RE: Let's vote on road charging: ABD
Tuesday 5th December 2006
Road charging: we need a public debateThe Association of British Drivers has called for a referendum on road charging.
Let's vote on road charging: ABD
Group calls for an open public debate
Road charging: we need a public debate
Describing the Government's road pricing plans as 'flawed', the pressure group argues that neither of the two main parties is debating the issue in public, nor was it in either of their manifestos at the last election 18 months ago.
ABD chairman Brian Gregory said: "The implications of road pricing are massive in terms of civil liberties, the cost to our economy and the motoring public in general. The huge costs involved in setting up and administering the system means that it cannot be `cost neutral'. Climate change policy, another flawed political bandwagon, will ensure that road pricing simply adds to the existing £50bn tax burden rather than replacing some of it.
"Voters are being fed propaganda to soften them up for this stupendous folly, but they have not been given the chance to vote or to hear a proper debate on road user charging. None of the major parties included this in their manifestos at the last general election. We need a referendum on road user charging as soon as possible."
ABD spokesman Nigel Humphries said: "We have had years of deliberate congestion-causing measures in our cities - hundreds of new traffic lights, obstructive bus lanes and road closures. These have worsened congestion without any increase in traffic. Meanwhile, investment in both road and rail infrastructure has been totally inadequate. People have been forced to use congested roads to go about their business - now this is to be used as an excuse to track and charge drivers, and to price normal families off the roads. It's iniquitous."
According to the ABD, road pricing cannot work because:
- People already have a £28 billion incentive to avoid jams - this is what government advisors claim that congestion costs. If £28 billion does not work at reducing jams, and is such a bad thing for the economy, then only a fool would suggest increasing this burden by charging people even more to sit in the same jams. It's a nonsense.
- Varying prices according to time doesn't work on the railways - trains are still packed at peak times and transporting fresh air at other times.
- Pricing people off the roads will lead to massive and unpredictable shifts in behaviour where alternative routes exist. This will lead to the roads being used less efficiently as people make inappropriate diversions to reduce the cost of their journey. The M6 Toll and the London Congestion Charge already demonstrate this effect admirably to those willing to look.
- Road pricing is an excuse for the government to do nothing positive about transport for the next ten years.
The ABD's solution to the UK's congestion woes is:
- Proper investment in infrastructure - mostly improving roads rather than building new ones - rail improvements, light rail, cheap, accessible park and ride schemes
- Reversal of the trend towards blocking and obstructing roads in cities - get the traffic moving again
- Better marketing of bus and train services, especially for journeys into city centres, to address the issue that drivers don't know what is available
- Better facilities for carriage of cycles on public transport - it couldn't be much worse
- Co-ordination of development to ensure that people can live close to their place of work and have proper transport links in place of piecemeal approach that takes the road network for granted
- Incentives for homeworking and for moving closer to places of work (abolition of stamp duty on houses for this would be a good start)
- Large scale studies into people's transport needs and habits, done with the intention of facilitating people's lives rather than justifying anti-car anti-transport policies.
Link
Discussion
Well done ABD. I'm glad to see that pressure groups are thinking about these issues, and also not just saying why it couldn't work, but thinking about the future and how to reduce congestion. Its another thing actually getting a reasoned response from blair and co.
