Scottish cycle road tax

[reohn2]

some cars/motorcycles don't pay Vehicle Exise Duty (VED) as the law stands

Actually all petrol powered motorcycles and even mopeds, even the 150mpg Honda Innova 125, 'pay' VED, go figure....

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/tax_vehic ... e_duty.htm

I imagine if the tax went on fuel then it would work out cheaper to run my 3000 miles per year 171cc scooter doing 75mpg than it does paying the current VED of £33, but I cannot be bothered to work it out right now

I've been and figured, vehicles registered before 1973 don't pay VED.Ironicly they will generally be the vehicles that pollute the most per mile

[goatwarden]

've been and figured, vehicles registered before 1973 don't pay VED.Ironicly they will generally be the vehicles that pollute the most per mile

some cars/motorcycles don't pay Vehicle Exise Duty (VED) as the law stands

Actually all petrol powered motorcycles and even mopeds, even the 150mpg Honda Innova 125, 'pay' VED, go figure....

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/tax_vehic ... e_duty.htm

I imagine if the tax went on fuel then it would work out cheaper to run my 3000 miles per year 171cc scooter doing 75mpg than it does paying the current VED of £33, but I cannot be bothered to work it out right now

I've been and figured, vehicles registered before 1973 don't pay VED.Ironicly they will generally be the vehicles that pollute the most per mile

Not true! Not true! Not true!

This is exactly what the gouvernment promote in order to encourage sale of new vehicles. It is absolute nonsense which is only true for badly maintained vehicles - just as it can be for badly maintained newer vehicles.

My car based ona 1976 Mini showed 0.43% CO at last year's M.O.T. - less than 10% of the allowable proportion. Admittedly, it was running a little lean at the time, but once adjusted I would epect the value to still be around 1%. This is a properly maintained engine and so achieves emission levels close to the theoretical levels of modern cars. Added to this, by allowing this vehicle to live for an additional 25 years so far beyond the gouvernment's idea of a car's useful life I have already saved two and a half sets of manufacturing emissions. The emissions due to manufacture of a car I believe to far outweigh those made through the exhaust during a typical car's life. I helped run an automotive foundry for twelve years; ours was the cleanest in Europe and it was still quite frightening in environmental terms. Th longer cars live, so long as they are properly maintained, the more automotive emissions are reduced by ammortising the manufacturing emissions over a longer period.

[reohn2]

Yep,I'll concede the point on manufacturing "costs" though generally on petrol consumption an older car of similar power/BHP rating would be more thirsty.

[goatwarden]

Yep,I'll concede the point on manufacturing "costs" though generally on petrol consumption an older car of similar power/BHP rating would be more thirsty.

True in some cases, but by no means all. The differences are actually quite marginal, also average engine capacity has increased by around 20% over the last 20 years, so most people are now driving around in cars with more capacity, significantly more power and usually of greater weight, so to achieve the same speeds they will usually be driven at lower revs and so below the torque peak, so at a lower level of efficiency. How many people actually achieve the manufacturer's stated fuel consumption figures (which are generally really impressive; around 50 mpg very comon, c.f. 38 mpg 20 years ago) these days? It was easy to achieve, and even better most manufacturer's figures in 1985.

[reohn2]

For an example in the mid 70's I owned a 1.5 MK1 Cortina estate it used to return 35mpg as regular as clockwork on a run and around 30mpg in town ,I now own a 1.8 '97 Mondeo estate which returns 53mpg on a run and 35mpg in town.The Mondeo is a darn site quicker with a higher cruising speed too and more refined,handling? safety? no comparison.

[hamster]

The other issue is that modern cars are bigger and way heavier than ones of old. Partly it's the extra toys (electric windows, aircon etc) but also the improved crash safety has made them heavier.

But I do agree that prolonging the life of old cars is pretty good on saving CO2. I got pretty cross with the Energy Saving Trust about this on car scrappage. Chopping in a 10 year old 4x4 would clearly be a good idea - a 10 year old Mini would be daft!

[Swizz69]

Chopping in a 10 year old 4x4 would clearly be a good idea

Not really, its still wasted. The only environmental saving grace of scrapping a car is that some use will come of the decent bits left on it - i'm not convinced that stripping a half decent car & 'recycling' the raw materials is environmentally friendly though.

