Shouldn’t government be using taxes to raise money and not to try to control the behavior of its citizens.
I think it is about time this people stood up to their government, but then I am an American and we did that 225 years ago.
I some brit friends tell me that the tax on petrol is 77%. They also tell me that 70% of vehicles are company owned in the UK.
From my perspective, Public transport is a false solution. First of all, it make the populace completely dependednt on the government for transportation. A strike by drivers could cripple the country.
Second, while pub. transport would be fine for those living in a city, what about others in smaller towns or those that have a long commute that is not on a rail or bus line? plus, more pub. transit means more expense. With less revenue from gas, where are they going to make up this money?
Third, a high gas tax impacts the poor the greatest.
And finally, the argumenht that a high tax emeliorates the effects of price increase is, well, dangerous. lets take your example and use it on gas prices. let’s say a galon in the US is $1. MAking it $4 with tax is quadrupling the cost up front. a 50% increase brings it to $6. if there were no tax on gas, the price would have to increase 600% to have the same effect as the tax.
The bottom line is going to be the cost of the gas, not the % increase.
A better question is: why does the government need to tax a necesary substance at 77%?
Thanks for that. Shall I come back with comments about irresponsible engine sizes in America and it’s duty to the environment, or shall we both try to avoid cliched opinions of no merit?
Why don’t you shoot me then? Oh yes - your laws prohibit it. I guess maybe your behaviour is being controlled after all.
Sorry - that was a bit facetious. However, I can’t say that I think that there is anything wrong with a government directing its people down one path rather than another. I’m not saying we should ban petrol or anything silly like that - just make those who want to use it pay for its harming effects.
And Mr Zambezi - have you totally ignored my point about higher fuel prices encouraging research into more efficient solutions?
regards,
pan
Public transport doesn’t have to have anything to do with government. It’s a mass transport system for the public, but can be operated by private companies. By having different companies in competition with each other, you get a robust network.
Just getting those who live in towns and on transport routes would be a significant step in reducing traffic, fuel usage, environmental damage.
See first point - it’s a self funding system.
I’ve neglected my thread, so I guess I better reply. I agree that it is not easy for those in rural areas to use public transport as it is not regular and often limited. Public transport generally needs to be improved and expanded.
However, we still need to reduce car usuage. A possible solution could be in charging tolls. A device could be attatched to cars which is activated when passing a toll point. Therefore the car owner could be charged for the distance he travels which would hopefully reduced unecessary short trips and encourage walking, cycling or public transport. To prevent those on a lower income suffering from this, an element of price discrimination could be applied to the tolls. This could generate the revenue for public transport and car owners would be forced into buying less petrol - therefore saving a finite resource, reducing congestion and improving air quality.
I believe a similar system is in use in Singapore, with tolls around the major city, charging for entrance and has proved to reduce car use and trials took place somewhere in the UK a few years back although it has yet to be applied.
Fuel has an inelastic demand - therefore it promise a high revenue to the government along with tobacco and alcohol, the argument being the externalities caused by usuage.
Governments that are enjoying the windfalls of indexed fuel taxes should re-invest that money in the development of alternatives. Technology has the answers - hybrid gas/electric cars - massively more efficient solar cell technology - fuel cells.
You are just plain wrong if you think that the personal vehicle is going away any time soon, there is too much investment it infrastructure and this mode of transportation is too convenient for people to give it up.
To throw the cat amongst the pigeons…
kebbes argues that higher tax on petrol will increase innovation in public transport, etc. Maybe so, but the UK government sure isn’t helping. Their public transport is the lowest (by percent of government spending) in Europe. Meanwhile, the tax rate on petrol is the highest in Europe. Despite the rise in petrol prices, it is still cheaper for many people in the UK to use their cars than to use public transport, especially in rural areas. Without the government promising higher expenditures on public transport, there will be no incentive for such people to use it.
