http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging Comments on 'write to my MP requesting they oppose road charging.' en-gb team@pledgebank.com 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 2 hourly http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_657774 It is a bad dream and i will wake up i hope.I pay £500 a month in fuel,£1000 insurance a year,£153 road tax a year as a rep.Now they want more money and all i am doing is my job . People have to satnd up and say no! or there will be no self employed people in ten years time. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_7253 Hello Nick, Actually I have to agree with what you say about increasing local services and working from home. However, I have to take issue with one statement that you make; "A full bus may be less poluting per passenger mile but a half empty one isn't." Midibuses travel 8 miles on one gallon of diesel, and double deckers 5 miles. Supposing that what you mean by a "half empty" bus is one which is carrying only 10 passengers, then a double decker would deliver 50 passenger miles per gallon. That compares favourably to the fuel performance of a Vauxhaull Astra on the urban cycle: 34.4mpg. So your conclusion that "polution would increase" is false. In actual fact, if most of the people who left their cars at home used the buses, then fuel consumption of buses per passenger mile would likely be even lower. And many people currently drive cars which are much less efficient than an Astra. You say "Tackle the cause not the effect." I would say, let's tackle both! What do you think of my suggestion that 1% of the exhaust gas of every new car in this country should be pumped into the passenger compartment? (Source of fuel consumption figures: LowCVP - The LowCVP is a partnership of the automotive and fuel industries, Government, academia, NGOs and other stakeholders ; http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/) http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_7240 I like Andrew's suggestion to tax car ownership and put the money into public transport - NOT! A full bus may be less poluting per passenger mile but a half empty one isn't. If we all abandoend our cars tomorrow and they were replaced by an effective bus service (similar frequency to tubes in central London) then other than in the peak rush hour, many buses would be half full or less (just like the tubes) and polution would increase. You have to remove the need to travel, not change the mode, if you are really to address global warming. So go back a few months and read what I said: - Change the planning rules now, to revers the trends of the last 50 years - encourage development of shops/work near where people live - look at more home working to reduce need to travel to work - etc, etc. Tackle the cause not the effect. It will take 50 years to put it right, but thinking small will get us nowhere. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_7097 I hadn't realised you could track a mobile phone like this? But is it legal??? http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_7089 I agree with Bonjo. These days tracking can be done via your mobile phone and you don't need to get the authorities involved. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_7069 It doesn't really matter whether they go ahead with something like this or not, the government can still track you if they really want to - sites such as www.traceamobile.com and www.mobilelocators.com show how easy it is to accurately track you by your mobile phone signal. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_6524 I totally oppose your pledge. Cars pump poison gas into the air. They also accelerate global warming. Any tax on car ownership/usage should be encouraged. Quadruple car tax and put the money into public transport! Here's an idea for a new law; 1% of the exhaust gas of every new car in this country should be pumped into the passenger compartment. All charges against cars are good. I am delighted that this pledge has failed. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_2070 Why on earth would you wait for 400 other people to sign up before writing to your MP about something you feel strongly on? Just write the letter already! http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_1807 No authority should be allowed to put ANY measures in place to limit car use UNLESS they can demonstrate that public transport within their jurisdiction meets a certain minimum standard. Taxing luxuries is fair, taxing necessities is extortion. Perhaps a good first step to ensuring this would be to ban the bus and train company bosses, and anyone else responsible for public transport, from owning cars. After all, in the olden days, an architect who designed a bridge would be expected to stand under it while a procession of fully-laden carts marched over it. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_1761 There is one way road-pricing will get people off the roads: Ever gone 2mph over the limit four times in a journey. That's 72 on the motorway. If you did that with road-pricing, you'd lose your licence and probably your job. And to those who say that speed kills, take a look at Germany. No speed limit and less road deaths than the UK. My view of how to deal with speed limits is the following: Remove speed limits on all motorways. However, to be allowed to drive on the motorway, you will have to take a special motorway driving test (the current test includes no motorway driving). This test will include a large section on when is appropriate to use speed, and inappropriate use of speed (discretion of police officer) will still be a 3-point endorsable offence. Also, a motorway licence will be lost at 6 points not 12. The minimum age to take the motorway test will be 21. Before this age, you will be limited to A and B roads (still with speed limits) A blanket 20mph limit will be imposed in all residential areas. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_1207 Would it be fair to say that someone who doesn't like cars and the havoc they wreak on the planet would be in favour of a road pricing system? Because I don't like cars and the havoc they wreak on the planet, and I'm in favour of a road pricing system. