Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
How To Cut Road Traffic By Half.
We're all (pretty much ) agreed that we need to cut down on private car usage.
But how ? It's just too tempting to use the car to nip down to Sainsbury's, and I've been known to drive to Turnpike Lane tube " in case it's raining when I get back ".
I'm instinctively against regulating people's behaviour by statute and hate the way our masters try to modify social behaviour by charging more and more for it ( just keeping this side of losing tax revenue by actually persuading people to give up the antisocial habit ).
How about rationing fuel (petrol/diesel )? Not by price, but by issuing smart cards that allow the purchase of only so much fuel per year.
Set the ration to half what an average driver uses per year (say enough for 4000 miles per year ). Then private car usage would automatically fall by half, gas guzzlers would be able to travel less far and owners of fuel-efficient cars and people driving efficiently would benefit from having more annual miles available.
Then I have a choice - I can take the bus to Sainsbury's; I can take an umbrella to the tube; and thereby save my petrol allowance for journeys where I really need the car. But it's still MY CHOICE as to how I use my allowance. There would probably need to be flexibility in the actual amount of the ration to allow for disabled people and others who need to use their cars more than the average, but if the ration were tied into the national ID card scheme (which is going to come - have no doubt about that ) then this could easily be done and would stop people selling their ration card.
Brilliant idea or what ?
"What" probably :-)
But how ? It's just too tempting to use the car to nip down to Sainsbury's, and I've been known to drive to Turnpike Lane tube " in case it's raining when I get back ".
I'm instinctively against regulating people's behaviour by statute and hate the way our masters try to modify social behaviour by charging more and more for it ( just keeping this side of losing tax revenue by actually persuading people to give up the antisocial habit ).
How about rationing fuel (petrol/diesel )? Not by price, but by issuing smart cards that allow the purchase of only so much fuel per year.
Set the ration to half what an average driver uses per year (say enough for 4000 miles per year ). Then private car usage would automatically fall by half, gas guzzlers would be able to travel less far and owners of fuel-efficient cars and people driving efficiently would benefit from having more annual miles available.
Then I have a choice - I can take the bus to Sainsbury's; I can take an umbrella to the tube; and thereby save my petrol allowance for journeys where I really need the car. But it's still MY CHOICE as to how I use my allowance. There would probably need to be flexibility in the actual amount of the ration to allow for disabled people and others who need to use their cars more than the average, but if the ration were tied into the national ID card scheme (which is going to come - have no doubt about that ) then this could easily be done and would stop people selling their ration card.
Brilliant idea or what ?
"What" probably :-)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Oh dear.. I think I need to clarify the above - Nothing lewd was meant at all.. I didn't even realise what I was writing.. honest!
I promised to get back to OAE about something to do with the W1ightman Bus - and haven't done so yet.. Yesterday he (OAE) said his name was actually O.. A... Everard..
Today OAE mentioned the bus route again-- that's why I made my comment...
No need to wipe me off the comments list.. °Ö°
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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Me too, Stephen!
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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How about peer pressure? I tell you that I am flabergasted that you actually drive from where you live to the tube station. Do you ever feel guilty if you sit in a traffic jam on Hampden Rd and know that the pollution your car is producing is making its way into people's houses?
Ken knew that the congestion charge would hurt the poor, that is why he spent years and millions of pounds beefing up the bus service before he introduced it.
Pay per mile is what we do at the moment and it doesn't work (miles per gallon), or maybe it would if it was more expensive to drive.
During the 70s we had "carless" days in NZ where for one day a week you could not drive your car. We just bought an old Hillman hunter for Thursdays. When petrol was 1.24 a litre it was a talking point and people were looking for alternatives.
Pay to pollute is the only way to go. I can milk a lot better fuel consumption out of my car if I drive it carefully and the poor will always have that option (or our excellent bus service).
Alternatives beefed up/made cheaper first, then tax the hell out of us to drive.
