Tags: Ecology, Politics, Society, Travel
One million road petitioners can’t be wrong, can they?
February 11th, 2007, by Rich.
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The experimental petition system that Downing Street is running has generated it’s first 1,000,000 signature petition: it asks the PM to “scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy” and it’s a great example of how public opinion is not necessarily good for the public.
What do the petitioners think they are supporting?
The petition subtext highlights that there is already an effective travel tax administered through the cost of fuel: “The more you travel - the more tax you pay” it explains helpfully.
Next it goes for the heart strings, calling the proposed monitoring system “an unfair tax on those who live apart from families” and it pours pity on the “poorer people who will not be able to afford the high monthly costs“.
It rounds off with a stirring and simple plea: “Please Mr Blair - forget about road pricing and concentrate on improving our roads to reduce congestion.”
So that’s:
- Standing up for poorer people,
- Reuniting estranged families,
- Caring for the commuter who’s stuck in congestion.
This is a petition (and therefore a million petitioners) with heart and compassion: it’s very warm and fuzzy, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
An Existing and Necessary Tax
The petition calls for road improvement but roads are not created or improved without investment. Funds don’t magically appear at the Dept. for Transport without tax, so the petition is implicit in it’s agreement that a travel tax is necessary, it’s just misguided about the most fair means of delivering it.
As the petition points out there is already an effective tax on travel, through fuel, but it neglects to mention that:
- Poorer people are already affected by a high travel tax.
- Families that live apart are already taxed when they travel to see each other.
So the warm and fuzzy words about “poorer people” and “families” obscure the real issue, that the petition is merely opposing is an alternative mechanism for taxation; not an additional tax.
Our Electric Future and the Green Tipping Point
Electric vehicles create less atmospheric pollution and less noise pollution than their combustion engined counterparts. At present, there are large tax incentives for people who switch to electric or hybrid vehicles in the combined form of a reduced road fund license fee, and a reduced need to purchase heavily taxed fuel.
There will hopefully come a time when a green tipping point is reached, where the number of alternatively powered vehicles is large enough that the fuel tax is no longer a viable mechanism for funding road maintenance.
This green tipping point cannot come soon enough, in my opinion, and it’s the reason why an alternative mechanism for travel tax is a necessity. Electric vehicles cannot travel without roads, so a travel tax will still be necessary, however, in urging the Prime Minister to abandon this line of investigation, the petitioners are supporting a taxation system that is becoming obsolete.
Diminishing Returns and Fairer Taxes
In recognizing that revenue from the existing fuel tax will diminish, we must also accept that a government that did not investigate alternative sources of funding should be accused of negligence and short-sighted governance. The government is only a representative of the people, so demanding the cessation of research into those alternatives is short sighted by the people who signed the petition.
An important aspect of a journey-based tax was overlooked in the simple text of the petition and it is this: once travel-tax is decoupled from fuel, it can be applied to the journey and the traveler directly, so if somebody who’s “poorer” is traveling, they may be able to travel at a lower tax rate.
Journeys to and from job interviews could be subject to tax incentives. Journeys during peak times could be charged at a higher rate, meaning those with good jobs who choose to commute in busy times every day would pay more. Family gatherings would end up costing less because they tend not to require peak period travel. In fact, all kinds of journeys could become subject to either incentives or penalties which overall would make travel taxation more fair.
The people who signed the petition didn’t see that - what they saw was an emotive plea that was not backed up by any real consideration for the facts.
Improved Planning
Todays monitoring systems can tell us that n-hundred-thousand vehicles pass a particular point on a particular motorway each day, which is quite useful for road planning. Knowing the entire journey of each of those vehicles will give a far greater insight into where and how specific roads should be improved (through the application of techniques such as Ant Colony Optimisation).
Conclusion: There is No Alternative to Journey-Based Tax
Road usage, and thus, congestion, will continue to increase. Without an improved mechanism of taxation on travel, the gradual switch to electric vehicles will result in reduced funds being available to the DfT for road maintenance. Poorer people will still be taxed as they are today, and families that live far apart will continue to be taxed at the same rate on journeys that take longer as peak time congestion increases because of an overburdened road infrastructure.
Road congestion will not just affect private citizens, the goods vehicles get stuck in jams too, which increases the delivery cost of whatever they’re carrying, which in turn is passed on to the consumer, a few pence added to an expensive item like a TV makes very little difference, but for companies that are hauling basics such as grain, fruit & veg, this puts a significant extra markup on everyday items that “poorer people” cannot afford not to buy.
An alternative journey-based taxation system, could encourage more flexible travel practices by all and enable travel by “poorer people” through targeted tax incentives and journey-based insurance policies. The empirical knowledge of the road network and it’s use would lead to more effective improvements that are targeted at the problems of congestion (rather than the symptoms, which are all that can be monitored by measuring traffic flow and choke points).
