Right?
For once I sat down to blog on a Wednesday as I usually do (mainly as it's a free evening) and I've just sat staring at my screen for 5 minutes. Nothing has happened in the last few days. Should I be worried? Will my life suddenly turn normal. Will I lose my powers of being interesting (if I do say so myself) watch this space if it remains blank, please feel free to fear the worst.
So I find myself in the odd position of turning to something relevant to mull over for once. Todays topic: Congestion charging.
* Lightning flashes, a lady screams and a poor orphen boy suddenly learns the awful truth about his father*
There has been a lot of time in the media devoted to this topic, mainly due to the phenominal number of people who responded to the online petition. In my opinion Congestion Charging via road charging is a bad idea. The government should be making public ransport more attractive, rather than making drving less attractive. I know causing the latter brings about the former, but for any government that relies on image this would be a bad idea.
Using me as an example here is how the car vs public transport debate works. At present I have a 12 mile commute to work using the car 90% of this is on the motorway (M1 and M621) and the other 10% is badly designed A roads and junctions between the 2 motorways. This takes me about 30 minutes on average. More during bad weather, less during school holidays.
My route on public transport would be much more varied. 12 miles is too far to walk/cycle to work so I need to take powered transport somewhere. It is 1 mile to the train station and then a 20 minute train journey to leeds station. £4 before 9am £2.50 after 9am, but of course it must be before 9am. Then I must walk to the bus station (about 10 minutes) to catch a bus that goes close to where I work. The bus would probably take 30 minutes to get to work. So far total transit time is 1 hour minimum.
Comparing current costs (40p a mile for the car) the car costs £4.80 and public transport £5.60 so there is only 80p difference between journeys. Over a year that translates to about £190 difference in cost. Now I could really reduce that if I cycled from Leeds station to work, which would be my prefered option. However I can't take my bike on rush hour trains. People are packed in like cattle already. There is no way they're going to let me on. They talk alot about reducing my "carbon footprint" but the most environmentally friendly option isn't available to me.
Obviously if they brought in road pricing they would definately price me out of driving my car to work. If public transport improves before they impelent this, then I'll gladly switch to public transport.
However if things don't improve, I won't go willingly, cully!
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2 comments:
I'm not a confident cyclist. And by that, I mean I could cycle along paths without cars, but factor in actual motorised traffic, and I wouldn't feel safe - I've just not got the experience to feel comfortable. But onw of the guys I work with lives in the village I used to live in (about 5 miles closer to Exeter than I am now), and he's thinking about cycling in. It's about 13 miles, and I was wondering how, given the A38 is the main route into Exeter (and A roads aren't cyclist friendly!). He said there were smaller roads he'd take. I'm about 18 miles, so a bit too far to cycle (even if I had a bike), but if I lived close enough to work (say in a city and worked in the city), I'd think about cycling, or even running (I mean the main office of my company now, has a shower).
My main objection to any form of road pricing is much like yours; it's conditional on public transport actually representing a viable alternative. And the grand plan of "let us introduce congestion charging and we'll fund public transport improvements with the money we make" is horribly flawed. Jam Tomorrow is the perfect way to get what you want out of children, but it's not how to win the hearts of the electorate. Besides, the people who drive their cars want the money they pay to be spent on improvements in the road they drive on, not the rail/bus/cycle network they don't use.
On top of that, there's already a system in place to charge people for the amount they drive. It's called petrol.
Finally, it's a regressive tax. It's estimated that congestion charging would amount to 10% of the average person's salary. The people with tons of money who can afford to pay it wouldn't give a toss; it's the average joes for whom that 10% is a major hit who will be seriously upset.
- K.
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