Certainly in Derby there are more and more traffic lights which does improve flow at peak times, but takes the acertiveness away from the driver to merge. We have had major roadworks on our ring road - which feeds the city with workers, for over a year now. This has a knock on for all major routes into derby. They have actually been reducing 3 lanes into 2, as well as strengthening flyovers, and widening the unused pavement on either side of the carriageway. I imagine the average punter hasn't realised this as the works have been there for so long they have forgotten how it was before. Where there were 3 lanes of rushhour traffic, this has now become one lane. To be honest the traffic flow isn't bad, but without the bottleneck i'd be home in 5 minutes instead of 20. Stupid traffic lights in villages hold me up everyday, and the bus lanes have priority to change the lights and make us wait. There is a bus stop 50 yards after these priority lights, so we overtake the bus as soon as our lights go green. I give the bus a two finger salute everytime this happens. Our bus station has been closed for a year with little work being done on it in the mean time. Instead of our buses being in a central station, they are now taking up the road all over the town centre, parking up at small shelters which are barely adequate and leaving little old ladies to brave the wind rain, whilst reducing the road to half width. Nottingham town centre is a mass of speed bumps on a busy main road with pedestrian crossings every 50 yards. Sheffield is a bloody mess of bus lanes, bumps and traffic lights and absolutely shocking to drive through. Roads are pitted and bumpy, it is just that modern cars soak up the bumps so well that they don't need to be maintained as well. My car shakes rattles and rolls along many of our derby roads.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm sure this sort of crappy congestion causing nanery is going on in every town and city,
OUR MONEY SHOULD BE GOING INTO GOOD TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT AND MAINTAINANCE
Certainly in Derby there are more and more traffic lights which does improve flow at peak times, but takes the acertiveness away from the driver to merge. We have had major roadworks on our ring road - which feeds the city with workers, for over a year now. This has a knock on for all major routes into derby. They have actually been reducing 3 lanes into 2, as well as strengthening flyovers, and widening the unused pavement on either side of the carriageway. I imagine the average punter hasn't realised this as the works have been there for so long they have forgotten how it was before. Where there were 3 lanes of rushhour traffic, this has now become one lane. To be honest the traffic flow isn't bad, but without the bottleneck i'd be home in 5 minutes instead of 20. Stupid traffic lights in villages hold me up everyday, and the bus lanes have priority to change the lights and make us wait. There is a bus stop 50 yards after these priority lights, so we overtake the bus as soon as our lights go green. I give the bus a two finger salute everytime this happens. Our bus station has been closed for a year with little work being done on it in the mean time. Instead of our buses being in a central station, they are now taking up the road all over the town centre, parking up at small shelters which are barely adequate and leaving little old ladies to brave the wind rain, whilst reducing the road to half width. Nottingham town centre is a mass of speed bumps on a busy main road with pedestrian crossings every 50 yards. Sheffield is a bloody mess of bus lanes, bumps and traffic lights and absolutely shocking to drive through. Roads are pitted and bumpy, it is just that modern cars soak up the bumps so well that they don't need to be maintained as well. My car shakes rattles and rolls along many of our derby roads.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm sure this sort of crappy congestion causing nanery is going on in every town and city,
OUR MONEY SHOULD BE GOING INTO GOOD TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT AND MAINTAINANCE
Edited by joesnow on Tuesday 5th December 10:35
MGV8 said:
Some thing I mite be missing but is there any one on hear that ejoyes being stuck in trafic?
If we all start work at 9am and finsh at 5pm all that will happen is we get charged more to do so.....
If we all start work at 9am and finsh at 5pm all that will happen is we get charged more to do so.....
Right, but we already have road charging...
its called VED and Fuel Duty...
And you can bet your bottom dollar, Labour wont be aboloshing either of those if it brings in road charging - so we end up paying 3 times instead of twice!
martaay said:
Great idea, and great report by the ABD....shame it will never happen as the government knows they will lose short of spending $28 billion to brainwash evern more people with propaganda 
Exactly this is why there are no plans for a public vote and there never will be one, I thought this country was a democracy, hmmm obviously I was wrong
Matt
Just to make things easy
www.abd.org.uk/
you will find-
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy.”
www.abd.org.uk/
you will find-
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy.”
I applaude the TVR owners who took part in a rally to deliver a letter to downing street.
Just imagine if PHers voted with their feet and we were all to converge on the grass outside parliment or even better outside Downing street in a anti pay-drive meet. Remember the hunting and the war demonstrations?
Just imagine if PHers voted with their feet and we were all to converge on the grass outside parliment or even better outside Downing street in a anti pay-drive meet. Remember the hunting and the war demonstrations?
joesnow said:
I applaude the TVR owners who took part in a rally to deliver a letter to downing street.
