And has immeasurable mental health benefits from being outside and getting fresh air
Crickey don't tell our masters that - They will be slapping VAT on that benefit !.
Total road expenditure in England
is about 8.5 billion , and
40 million cars in the UK in the UK, if that scales with England's share of the population (80%), that gives you 32 million in England giving you about £265 of spending per car. The article you remember was probably talking about America.
If income MUST come from the same source, what happens if public transport takes up a higher share as result of EV's generally being more expensive , would you keep the same insistence of not raising any taxes elsewhere, or do any money printing, and start increasing the tax on people's bus and train tickets?
This is the elephant in the room. Basically if the taxes are used to fund something that replaces the tax generator then that tax cannot become too successful at changing behaviour !. It a bit like tax on cigarettes - if everyone stopped smoking how much would the NHS lose in funding ? - allthough in that case the lack of smokers and therefore smokers' diseases might actually be a cost benefit to the NHS.
The local authorities spent about £2bn on roads maintenance this is dwarfed by taxes raised from motorists.
Here are the transport spending figures for the last five years.
| 4.5 Transport | 32,701 | 34,420 | 49,387 | 44,685 | 43,578 |
| of which: national roads | 4,820 | 5,574 | 6,153 | 5,438 | 5,660 |
| of which: local roads | 5,304 | 5,619 | 6,797 | 5,867 | 5,468 |
| of which: local public transport | 2,484 | 2,403 | 7,199 | 4,983 | 4,344 |
| of which: railway | 18,226 | 18,285 | 27,052 | 25,862 | 25,942 |
| of which: other transport | 1,867 | 2,539 | 2,185 | 2,536 | 2,163 |
Source: Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2023
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-expenditure-statistical-analyses-2023
Vehicle Excise Duty and Fuel Duty run at about £35bn a year not to mention the other taxes motorists pay such as VAT and Insurance premium tax. So your assertion that motorists aren't paying their way doesn't stand up.
Thanks for those figures. The amount the railways get spent on them is over 50% of the total and nearly five times that spent on road - Ouch !.
Thanks for those figures. However, these are direct expenditure and my point was about the externalities of health, policing, environmental damage etc. I have no idea how much these are but I don't think we can just ignore them.
That would be an absolute disaster. Motoring would get cheaper so it would increase, subsidised by everyone whether they drove or not. Either the increase in motoring would be choked off by congestion, affecting bus services, emergency vehicles and those that have to drive, or the government would end up spending a lot more building more roads in an attempt (almost certainly unsuccesssful) to cater for it.
The need to use a car has to be reduced, we have become far to used to it as a convenience. I walk a lot of journeys (local shops) more than people I know. Many of them drive a very short distance and then illegally park - I am talking less than a mile.
Tax regimes are more than just gathering revenue for running the country, - they can and are used to modify behaviour of the population. With increasing demand on the road system, just building more is not a solution, so tax will, I believe become a 'nudge' tool to encourage more active travel and use of public transport. In my opinion, revenue from private car use should appropriately be applied to improve public transport and support for active travel.
I agree, tax has to be used not just as a fund raiser but as a tool to target unwise behaviour. Although how you tackle knife crime is outwith the capability of tax unless we tax knives very very heavily. Brainstorming but if the tax were high enough each knife could have a transponder in it, an id photo taken and records kept - if the tax were high enough.
Well if we take £48bn as the full that means roads are getting the same level as subsidy as rail then. The other element that seems to be being ignored in this talk of externalities is the amount of economic activity that is enabled by road transport. Surely that far out ways any cost.
Economic activity is probably king. Our way of life (prosperity) relies on growth in economic activity which relies on a growth in population. Trouble is the planet is not getting any bigger. We have to be smarter in how we use our resources including space - well they are not actually ours !. Town planning has to take a more responsible attitude. We are swallowing up agricultural areas for activities that dictate more vehicles while letting our town centres decay even though these are the hubs for public transport.
That's not as effective, though, because your rural dweller can come into town and drive with impunity.
My preferred options, a parking tax (so abolition of all free urban parking), an urban driving tax or road pricing, mean a rural driver is encouraged to park up at a suitable location and continue their journey by public transport (i.e. railheading or park and ride). People already do this in London because (a) parking costs a fortune, (b) driving is grim and (c) there's a congestion charge, so this proves the efficacy of this approach.
