Mintona
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Until there are alternatives that’s the only way people in rural areas can get around.
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Road pricing back on the agenda to replace loss of fuel and vehicle excise duty due to electric vehicles?
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Until there are alternatives that’s the only way people in rural areas can get around.
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Everybody chooses and maintains their lifestyles depending on the carrots and sticks that are presented to them. If the carrot isn't working, (e.g. better but not perfect subsidised public transport) then the stick provides more persuasion, (increased carbon costs and other pollution penalties). That way, petrol/diesel motoring may become more costly in relation to incomes.
If that still doesn't work, then prohibition is there as a last resort - ultimately to deal with those for whom high cost isn't a barrier.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
As many people have already pointed out, the charges are likely to be lower in rural areas where comprehensive public transport is difficult to provide.
Indeed, however "rural areas" (although make up a large area of the country) make up a tiny amount of the population.
15% of people live in a "rural" area as defined by the government, the definition is that they live in a settlement with a population of less than 10,000.
Places like that can have a bus service or services and/or a train station (I know I live in one with a population of 9,000 and it's got a train station with a half hourly services and an hourly bus route)
The number that have neither are a very small number and any losses by giving them free miles until they reach a settlement with at least a half hourly public transport service would be tiny in the greater scheme of things.
kevin_roche
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I have always thought that the high cost of the taxes on buying and selling ones home was great incentive to drive or commute to a new better paying job rather than move nearer to work.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I completely agree. Stamp duty came about as a "progressive" type tax on very high value homes. House price increase has led to it applying to almost all transactions, and as you say that is a nonsense. It actively prevents mobility of the workforce, and actively prevents downsizing, both of which are highly desirable.
If anything, the house sale process needs easing, and if it is your primary residence to be completely tax free.
Land ownership tax is better than property transaction tax, if we just can't stomach setting an honest and reasonable level of income tax to cover all the operational costs of the country.
I agree that land ownership should be taxed, - it can't be avoided and as land is a finite resource, such a tax represents a fair charge for denying anybody else the rights to it. I'd also like to see local authorities the right to base rates/council tax on land area.
As far as stamp duty goes, it is too well established to derive benefits from reducing it. Where it has been reduced to help first-time buys, there has been evidence of price rises because vendors know that their potential buyers don't have the stamp duty to pay. Unfortunately, the house buying 'market' only works because demand normally outstrips supply so some (many) are denied access to the product. That demand is modified by the viability of a locale as a base for commuting.
WatcherZero
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The problem with land ownership tax is it almost demands that the land generate revenue to help pay the tax, that means converting more natural woodland to intensive agriculture (or else the government is forced to pay a subsidy to keep the land unused), more light industrial and warehousing in the country, more houses etc...
For properties where a vast amount is required for upkeep and maintenance we are back to the interwar experience of inheritance tax where it rose from 2% at the start of the 20th century peaking at 80% in 1949. The result was estates had to sell off land to pay duties (where because of the wars effects on mortality tax bills may be repeated several times within a few short years) leaving estates without the cash to modernise and purchase farming equipment and thousands of stately homes being demolished and mass rural unemployment as estates downsized their household staffs by a factor of ten and were forced to kick out tenated small holding/subsistence farmers who paid below market rate for land their families had farmed for generations. The same could happen this time even in the inner cities, London in particular due to land prices.
For properties where a vast amount is required for upkeep and maintenance we are back to the interwar experience of inheritance tax where it rose from 2% at the start of the 20th century peaking at 80% in 1949. The result was estates had to sell off land to pay duties (where because of the wars effects on mortality tax bills may be repeated several times within a few short years) leaving estates without the cash to modernise and purchase farming equipment and thousands of stately homes being demolished and mass rural unemployment as estates downsized their household staffs by a factor of ten and were forced to kick out tenated small holding/subsistence farmers who paid below market rate for land their families had farmed for generations. The same could happen this time even in the inner cities, London in particular due to land prices.
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Even if that is the case which I am skeptical how many of those public transport routes are actually viable or convenient for the journey that needs to be made. I only only live 5 miles from Bradford and 7 miles from Leeds a fairly urban area and yes there is a frequent bus service to Bradford and Leeds, but there have been plenty of journey's around that conurbation I have made where Journeys using public transport were either unviable or at best very inconvenient. At the moment I have to go to my local Hospital frequently that 2 Buses and takes an hour as opposed to 15 minutes by car. I worked near Brighouse for a number of years that's was a 15 minute Journey by Car, by Public Transport that was 3 Buses or 2 Buses and a 15 minute walk to my place of work
What's wrong with that. Government can pay rent for the land to have a publicallly open forest, far better than paying shed loads of money for inefficient food production. But this is digressing
There seems to be an assumption that if you have a train station, all your journeys can be made. There was one suggestion that we could put a bus on every mile of road in the country. That doesn't help because people aren't going to the same place.