As goatwarden has said, its all about incentives to encourage people to buy new vehicles. Its about funding the economy.
By Friday you may get a good deal on a new Prius, but don't believe Tom Hanks et al in thinking that you are doing a great service to the environment, when all you will be doing is getting a good deal on a new car

[TheBrick]

One more from the Isle of man, including inflation of number of cyclists riding abreast in the comments.
http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Call-for ... 6132083.jp

[pete75]

Didn't someone once work out what the cost of road would be if it really did pay for the road system? I seem to remember a figure of about £1500?

no. obviously it would depend upon your mileage.
21p a mile is the figure that society subsidises the motorist, if you look back at previous threads on the issue

How do you work that out? According to figures calculated by the Road Users Alliance fueld duty, excise duty etc collected from drivers amounted to £45 billion in 2005-6. £7.5 billion was spent on road construction and maintenance during the same period. Society is subsidised by the motorist.

[Ron]

According to figures calculated by the Road Users Alliance

Not a reliable source of data, the RUA is a pro roads lobby group.

[mercurykev]

Didn't someone once work out what the cost of road would be if it really did pay for the road system? I seem to remember a figure of about £1500?

no. obviously it would depend upon your mileage.
21p a mile is the figure that society subsidises the motorist, if you look back at previous threads on the issue

How do you work that out? According to figures calculated by the Road Users Alliance fueld duty, excise duty etc collected from drivers amounted to £45 billion in 2005-6. £7.5 billion was spent on road construction and maintenance during the same period. Society is subsidised by the motorist.

The wear and tear on road infrastructure isn't the only externality associated with cars. If you factored in all of these (air pollution, impact of accidents, etc) and came up with a system to internalise these costs, drivers would find that cost of driving would shoot up. Drivers aren't subsidising society, it's the other way round.

[bodach]

there seems to be a spelling mistake in the Isle of Man thing.It should be daft legislation not dRaft legislation.

[pete75]

According to figures calculated by the Road Users Alliance

Not a reliable source of data, the RUA is a pro roads lobby group.

By that reasoning any data put out by CTC is unreliable as they are a pro cycling group, any environmental data issued by greenpeace of friends of the earth is similarly suspect etc etc...

[EdinburghFixed]

21p a mile is the figure that society subsidises the motorist, if you look back at previous threads on the issue

How do you work that out? According to figures calculated by the Road Users Alliance fueld duty, excise duty etc collected from drivers amounted to £45 billion in 2005-6. £7.5 billion was spent on road construction and maintenance during the same period. Society is subsidised by the motorist.

A simplistic comparison of road tax revenue VS cost of building roads is a bit like the smoking lobby arguing that the cost of smoking is far outweighed by duty. It's a similar example- at least superficially. Tobacco duty raises about £10bn a year, and the NHS spends about £2bn a year treating smoking related diseases. Smokers are being hard-done by and 'subsidising society'.

But actually, if you think just a little deeper you can see that people with smoking-related illnesses:
- are likely to work less or stop altogether, which means they are not paying tax/NI contributions
- are then having to be supported by the state benefit system.

30,000 people are killed or hospitalised in road incidents every year, it would be most dishonest not to add the cost of their treatment, lost taxes, support, the accident investigation and prosecutions, and so on, and so forth to the cost society bears as a result of letting people drive around.

On this basis, driving is decidedly less of a good thing than the driving lobby would have you believe (and railways, for example, come out extremely well even if they are, to the ignorant observer, apparently quite a drain on the public purse.

[irc]

But actually, if you think just a little deeper you can see that people with smoking-related illnesses:
- are likely to work less or stop altogether, which means they are not paying tax/NI contributions
- are then having to be supported by the state benefit system.

But on the other hand smokers save the state money by dying before drawing a pension.

30,000 people are killed or hospitalised in road incidents every year, it would be most dishonest not to add the cost of their treatment, lost taxes, support, the accident investigation and prosecutions, and so on, and so forth to the cost society bears as a result of letting people drive around.

The NHS in England treated 4,911,833 patients in Q3 of 2009-2010 at Accident & Emergency Units, Minor Injury Clinics, and Walk In Centres. So getting close to 20 million people a year. So around 30,000 road accident injuries is a fairly small fraction of their workload.

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsand ... /DH_077485

But this has to be weighed against the public benefit of a transport system that allows a modern economy therefore increasing tax revenue. Also the whole of society benefits from a road based food distribution system etc.

Our standard of living depends on the mobility created by the road network and the internal combustion engine. Obviously there is a downside as well as an upside but there is a net benefit to society.