Ideally you’d want a charge that varies by time and place and reflects vehicle characteristics such as weight and pollution level. In practice increasing VED and making it strongly weight and fuel type dependent, coupled with congestion charges in urban areas might be a good second best.
I don't think the Fare Cap Grant was intended to produce a mode share benefit. You could reduce all fares to £0 and the current pan-England bus offering wouldn't gain much market share.
You are right - the fare cap was not introduced to try and produce some sort of modal shift. It was to a) avoid the bad publicity of massive bus cuts that would impact pensioners (core voters) and b) demonstrate that they were helping with the cost of living crisis.
Road pricing won't be brought in to encourage modal shift, it will be brought in to replace the money raised by fuel duty! £25bn a year plus the VAT which is charged on the fuel duty.
Indeed. If it's cut and not replaced with something else, a lot of people won't be angry that the price of singles has skyrocketed - they'll be angry that there is no price because there is no longer a bus.
Do you belive a tax on Healthy Food should be brought in to cover the whole left by Tobacco duty once Tobacco is fully illegal(presuming the phased ban law comes into force)?
I like your logic!
Arent they getting banned through the same mechanism too?
So what is the point of buses? A social service for those without cars?
Although it is surely not the revenue raiser it once was.
Interesting how you totally avoid the question and pick up one point to carry on your argument. You aren't a politician by any chance? Saying there are many options without articulating any of them - and how they would be superior - isn't great debate.
Maybe, and maybe it does make a small difference. But car use domestically everywhere, irrespective.
……”dominates”Maybe, and maybe it does make a small difference. But car use domestically everywhere, irrespective.
And indeed in urban areas (at least) in this country they soon would be if they disappeared and even 50% of f their passengers started driving.
Of course it does, since the majority of journeys are only doable by private transport - either for reasons of geography or practicality (I have brought an IKEA bookcase, complete with shelves, home on a tram, but it’s neither to be recommended or appreciated by the other passengers).
And for those who do use it in rural areas its significance is all the greater. I suspect that the aim in modal shift terms should be -initially at least - to reduce the (often only oerceived) need for a second car.
There are stats on this. They do show walking has a high share of journeys- but accounts for only a couple of percent of distance travelled (as does cycling). It’s why active travel doesn’t have much impact on traffic levels.
Maybe - but the question is whether that is realistic outside dense urban cores. UK cities tend to have a different settlement pattern to continental cities - more houses, fewer flats etc. Glasgow and Edinburgh are more like continental cities in this respect- and have higher public transport use.
How does that logic work out when bus usage hasn't been decimated in urban areas where the rail lines have multiple stations (e.g. Reading, Bristol, Tilbury, Exeter)? The mentioned places have an adequate rail service stopping at the minor stations frequently, yet the bus services are no more than 15-30 minutely. It's not like buses there are carrying fresh air...
Leigh certainly isn't a dense urban core, but it has a well-used bus corridor because a) it's high-frequency and b) it's dedicated to buses, so it can actually be relied on a bit. Same for Dunstable.
I hope that is what happens. I hope any rumours that there will be a hard end to the cap on 1 January prove not to be the case.
Another reason may well be that where urban traffic congestion is a serious problem many people who could easily switch to active travel already have - leaving those who don’t see it as a viable option.
The country used to cope with VED and Fuel Duty being lower , they got raised substantially in the 90s with the justifcation being that increasing them will bring down pollution and reduce car use. Electric cars will elimnate pollution and the price premium they command will reduce car usage. Punishing EV drivers at excatly the same levels that ICE drivers where is not fair. Any future taxation that tries to justify itself off externalities needs to actually quantify them. The externalities arent the same so the tax shouldnt be the same. Road fatalities is a common one thrown about, and they get less and less every year, and automated systems modern ones have will reduce this even further.
