With these feet]

thinfourth2 said:

Sadly being the only country that is stupid enough to follow europes laws

If we charge french lorries a million pounds a day we would also charge UK lorries a million pounds a day


As we are lead by people without any backbone

Our transporter - which travels less than 5k a year - still has to pay £600 RFL. Thats cheap as its on a restricted licence and reduced train weight. All UK hauliers pay more than this, per truck.
On top of that it does 8 - 9 mpg, a fill is in the region of £500.

Even if it did price foreign trucks off the island, all it would mean is a drop at the ferry/tunnel and collected at the other side. Has the loophole been closed where trucks were registered abroad yet spent most of its time here to avoid RFL and O licence costs?

We went off to Le Mans a few weeks ago. The French have no issue with taking several hundred Euros off us to use their (toll) roads. Yes we could use other routes, but not with an artic.

[F93]

Road pricing does work. Look at Singapore. It removes the excess demand created by something being free, such as people over using it. Do you really need to drive down to shop that you can walk to to pick up some milk? No, and by doing so you deprive someone else of the road space you're using, decreasing the supply of road space in the system. This doesn't matter so much on quiet roads, but what if you're using the M25 for a journey that you could do by bus? When you pay the right price for something you use, the system works. However because road use is free and the charges flat (you pay car and road tax if you drive one mile or one million), people 'overuse' it. The only control is fuel tax, which does work as fewer people are driving as much as they did in the 1990s (Even though there are more cars), but that only works to a certain extent, and can (and has) cause inflation.
While road pricing could work perfectly well, the government will implement it in the most stupid and inefficient way conceivable, wasting everybody's time and money. If they do implement it properly, such as the system in Singapore, then that's fine, but could a government in the UK ever do that? I really really doubt it.

[eccles]

F93 said:

Road pricing does work. Look at Singapore. It removes the excess demand created by something being free, such as people over using it. Do you really need to drive down to shop that you can walk to to pick up some milk? No, and by doing so you deprive someone else of the road space you're using, decreasing the supply of road space in the system. This doesn't matter so much on quiet roads, but what if you're using the M25 for a journey that you could do by bus? When you pay the right price for something you use, the system works. However because road use is free and the charges flat (you pay car and road tax if you drive one mile or one million), people 'overuse' it. The only control is fuel tax, which does work as fewer people are driving as much as they did in the 1990s (Even though there are more cars), but that only works to a certain extent, and can (and has) cause inflation.
While road pricing could work perfectly well, the government will implement it in the most stupid and inefficient way conceivable, wasting everybody's time and money. If they do implement it properly, such as the system in Singapore, then that's fine, but could a government in the UK ever do that? I really really doubt it.

So you're saying we should pay a lot of tax for something, and not be allowed to use it unless we pay again?

[F93]

Not that. What should happen is that road tax and car tax (which are a flat yearly rate and do nothing to discourage people according to market principles) are abolished. Then, you pay tax on fuel but at a lower rate. Then you pay to use the road whenever you use it. Alistair Darling commissioned a study that showed that it would be something like 5p a mile (I think) on less busy roads, and something like 50p (I think) on a stretch as busy as the M25 near Heathrow. That way, you use less busy roads so there is no wasted space on the roads. There are lots of problems with this, as when and who raises the price etc. But its meant to be the fair price of using the road. You use it a lot, you pay a lot, you never use it, you never pay.
The main problem has been that at the moment all taxes just go into a pot that various government ministries take their share of. With road pricing, the money from the road tolls would have to go back into roads or bus transport etc, which the government is unsure about doing.
Basically, it should mean no car or road tax, and could mean no fuel tax, all so you have a sticker on the windscreen that is registered by a sensor in a lamppost that charges you pence for a mile. It might end up being cheaper than right now, which is what the government wants...

[colonel c]

F93 said:

...It might end up being cheaper than right now...

[eccles]

F93 said:

Not that. What should happen is that road tax and car tax (which are a flat yearly rate and do nothing to discourage people according to market principles) are abolished. Then, you pay tax on fuel but at a lower rate. Then you pay to use the road whenever you use it. Alistair Darling commissioned a study that showed that it would be something like 5p a mile (I think) on less busy roads, and something like 50p (I think) on a stretch as busy as the M25 near Heathrow. That way, you use less busy roads so there is no wasted space on the roads. There are lots of problems with this, as when and who raises the price etc. But its meant to be the fair price of using the road. You use it a lot, you pay a lot, you never use it, you never pay.
The main problem has been that at the moment all taxes just go into a pot that various government ministries take their share of. With road pricing, the money from the road tolls would have to go back into roads or bus transport etc, which the government is unsure about doing.
Basically, it should mean no car or road tax, and could mean no fuel tax, all so you have a sticker on the windscreen that is registered by a sensor in a lamppost that charges you pence for a mile. It might end up being cheaper than right now, which is what the government wants...

Do you really think it would be something as simple as a sticker in the windscreen? Knowing the way the government works it would be some god awfully complicated black box that tracked your every move (but they'd promise not to look at the data, honest!), cost a fortune to get fitted and would have enough bugs to fill a zoo.

[thinfourth2]

F93 said:

Road pricing does work. Look at Singapore. .

Okay looking at Singapore

It appears to be a tiny little island in the far east

It also appears to have a hugely efficient cheap and clean train system that carries you anywhere in the entire country for pennies and you can get from one side of the country to the other in about 30 minutes


We aren't a tiny little island

We don't have the MRT



next silly idea?


Unless you are from london as only someone from london could be stupid enough to think the UK is the same as singapore

[mattnunn]

You do all realise that the vast majority of us don't live inside the M25, M60 or M42.

We're simple folks out here in the sticks, and our roads are pretty ste as it is, if roads are maitained on the basis of the amount of use they get soon pretty much the entire country is going to be unreachable.

[crankedup]

Interesting POV put over by Andrew Lansley yesterday regarding the A14 proposed Toll road. He is saying that the commercial traffic will be using the A14(Toll) thereby freeing up the existing A14(F.O.C.) for his constituents to use for their daily commute. He made a valiant effort in attempts to dress the Toll road as a positive for the locals, those will be the ones that vote for him at election time then. Yet when looking at the other major motorway section that is Toll usage it is under used. Is Lansley suggesting that commercial traffic will be compelled to use the toll road section of the A14 I wonder?

[Sheets Tabuer]

I really wish they'd try all this out on the M25, then when that works they can start looking at roads in the sticks.

[Morningside]

crankedup said:

...He is saying that the commercial traffic will be using the A14(Toll) thereby freeing up the existing A14(F.O.C.) for his constituents to use for their daily commute. ...

Really? After all the cost have been cut to the bone he really thinks that they will be using toll roads as well.



They really do live on another planet.