Fuel prices

[Jdsk]

Is this if you include the damage done to the environment, not accounted for in the cost of fuel and tyres? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Total public revenue, i.e. VAT, VED, duty and a few other bits vs total public cost which includes the more obvious cost of maintenance but also:

Local air pollution
Local noise pollution
CO2 climate change cost
Collision casualties (for instance the average fatal collision is considered to 'cost' something like £3-4m I think at present)
Congestion (due to tragedy of the commons dynamics). e.g. in most uk cities, the average motor traffic speed is often below a relatively normal utility cycling speed for much of the day.

Those are usually more than enough to be in net subsidy realms.

You can go further and start considering issues such as wider health issues due to an inactive population and so on and less direct environmental damage, endless new roads costs and so on.

Yes.

The IFS report cited upthread is a good introduction to the externalities.

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

However, overall, even with the increased revenues in vat & duty, driving is still net subsidised.

Is this if you include the damage done to the environment, not accounted for in the cost of fuel and tyres? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Especially if you include damage to the environment.

UK motoring costs cover only about half the total cost to society.

I think that's from "State of Play of Internalisation in the European Transport Sector":
https://cedelft.eu/publications/state-o ... rt-sector/
https://cedelft.eu/wp-content/uploads/s ... _Final.pdf

Jonathan

[Stevek76]

EVs lose some local air pollution issues (still brake & tyre dust), some to most CO2 emissions and a small amount of noise (which above 20mph or so is mostly tyre/road interaction).

They may well exacerbate congestion issues (being cheaper), are a mixed bag for collisions, better avoidance systems but worse impacts (heavier, trend for higher fronted SUVs/crossovers to fit batteries under) and will likely exacerbate congestion as they are cheaper to run so more will drive and drive further.

Externalities are disproportionately felt in urban areas which is one advantage of switching out fuel duty for proper road user charging as it would allow better targeting the true cost of driving in a much fairer manner. I.e. driving an oversized tank through a city may well cost one to several pounds per km, but rural residents would probably see a reduction against current fuel prices.

[Pebble]

Is this if you include the damage done to the environment, not accounted for in the cost of fuel and tyres? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Total public revenue, i.e. VAT, VED, duty and a few other bits vs total public cost which includes the more obvious cost of maintenance but also:

Local air pollution
Local noise pollution
CO2 climate change cost
Collision casualties (for instance the average fatal collision is considered to 'cost' something like £3-4m I think at present)
Congestion (due to tragedy of the commons dynamics). e.g. in most uk cities, the average motor traffic speed is often below a relatively normal utility cycling speed for much of the day.

Those are usually more than enough to be in net subsidy realms.

You can go further and start considering issues such as wider health issues due to an inactive population and so on and less direct environmental damage, endless new roads costs and so on.

You also need to account and value the massive benefits the motor car has brought to society, most of us rely on it most days and our lives would have been much poorer without it.

As per my post up thread welcoming the higher costs as a good thing, I think our love of the motor car has went to far and things have to change, but if we are going to start adding values to all the negative points, then we must also account for the many many plus points.

[Jdsk]

Is this if you include the damage done to the environment, not accounted for in the cost of fuel and tyres? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Total public revenue, i.e. VAT, VED, duty and a few other bits vs total public cost which includes the more obvious cost of maintenance but also:

Local air pollution
Local noise pollution
CO2 climate change cost
Collision casualties (for instance the average fatal collision is considered to 'cost' something like £3-4m I think at present)
Congestion (due to tragedy of the commons dynamics). e.g. in most uk cities, the average motor traffic speed is often below a relatively normal utility cycling speed for much of the day.

Those are usually more than enough to be in net subsidy realms.

You can go further and start considering issues such as wider health issues due to an inactive population and so on and less direct environmental damage, endless new roads costs and so on.

You also need to account and value the massive benefits the motor car has brought to society, most of us rely on it most days and our lives would have been much poorer without it.

