Safe Speed Forums

Thank you. I prod again: how would you compare that costs of that to cycle lanes, for an equal measure of area?



The point being: being realistic, it could well be nothing more than spin!

This is untrue. I've just disproved it. A few posts up I've shown how motorists employed by my LA are subsidised with free parking paid for by the general tax-payer. This is a small, local example of a national subsidy topography that favours motoring and to which we've become sufficiently habituated that we mistake it for a pre-existing and neutral norm. That some over-identified drivers strain to sustain this illusion with falshood is unsurprising. But weren't you just chuntering about intellectual honesty somewhere?
Your fielty to your vehicle is touching, but don't be a fool for love.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

I don't know and I don't care. If you care go and find out. While you're at it why don't we make a list of all the things parking spaces are not for which you can also find costs. How many carved walrus tusks would that buy you, hmm? You could also do a comparative study of the overall spend, by local/unitary/city authority, on motoring, and on cycling/walking and on public transport if you wanted. I do know that while drivers at my place of work receive this subsidy, those of us whose personal commuting choices align most closely with our ostensible Transport Policy goals - who walk or cycle or take public transport - receive no financial support. That may be a more pertinent comparison to make in the given example.

There's a line between being healthily sceptical and being a pitiful, desperate dumbass. Try a course in epistemology. This'll get you in the mood: have you considered that there may exist an evil genius, a personification who is as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading you? All the stuff you hear about cars not being perfect? His work.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

Perhaps, but not in psychology - those categories are a load of old twaddle, glaikie. Do come back when you have some better material.

And there it is. We were talking about subsidising one form of travel “investment gradient so that [mode of travel] is no longer incentivised with public money” ; when the coin lands on the other side he rather conveniently doesn’t care. I guess he'll be moving on to the next argument!


I’m happy to let the reader decide which of us just crossed that line!

For goodness sake, isn't it obvious? Let's hire engineers instead of "environmental psychologists"!

Utter nonsense. In working for any employer you get an entire package of benefits, some financial, others not. The employer costs them up in terms of the overall package offered. If free parking is not available, then employees are likely to expect higher pay to compensate. So it's not genuinely "free".

Likewise it is illusory to imagine that the "free parking" available at Tesco is not included in the cost of the goods on sale - but Tesco know very well that few customers would come if the parking was paid-for or non existent.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Again, the error of 'RAB Accounting' for capital possessions that are already owned. Just because the council could sell the car-park for £x, doesn't mean it costs them that much not to!

Glaikie, you still haven't indicated to us how much public subsidy is devoted to private motoring

Thanks for confirming that the expectation that their chosen mode of transport will receive subsidy is hard wired into some motorists' souls, and that parking has a monetary value. Do bus users expect higher pay if there's no subsidy forthcoming from their employer, do you know?
It is genuinely free. There is no compensatory subsidy, either in wage or in alternative transport provision, for those who can't or don't occupy one of these parking spaces. I should know as I've been agitating for one. 'Package of benefits' isn't a term that would trip off the tongue of the vast majority of Council employees when speaking of their contractual relationship with their employer. Gloria from accounts isn't hardball negotiating in this pay round for her package of benefits to include a car commute component. You're out of touch and begin to look - your disdainful prescriptions for public transport users, your assumption that all employees receive 'packages of benefits', your strenuous protection of the priviledges enjoyed by motorists - less like a libertarian champion of freedom and more like an authoritarian hierarchist defending his prerogatives.
We're not Tesco's. We're a statutory body shifting around tax-payers money. We don't shunt our costs on to consumers who can choose to shop elsewhere, we add them to people's ineluctable tax bill. We're talking place of work not choice of supermarket.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

Given your last post glaikie, and in the interests of not having cake and eating it, commuting to your place of work, for a governmental organisation, is not private motoring. Driving to the supermarket is.

I've answered this. Your question is impertinent. The relevant comparison is between this LA's provision for people to park their cars (>600 spaces at > £180000 - £300000 pa) vs their provision for cycling (£0), walking (£0) and public transport using (£0) commuters.
Now if you think there's an angle you might usefully work about the cost of cycle lanes relative to the cost of parking go and find the data and try and make the connection.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

Umm, bear in mind - as I said in another thread - that I currently work for a local authority. And I can assure you that the employees do regularly discuss the "package of benefits" although they may not express it in such terms. The flexible hours, the generous maternity provision, the availability of part-time working at senior grades, the pension and the job security are all considered as valuable benefits. Your suggestion that they don't is profoundly patronising. They also regularly grumble about the cost and difficulty of parking. It is a major bone of contention.

It's basic economics that an employer has to provide a package of financial and non-financial benefits to attract and retain staff. If he chooses to charge for parking, or not provide it at all, then it is a disincentive to some potential employees. Of course parking isn't "free" in economic terms - very little is - but for many employers, given the nature of the sites they occupy, the cost of providing it to employees effectively is zero. For example, in the past I worked at a British Aerospace site that had acres and acres of unused airfield perimeter land.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

So all those commutes undertaken in private cars can be shunted over into public transport column. Breathtaking.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

What about the first time house buyers, expected to subsidise non car transport to £5000 a throw! It is not the tax payer subsidising the buses and cycle lanes... It is those who have to move or trying to buy thier first home.

And what do they get for thier cash, a bus that starts at 9:00 and they need to drop thier child at the creche by 8:00 and be at work by 8:30.
To pay a mortgage that is £5k more than it needed to be.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Yes, I rather thought you might be obtuse about it. We have all sorts of different journey in 'private' cars, we have those which are wholly private, those which benefit the country by bringing our public servants to work, and those which benefit the country to a degree by bringing the workers to work.

If a private company provides it's office workers with on-site parking it is not a public subsidy. In fact, I believe they are taxed for it. If a local authority provides their employees with the same benefit, how exactly does it constitude public subsidy for private motoring? LA's spend £x on recruiting, retaining and remunerating employees, that is where the 'cost' of their parking comes from.

You still haven't indicated to us where all this alleged public subsidy goes on private motoring.

Will you say which. Off boards if you prefer. I'd like to take a look at the Local Transport Plan you're delivering.
and for many employers it isn't. The point, lest we forget and we wouldn't want that, is that motorists do not "pay the full costs all the time - and the rest" which you claimed upthread.
I've shown, in one small local example, where the taxpayer is insulating the motorist from the full cost of his transport preference.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

You must be joking! Should I invoke your own argument about used land? What about all those cycle lanes provided and have to be maintained? Could companies/councils instead not use this space for car parks?

An argument can only be valid when scrutinised from both sides. If you don’t like seeing yours scrutinised from other angles then please – don’t give them!


It is relevant to the overall point I am making: personal motorised transport has singularly greatly increased the quality of life for everyone, not just the motorists. It is not the social evil which some make it out to be. There is nothing wrong with the principle of personal motorised transport.

Given my stated location you can probably narrow it down - but that side of things isn't what I'm involved in. And I'm only a contractor - I just do the work, I don't have to agree with the policies.


As stated by others, for any private sector employer the cost of providing on-site parking is fully covered in the employer's costs. I would also suggest for public sector employers that free parking only tends to be available at peripheral locations (e.g. schools) with large amounts of free land. Very few local authorities provide free parking for all employees at town-centre offices.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I've a lump in my throat at the thought of all those selfless commuters driving to work to benefit the country. They should be subsidised, obviously. I'm pleased you've explained that commuting is public service because that means when I ride to work on my bike I'm both using public transport and active travelling. That would mean double subsidy to me, if any mode other than driving deserved subsidy from my employer, of course.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?