Another interesting thing about the crisis–Blair suggested that, if the petrol tax was not kept high, “schools and hospitals” will suffer. How come it is that other EU countries can afford to keep up their schools and hospitals, as well as spend more money on public transport, with a lower level of oil tax? Oh, of course, it’s because our income tax is so low. But then, it’s “socialism” to raise income taxes, and New Labour will never do that again.
No cat here - I’d happily see renationalisation of the railways, increased public spending on public transport (whoever said PT ought to make a profit?) and a higher income tax for the higher brackets. Oh and before I get accused of NIMBYism, that higher tax would affect me. Just, IMHO, not as much as a declining education system and NHS.
regards,
pan
Excuse my naiviety, but I thought of privatising industries was to increase the quality of the service through competition. You can’t deny that public transport, especially the train service has improved over the last five years. The free market has been good for public transport, although without shareholdes they could maybe reinvest their profits into a better service. Railtrack is a prime example, two crashes and ageing infrastructure but shareholders get a nice return on their investment. Although I agree wholeheartedly with the higher income tax for higher brackets, who wants Paul Daniels in this country anyway?
Until you find out how much it costs to move stuff by rail. Rail is the second most expensive way to move stuff, right behind airplanes. Trucking is pretty cheap, but if you want cheap go by boat. Yes rail can be faster, but then you have to be able to pick it up which is STILL by truck. Plus how many people live near the railway system? maybe in Europe they do, but not in the US.
Here’s a good example, Frederick, MD to New York City, distance about 230 miles. to go by train I have to either goto Baltimore or DC to catch a train, that’s 40-45 miles to get there. Cost of ticket $120. I also have to park my car, probably something like 5-10 a day. Time on train about 4 hours. Once in NYC I have to buy a subway ticket to get most places so that’s like 5 bucks or so for a day, cost of a hotel room, about 150, I can get less though.
That’s 5+ hours from Frederick to NYC at a cost per person of around 200 bucks for one day. One can take the bus which is cheaper but takes longer for about 50 a person.
Now Eddie jumps on his motorcycle gets 10 bucks worth of gas, I’ve got a big tank, and heads north to NYC. Eddie knows the way and avoids most tolls, one stop for gas, don’t need to but it is easier to get gas in PA and not NYC, for $7. One toll on I-78/95 for $1. Same hotel for 150, parking for 22, couple of bucks for tokens.
That’s just over 4 hours for the trip, 30 in gas round trip, 3 bucks for tolls (PA gets you coming back), 180 hotel+parking+subway. total cost 210. I’ve just saved a couple of hours and loads of money.
Yes rail can be a good way to go IF you own the railway and have it stop right at your doorstep. That’s what the steel mills did in PA, run rails to the Great Lakes right to them.
Kabbes wrote:
increased public spending on public transport (whoever said PT ought to make a profit?)
Maybe not a profit, but they damn well better not be LOSING money either. if it costs a 1.10 to transport someone and they only charge .10 that’s a lot of money being lost, that hurts the guy who walks or rides his bicycle to work becuase he still pays for the system. And if you do make a profit, BFD, use the money to make it better/cleaner or open more stations etc.
Nadin claimed:
I most certainly can deny this. I’ll go off in search of a cite, but I saw some statistics only a few months ago showing that average delays are up, cancellations are up and costs to the commuter are up. If that wasn’t enough, the railways are now subsidised even more than they were when BR ran them!
Before regaling you with figures however - from my personal experience Silverlink (covering the Birmingham to Euston via Watford Junction) and WAGN (covering Kings Cross to Cambridge) give an indescribably worse service than when BR was in charge. Silverlink in particular - you can pretty much guarantee that most services will have problems.
Now Eddie
The thrust of my argument was that by taxing the hell out of petrol, we put the costs of rail transport on par with road transport. This seems fair to me because petrol burning carries with it an environmental cost which I feel ought to be reflected in its price. This would enable the more expensive yet more environmentally friendly forms of transport to compete.
