Possible new tax on the motorist!?

[HodgeHi]

I would love to use public transport. I absolutely love using the London underground. Admittedly i have only used it a handful of times when i went to the Bett show but i thought is was great, excellent fun. Its just in the West Mids its rubbish. IIRC the metro (tram) from B'ham to Wolvo stops at wednesbury after around 11.30pm at night....Why???

[srochford]

I would love to use public transport. I absolutely love using the London underground. Admittedly i have only used it a handful of times when i went to the Bett show but i thought is was great, excellent fun. Its just in the West Mids its rubbish. IIRC the metro (tram) from B'ham to Wolvo stops at wednesbury after around 11.30pm at night....Why???

 

Seems pretty late to me - shouldn't you be snugly tucked up in bed before that :-)

 

I don't know why that happens; in some places there's too little demand to run buses, trains, metros etc after a certain time. In other places there's no night transport because there's never been night transport and that's just the way life is ...

 

London does make it easier; tubes run till after midnight and then there are night buses (or 24 hour bus routes) to keep you going after that. The bus past my place runs to/from central London about every 10-15 minutes through the night and costs £1 (although I have a bus pass for work so effectively there's no extra cost)

[srochford]

But he owns the car already. It needs to be insured whether he uses it or not. It needs to be taxed whether he uses it or not.

 

The crux of this is that public transport should be attractive to car users.

 

If public transport is so inconvenient, so expensive and so unreliable, then you can't blame anyone for thinking 'sod it - I'll use the car'.

 

He only "owns the car already" because he's bought it!

 

You're right to say that public transport should be attractive to car users; the trouble is, that people don't make fair comparisons. They say things like "it costs £5 on the train but it's free if I drive" and it looks stupidly expensive to take the train.

 

It isn't easy to to make complete comparisons but to be fair you've got to look at the total cost of travelling by car compared to using public transport (including taxis) and occasionally hiring a car.

 

As localzuk says in many places you can now do this for just a few hours while you're moving a large PC (although I've twice recently shifted HP D530 machines on the bus because it was easier than driving in to work)

[Midget]

It isn't easy to to make complete comparisons but to be fair you've got to look at the total cost of travelling by car compared to using public transport (including taxis) and occasionally hiring a car.

Compared to buying a mondeo for £300, insuring it for £200 and taxing it for £185, which works out at £2.60 a day plus fuel the train and bus is vastly overpriced.

[torledo]

It's fairly easy to protect resident parking areas by just introducing controlled parking - that doesn't have to mean a huge charge for residents and it brings other benefits because the parking charges pay for someone to walk along the road checking that vehicles are not just parked properly but have valid tax etc.

 

now, that's a 'city' solution if ever i saw one. Paying to park in front of your own home.

 

There are doubtless those who see the benefit where parking/congestion problems exist on their doorstep. But this just highlights more of the variances that exist when considering deploying such schemes.

 

I think city planners are kept busy enough dreaming up where to put one-way steets, pedestrian zones, speed bumps and controlled parking without adding more in the way of dealing with the outcomes from car parking levy's. Oh well, all in a days work for them i suppose.

[torledo]

But he owns the car already. It needs to be insured whether he uses it or not. It needs to be taxed whether he uses it or not.

 

The crux of this is that public transport should be attractive to car users.

 

If public transport is so inconvenient, so expensive and so unreliable, then you can't blame anyone for thinking 'sod it - I'll use the car'.

 

as i said, bus travel isn't so much the carrot, as motoring taxes are the stick.

 

Where i live some of the main commute routes into the city centre, are already clogged at peak times with buses.....local lines do exist, but some upgrading is required and new local stations need to be opened. Sounds reasonable doesn't it ? We're talking a decade long timescale, which to be fair isn't as long as it sounds [or so i'm told].

 

local rail services have been the no-brainer solution for years, rather than packing the roads full with buses that don't go faster than 25mph.

 

It's just a shame they didn't think about this 10 years ago when they were content to perisist with papering over the cracks with ideas like bus lanes.

[Theblacksheep]

now, that's a 'city' solution if ever i saw one. Paying to park in front of your own home.

 

There are doubtless those who see the benefit where parking/congestion problems exist on their doorstep. But this just highlights more of the variances that exist when considering deploying such schemes.

 

 

I've just been subjected to this land grab.... no change in the amount of space outside my house.