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_1174 The problem with road pricing is that it tries to tackle the symptom not the cause of the problem. As a number of people have already written, does the Government really imagine we all choose to join long queues in the rush hour? The reality is that we do it because we need to get to work, and for many people the car is the only practical way to make that journey. So the majority of people are in their cars not from choice but of necessity. Of the four jobs I have had in the last 25 years only one of them was accessible by public transport. The causes of this are many. The world has changed dramatically since the time up to the early 1960s when the majority of the population relied on walking, bicycles, buses or trains for their transport. Without getting into an exhaustive essay on the subject, some of the issues are as follows: 1) The idea of a job for life has long since disappeared. Successive Governments since the rise of Thatcher have told us that we must learn to be a more flexible work force and expect to have multiple careers durig our working life. So the old idea of living close to where you work is no longer as simple as it was, as it may result in you having to move house every few years. 2) In most families both partners now work, at least part time. Whilst moving house every few years to follow one persons latest job may be possible, if undesirable on the children, trying to find two jobs in the same location at the same time is going to prove more tricky. 3) Since the early 1980s the job market has become much more volatile. Whereas before that people would routinely relocate to follow their career, now the scourge of redundancy puts many people off. Do you really want to disrupt your life every few years for a new job, only to relocate, be made redundant, and find yourself on the move yet again. Not likely. So people are prepared to commute longer and longer distances to get to work, because they expect to move jobs within a few years anyway, form choice or due to redundancy. 4) Moving away from work, when I grew up in the 1960s most people in cities lived within easy walk of a whole range of shops - butcher, grocer, green grocer, baker, post office, bank, etc. All your regular needs were within easy walking distance. The rise of the supermarket has led to the closure of these local shops, with the result that many more people have to drive to do their shopping. There are exceptions, and I know people who live without a car. But they have adapted their life to do this, and been prepared to accept the compromises. In reality we could not all make the same compromises because the combination of jobs, housing, shopping and leisure activities within easy walking/cycling/bus journeys is not possible. We would all be wanting to live in the same few streets that provide easy access to all these services. So you cannot tackle transport in isolation. You have to look at the much bigger picture, and start with planning legislation. Whilst we continue to develop employment ans shopping on the outskirts of towns and cities, with little or no public transport connections, car use will continue to rise. We have to create a planning climate in which housing, employment, retail and leisure are integrated much better. Then you get the really big challenge. How do you provide an economic climate in which job security returns, so that people can live close to where they work? The benefits for most people would be far more than just reduced use of their cars. I am sure I am not alone in believing that many people would actually prefer to know that their job is secure, that they can continue to work where they are, and they don't permanently live under the threat of redundancy. It has taken about 50 years to move from a society based on walking, cycling and public transport, to the one we have today which is so reliant on the car. To turn back the clock on transport you must also turn back the clock on all the other changes that have occurred. To think you can do otherwise is misguided. Unfortunately I don't see any political party, not even the Green Party, prepared to stand up and declare that this is what we have to do. So they continue to try and treat the symptoms not the cause and wonder why great plans often seem to fail. So I oppose road charging because it is another attempt to put a sticking plaster over the real problem. It will hurt the poor more than it hurts the wealthy, because the wealthy can afford to pay, and are much more likely to be able to adjust their working day to avoid the rush hour. If they have to travel in peak hours on business their employer will pay. I also believe it is a fundamental breach of civil liberty. If you tag the car you tag the driver, and whilst I have nothing particularly to hide I do not see why the Government should know every journey I make. We tag people as an alternative to a custodial sentence, and tagging cars is akin to making driving a criminal offence. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_1124 To anyone suggesting that drivers should start using public trnasport instead, I'd just ask whether they'd tried to use a train on a sunday recently? Especially outside of London! And as far as the communte to work goes, having lived in London for many years and complained about the poor level of public transport, I have to eat my words, because as soon as you move out of the south-east you get a poorer service at, generally, higher prices. One arguement above that is actually almost offensive, is that using mobile phones means that you can be tracked anyway, so why object to this..... Well, the government didn't get the majority of the public votes, so why bother having elections? We're never going to meet millennium pledges so why bother trying? Just because mobiles have led to a situations where we can be tracked does not mean that it's not scary, and definitely does not mean that further measures to track people should just be allowed. Everyone has the suffer in some way from congestion, either with longer trips or noise on their streets etc, but not everyone has an alternative because of the patchy public transport system. I've paid rise after rise in train fares because after the years of underinvestment, it was apparently needed to improve things. Now I just have to pay too much for trains that don't run on time. I agree with some of the sentiments above in that if you actually encourage more people into the crumbling public transport system then it will collapse. Surely the money for this stupid scheme could be spent trying to give the 'evil' motorists an alternative. (and maybe if the haulage system went back to the railways there would be 50% more space for cars on the motorway anyway?!) http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_1085 All very well, Matt, but how about you putting yourself in the position of someone living in a village on a little-used rural road (2p per mile) which is suddenly filled with an influx of drivers doing a 30 mile detour to avoid seven miles of motorway (£1-odd per mile). People drive down "rat runs" (and I live on one myself, so I know what you mean) to avoid traffic jams now; they'll drive down them even more to avoid paying. