tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4316904890367789805.post345044022479563070..comments2023-11-05T07:18:30.231+00:00Comments on Hug A Hoodie: Road pricing - it's about trust, not transportJonny Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07414994559548890103noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4316904890367789805.post-85220813707940649132007-02-22T12:49:00.000+00:002007-02-22T12:49:00.000+00:00It's not so much about whether you can trust the g...It's not so much about whether you can trust the government, more about whether you can trust each City's council to come up with a workable plan. Central money will be stumped up but there is going to be a lot of local autonomy on design and implementation.<BR/><BR/>Edinburgh messed their proposal up and had to withdraw it under protest.<BR/><BR/>Now Manchester have approved a scheme in principle to be funded by £1bn from central government, but they have not thought through their design.<BR/><BR/>What do you think will happen if you pick 15 trunk roads into the city, with 2 sensors along each route, and tell motorists they will be charged £3 to pass each sensor during their daily commute?<BR/><BR/>Let me tell you.<BR/><BR/>They will add it up and work out they will be paying about £1,500 a year extra, just for a less congested commute. They will think about public transport but that's a hassle and also expensive. Car sharing makes you too dependent on others.<BR/><BR/>So the answer is to have a good look at the map and plot a route that keeps you off the trunk roads at the points where there are sensors, or just off the motorways and trunk roads full stop.<BR/><BR/>The motorways will be deserted while cars pack the backstreets to get a free commute. Drivers will prefer to get up even earlier and sit in traffic jams in residential areas as they crawl to work rather than pay £1,500 they would rather put to a holiday or a new high def LCD TV.<BR/><BR/>This will never fly.<BR/><BR/>Yes, we do have a problem with congestion. Yes, we do need to do something about it. But we also have to design schemes which work as intended.<BR/><BR/>How often has legislation been proposed that ignores the boundless human capacity to find workarounds to their own advantage?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4316904890367789805.post-74253217848680169082007-02-22T11:17:00.000+00:002007-02-22T11:17:00.000+00:00Biscit, I didn't get the round robin, for some rea...Biscit, I didn't get the round robin, for some reason. I read about the petition in the news, and found it on the PM's site.<BR/><BR/>I take your point about the hysteria of the email (having just googled it) but I was voting on the petition itself, which just called on the Government to scrap their plans to introduce road pricing.Jonny Wrighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07414994559548890103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4316904890367789805.post-90486668928744557782007-02-22T10:41:00.000+00:002007-02-22T10:41:00.000+00:00I resisted signing the petition for the very reaso...I resisted signing the petition for the very reason of the screaming hysteria in the round robin.<BR/><BR/>I don't like being lied to in order to get my support.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4316904890367789805.post-52283812597126783242007-02-22T09:35:00.000+00:002007-02-22T09:35:00.000+00:00You've hit the nail on the head.That is exactly wh...You've hit the nail on the head.<BR/><BR/>That is exactly why I am opposed to these proposals.<BR/>Road Usage Charging is a sound economic idea, congestion costs us more than Stern's estimates of the costs of climate change, and here we can kill two birds with one stone.<BR/><BR/>This government however has shown itself to be untrustworthy and power grabbing and contemptuous of human rights and civil liberties. I don't trust them to do this without creating a database for tracking or just using it to top up the treasury's income a bit.Tristanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15395992764678278326noreply@blogger.com