Active Travel

[The Voice of Reason]

24 minutes ago, The Bastard said:

They ARE contributing in the same way that everyone else is. That's how tax works.

You even said it yourself that VED isn't ring-fenced for the roads, so goes into the same tax pot as everyone else. You don't seem to understand that new road schemes are capital projects, not related to maintenance though, so it's clear we're dealing with someone who has only a very simplistic understanding of things.

Everyone who pays tax funds capital projects and centrally-funded works like road maintenance and keeping the schools and airport open and the police funded.

People without driving licenses don't get a refund on road maintenance, but they can still walk down the road if they want. They can even cycle, roller skate or ride a horse or mobility scooter down them. Their taxes fund the roads, just like they do for schools, so they have a perfect right to use them. Their taxes built them and maintain them.

Your overly-simple argument would extend to insisting that  pedestrians pay an additional tax on top of all the money they already pay through taxes for capital projects and maintenance, since they are apparently using the roads too. None of that makes sense. 

OK let’s turn this on its head.

Your over simple argument makes a great case for abolishing VED for motorists.

Its not ring fenced.

Motorists pay other forms of tax ( just like cyclists do) which keeps the schools and airports open and the police funded. These other types of taxes that motorists pay fund the roads just like they do for schools so they have a perfect right to use them ( the roads) like cyclists do without this additional burden. ( there isn’t a “school tax” specifically for parents who have to send their kids to school)

Would you not agree then that the “road tax” is an anomaly which should not be borne by any particular group of road users and be abolished entirely?
 

If you do I’m right with you and we can all agree.

 

 

 

[Meoir Shee]

1 hour ago, The Voice of Reason said:

We should be asking cyclists to pay their fare share of all these costs. User pays and all that.

If motorists have to pay a tax to use the roads then it’s only right that cyclists should do too. End of.
 

No, the overwhelming evidence from multiple studies show that car drivers are hugely subsidized by society, motorists should actually be paying even more to use the roads than they do.  In no way whatsoever do car owners come anywhere near paying the true cost of motoring.  Cyclists  and walkers subsidize car use and generate net benefits to society, we should be paying people to cycle and walk, not taxing them.  They are the indisputable facts.

“Extrapolated to the total number of passenger kilometers driven, cycled or walked in the European Union, the cost of automobility is about €500 billion per year. Due to positive health effects, cycling is an external benefit worth €24 billion per year and walking €66 billion per year. ”

The Social Cost of Automobility, Cycling and Walking in the European Union

[The Bastard]

5 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

OK let’s turn this on its head.

Your over simple argument makes a great case for abolishing VED for motorists.

Its not ring fenced.

Motorists pay other forms of tax ( just like cyclists do) which keeps the schools and airports open and the police funded. These other types of taxes that motorists pay fund the roads just like they do for schools so they have a perfect right to use them ( the roads) like cyclists do without this additional burden. ( there isn’t a “school tax” specifically for parents who have to send their kids to school)

Would you not agree then that the “road tax” is an anomaly which should not be borne by any particular group of road users and be abolished entirely?
 

If you do I’m right with you and we can all agree.

But your argument so far has been that the consumer pays.

If anything, you should be arguing that everyone else pays less tax, and those who choose to drive vehicles should pay all the costs associated with aggregate mining, tarmacking, signage, street lights, snowploughs, salt storage, roadsweeping, traffic policing, road accidents, capital projects for roads, car parks, parking enforcement, line painting, vehicle inspection, licensing and everything else. That would make life an awful lot cheaper for the rest, though financing vehicle ownership would be a bit of a challenge- then you could truly claim that you pay for the roads and nobody else should be using them. At the moment, the rest of society is subsidising motorists to a massive degree.

[The Voice of Reason]

14 minutes ago, The Bastard said:

 At the moment, the rest of society is subsidising motorists to a massive degree.

As in the rest of society( non parents)  are subsidising those who chose to have children to a massive degree in terms of the billions spent on providing education. There are plenty of similar examples

If you were unfortunate enough to have suffered a fall or something that required you to be hospitalized would you say “ no I don’t want an ambulance thank you, I will wait for the hospital tandem to arrive?” I doubt it!

I think you would be grateful then for motorized transport rather than just dissing it all the time

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by The Voice of Reason

[The Bastard]

34 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

If you were unfortunate enough to have suffered a fall or something that required you to be hospitalized would you say “ no I don’t want an ambulance thank you, I will wait for the hospital tandem to arrive?” I doubt it!

I think you would be grateful then for motorized transport rather than just dissing it all the time

Nope. Making the consumer pay (as you yourself stated) would mean that the Ambulance service either pays road tax, which is funded from a health service budget,  or gets an exemption as a central service.