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_947 You all miss the point. Road pricing is not there to make money it is to reduce traffic. If you don't like to pay for your road use, use public transport, lift share, ride a bike. Lobby the government (local and national) to provide alternatives and incentives to use those alternatives. The same "argument" is used against speed cameras. If you don't like to be fined for breaking the law then don't break the law then the government's evil plan to tax you by the back door will fail. If you believe that a speed limit is inappropriate, get the limit changed. Try to put yourself in the position of someone who lives on your commute to work. Imagine how much better their lives would be if the noise and pollution were reduced. Imagine how the lives of children would be improved if they could play in the street. They can't in my "quiet" suburban street because of the commuters driving at 50 mph to avoid the choked main road. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_922 So people in favour of this system have said three things that stick in my mind. Firstly that the roads are a privelage to use not a right. Like a public privelage of way then? I guess I dont have to pay road tax if I'm not paying for the right to use the road too. Secondly we should not just criticise this system but suggest an alternative? Where did you get that idea from. Congestion itself is a great deterrent that doesn't discriminate rich and poor. (Don't get me wrong I dont want congestion per se.) Your well paid councillor in a big luxury car will be just as stuck as Beverly the single parent sitting there in a Metro. I think that's a lot fairer and when powerful people are inconvenienced like this they are much more likely to bring about positive change that effects all of us. I think allowing richer people more freedom on the roads at the cost of the every day guy's freedom is only something that richer people could possibly favour, unless we are truly a nation of masochists. Thirdly, we should use a road charging system to improve public transport? Noble idea, but you REALLY expect that to happen? Public transport isn't even publically owned anymore, this suggestions is so full of holes it just doesn't hold water. I love the principle but without a radical change in our system of government I think it is a foolish fantasy to try and push it forward. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_812 Alan, if you carry a mobile phone, you're not allowing yourself to be tracked, the Police need a warrant to do that. Even so, the location is accurate, even inner city to the nearest district. I myself use the services of www.verilocation.com to track my families mobile phones - with their permission. The main problem is that it will be used for statistics, be able to prosecute you for speeding (even where it's safe to do so) and of course it gives a much much more accurate position that a mobile phone does. Sorry Alan, but I don't even know what the "Hampstead millionare socialist brigade" is - so I assume you're one of the people that live in or near London and have a decent public transport system. Secondly Alan, I am no paranoid internet consiracy theorist, I am a telematics profession who understands all the technical challenges of this system and has a good idea of how it would be implemented. I am against this scheme and I have a solid view, and that is better and cheaper public transport. I think you'll find the many that drive into the cities every day do so for simple reasons - the car is comfortable, reliable, cheap and 'feels safe'. Also, public transport seems to go in 'spokes' - if you want to get from the south east of a city to the south west, often you need to go into the centre first. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_787 I don't get the privacy argument - if you carry a mobile phone, you are allowing your whearabouts to be registered to any agency who might want and be able to get that information. And we are with our mobiles far more than we are with our cars. I think the whole big brother idea of this is great for the thousands of paranoid internet conspiracy theorists and for the Hampstead millionare socialist brigade, but not a worry for the rest of the population. Besides, what is to be done about congestion? No one against this scheme has a solid view on the alternatives and the car lobby is notoriously arrogant on environmental issues (just listen to jeremy clarkson). http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_673 Lee, you miss the point. The proposed scheme... - Does NOT reduce the number of cars on the road - Does NOT penalise those who drive less environmentally friendly cars - Is horrifyingly invasive of privacy Lucky you that you have convenient public transport - most don't. I cycle to work, my wife takes the train. Where we used to live I had to wake up at 5:30am in order to take a bus to work by 8:30am. By car I could leave at 8:00! There are many ways to improve things, it's just that our government has chosen probably the worst possible option, a thinly veiled attempt to further the ID card citizen tracking agenda. http://www.pledgebank.com/no2roadcharging#comment_624 What happened to "I work to live, not live to work!" this is another dip into the working mans wallet. You think Prescott pays for the mileage on those Jags?