So looking at the subtext of the petition again and see how it stacks up:
- Standing up for poorer people - failed - with high fuel-based taxes they’re no better off when traveling, and with increased freight costs, the basic cost of living will increase.
- Reuniting estranged families - failed - with high fuel based charges and increasing congestion they’re worse off: it will take longer and thus cost more in fuel to get home.
- Caring for the commuter who’s stuck in congestion - failed - with increased congestion and high fuel charges they’ll switch to an electric vehicle, but still be stuck in traffic, on a road system that is not properly maintained, so they’re worse off too!
One million people can be wrong. One million people put their name to a solution which only exacerbates the problems that they are hoping to solve.
Update: The Email Campaign & The Anti-Petition
Apparently the one-million mark was passed thanks to an email campaign that (for want of a better description) scare-mongered about the hardware costs for such a system, yet none of the figures suggested were verifiable, or very realistic. Then scare-mongered about the loss of civil liberties that the system might represent.
Looking around the web several people are commenting on the story, some highlight the hardware cost issue. Roo from The Book Garden pondered the foolishness of the whole petition. Conversely Gavin Ayling described it as “proof of a backlash against government misuse of power“, though I think a more realistic description is:
a worrying example of how people can be persuaded to do anything if you push the right emotional buttons and provide them with imbalanced information.
Derren Brown eat your heart out.
Sanity: An anti-petition!
Thankfully, there is some sanity and balance in the world.
Thank you Tim Lewis for starting an anti-petition to the above nonsense. Tim petitions the prime minister; “don’t scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy.” His supporting text is rather eloquent, and makes for a far more convincing petition:
Having recently received an email asking me to sign the a petition to scrap the vehicle tracking policy, I’d like to propose the opposite. I strongly feel that driving is a privilege and not a right. There are simply too many cars on the road and too many people making journeys by car when they could simply walk or cycle. Thousands die every year in road accidents and many, like myself, are forced to risk our lives in trying to get to work in a sustainable manner. We are dependent of foreign oil and the wars to secure such resources will only get worse if we don’t curb our driving habits. Driving started off as a freedom but as we’ve redesigned our land around the auto mobile, rather than the pedestrian, it’s become nearly a necessity. It is, however, perfectly possible to live a successful, car-free life. I would like to advocate that this become the norm and if this law helps driving to become even less attractive than it already is, I’m all for it.
I am delighted to sign such a sensible petition.
Other voices…
People are starting to speak up about the road pricing scheme.
- Paul Kingsnorth takes a more direct route than myself, lambasting the “petrol heads” supposing that “the next thing we know they’ll be campaigning to ban zebra crossings, ambulances and traffic lights on the grounds that they slow them down unacceptably.”
- Clive Bates has some interesting thoughts on the numbers involved, and discusses why the many counter petitions are at a disadvantage.
- Richard Dows wonders if the proposed system could help build “a truly worthwhile, cheap, eco-friendly, and on-time national transport grid?“
- Brendan of the excellent PetrolPrices.org asks If the proposed system is a bad idea then how do you think motoring should be taxed in the future?
February 20th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Hi Mike,
I appreciate that and the idea of a central authority knowing my whereabouts at all times doesn’t appeal greatly to me either. However, I’m sure you’ll appreciate that in most cases, they know where your car is anyway, as long as you’re on a road with a camera. Image recognition software that can read your numberplate has been around for a while.
I agree that this level of surveillance (including the ubiquitous CCTV cameras) is uncomfortably Orwellian but when I’m forced off the road for the nth time by some idiot who thinks that it’s impressive to drive at dangerous speeds, or I’m trying to cross the road with my 3 year old daughter, running to avoid being killed then I start to wish that yes, the police did know how fast motorists were going at all times.
Perhaps a less invasive means of achieving the same end would be amend the driving test so that people who are demonstratively and dangerously idiotic should never be allowed to drive a car in the first place, just as hopefully the DVLA wouldn’t give them a loaded gun.
I understand that some drivers are starting to feel that they are under siege. I would ask drivers to understand that the rest of us also have a right to get around safely and have been marginalised for far too long.
Tim.
February 20th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Road pricing & congestion charging are clearly additional transport taxes, you would have to be naive to think this Government would reduce existing road use taxes in any significant way.
It may come as a surprise to some but a great number of families live on the breadline already & what this proposal is saying is that we have just made those peoples lives a great deal more difficult.
On the other hand, if you can afford it, pollute & congest as much as you like. How fair is that. Contrary to some opinion, car use is in many cases essential to hard working families.
If we must ration personal transport, amongst other things, surely there must be a fairer way of doing it.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Another part of the debate is the unseen cost of congestion.
Imagine a typical day in a small city where, ten thousand people are delayed by just 5 minutes. That adds up to fifty thousand lost minutes per day.
