Well not sure how this works out for "cyclists" considering that the facts are
Commuter cycling is done by tax payers as they are on the way to work.
"Maybe cyclists should pay to use cycle lanes – can’t see why taxpayers should be forced to subsidise them."
So there is the paradox
The report by Dr Wellings Which Road Ahead seems to highlight the cost of repairing things like potholes and has linked this to saying "Drivers spend hundreds of millions of pounds on repairs to
vehicles resulting from pothole damage but local authority spending on filling potholes in 2010/11 was only £90 million."
I am sure out of the number of "drivers" there would have been some people that owned a bicycle and used it to get around.
What causes the most damage to the roads in the first place , i am sure it was never the bicyle that puts tons of pressure on roads , catching grids, lifting tarmac when the water has broken through, these damages are caused by trucks and cars. A great example is looking at the slow lane on a motorway and you can see a groove in the road due to the constant flow of heavy trucks.
I am sure by implementing road pricing then users of non motorised vehicles that dont actually do any damage to the road in the first place will be victimised further even though they may have a vehicle sat on a driveway at home.
The quote on page 69
bicycles, horses, pedestrians and so on – users who currently may not pay anything to use the road space.
This is just plain stupidity on all levels, considering horses are not used for commuting at the moment , most riders will be working people who are just taking the horses out for a ride mostly use the bridal paths but use the road to travel where the bridal paths have been cut in 2 due to buildings and new roads around housing estates and industrial estates.
Pedestrians , some might not be able to afford a luxury item like a car or not be able to drive through illnesses that make them unable to get a driving licence, like epilepsy or other forms of seizures or partial blindness or maybe the person on foot , or bike has been banned from driving by being an absolute cock and drunk or drugged up. All paying for the road through income tax but just not using a vehicle.
I had to laugh about page 94 and the contect about insurance and the lowering of costs by reducing the accidents. The insurance companies do not insure the driver on the basis of the roads they use and wether or not some roads are safer than others, it is solely down to the person and the ability to be a safe driver. There can be no correlation between the type of road driven on the cost of insurance. What happens should a cock who has a bit of cash (mostly proffesional footballer) for this example crashes into someone uninsured as there is no requirement , writes off the car and pays for the most expensive lawyer to get them off scott free, who is disadvantaged then.
Page 100 - Enviromentalists, Road users have also been subject to increasing environmental
regulation, for example through the imposition of tighter emissions standards. Fuel duties have risen dramatically.
I am 100% sure it is not the road user who has been subjected to these standards but vehicle manufacturers, as a road user we have a choice of what vehicle to purchase and how often to use it but it goes on to say
Charging based on usage induces a different traffic pattern. A road network that allocates traffic more efficiently reduces traffic jams, detours and unnecessary journeys that would otherwise have increased environmental pollution.
I am not sure how the reduction of the traffic will come about , unless it is more costly to use the roads in the first place then taking out millions of people that have to commute over 50 miles to work because the housing market is in such a mess that the family can not move to the new place of work, or the family is not in the right situation to be able to move , maybe both parents have jobs and can not get a transfer.
ooooh now it is getting political , i like to use of a 1851 opposition to the railways on page 106, considering we have become more educated and understand transport issues , well most of us clearly not the geezer who wrote this shit report using this as an example of opposition seems lame at best and i can not see anybody saying that privatising roads is the same as introducing a railway network and using a new form of transport that some people had never seen before next to a farm. Maybe it could be used ahould we introduce a rocket travel system and we all have jet packs on or use jet fueled cars.
Going on about tax payers , again everybody pays tax unless you are a non domicile , earn under the threshold or have the money to be able to avoid tax by paying specialits tax avoidance people , and if you have that kind of cash i bet that these limited number of people have a lot of cars and use them more because they can afford to run them.
Looking at this document it may seem like tolling the entry to motorways at ports could be good news by the ability to get income from non british taxpayers and importers that use vehicles from ireland and europe who pay nothing towards our road system and non british cars , there are a number of european cars on our roads not taxed or insured or bought here , only using fuel.
Anyway whatever happens the only way round this is to remove the VED disc entirely as it is still represents road tax and nothing else.
The only way to increase revenue is to toll the entry to our country as they do in europe.The cost of getting into france with a car is around E7 and a truck E20 but it does not stop there as there are tolls to cities. Now that is something we should adopt mainly used for the non uk vehicles , that would bring in some more cash.
