Safe Speed Forums

From The TimesApril 20, 2009

Busy roads, slower speeds, extra taxes – but we'll carry on driving
Two children help their parents wash the family car. March 1953

Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
Britain is more dependent than ever on cars, according to a study published today. Even the poorest families are increasingly reliant on them, and when motoring costs rise they prefer to sacrifice other household spending rather than stop driving.

The number of cars has grown seven times faster than the population. There are 29.6 million cars, up 30 per cent from a decade ago. Over the same period the population has grown by 4 per cent to 60.6 million.

The RAC Foundation commissioned a team of academics from Oxford University, Imperial College and University College London to investigate how reliant Britons were on their cars. They found that people opted for them even for journeys that could easily be walked or cycled and were used for 78 per cent of journeys of two to three miles. Just over three quarters of homes had a car and ownership had grown fastest among the poorest fifth of households, up from 35 per cent in 2000 to 49 per cent in 2006.

The foundation said that government policies purporting to reduce car use — such as raising fuel duty and road tax — could increase social exclusion by penalising poor families. The researchers found a significant fall in the number of homes within easy walking distance of a grocer or chemist.

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In addition to analysing Department for Transport data, the team gathered evidence from focus groups and found scepticism about the potential for replacing car trips with public transport. One 75-year-old participant said: “You can get to town [by bus] all right, but Sainsbury’s is a mile and a half that way, Tesco’s is a mile and half the other way. There’s no supermarket in the centre of town.”

The team detected the beginning of a generational divide in attitudes to car travel, with growing use among the over-70s but falling use among those aged 16 to 29. However, the fall in young people’s car use was partly due to their taking longer to obtain driving licences. Once qualified, they become as reliant on cars as older generations.

The average distance travelled by car per person has stabilised in recent years despite the big increase in ownership. The average car travelled 152 miles a week in 1996 but only 132 miles in 2006. The report said that congestion had caused average speed of trips to fall from 25.7 miles per hour in 1995 to 24.6mph in 2006, possibly discouraging people from making more journeys. However, many drivers preferred to queue in their cars even when they knew that public transport would be quicker. The report quoted a recent Department for Transport study that concluded: “Sitting in congested traffic conditions was seen as being more comfortable than waiting for a train or bus and drivers felt more in control. Drivers also saw the benefits of time alone, safety and independence.”

Women are slightly more dependent on cars than men, using them for about 77 per cent of the total distance they travel, compared with 74 per cent for men.

Professor Stephen Glaister, the foundation’s director, said: “More than four out of five people say they would find it difficult to use their cars less. It is a myth to claim public transport is the magic answer. The Government’s emphasis on high-speed rail ignores the reality of most people’s lives.

“The car is the bedrock of our society and our economy. It has democratised this country. There is no question of getting rid of cars. Instead we must change the type of cars we use — smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient models with less CO2 emissions.”

He said it would be fairer to tax people for the number of miles they travelled than for owning a car. “The Chancellor should shift emphasis away from taxing people on what they own to what they use. This is likely to be through national road pricing. The trade-off for drivers would be the abolition of road tax and fuel duty, and more spending on the road network

The final sentence would see him to be a deranged fool - given the resounding NO from Manchester and Edinburgh as neither scheme promises any such trade-off ..

Hey MM .. you are on a newsy roll here

Yep .. we need cars. Not easy to do without them .

Or on PT.

I used to work for a interior landscaping (i.e. office plants) firm that experimented with sending staff in to central London on the tube.

It was an unmitigated disaster:

The trade-off for drivers would be the abolition of road tax and fuel duty, and more spending on the road network

Public transport should pay the same fuel taxes, ditto aircraft then the playing field is level if the infrastructure comes out of taxes but the use charges are paid by the use

In this model railway infrastructure (track building and maintainance, building and manning stations, signalling), air transport infrastructure (airports, terminals, ATC) and canal infrastructure would also be paid for out of the public purse. Would you be happy with that?

Biofuels have turned out to be a huge disaster.
Just look at the ethanol case.
You cannot grow food for fuel without losing the food part...and pushing prices up of food.
Electric cars are not the answer either, their use still has the congestion problem and only displaces the pollution problem.
Bedfords solution to traffic problems is probably the way most towns will go.....as soon as the various bypasses are built the town centre is being closed to through traffic and the various rat runs are being 20 limited.
Plus, the large expansion of 20 limits continues.

The other way of working it would be proportional subsidy according to passenger miles. Roads would get more than 90% of the budget which would leave railways screwed.