Road pricing is probably the fairest of the three, because an urban dweller who only uses their car to go out of town to a rural location won't pay much, whereas with parking taxation or blunt instruments like zonal congestion charges they get whacked regardless of what they do that day.
I hope not a parking tax on the parking outside the owners house. I had to give Croydon council over £300 per year to park in my road. My car is not the greenest but I use it very little so why should I be punished for not using it ?. I now avoid the residents parking charge by parking about a mile away. So lots of short journeys to my house to load up or unload after 17:00. The result is more usage of my car while the engine is still cold !.
So I agree the tax has to be on the actual use and how much use.
In very rural areas, the car (ideally EV) is the most cost-effective and least damaging mode of transport. Running diesel buses around with two people on them is worse on just about every measure.
That can be managed other ways such as via planning law. But if you've got a lot of people driving in from rural surrounds to e.g. a supermarket, the outskirts IS the best place for it.
It is true the public transport has to be reasonably well used. How long should we oversubsidise a route/mode to see if demand picks up. Carrot vs stick I suppose.
And YES planning law.
I do like your parking charges idea. It would need the least new infrastructure, wouldn't exempt old cars , wouldn't double tax people who still pay fuel duty and gives the city itself the final say. I still don't want it to be used as a 1 for 1 replacement for fuel duty tax, you'd be creating a peverse incentive for the government where increasing public transport use , even on profitable routes, would be decreasing it's revenue
This question is hard to answer, which is why I think devolving the question to district or borough councils is the best idea, with the way political leanings are between cities, towns and the countryside, you'd get the same result as if Westminster road priced based on population density anyway
I would not devolve it. We need a consistent policy across the whole of the UK otherwise drivers will have to know about every charge they might encounter in every area they might pass through. Their car might be ULEZ exempt in one area but not exempt in another. Too many different rules. So a journey from London to Leeds via a few places could result in having to set up accounts for, log into and pay for quite a few different bodies. Croydon, London, Dartford Crossing, Motorways, Leeds and maybe a part of Leeds for parking. Lets keep it standard across the whole of the UK.
First of all, tax isn't the only way to fund expenses. I hate to sound like a MMTer , but their is numerous ways to sort out the financial issues. You can print more money, borrow , kick up taxes elsewhere or cut spending else where, all of these have different trade offs , but it's not non-negotiable every tax is replaced 1 for 1.
I support localized schemes, what I don't think is a good idea some Westminster impose national scheme which I think will be clumsy and expensive to implement, nor that its non negotiable that all the revenue that previously came from fuel duty must be taken from electric drivers, and other methods of funding cant be used.
I know what I'll say on here doesn't matter, what you says doesn't either but this is a discussion forum and people will discuss things
My bold - sades og majic money tree there !.
Local schemes mean someone passing through having to have local knowledge. Too complicated and results in it being easier and less risk for someone to remove their number plates. ANPR cameras don't chase you.
That ignores the behaviour modification issue mentioned in the post you quoted. Less tax on driving means more driving, unless something else is done to discourage it, and it still has many adverse consequences even if the vehicles in question are now electric (another one nobody has mentioned is the need to invest in more electric generation and transmission). There's a risk of more traffic anyway even if the tax take EVs is identical to that on IC vehicles, because EVs, once purchased, are cheaper to run.
Autonomous driving, if it happens, throws another factor into the mix. People could instruct their cars to drop them off in the city then continue empty to some free or cheap parking location before returning to pick them up. To some extent that defeats any attempt to replace fuel tax revenue with parking charges, as well as providing another reason why congestion increases in urban areas.
It is a lot more electricity generation. Sadly the advantage of ICE is all the energy stored up in peoples cars ready for use. ICE tends to put a more immediate cum just-in-time pressure on the energy supply infrastructure as generally overnight charging starting in the evening peak. This is why I would like Hydrogen Fuel to succeed but it is not practical (yet).
Autonomous driving, you make me think - well that could make it cheaper to jump out of the car and let it go round the block in circles while one pops into the local corner shop. So there could be a lot more traffic if parking is too expensive !.