 

2000+ residents all paying £40 a year. Plus all profit from the tickets issued, not a bad deal for the councilors, maybe they deserve another payrise for getting more revenue. Its great when they can come up with false problems and create profit from it.

 

We don't have 'congestion' problems, we have greedy council problems.

 

 

p.s. buswankers

Edited August 3, 2009 by Theblacksheep

[Midget]

Doesn't help that when demand on the train network increases due to more people using it, instead of dropping the cost or adding more carriages, they just increase the price to get people back off the trains and into cars.

[Theblacksheep]

they just increase the price to get people back off the trains and into cars.

 

Or increase the price because the private company running it has a defacto monopoly.

Edited August 3, 2009 by Theblacksheep

[Martin]

It isn't easy to to make complete comparisons but to be fair you've got to look at the total cost of travelling by car compared to using public transport (including taxis) and occasionally hiring a car.

 

...and as i said in my previous post - you need to take into account the MASSIVE subsidies that are given to "public" transport (especially as 99% of it is actually private and for profit!). Did you read my link - where failure means more money for the train companies

 

Then there are the free upgrades being given to "public" transport in the way of bus-only lanes, bus-biased traffic controls etc. - do they pay extra for their dedicated road-space, i doubt it? Several years ago the city council implemented bus lanes on most of the arterial roads into Birmingham - effectively stealing half of the road space from cars. The strange thing is that they didn't change the timetables, so there were no more buses, no faster a service, but seriously inconvenienced cars!

 

If you looked at the true cost, i bet that cars would be cheaper, as well as more convenient, more practical, more flexible, and when the public transport workers decide to go on strike - you can still get home!

 

mb

[mac_shinobi]

If you looked at the true cost, i bet that cars would be cheaper, as well as more convenient, more practical, more flexible, and when the public transport workers decide to go on strike - you can still get home!

 

mb

 

Not sure about the true cost side of it ( as I don't want to get into a debate about it but as for more convenient etc I totally agree

[TechMonkey]

I used to use public transport for work. If I left work on time my next train would be in 25 mins (they came at just before the half hour) the bus had to catch at the other end was a coin toss on wether it would come, turn up, be early or late. An hour would be the average it would take me, normally longer though. If I stayed too late the trains would cut to 1 an hour and the buses would get even more random in their timings or just stop. Staff socials were a no.

To get in I would have a choice of being 25mins early to work or 15 mins late. I had to catch the first bus or I had no choice but to get the later train & infact if the first bus was delayed or didn't turn up (which happened often) I may as well head home and wait for a much later train as there was a huge gap between the 2 trains compared to the buses.

By my own transport it takes 20-35 mins on average, depending on when I leave. I get to leave when I feel I need to, I can pop in on a friend on the way back or come back in to socials.

I did love training it in, I could listen to music or podcasts & read a book. I had some time of my own, great thinking time. But there was no way I could rely on it. or seriously use it for anything other than peak time use. So without even looking at the cost public transport loses. & i think that is a huge factor for many people.

[jamesb]

Taking into account all things, its much cheaper for me to drive to work than to walk or use public transport.

 

Driving - 6 minutes, LPG engine so works out around £1 for fuel at most. Same travelling home. The van's cheap to maintain (and the cost should be fairly spread around all the travelling I do, so with an upkeep of maybe £1500 a year including tax and insurance and a mileage over 10 000 I'm paying £0.15 per mile for upkeep. Work is four miles by road, so we're looking at under £2 per journey)

 

Bus - £2.90 into town after a maximum of an hour's wait at the bus stop. Average wait is twenty minutes. Then a further £2 to work afterwards. Total time taken is at least an hour, and that's on a good day. It can take that long to get into town, then its another half-hour wait for a bus to work, and as much as a half-hour again into work. Call it an average of an hour. £4.90 per journey.

 

Walking - Despite the fact that work is four miles by road that's an A road, bordered on both sides by private fields. In order for me to walk into work is ten mile trek. Free, but uses up 2.5 hours.

 

Now given that I consider my time to be valuable, even if I just assign it a value of £2 per hour, driving is by far and away the only sensible way for me to travel to work.

 

I actually rate my time a bit higher than that since for example having time before I leave for work means I can make myself breakfast, and a lunch. Otherwise I'd be looking at buying one. Equally coming home late leaves me rarely wanting to cook, so a quick trip home saves money there too.

 

It doesn't matter how many sticks they try to throw at me, the van is simply the most sensible option. A carrot in the form of a quick, easy trip to work by bus might persuade me otherwise however.