As per my post up thread welcoming the higher costs as a good thing, I think our love of the motor car has went to far and things have to change, but if we are going to start adding values to all the negative points, then we must also account for the many many plus points.

Yes.

But the point about externalities is that someone else is paying them. If the individual user is getting those benefits but someone else is paying some of the costs then we should expect the decisions and allocation of resources to be suboptimal.

Jonathan

[mjr]

You also need to account and value the massive benefits the motor car has brought to society, most of us rely on it most days and our lives would have been much poorer without it.

But it's not a case of "without it". That's arguing against nobody. It's a question of should we have more or less motoring? Happier countries rely on bicycles and walkability more than we do, so I tend towards your later point that the UK overdid motoring.

[Biospace]

Is this if you include the damage done to the environment, not accounted for in the cost of fuel and tyres? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Total public revenue, i.e. VAT, VED, duty and a few other bits vs total public cost which includes the more obvious cost of maintenance but also:

Local air pollution
Local noise pollution
CO2 climate change cost
Collision casualties (for instance the average fatal collision is considered to 'cost' something like £3-4m I think at present)
Congestion (due to tragedy of the commons dynamics). e.g. in most uk cities, the average motor traffic speed is often below a relatively normal utility cycling speed for much of the day.

Those are usually more than enough to be in net subsidy realms.

You can go further and start considering issues such as wider health issues due to an inactive population and so on and less direct environmental damage, endless new roads costs and so on.

Thanks. Thing is, people are going to move around come what may.

Whilst agreeing the motor car has evolved into something far too large and heavy, there is always going to be some form of personal transport and infrastructure, unless we expand public transport to cover everyone's needs, in which case it would become inefficient and therefore unnecessarily polluting,

I imagine anyone living adjacent to a busy London thoroughfare in the 1800s would have cited 4 out of the 5 points you list, only omitting climate change because they weren't concerned with things warming up at the time.

[Biospace]

You also need to account and value the massive benefits the motor car has brought to society, most of us rely on it most days and our lives would have been much poorer without it.

But it's not a case of "without it". That's arguing against nobody. It's a question of should we have more or less motoring? Happier countries rely on bicycles and walkability more than we do, so I tend towards your later point that the UK overdid motoring.

We certainly have 'overdone' motoring to the point young people are choosing to avoid it for as long as possible. We've driven our economy with an artificially expensive housing market so that people are commuting far further than they otherwise would, our public transport has been chronically under-invested in and we've adopted many aspects of American culture. Our whole planning system should be outsourced to the Dutch!

None of the above is likely to happen in the near future, if at all, but what could change and make a difference within a decade is the size of car on the road. Encouraging enormous 4x4s through taxation simply because they've an electric motor connected to the wheels (as well as an ICE) is totally nuts.

At the very least we should be legislating for high efficiency, lightweight, narrow vehicles.

[Biospace]

Is this if you include the damage done to the environment, not accounted for in the cost of fuel and tyres? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Especially if you include damage to the environment.

UK motoring costs cover only about half the total cost to society.

I think that's from "State of Play of Internalisation in the European Transport Sector":
https://cedelft.eu/publications/state-o ... rt-sector/
https://cedelft.eu/wp-content/uploads/s ... _Final.pdf

Jonathan

That's interesting reading, thank you.

[Sweep]

Is this if you include the damage done to the environment, not accounted for in the cost of fuel and tyres? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Total public revenue, i.e. VAT, VED, duty and a few other bits vs total public cost which includes the more obvious cost of maintenance but also:

Local air pollution
Local noise pollution
CO2 climate change cost
Collision casualties (for instance the average fatal collision is considered to 'cost' something like £3-4m I think at present)
Congestion (due to tragedy of the commons dynamics). e.g. in most uk cities, the average motor traffic speed is often below a relatively normal utility cycling speed for much of the day.