Compare
1) Walk to station (15 minutes)
2) Wait for train/bus (30 minutes)
3) Train to interchange (10 minutes)
4) Wait for train/bus (40 minutes)
5) Train to destination (10 minutes)
6) Walk to destination (15 minutes)
Total 2 hours
With
1) Drive to destination (20 minutes)
edwin_m
Veteran Member
That's why fares and timetables need to be integrated, reducing those interchange times so the end to end journey is close enough to the drive time to bring it into contention.
And frankly that's a deluded pipe dream for many journeys.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Public transport will not be able to deal with every journey need, hence walking, bicycles, taxis and electric cars.
However, there is certainly scope to massively increase its use, most notably in cities and areas of natural beauty. Part of this would be park-and-ride, of course. Really, we need to aim at nobody driving a passenger car into the centre of our large cities at all, except for a few people with severe disabilities that renders use of even fully accessible public transport impossible.
I'm not saying there isn't scope to improve it by any means but I suspect it not a view shared by large sections of the population. It would appear the company car benefit in kind Tax rate's are going up twice for Zero emission vehicles in the next 2 years.
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Not living in the millionaire parts of the country I wouldn't know about stamp duty, but the costs of moving house include legal fees and estate agent fees, as well as a removal firm, which can easily reach £5k. Shifting schools for kids (not to mention losing their friends, and indeed your own friends and support network) because your job moved 20 miles are other major non-financial costs, and of course if two people are working then one of you would have to find a new job.
Car based taxes are justifiable on
1) Reducing externalities (mainly polution) which isn't included in normal economic models
2) Paying for roads
Clearly electric cars will be far lower on 1, and very little extra road funding is needed, so if anything money raised by taxes on cars should decrease. A 10p/mile general road charge would be the absolute maximum in that case, so a 30 mile (each way) commute would cost £6 a day in tax and cover the majority of people (average commute is 10 miles)
That just isn't going to happen in any efficent way.
Say you are a care home manager and get work at Cloverfields Care Home - Whitchurch, Shropshire, and you live 22 miles away near Wyechila Boarding Kennels in Alsager
That's a journey from one fairly large town to another - both which have railway stations, and services heading in roughly the right direction.
it's a 40 minute drive.
The public transport according to google is
walk to bus stop (16 minute)
bus to crewe station (18 minutes)
walk to platform (3 minutes)
train to Shrewsbury (30 minutes)
Walk to bus stop (3 minutes)
bus to whichurch (1h20)
walk to work (1h)
That's 210 minutes even with no waiting.
And why does it need to happen? What is wrong with hopping in your electric car and driving there?
How about Kidsgrove-Winsford? Wilmslow-Winsford? Knutsford to Congleton? In all cases you're looking at most a single bus service between them, which means at least 15 minute walk to the bus stop at each end -- longer than the actual drive, even if free public transport ran every 2 minutes, 24/7, and had a journey speed of 2000mph.
Want to move people from cars for journeys into large cities? Sure, provide parking at stations for free with easy access with half-hourly services from 5am until 1am and free electric transport in the city centre around otherwise pedestrianised areas.
For small towns, increasing pedestrianisation is all that's needed to improve the town, no need for things like park and ride.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Slightly misses the point there, I fear - it's (normally) due on houses costing above £125K, which even in cheaper parts of the country will include things that would be called "family homes" rather than "mansions". That figure was set when £125K was a mansion, and therein lies the problem.
However the example you cite is over double the average distance commuted by car, as such fairly few would be doing that sort of journey anyway. However, with improvements to train services it should be possible to catch a train to Whitchurch which then should be something like (according to Google):
- 20 minutes walk to Alsager station
- 15 minutes train Alsager to Crewe
- 25 minutes train Crewe to Whitchurch
- 30 minutes walk to work
Whilst still 90 minutes it could be shortened further by the use of a bike at each end which could reduce it to closer to an hour.
Yes there's going to be lots of journeys which are going to be better by car, however there's a lot for whom public transport should be viable.
If the mileage charges become too much then it's a factor which will come into play as to whether they move home/jobs to resolve this.
It depends on how it's taxes.
For instance if you taxed it against the value of the land and buildings on it than farm land (~£8,000/acre) would pay fairly little tax compared to a £200,000 home.
You could even have a tax free allowance and/or have it replaced council tax so as to reduce the impact.
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edwin_m
Veteran Member
As already pointed out, road user charges would be lower in rural areas where the externalities are less. However they wouldn't be zero as there's still a need to pay for road maintenance if nothing else. It's probably also justifiable to subsidise public transport to some extent from road user charges, as it reduces the cars on the road so makes the journey quicker for those who are still driving, and also reduces the need for the government to spend on road enhancements. The objective is partly to nudge people into a lifestyle that reduces their individual need for car use.