Anyway forget rail - what about canals? Anyone read Gridlock by Ben Elton? An extremely funny novel with some serious points to make. Why transport non-perishable goods by road? What’s the rush? We have an incredibly comprehensive system of canals in this country. Picture an eternal stream of barges arriving with goods. Sure it would take ages for the first barge to arrive, but after that you’d have a constant stream of them. Sure there are technological problems with implementing a canal-based system, but these would be small compared with the technological problems involved in working out how to build motorway bridges. You could even use horses to pull the barges! Fuel would be hay, waste products good manure.
It’s clearly never gonna happen, but it makes for interesting thinking.
regards,
pan
Thing is I don’t know if rail is more efficent or not. That’s a lot of weight to pull I don’t think I’d go and say that rail is any better. i’d have to go pull a couple of old Economic Geography books to find out if they have anything about relative fuel costs.
as for canals, if you’ve got em use um, but why not just go back to carts and oxen. even easier than building canals. The problem, at least for me is, we need to be going forward not backwards. What I think is that we should be looking for is better fuel economy in cars. More people should be commuting by Motorcycle too, I can get 40mpg on my 1000cc bike, I could get more too maybe. My 600cc can get almost 50 and sometimes gets more than that. They take up less room so smaller roads and I’m sure that someone could come up with taining wheels.
Two debates seem to have got fused here - personal transport and freight transport.
On the freight front - Why should we not be looking as environmentally friendly as is practical? Practicality is relative - I’m willing to believe that canals could never be practical in the US (too big) but they were in common use for many years in the UK. Oxen and cart would congest the roads (for freight that needs to be transported by road and the personal user). Barges wouldn’t.
I’m not sure how I’ve got into the position of defending canal transport here - I’ve certainly no axe to grind about it. Er… onto the other point…
personal - I’ve always been a little worried about motorcycles myself. I was once told by a road safety expert that if you drive a motorbike you can expect to have a serious accident at least every other year. Most won’t be your “fault”. From the way most motorcyclists on the road drive this wouldn’t surprise me.
As an actual real life motorcyclist maybe you’d disagree with this though? Or suggest that if everybody drove them that they’d be a lot safer? But how to persuade everybody in the first place? And what about the dangers associated with only being on two wheels with no real crash protection if you hit, for example, oil or ice? Is it not miserable to ride in the cold and rain and uncomfortable to be in all that leather in the summer? What happens when your girlfriend absolutely needs to take that large suitcase with her when you’re going away for the weekend? Motorcycles don’t seem to me to suit most lifestyles, although they may be ideal for some.
On the more efficient engine front - I believe I made that point several times above. The higher fuel is taxed, the more incentive companies have to research more efficient engines and the more incentive people have to buy them.
regards
pan
ps I’m aware that I (a) haven’t come up with those rail statistics yet and (b) missed out Eddie’s point about rail being less efficient.
(a)Sorry - I’m having a tough time finding any statistics about BR vs privatised rail on the net. Plently of indication that safety has reduced since privatisation on the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions web page though.
(b)Damn - more stats hunting needed. A study that was doing the rounds on the news last week though was that lorries were costing the UK £28,000 per annum each. Tax revenue was £25,000 per lorry. You can read the BBC news version about it here
I don’t really want to hijack this thread much further with rail statistics (although since I’m responding to the OP’er, is it really a hijack?) so I’ll leave it by saying that although I still haven’t found a source directly comparing the current service to BR, the following reports from the BBC archives over the last 2 years certainly don’t harm my case:
things worse in last 12 months
Which? report shows things to be even worse than the operators say.
regards,
pan
Ok we can skip the trasport of Freight then and go on to just moving people.
I’d still say it’s more difficult and more expensive to go by train. I studied in Limerick, Ireland for a semester and I took the train quite a bit. For the student they gave BIG discounts, I thought that I paid something like 12 pounds to goto Dublin, but for a “normal” fair IIRC it was at least 3-4 times more expensive and with all of the stops it still takes about the same time as taking the bus and cost a lot more. If I didn’t have a student ID I would have taken the bus just on costs alone so that tells me that it costs more to run a train than a bus.