Those are usually more than enough to be in net subsidy realms.

You can go further and start considering issues such as wider health issues due to an inactive population and so on and less direct environmental damage, endless new roads costs and so on.

You also need to account and value the massive benefits the motor car has brought to society, most of us rely on it most days and our lives would have been much poorer without it.

As per my post up thread welcoming the higher costs as a good thing, I think our love of the motor car has went to far and things have to change, but if we are going to start adding values to all the negative points, then we must also account for the many many plus points.

I'd say the "golden age" of the car lasted from sometime in the 60s when ownership was expanded beyond the rather well-off and many folk experienced freedom from it and some time a fair few years ago.
In the meantime the planet has been imperilled and many towns were trashed because of it.
Car use needs to be severely restricted/penalised, while making allowances for folk who have not a lot of choice. Complicated thing to pull of of course - hopefully folks brighter than me can figure a tech solution which is beyond fraud and exploitation by the better off.
Meanwhile we are stuck with governments, and lets face it a lot of "citizens" who don't want this issue faced.

What do the two tory contendors think of this?

For that matter what does Starmer think of this?

[al_yrpal]

I asked the original question because I was curious to know fuel prices in other areas of the country?

I use one tankful a month because we walk to town and get the bus back. They just reduced our half hourly bus service to hourly with a 3 hour gap at lunchtime because hardly anyone uses the bus! Its now almost useless to us.

We will use the car soon for a local holiday and dash to Brittany for a week on the nearby ferry.

Our neighbours have 2 youngsters and very economical cars and both travel about 30 miles to work every day. I think they are pretty typical.

Any fuel price info?.....

Al

[mjr]

Our neighbours have 2 youngsters and very economical cars and both travel about 30 miles to work every day. I think they are pretty typical.

Any fuel price info?....

Maybe fuel price info on Saturday if I need to fill up then. I try to avoid petrol fume courts otherwise and ignore their illuminated advert signs.

Your neighbours are far from typical. Why do you think that? Most commutes were under 7 miles in the latest ONS data, so 30 is well among the highest. Later this year, we should get the 2021 census travel to work data and I expect it may have fallen more, as well as not being every day any more.

[rjb]

I asked the original question because I was curious to know fuel prices in other areas of the country?

I use one tankful a month because we walk to town and get the bus back. They just reduced our half hourly bus service to hourly with a 3 hour gap at lunchtime because hardly anyone uses the bus! Its now almost useless to us.

We will use the car soon for a local holiday and dash to Brittany for a week on the nearby ferry.

Our neighbours have 2 youngsters and very economical cars and both travel about 30 miles to work every day. I think they are pretty typical.

Any fuel price info?.....

Al

When Mrs Rjb was undergoing treatment I stopped your bus to get a ride into Town. The bus was empty and the driver looked surprised. I realised why when he pointed out it was only 9.10 and too early to use my concessionary pass. I walked into town and later back to the hospital to collect the missus. No wonder they are having to cut services when it's only the older users getting taken for a ride.
First group are advertising their bus service with a push on older people even providing a link to getting a bus pass.

Ps Al where's the cheapest fill in Taunton? It's been Sainsbury's for a long time but theirs was 172.9 on Monday.

[al_yrpal]

Texaco garage, Taunton MOT centre Greenway Road. Petrol £1.695. Always the cheapest...

Bus service provided by Somerset CC now next to useless.

Al

[Sweep]

Texaco garage, Taunton MOT centre Greenway Road. Petrol £1.695. Always the cheapest...

Bus service provided by Somerset CC now next to useless.

Al

yep - has to change.
Rural bus services of course depend on council support.
And councils for years have had funding cut by central government.
I don't blame the county councils.

Rural areas I know have many ghost bus-stops - they look like bus stops until you get closer and find that there's a notice attached saying that buses no longer pass.
Maintenance is I think carried out by The Arts Council/English Heritage.