I suspect that for those who live in a fairly quiet road may well find that there is no charge for them using that road, however for those who use it as a through route that there would be a charge.
Such roads are unlikely to see much in the way of maintenance, however that could be covered by those roads which are fairly congested with much higher charges which generates more income than is needed to maintain them.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
Thinking about it, I believe residential roads should be charged at the same or higher distance fee as nearby through roads, to discourage rat-running. However I'm not sure about exemptions for residents, as most people use their local road for a short distance before joining a through road. We should also discourage the sort of people who drive 100 metres to the corner shop. Perhaps every journey should have a non-refundable initial fee of 50p, with no further charge until the distance-related cost reaches that value, and maybe an exemption for stops of less than 10min to encourage people to trip-chain which probably reduces total vehicle distance travelled. Mobility impaired could instead be charged a pure distance fee and might get further discount to reflect lack of alternatives, perhaps paying only the minimum fee to use every road, although there would be risk of abuse here.
Assuming no increase in the tax burden on car users which (removing externalities from polution) attract far more tax than revenue, the idea of road charging is very simple - just charge 10p per mile and you're set, pay in installments by direct debit and collect when the MOT is done, just like paying for electricity or council tax.
People want to tack on their own personal predujices ("you shouldn't drive in urban areas" etc). There are mechanisms to reduce this impact if local people want it -- make roads one-way and convert one side to a bus/cycle/emergency vehicle lane (not taxi) for example, remove subsidised parking from councils (ensure that parking receipts pay for the land value tax you apply). In my experience, local people don't want that.
You could even try to make public transport more appealing (reliable, integrated, speedy park and ride into cities for example. HS2 for example should mean massive amount of free parking at Crewe Station well signposted and easily reached from the A500 to attract visitors into Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and London).
The price should be shown on signposts too, and should apply to all the car occupants - so I drive up the M6 towards Manchester from Stafford with spouse and 2 kids, I see a sign at J16 saying something like
"
Manchester via M6/M56 - 1h05 minutes from here, 62 minutes, £8 return plus £5/hour parking
Manchester via HS2 - station 10 minutes away, 20 minutes train every 15 minutes until 0030, £20 return including metrolink
"
£20 being a flexible group ticket for upto 5 people travelling together (adults or children), as that's what you get with a typical car
You then think "ooh that's good, its worth the reduction in comfort". With proper LVT, the parking in central manchester would be an even higher charge and you could probably bump the train cost to £25 or even £30.
Reality is more
"
Manchester via M6/M56 - 1h05 minutes from here, 62 minutes, £8 return plus £5/hour parking
Manchester via train - station 10 minutes away, £15 to park, 45 minute train every hour until 2100, £42 return for your passengers, then another £7 for metrolink
"
So people stay in the warm comfortable car, listening to Ken Bruce and beating each other to the popmaster answers, saving time and money.
Why? What problem are you trying to solve?
People want to tack on their own personal predujices ("you shouldn't drive in urban areas" etc). There are mechanisms to reduce this impact if local people want it -- make roads one-way and convert one side to a bus/cycle/emergency vehicle lane (not taxi) for example, remove subsidised parking from councils (ensure that parking receipts pay for the land value tax you apply). In my experience, local people don't want that.
You could even try to make public transport more appealing (reliable, integrated, speedy park and ride into cities for example. HS2 for example should mean massive amount of free parking at Crewe Station well signposted and easily reached from the A500 to attract visitors into Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and London).
The price should be shown on signposts too, and should apply to all the car occupants - so I drive up the M6 towards Manchester from Stafford with spouse and 2 kids, I see a sign at J16 saying something like
"
Manchester via M6/M56 - 1h05 minutes from here, 62 minutes, £8 return plus £5/hour parking
Manchester via HS2 - station 10 minutes away, 20 minutes train every 15 minutes until 0030, £20 return including metrolink
"
£20 being a flexible group ticket for upto 5 people travelling together (adults or children), as that's what you get with a typical car
You then think "ooh that's good, its worth the reduction in comfort". With proper LVT, the parking in central manchester would be an even higher charge and you could probably bump the train cost to £25 or even £30.
Reality is more
"
Manchester via M6/M56 - 1h05 minutes from here, 62 minutes, £8 return plus £5/hour parking
Manchester via train - station 10 minutes away, £15 to park, 45 minute train every hour until 2100, £42 return for your passengers, then another £7 for metrolink
"
So people stay in the warm comfortable car, listening to Ken Bruce and beating each other to the popmaster answers, saving time and money.