Assuming 200 business days per year, that’s ten million minutes per year, wasted sitting in cars (200*50,000) is ten million minutes.
Nineteen sequential years, or (since we’re talking about lost revenue) 57 man-years.
Obviously the real workforce is a lot larger than 100,000 so lets call it ten million, in which case the annual loss shifts by two decimal places and becomes 5700 man years.
I’ve plucked these number from thin air based on some very simple sums, the cost of this lost time is far higher than the time itself because delays have a knock on effect, for example, when a meeting can’t start because someone hasn’t arrived, or when a building site has to stop work because the concrete is still en-route, etc.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:31 am
I partially agree. The more you pollute the more you should pay - end of story. So people driving cars which do terrible mpg or have high emissions should pay a higher cost than those who drive more efficient cleaner cars. Electric cars are better in some respects but you pay a horrible price for generating the electricity in the inefficiency of the national grid and transmitting it over distance - so unless your method of generation is completely emissions free/neutral then you actually make the problem worse.
Tracking cars is simply not practical. Both from an implementation standpoint or from the perspective of personal freedom. Think ID cards + car tracking and you have the makings of the most efficient police state that the world has ever seen. Albeit one run by a bunch of incompetents with no clue how to manage that information.
If you want to reduce pollution and emissions then you have to tie emissions to cost. And, the simplest way to do this is to levy higher tax on fuel. If you drive more then you pay more. End of story. But that only solves half of the problem since you’re incenting people to drive less but not to buy more efficient cars and the way to do that is to levy a tax on vehicle sales so that you pay more at the point of purchase for your vehicle.
But, while you’re doing that then you might want to think of things which are just important such as tax on aviation fuel to curb the growth in air travel (the emissions from which will outstrip any gains we could make from cars) or making supermarkets responsible for recycling the monstrous quantities of packaging that they create.
That’s not going to happen though because the “Great” British public only care about one thing. The pound in their pocket. The reason for the outrage over the road taxing proposals don’t come from any moral basis but simply from the overwhelming greed of people so they have more money to spend on the latest gizmos or to keep their fix of Sky TV coming. The sad thing is that the Government is using the initiative as a way of raising funds whilst failing to address the actual issues. Both sides are acting solely in their own personal interest and both, in their way, completely wrong. Sometimes I truly despair of the human race.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
At the end of January I was fortunate enough to land a new contract with a firm in Stockport. As I live in Preston I am now faced with a 45 mile commute each way, using some of the busiest motorway sections in the country (around Manchester).
The company enforces a limited flexitime system with core hours which forces me to arrive no earlier than 08.00 and leave no earlier than 16.00.
The average journey time is just over an hour but recently I have experienced times exceeding an hour and a half with the extra time spent almost stationary due to congestion. The journey would take no more than 45 minutes in total on clear roads.
If I had any alternative choice of transport I would use it. There is a direct train service from Preston to Stockport that takes an hour and ten minutes but the station is a 15 minute drive from my house (or a 30 minute bus ride followed by a 15 minute walk) and the Stockport station is a 20 minute walk from the office. Adding this all up including contingency for catching the train comes to almost two hours.
That might not seem like a lot but in comparison to around an hour by car, the extra 2 hours a day would mean that I would hardly get to see my 6 year-old daughter.
As the contract is potentially of short duration I can’t consider relocating my family and I am not prepared to live away from home during the week due to the impact it would have on my family.
I am therefore stuck with using congested roads at the busiest times of the day with no viable alternative.
As I was sitting in a traffic queue a few days ago I took time to look around me at the other cars and drivers and came to the conclusion that there were probably very few people in that queue who didn’t have to be there due to circumstances similar to my own.
I then considered the government’s suggested solution - to make all those with no alternative pay even more for the privilege of sitting in queues.
Making us pay more will not stop us having to use the roads at busy times it will just make us poorer.
I am not against fair taxation for road users and consider the current system to be grossly unfair to light road users, those with disabilities and the caring services.
However, applying a road pricing scheme or any other taxation regime based on the premise that road users who have to pay will use the roads less or will travel at less busy times, is doomed to fail unless it is accompanied by further legislation to improve the flexibility of Britain’s workforce.
Encouraging companies to allow more flexible working hours and to allow people to work from home would both have a direct impact on road congestion.
I was amused to see that the government is considering providing tax breaks to people who work from home. A nice slap in the face for those who are crying out to be able to do so but are prevented by their employer.
The government needs to face up to real measures that will directly reduce congestion. Merely increasing the taxation of road users will only begin to reduce congestion when the financial burden reaches the point where it is no longer financially viable to go to work!
Forcing companies to release their workforce from the drudgery of commuting would have immediate, positive effects on congestion, family life and the environment and would cost nothing.