Safe Speed Forums

Lots of organisations insist that we need to use cars less. I'm not really convinced by their arguments. The roads are safe and cheap. Modern cars are clean. Congestion will be forever manageable, even if only because too much congestion will discourage travel and self-limit.

But it is true that we could move more people into crowded places with transport modes that use less space than private individual motor cars. It'd also be nice to offer better transport facilities to those who don't have cars for any reason (skint, medical, never learnt to drive, tourist, etc).

Government and councils talk about 'modal shift' to make their 'anti-car' policies sound more acceptable. But despite a decade or so of 'modal shift' policies we've seen no modal shift whatsoever across most of the country. Actually that's wrong - we're getting modal shift TOWARDS private car use.

But suppose (this is brainstorming remember) we did want to reduce private car use. What policy devices would we actually derive benefit from? What ideas have you got?

* One thing I'd really like to see is tax incentives or grants to encourage home working. That could cut out quite a bit of traffic.

* I'm not quite so sure about home shopping. I think the natural market trends towards home shopping can probably look after themselves.

* Perhaps we need to more to replace meetings with tele-conferencing of some sort. Again this could be market driven.

* I would very much support mild policies that tended to lead to population reduction. Better controls on immigration. Less tax benefit for large families. I know that politicians fear population reduction because the tax take would tend to reduce and pensions would be even harder to support. But I think that's just short-termism.

On present information I reject improving public transport because those in charge seem quite incapable of delivering improvements. It seems to me that we need to find better management structures to deliver long term improvements.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

There are a few ways.

Free local bus transport for one. The local bus company have stopped doing returns where I am so it is £2.40 for a return journey of all of 1.5 miles each way.

A route matching system where a couple of people could share a taxi and save a bit of money if they were all going to destinations which were on the way could allow those without cars more freedom.

Improved street lighting and police street presence so you can actually walk around at night (or even daytime in some places) without being bothered by feral kids, dubious men in raincoats or muggers.

The fundamental reason car use has increased substantially is house price increases making it impossible for people to live where they work unless they're either well off or lucky. The job situation is such that most people only work a couple of years in each job (or may be even less) so it becomes uneconomic to move. Removing stamp duty and making moving much, much easier would help a great deal. House swap facilities spring to mind so that you can find somewhere without the hassle of trawling around the market. The Inland Revenue have removed the tax advantage from house swaps typically so I think you have to pay stamp duty on both as though they were both bought rather than exchanged.

Selling your house and buying another should be as easy as selling your car and buying another one. Perhaps a part exchange scheme could start where you chop your house in to a broker and then get another one the broker has. The broker would then have to sell yours as fast as possible. It would take rather a large capital outlay though

No government will dare do something about the real problems ie house price inflation and job insecurity (they're always boasting about our flexible job market).

Working from home is also a good idea. Lots of large companies have paper scanning systems so that all correspondance is available online so it would be easy for someone to work at home and process this stuff. VOIP would allow them to take calls as though they were at work. There are the security aspects to consider though so it might be best for only people that have been with the company a reasonable time would be allowed to do it. I could probably work at home when the students weren't around but you do miss out on the social aspects of being at work. Homeworking all the time would become socially isolating I think.

I can see the attraction, but I can see problems too.

For a start if it's free they suddenly have no need to attract customers. I have my doubts that any 'committment to providing a service' will concentrate efforts to meet demand as well as needing to attract customers.

Then there's the risk that 'customers' will respect it less and consider it to be 'worth what they paid for it'.

And if it's provided for free it moves outside of contract law. This might make it considerably harder to get compensation if there are serious consequences of a failure in the service.

I'd rather see these services run on a competitive basis where possible, because I believe that the free market is a strong force for problem solving.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

If you add up the TRUE cost of owning a car it is often not cheap. Most people only calculate car ownership on the basis of the fuel they put in. They leave out depreciation, finance charges, servicing, MOT, insurance, VED etc.

Granted cars are generally more convenient than other methods of transport, but they aren't necessarily cheaper.

I should know - we've got 2 of the bloody things!

Don't forget to remove all the tax if you want 'true' costs. And maybe add back all the subsidies if you want to compare modes.

Amazingly it's usually cheaper for two to tavel by highly taxed car rather than by subsidised train.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

The majority of car journeys are single occupancy.
83% of commuting journeys are single occupancy.

DfT has average car occupancy as 1.6. FWIW.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Yes - 1.59 in 2002/3.

I'd wager is it a bit lower now...