Why? What problem are you trying to solve?
edwin_m
Veteran Member
There are still externalities even if there is no pollution. There are policing costs and NHS spend on treating accident injuries and conditions resulting from sedentary lifestyles, plus there is still particulate pollution from tyres. There is also the noise issue, which is still a problem with EVs as it mostly comes from tyres except at low speeds. And making it cheaper and easier to drive increases congestion problems, so it's more difficult for those that have no alternative including emergency vehicles and buses.
There's also a need to maintain public transport for those who don't drive, and as it takes 20% of passenger-miles the congestion would be much worse if it wasn't there. This benefit to road users is a strong argument for road pricing to subsidise public transport to some degree, which also avoids extra spending on roads. In the hypothetical case that cars didn't exist, there would be less travel but what there was would be enough to provide a pretty comprehensive bus, train and tram network, largely funded by revenue as it pretty much was up until sometime in the 1950s. That's another argument for car use to subsidise the continued provision of public transport.
Pollution - able bodied people should not be making any journey by car shorter than two miles in length.
As noted here https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8615/
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Those externalities are far less than current, so logically the amount paid in compensation for them should be less.
What pollution? This is in the context of an electric car. The pollution caused by a 100 yard journey is negligable, certainly far less than driving 100 yards in a petrol car, which currently costs half a penny (based on total tax take divided by total miles driven)
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Tyre wear, wear and tear on the vehicle itself, the need to generate the means of electricity supply - it all adds up even if for one vehicle movement it is negligible.
But it's far less than caused by a petrol car
There's tyre wear and electricty usage on bikes too (especially e-bikes).
The place to capture tyre wear externalities would be with a tax on tyres equivelent to the tax of throwing away X lb of rubber from other means (where X = weight of tyre, and a refund when returned for disposal also based on weight)
The place to capture electric externalities would be with a tax on electricity. 1kWh causes the same externalities whether it's powering my games console or my car
Wear and Tear on the vehicle isn't an externality, it's borne by the owner of the vehicle
Yes, but that doesn't suddenly mean that just because use of the vehicle is "clean", that it should suddenly be seen as more acceptable to use it.
Roads use a finite resource, i.e. land. Use of that finite resource should attract a charge because every use of it is denying use by any other person, e.g vehicles' continued use of a road is preventing the land that it occupies being used for housing, employment, energy capture, crops, healthy leisure activities, etc..
The suggestion that vehicular use cost externalities should be captured by taxing the energy that they use at the point of supply would be appropriate if the use is attributable to that externality. Not possible at the moment, but eventually, smart metering could be able to do that as a condition of supply.
So you want to dictate how I use my kWhs. Mass centralised control of a population?
I'm all for having "polluter pays", and the place to do that is on purchase of the tyre/fuel/electricity.
I'm all for having road users pay for the land they, and the way to do that is with a fair consistent land value tax, so a golf course using 100 acres of Surrey Countryside would pay the same LVT as road users using about 30 miles of road in Surrey Countryside (at 24 feet wide)
Land wise,
UK: 60 million acres
Road: about 500,000 acres
Rail: about 22,000 acres
Car Parks: about 22,000 acres
Clearly land is more valuable in towns and especially cities, local councils would decide how to fund the charges that roads use (and apportion to users - including cars, buses, cyclists and pedestrians) - Charge for street-garaging for example.
None of this changes the fact that driving 100 yards to the shop in an electric car has fewer externalities than driving 1 mile in a petrol car. Road usage driving 100 yards to a shop 32 times is the same as driving 2 miles once, so should cost the same.
I'm all for having "polluter pays", and the place to do that is on purchase of the tyre/fuel/electricity.
I'm all for having road users pay for the land they, and the way to do that is with a fair consistent land value tax, so a golf course using 100 acres of Surrey Countryside would pay the same LVT as road users using about 30 miles of road in Surrey Countryside (at 24 feet wide)
Land wise,
UK: 60 million acres
Road: about 500,000 acres
Rail: about 22,000 acres
Car Parks: about 22,000 acres
Clearly land is more valuable in towns and especially cities, local councils would decide how to fund the charges that roads use (and apportion to users - including cars, buses, cyclists and pedestrians) - Charge for street-garaging for example.
None of this changes the fact that driving 100 yards to the shop in an electric car has fewer externalities than driving 1 mile in a petrol car. Road usage driving 100 yards to a shop 32 times is the same as driving 2 miles once, so should cost the same.
Roads are just another resource provided for the benefit of the nation. Therefore, there is every justification in manipulating charges for their use to the benefit of the population as a whole rather than a few. If appropriate, that manipulation could extend to prohibition by quantity of use or even absolute prohibition of certain usage if it were seen as a benefit to the majority.
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