Just imagine if PHers voted with their feet and we were all to converge on the grass outside parliment or even better outside Downing street in a anti pay-drive meet. Remember the hunting and the war demonstrations?
Just imagine if PHers voted with their feet and we were all to converge on the grass outside parliment or even better outside Downing street in a anti pay-drive meet. Remember the hunting and the war demonstrations?
Yeah - look at what they achieved
see - common sense, not that difficult is it? These comments enforce comments made in an earlier reference to road pricing. If it was not to earn the cash to get a decent car/house/holiday I suspect many would not get out of bed in the morning, After all what would be the point? You try to get to work to earn a living, and this shower want to tax you to the eyeballs for the privelege of doing so. Its getting to the stage where it just wont be worth it. And because travel anywhere is going to be made too expensive to be worthwhile, people will just avoid getting jobs, even in the local area. Here`s a job for you the job centre will say. Sorry, but by the time I have paid for road pricing, fuel tax, environmental parking tax, congestion charge, the pay being offered does`nt even cover my costs. Think I`ll stay at home on benefits, perhaps WALK down to the pub at lunchtime (Got to show my green credentials!) then come home for a nice kip in front of the telly. Is there more than one brain cell in the entire government? ...... does`nt particularly look like it!
fidgits said:
joesnow said:
I applaude the TVR owners who took part in a rally to deliver a letter to downing street.
Just imagine if PHers voted with their feet and we were all to converge on the grass outside parliment or even better outside Downing street in a anti pay-drive meet. Remember the hunting and the war demonstrations?
Just imagine if PHers voted with their feet and we were all to converge on the grass outside parliment or even better outside Downing street in a anti pay-drive meet. Remember the hunting and the war demonstrations?
Yeah - look at what they achieved
Well, yes I agree, but my urine has been turned to steam over the whole thing. We don't seem to be able to go in and fight it off logically with discussion. I'd gladly demonstrate about it, which would catch the media's interest.
Edited by joesnow on Tuesday 5th December 14:05
From adb site-
You might think that as an individual there's not a lot you can do to compact the plethora of anti-car measures coming from the powers that be, and you'd be right. As a solitary little raindrop you're pretty powerless.
But get together with twenty five million other raindrops and you become a powerful torrent that the government can no longer ignore.
Don't let them drive you off the road!
www.abd.org.uk/
Our lass always sed I was a drippy -----r!
You might think that as an individual there's not a lot you can do to compact the plethora of anti-car measures coming from the powers that be, and you'd be right. As a solitary little raindrop you're pretty powerless.
But get together with twenty five million other raindrops and you become a powerful torrent that the government can no longer ignore.
Don't let them drive you off the road!
www.abd.org.uk/
Our lass always sed I was a drippy -----r!
I actually looked into moving closer to work a couple of years back, actually triggered by problems with local schools for my daughter, but with the handy side effect of being 4.5 miles from work rather than the current 12 miles. We had actually lived in the town that we were considering moving back to, and at the time I did occasionally cycle, so not only would my daily journey be less, but there would be further traffic/emissions/fuel savings by using my bike every now and then.
However, when I looked into the cost of moving, putting around £10K stamp duty into the mix made it almost impossible to consider (particularly the thought of having to add it to the mortgage for the next 25 years). Then there's the legal fees and estate agents fees (why do estate agents charge a percentage, rather than flat fee? It doesn't cost more to market a £300K house than a £200K house.) Luckily my daughter's school situation was sorted out, but unfortunately I still have to drive the extra mileage on one of Essex's busiest roads, rather than the occasional pleasant cycle through country lanes.
However, when I looked into the cost of moving, putting around £10K stamp duty into the mix made it almost impossible to consider (particularly the thought of having to add it to the mortgage for the next 25 years). Then there's the legal fees and estate agents fees (why do estate agents charge a percentage, rather than flat fee? It doesn't cost more to market a £300K house than a £200K house.) Luckily my daughter's school situation was sorted out, but unfortunately I still have to drive the extra mileage on one of Essex's busiest roads, rather than the occasional pleasant cycle through country lanes.
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