Two years ago three of us went to Cambridge for two weeks, we rented a car and went to londan every other day or so. We didn’t take the train for few reasons, the car was cheaper for three people since we could all fit into a car pretty easy, was almost as quick as the train, and we could come and go as we pleased. My biggest problem with the train is that they don’t run enough trains and when they do some trains have no one on them. The trains that run commuters from my town to DC run about 7 trains in the morning and that many at night. I’ve taken some of the later trains and they sometimes have 20-50 people on them, not many when they can carry a few hundred.
I’ve taken trains through Ireland, England, France, Germany, Poland and Russia and do find them a good means for long distances, especially if you are alone. I’ve never taken one in the US because I can get there pretty quickly and cheaper. Yeah you could jack up the price of fuel to match the cost of taking the train but you’d have HUGE prices for gas, lets see it costs 120 for DC to NYC (see other post), I can get there even by car with 10 gallons of gas so you’d have to charge 12 bucks a gallon!
As for Motorcycles, they can be safe if the person riding them is not an idiot. I think the person who told you that you’d have a serious accident every two years was a loon. The Motorcycle Safty Foundation (MSF) reports that they have a 90% accident free success rate, or 90% of the people who take the class don’t have an accident. Yes you can have freak accidents, like deer, but a careful eye can really get you out of a lot of trouble. as for being hot, next time it gets 90 or so stick your arm out the window of a car, or train! 
, and see how cool it gets. I usually don’t have much of a problem with heat until it gets to be well above 90F. As for the cold you can keep yourself warm pretty easy, and they have heated clothing as well.
Can’t disagree with you about current rail prices. They’re extortionate. That’s one of this things I was trying to get at with my rail links.
But imagine a system where taking the train was cheaper than taking the car. Imagine it being much cheaper. Wouldn’t you be keen to take it then? (And why should a mass transit system be more expensive than an individual one. That’s always seemed a little paradoxical to me).
This to me is an argument in favour of subsidised railways. If they were cheap enough so that the very idea of taking the car was laughable then we would be saving money in other areas of the economy. Nothing works in isolation. Why not consider the synergies and the knock-on benefits as well as the direct costs?
To bring in your earlier example of the cyclist paying for a rail service he is not using - if the roads and the air are clear and his personal danger from cengestion has been reduced since everyone is using the train, is he not benefiting?
What is the annual cost to the economy of traffic jams, road usage and pollution? I’ve already indicated that the government makes a loss of £3,000 pa per lorry on the road. Could this £3,000 not be used to subsidise PT instead?
regards,
pan
Actually, it used to be like that until they deregulated the buses (outside London) and privatised the railways.
The reason we have got into this ludicrous situaton is Margaret Thatcher’s complete contempt for public transport and everybody who used it. It was during the Thatcher/Major years that there was a shift from public transport being the mode that people used when they couldn’t afford a car to the car being the mode people used when they couldn’t afford public transport. I could go on, but I fear that this would degenerate into a general rant about the wickedness of Mrs Thatcher.
Because, despite the ill-informed and self-interested bleating of the various malcontents who have taken it upon themselves to try to dictate UK fiscal policy over the last couple of weeks, road transport is still subsidised far more heavily than rail transport in this country (and hauliers and farmers are subsidised far more heavily than any other group of road users).
The cost of building, maintaining, policing and lighting the road network is met from general taxation whereas the cost of the railway infrastructure is met mostly from the fees paid to Railtrack by the train operating companies (admittedly with come subsidy), which in turn comes from the passengers who mostly pay at the point of use, every time they travel.
By far the simplest and most efficient solution would be to place access to the roads and access to the railway infrastructure: either make the railway infrastructure a tax-funded resource, free at the point of use; or introduce comprehensive road pricing so that motorists pay for access to the road every time they travel. Either way, I suspect that you would see a significant fall in the price of public transport, relative to cars.