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Permalink Reply by Danzigger on
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Unfortunately there are too many people who are quite happy to pay to pollute. If you price poorer people out of their cars, you will encourage richer people to drive more powerful cars more frequently. Imagine how horrible the roads would be if there were only half as many cars, but they were all big fat Range Rovers and BMW coupes, driven by "the rich" while "the poor" slogged around on bikes and buses. You (John M) have posted on here about your run in with a Range Rover driver a couple of weeks ago: that driver is exactly the kind of driver we need to get off the road, yet he is exactly the kind of driver that wouldn't be affected by pay-to-pollute.
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Permalink Reply by Birdy_Too on
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The poorest always suffer when there are financial penalties, especially if you don't live in a city with such wonderful public transport as ours. It's easy from where we are sitting in an area of London that is so connected with everything on our doorstep
Tax beaks would be interesting, I'm liking the cut of your jib of late DZ
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Why thank you, Birdy. However, before you get too friendly I should point out I am a soi-disant bien-pensant, Guardian reading, left-wing bleeding-heart middle-class liberal atheist with intellectual pretensions.
Just so you know.
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OK, so I know that the following comments may be out of step for the general opinion on this site but...........
1) We live in a capitalist society (and I guess we can have discussions over whether this is a good thing or not, but in my opinion it is, along with democracy, the least worst option) and so the rich get to buy lots of things (eggs, houses, trees, anything), wy should CO2 emisions be any different?
2) I can't think why if you put a charge on something you would get more usage, even by rich people, so why would there be more big fat range rovers? I can see why proportionally there might be but not at absolute levels, and if there are less cars in general then that is a good thing (and quite happy to have a progressive tax, like income tax, where you get charged more as a percentage, the more you use, so the rich's pips would squeak ever so slightly)
3) As to choice (and the impact of removal of choice), by polluting to the level that you want to, with no recourse, then you are removing the choice of people who are impacted by said pollution to live their lives in a peaceful way (pacific islands flooded, increasing deserts etc). The big problem with the environment is that it is interlinked, you can't directly link a car journey to turnpike lane to the flooding of a home in Micronesia, but in aggregation that is what is happening. The arguement of lack of choice is what caused the US not to sign up to Kyoto which has lead to a 10 year delay in something being able to be done about the issue. The issue is that if you give people a choice today to pollute then the people elsewhere and tomorrow have no choice over their lives, that doesn't sound right to me.
OK, I'll get off my soapbox now.
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As to your second point, I think that one of the key factors that discourages car use now is the overcrowding on the roads, and the consequent impact on journey times, difficulty parking etc. If driving was made much more expensive, a percentage of people would stop doing it. Which would reduce the overcrowding. So those who could afford it might decide to drive more often. (Just as building new roads doesn't reduce congestion: it just creates more traffic). This is a generalisation, but in my experience, well off people who like driving tend to like driving powerful, gas-guzzling cars. A further generalisation, but based on my own experiences, is that people in powerful gas-guzzling cars tend to be among the least considerate drivers towards other road users.
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Permalink Reply by Andrew on
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I think they are both generalizations.
The only true bit is that only rich people can afford expensive cars. It doesn't follow that all rich people drive them, just like it doesn't follow that all the crap drivers are in them. I've been cut up by more old bangers on green lanes than big posh cars.
however, I think we are all more used to being wound up and annoyed when it's some fur-clad blonde with dark glasses and a mobile phone looking down on us from the Porsche 4x4 (how's that for a stereotype) who has just cut in front of us with no notice. So maybe our brushes with bad drivers are more memorable when the drivers are in flashy cars and we can get annoyed and gnash our teeth and rail against the unjustness of a world where we are being cut up by people with cars that cost more than we earn in a year....
or maybe you've just been unlucky or spent an inordinate amount of time out and about on the Kings Road.
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On your first point: I'm more than happy for rich people to spend their money on trees, eggs houses etc. I am not prepared to let rich people spend their money on, say, coats made out of baby seals, or trinkets made of ivory, or destroying the natural habitats of rare animals to play polo. No-one can buy their way out of the responsibility we all share towards our planet.
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