We need to have a dynamic transport policy that promotes the best tranport solution in different areas. City-centre commuting is best catered for by heavy rail. Light rail can also be used to good effect in highly populated areas, and both have the ability of being (at least partly) sub-surface, thought this maybe prohibitively expensive.

The car should be recognized as an important tool and investment in roads should be used to provide by-passes and dualing of important through routes that currently suffer cronic congestion.

Working from home is probably the greatest chance we have or naturally reducing the demand for travel. Until that has a significant effect there are two choices. Accept peoples need to travel and provide the most suitable method for us to do so. The alternative is trying to restrict demand for travel which I would argue, is not desirable. However I would bet we are all NIMBYS, so increasing travel capacity is not an easy option either.

Very nicely put!

But if you already have a car, then all you are looking at is the marginal cost of using it - the depreciation, insurance etc are incurred whether or not you make the journey.

A good way of encouraging people to use public transport is to provide worthwhile discounts on go-anywhere travelcards for the local area, so the marginal cost of using public transport becomes zero. Local buses can be ridiculously expensive - I have to pay 90p single for a one-mile trip into the centre of Stockport.

One thing I would suggest is abolishing the flat-rate scale charge for private fuel for company cars, which gives people a perverse incentive to drive further and to take on marathon commutes. Someone on another forum has just started a 75-mile commute, which few people would contemplate if they were paying for their own fuel. If private fuel is provided it should be taxed as used.

Increasing fuel tax is likely to be an inefficient means of reducing car use, as over time its main effect would be for people to buy more economical cars rather than travelling less.


I can't see it ever happening, but part-exchanges for houses would certainly unblock the housing market. As with cars, you would have a choice between accepting a lower price for a part-exchange, or taking a risk in return for a potentially higher price by selling directly. A difference of say £10k may seem a lot, but added on to a £200k 25-year mortgage it would not be so bad.

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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 can fix that... put an *2 in the compulsory purchase legislation. Pay double market value when land is needed for 'national' purposes.

Everyone would be saying: "PLEASE build your road through my house".

And fund it through efficiency in civil service.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Yes if you get the chance to move out and start afresh with double the value of your house you would jump at the chance. Well I would anyway! Particularly motorways though, those that are in the area and who will suffer from the constant noise won't be very impressed. I'm sure you can buy them off and fit triple-glazing but it's not pleasent sitting in the garden with the constant hum.

I'm in no way anti-roadbuilding, but if I knew a motorway was planned close to my house I wouldn't be too impressed, but it would be okay so long as it's not near me....... which is classic NIMBYism I know. I would be genuinly suprised if any one really didn't mind an mway near their house.

Of course the other angle is that if a motorway was planned near your home it's highly likely you'd be suffering from congestion, and may consider the disturbance of an mway to be fair price to pay.

However I still stand-by my reckoning that while many people(including me) think we need more roads, most, if not all, would prefer it to be someone else's problem.

A motorway at the bottom of your garden might be bad news, but being within a couple of miles of a motorway junction would increase the value of your house and very likely make your commuting easier. I am very happy to live half a mile from the M60.

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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

Yes, this might work but the loudest complaints will come from those just outside the compulsory purchase boundary who would have the inconvenience with no recompense.

You would need to "fix" this also and this is a can of worms.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Fair point but a lot of problems of congestion are caused by motorways being built with junctions too close together. This helped sweeten the deal to get them built, but is causing headaches now. Do we repeat this mistake to get them built or build them properly and deal with the issues of local residents who have a mway close by with no way of easily accessing it?

Paul,

I'm sure there would be some kind of control preventing that suggestion. European maybe.

Your comment on the Civil Service does you no favours. This is supposed to be a Road Safety site, not some kind of blinkered Daily Mail vomitorium.

WHAT? You believe the civil service is efficient?

I'm pretty sure we could axe half of it and barely notice the difference.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Most of the buses around here are, too

I am sure a more efficient public transport system would ease congestion.

How about a sort of half way between bus and taxi system. Whereby the the buses are very small but come when you order them. You ring a central control and they tell you when a bus is coming in your direction and you say where you would like picking up. Haven't thought this right through yet but surely we have the technology to know exactly where a bus is at any one time and exactly where it is going. Everybody has mobile phones so communication should be easy. The central control diverts the nearest bus to your chosen bus stop or even to your mobile phone signal.

Perhaps your mobile phone could be updated with information about where your bus is and exactly what time it will arrive at your stop.

It wouldn't work with a few buses but the more of them there are the better it would work. Then instead of having large empty buses we have lots of small full ones.

Does that make sense?

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.