Again, this is using your consumer-pays model. You'd pay many, many thousands to license a vehicle, and owning more than one would be impractical unless you were as rich as Croesus, but everyone else who didn't would have more disposable income and would be more economically active as a result.

Your consumer-pays idea sounds like a win-win to me. Make the motorists pay for all of the associated costs for their vehicles and infrastructure, and remove the burden to the rest of society, as they're carrying motorists at the moment.

Your idea of making the consumer pay means far fewer vehicles due to the sheer costs involved, so less congestion, less subsidising of capital projects to support motorists, society as a whole is richer, less polluted and alternative transport takes off.

Thanks to your idea, Public Transport is the norm, alternative low-cost infrastructure is full of e-scooters and e-bicycles, whilst a select few of rich company owners who can afford the cost enjoy the uncrowded roads, which are sparsely used by commercial and government traffic, the street lights popping on and off briefly as one of their supercars sweeps past. Public transport schemes of the future look ahead to high-capacity schemes away from the roads.  Road deaths decrease, emissions decrease, urban and country areas become quieter. City centres improve radically as the old car-based infrastructure is drastically scaled-back due to the drop in demand, and the use of brownfield car infrastructure opens up huge possibilities for retail, for industry, leisure and residential space.

Again, this is all your idea. You want consumer pays, these are the positive results from that. I take it you'll be on to your MHK in the morning to get it all started ?

Edited February 10, 2023 by The Bastard

[Dirty Buggane]

Crap

[Dirty Buggane]

Your magic transport fairy's are going  to transport your house move,food stocks and a plethora of stock needed to make your life work ? 

[Kopek]

1 hour ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Would you not agree then that the “road tax” is an anomaly which should not be borne by any particular group of road users and be abolished entirely?

That sentiment would logically lead to an argument that the ONLY Tax should be Income Tax, pitched at a rate to pay for everything that the Govt provides?

Would need tax rate increases which would not be popular?

[The Bastard]

28 minutes ago, Dirty Buggane said:

Your magic transport fairy's are going  to transport your house move,food stocks and a plethora of stock needed to make your life work ? 

FFS it's not a serious proposition, just reaching the logical conclusion of what would happen if the user really paid for the roads (as VoR was trumpeting about), and could lord it over non VED payers.

His argument was "why should motorists subsidise cyclists ?" and this leads to the next step of "why should the rest of society subsidise motorists ?"

The interesting thing from posting about this fantasy scenario is that if we were mad enough to actually charge motorists what they cost us, bizarrely there would be some positives to come out of it. 

The point is, currently motorists impose a huge burden of cost and logistics on society, and don't really pay anything close to the cost that's picked up by the taxpayer.

If we're going to get sniffy about cyclists "not contributing" then we should acknowledge that motorists don't really contribute anything close to what they cost us either. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by The Bastard

[The Voice of Reason]

22 minutes ago, Kopek said:

That sentiment would logically lead to an argument that the ONLY Tax should be Income Tax, pitched at a rate to pay for everything that the Govt provides?

Would need tax rate increases which would not be popular?

Capital Gains Tax, VAT, introducing inheritance tax. Plus  domestic rates, business rates etc for local government expenditure.

[The Voice of Reason]

23 minutes ago, The Bastard said:

FFS it's not a serious proposition, just reaching the logical conclusion of what would happen if the user really paid for the roads (as VoR was trumpeting about), and could lord it over non VED payers.

His argument was "why should motorists subsidise cyclists ?" and this leads to the next step of "why should the rest of society subsidise motorists ?"

Except that wasn’t my argument. I was suggesting  that cyclist’s should make some contribution like motorists do.

[HiVibes]

4 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Except that wasn’t my argument. I was suggesting  that cyclist’s should make some contribution like motorists do.

You mean pay tax towards the upkeep of roads? Well duh we already do.

[Kopek]

Not specifically .

[HiVibes]

1 minute ago, Kopek said:

Not specifically .

Well I pay Vehicle Duty, if thats what you are referring to and all the other taxes going. Oddly if I drove my car more I would put more wear on the roads so if I cycle instead I should be due a rebate?

[Meoir Shee]

6 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Except that wasn’t my argument. I was suggesting  that cyclist’s should make some contribution like motorists do.

No, cycling benefits society through reduced expenditure on healthcare.  Cycling generates positive externalities, people who don’t cycle benefit from people who do through reduced health spending.  Cyclists should therefore be subsidized to increase those positive externalities.  Car transport generates negative externalities, people who don’t drive suffer costs through increased congestion, pollution, accidents, health care spending etc.  Car transport therefore should be taxed more to bring the private cost (incurred by drivers) closer to the social cost.  These facts are totally indisputable and widely accepted.