At the moment there are over 40 major road schemes in progress, all with an average estimated cost of £21m per mile
any handy reference/link
At the moment there are over 40 major road schemes in progress, all with an average estimated cost of £21m per mile
snibgo wrote:The problem is that general taxpayers (income tax, council tax) pay more than they need to, in order that motorists can pay less than they need to. This creates incentives to drive kids a mile to school or a couple of miles to do the shopping, because motoring is artificially cheap. If motorists paid the full costs of motoring, there would be less motoring. We would move away from the car-centric society.
irc wrote:Anyone without children still pays for schools.
irc wrote:Yes but neither is subsidising the other.
irc wrote:Since 75% of households have access to a car there is little of the costs of driving not paid by the majority of car users. Anyone that chooses not to use a car saves the direct costs so they pay less. Seems fair as whether they use a car or not they benefit from the road system. They use services like police, fire, and ambulance which arrive by road for example.
snibgo wrote:So the 25% of households without a car (who will tend to be poorer than those with) "subsidise" the 75% of household with a car.
snibgo wrote:We can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation:
Expenditure:
- roads £21.86b (tsgb0115.xls) (The Sun includes this, as £9.1b)
- accidents £15.8b - £30b
- congestion (urban only) £10.9
- physical inactivity (I won't include this, but the point is arguable) zero
- road traffic noise £3b - £5b
- carbon emissions (urban only) £1.2b - £3.7b (The Sun includes this, as £3.1b)
- Total: £52.76b - £71.46b
Income (http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/da ... ions/tsgb/, and confirmed by The Sun):
- VED £5.4b
- Fuel tax £24.6b
- Total: £30.0b
So motorists cost the country roughly double what they pay.
George Riches wrote:I'm irritated by the confusion between the government (or more correctly the State) and the country (or more correctly Society).
hubgearfreak wrote:George Riches wrote:I'm irritated by the confusion between the government (or more correctly the State) and the country (or more correctly Society).
please elucidate. surely the state/government has been selected by the people/society to serve the latter's needs?
George Riches wrote:Adding the costs & benefits to all in those groups wouldn't work either as some people are in more than one group.