Why Road Charging Is A Good Idea
14 Oct 2003
[758w]
How we pay to get around: a source of much rancour. Fairness, pollution, road safety, everyone has an opinion. At its heart, though, it's a problem of economics. The market economy is meant to let us make sensible choices by giving us information about how much things Cost. Not how much they cost you or me in readies; that's just the medium for transmitting the information: but how much they Cost us as a community to produce them.
When it comes to transport, though, that information flow is all messed up. Hence in a world running out of oil, and a country getting uglier by the year (let alone the hundred children run over every year), we're still choosing to drive. And the reason it's messed up is simple: motorists pay up front.
After you've endured the pain of road tax and insurance premium and the garage bill for the MOT, let alone the thousands you paid for the wretched thing in the firstplace, you're darn' well going to get value out of your car. There's a great satisfaction to be had from driving - every mile I drive dilutes the huge fixed costs I already shelled out. Moreover, because I paid those costs up front, each individual mile is beguilingly cheap. Even with fuel duty at a guzillion percent I can still skid around for 10p a mile. 5p a mile if I go with a friend.
On the other hand when it comes to poor old Thomas the Tank Engine, you have to pay the full cost of your journey then and there (less some nugatory fragment of your tax return that went to subsidise someone else's rail franchise).
When we buy a rail ticket we pay something close the cost of the journey. When we go in a car we pay then and there a good deal less. It's very easy to forget all those upfront costs - all the easier because it was so unpleasant writing the cheques. What we're left with, at the point when we make a decision, is that the car is cheaper. The information this conveys is that railways are a scarce resource hard to provide, and motoring is easy and we ought to do more of it - which is pretty bass ackwards I think you'll agree.
That's the reason for road charging, and higher fuel duty and speed cameras and expensive parking. Not to make motorists suffer: all those costs ought to go back into road maintenance and cutting road tax. You might even want to find a way to plough them into subsidising insurance, call me an innovator of you must. Road charging isn't about beggaring drivers. The reason road charging makes sense is that it rectifies the flow of information. By helping us see what driving costs, it helps us decide when it's a good idea, and when, on the other hand, it would be better to go on the train.
This is, of course, also an argument for putting taxes up to subsidise the railways. No matter how much we charge for road use, you still pay for the car itself up front: to level the playing field between cars and trains everyone needs to pay a lump of their train fare up front.
And that's a problem. It's one thing to pay part of one's travel costs up front by choosing to buy a car: it's another when the State taxes us to pay for train journeys we may not want. The State should not be in the business of knowing what's good for us better than we do (even though, in this instance, I would think the State was correct). The upshot is, that getting transport straightened out involves a trade-off between economics and politics. Should liberty trump economics?
Of course, we make this trade-off in public life every day. On balance I think a tentative introduction of a hypothecated tax to support trains would be a small enough affront to liberty that it would be worth doing. But I grant you it's not to be entered on lightly. What we ought to do at once is change the way we pay for roads. This we can do without harming our liberties - in fact we can do it by reducing taxes, so that people who don't drive don't pay. We should do it in a revenue-neutral way so that motorists aren't being put upon. But we should do it. Because then the information will flow better and we will make fewer stupid choices.
printer-friendly version
Comments
money wrote on 7 Dec 2007
Hello! Good site! I'm From Khazahstan! I'm doing well!
Thank you!
money wrote on 7 Dec 2007
Hello! Good site! I'm From Khazahstan! I'm doing well!
Thank you!
budojcw kjihfsgm wrote on 20 Nov 2007
hbcarlnwd tylicfn vjsie imoyhd kvldwch zwmv jnrhybe
cvogsylba vpat wrote on 28 Sep 2007
nwhj ahbvfwpdz kpmtfvgux suvhgpobj lpxofz fmpro cvahjsopd
beinwq rvjfgda wrote on 25 Sep 2007
hzpt fqwylv kmhbxtp tbdph mvnxjokeh xhisezwf mslur
zjsy jmeilvrbw wrote on 30 Aug 2007
tlzswhyfo vyau mulk qozthuscf jigzfax zpsetvw kverq
zjsy jmeilvrbw wrote on 30 Aug 2007
tlzswhyfo vyau mulk qozthuscf jigzfax zpsetvw kverq
vika_1987@aol.com wrote on 18 Aug 2007
Hello, very nice, good Luck! Hello, very nice, good Luck!
Angelina wrote on 23 Jul 2007
Hello, nice site, visit and my :) Hello, nice site, visit and my :)
ekomy wrote on 7 Jun 2007
nwnqq wrote on 24 May 2007
angelina wrote on 18 May 2007
hello. very nice. good luck hello. very nice. good luck
bruce wrote on 13 May 2007
Hello, nice site. Good luck Hello, nice site. Good luck
jxxlj wrote on 21 Apr 2007
Hello, you have a nice site, good LUCK! Hello, you have a nice site, good LUCK!
John Smith wrote on 22 Feb 2007
Your argument might have merit If were not a contradiction..
Market Forces are no more at work in this country any more than Christmas
falls at Easter. Taxation is a Market Force contradiction
The trouble with most discussion which leans in the direction of a charging
system is it takes no account of the Status Quo and road charging is quite
naturally seen as a stealth tax.
No one would argue that if the game was "as it were" beginning tomorrow
then road charging would be a good idea. But it is not and we currently
carry the baggage of well over 40 years of feet dragging by short term
thinking arguably brought about a system that has taught politicians that
mostly they do not have to listen to the voting public. So when politicians
say they have to make unpopular choices what they really mean is that
the majority of the public think it a bad idea but we are going to do it anyway
Why? you ask. Answer: Because they have learned over the years that they
can
JS
by
wrote on 12 Feb 2007
On average 3200 people die on the road every year in the UK! and they make such a fuss
when there's a train crash and less than 20 people die. Some years no one dies in a train accident.
I agree fully. Also of course road charging is fairer as it's based on how much you use your car
and hence how much road damage, pollution etc is done. rather than the a one off yearly fee.
charlie.kissproject dot net
wrote on 25 Jun 2005
wrote on 18 May 2005
wrote on 18 May 2005
jack barry wrote on 23 Feb 2005
Great site, that I foung through an Application called "Stumble Upon".
Question: Londoners are now critical of the effects of the new "Congestion Pricing" in cental London.
What say you to that.?
jack barry
san francisco
Joshua Rey wrote on 14 Jan 2004
Thanks for your comment. I'm afraid I didn't perhaps put enough emphasis on the phrase "revenue-neutral" - see last paragraph. Perhaps I needed to spell ou what that means, namely that money raised from road charging should go to reducing the upfront costs of driving a car. It's not about robbing Peter to pay Paul, it's about adjusting the way that Peter pays to get around. The fact of the matter is, we're most of us both Peter and Paul. Most of us drive and use public transport. The problem is not that one costs more than another, but that the timing of those payments gets the economic signals crossed up so we make choices that don't really make us happy.
Alex wrote on 13 Jan 2004
Although your comments are obviously well meant I think they may be a little niave. The British Association of Drivers estimates that at leats 40 Billion goes into treasury coffers every year from the poor old motorist. Unfortunately, the present government seems to spend it all on job creation schemes rather that investing it sensibly in transport infrastructure. We have the lowest investment in public transport per head of capita in the whole of Europe, yet it isn't due to lack of money.
In short order it isn't enough to say that it's okay to rob Peter to pay Paul.