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Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

carwow.co.uk

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Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#261

Post by bluecalm »

dahfizz wrote: post #226
yohannparis wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many cyclists [...] aren't going the speed limit. It's a speed upper limit, not a minimum. Are you upset when an agricole machine is using the public roads? This "annoyance" against people not travelling at the speed limit on public roads is based on a lack of time management and the expectation that the road is empty. This is a selfish point of view. When I want to control my travelling time, I walk or cycle. When…

> Are you upset when an agricole machine is using the public roads? Nope. 1) Any tractor I've been behind on a public road will pull over to let traffic pass by when possible. 2) Tractors obey all traffic lights and laws and behave predictably. 3) I've never seen a tractor driver act aggressively towards a car.

Cyclists are are smaller and easier to pass than tractors. Cyclists are better than obeying traffic laws than drivers. Multiple police surveys confirm it. Finally cyclists are subject of so much abuse and straight up murder attempts on the road that it's reasonable to expect them "acting aggressively towards a car". I mean if you come swinging a heavy object next to me I may lose my cool as well.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#262

Post by AnthonyMouse »

brippalcharrid wrote: post #238
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a matter of "massively more" -- with those numbers the damage from anything other than large commercial vehicles is a rounding error which, if accounted for proportionally, would cost more money to collect than the amount collected.

It's the fourth power of axle load according to the AAHSO report ( https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-power-rule-... ) A 30-ton 5-axle HGV would be 6 tons per axle, a BMW 7-Series would be 1 ton per axle, and a heavy cyclist on a heavy bicycle would work out to around 0.05 tons per axle, so while a car might cause ~1/1000th of the wear of a heavy truck, a bicycle would cause less than 1/100000th of the…

The point is that it's not worth doing even for cars. If the toll for the truck was $50, the proportional toll for the car would be one half of one cent.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#263

Post by jeroenhd »

dotancohen wrote: post #217
analog31 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car. Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Income taxes cover a fair amount of road construction. The county bike paths have a fe…

> My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking. Road wear grows at the 4th power of vehicular weight, assuming similar tire pressures. An F-150 that weighs one and a half times what your Mazda 3 weighs, does 5 times the road wear. Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would cost, if everybody were paying their f…

Based on [1] this first result on Google, a truck can carry about 300,000 tomatoes. I don't think those tomatoes are going to add up very soon. A loaded truck of about 80,000 pounds (11.5 times the weight) would have 17490 times the road impact compared to the same trip driven back home. Distributed over 300,000 tomatoes, the cost wouldn't be all that much. Despite inefficient engines and truck construction, bulk transport is actually very efficient. Generally speaking: the bigger the trailer, the better, even with the weight increase.

Even better would be using this as an incentive to expand and improve the quality of the much more efficient rail network (or transport over waterways, where available) to improve the entire supply chain. That would require the government to act in the interest of its people, though, so I don't think we'll see the effects of such a programme too soon if it ever makes it.

Every tax-paying citizen is already paying this heavy price! Only instead of the damage inefficient transport causes to our infrastructure being reflected in our everyday expenses, it's hidden from plain sight in taxes.

The only industry I'd expect to see killed by paying for road damage would be package delivery vans. They're driving long distances with comparatively almost no weight at all for the convenience of not needing to go to a centralized store to pick up your stuff. With the way Amazon and friends have their drivers pee in bottles, I don't see why we should subsidize those vans.

[1]: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-26-mn-26434...

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#264

Post by Originami »

standardUser wrote: post #211
matsemann wrote: post #2

There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.. Norway have the same issues now. Almost all new cars are electric. You don't pay purchase tax / vat when buying it. Pay less on toll roads. Cheaper to use. Et…

"Which was great to get the initial people to convert, and get the infrastructure in place. But now it's time to tax them. " Maybe in Norway, and only Norway. Every other nation should be quadrupling-down on EV incentives. Or 10 fold. Or 20.

Road tax needs to be morphed into road-usage tax, based on time of day, location, axle weight, and distance.

It should be prohibitively expensive to use congested freeways and city streets during peak hours, but free at all other times.

Road expansion is justified based on peaks of usage - so by smoothing out these peaks, we can save significantly on the need to build more roads. Trip length can also scale non-linearly based on congestion: 10-20% more cars than capacity can result in 50% longer trips.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#265

Post by asdff »

unglaublich wrote: post #80
analog31 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car. Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Income taxes cover a fair amount of road construction. The county bike paths have a fe…

Some motorists seem to forget that cyclists don't need a 30m wide, 40cm thick, heavily reinforced highway with stabilized foundation that has to be revised every year to account for the damage caused by heavy vehicles. The costs of a cycling path that support the same flow of people is negligible compared to that of a corresponding highway.

No one ever says "why don't we charge pedestrians fees for sidewalks," for good reason. Bike infrastructure should be thought of as the same way. A paved bike path is going to be like a sidewalk: it will last as long as the elements permit it no matter the amount of usage it sees. Versus a road used for vehicular traffic that is heavy enough to degrade the road, that sort of usage makes a lot more sense to tax.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#266

Post by asdff »

timellis-smith wrote: post #183
ehnto wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take a rough separated cycle path over a shared car road any day.

Depending on what type of bike you have. On a mountain bike, anyday. On a road bike with paper thin tyres that easily puncture, maybe not so much.

Just put some good tires on your road bike and you wont deal with flats. I have used gatorskins which have always been indestructable, tubes last for years and are only replaced when I put new tires on the bike. I'm moving to the continental gp5k for the next set because apparently the puncture resistance is good enough these days in those more standard road bike tires. Unless you manage to hit an upright nail you shouldn't worry too much.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#267

Post by megablast »

standardUser wrote: post #211
matsemann wrote: post #2

There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.. Norway have the same issues now. Almost all new cars are electric. You don't pay purchase tax / vat when buying it. Pay less on toll roads. Cheaper to use. Et…

"Which was great to get the initial people to convert, and get the infrastructure in place. But now it's time to tax them. " Maybe in Norway, and only Norway. Every other nation should be quadrupling-down on EV incentives. Or 10 fold. Or 20.

Why?? EVs aren’t good for the environment at all. Why push for them??

Why are we continuously subsidising the car industry?

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#268

Post by asdff »

bobthepanda wrote: post #190
wil421 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Not true for a lot of states. Property tax is not used for roads. Georgia pays for roads using gas taxes and road use fees like registration (tolls contribute a very small amount). Florida is similar but they are much more toll heavy. Alabama is similar as too. A…

At the state level, sure, but local roads are paid for by local governments using local general taxes, no? A random suburban residential street is not usually getting gas tax money.

A random suburban residential street could get away with being repaved every 100 years. The ones in my neighborhood bear contractor stamps from the 1920s at least. A big source of road wear is trucking traffic and usually truck routes are along state routes that get state gas tax funding for maintenance at least.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#269

Post by megablast »

faichai wrote: post #19

Everyone always seems to jump from general schemes (road tax, fuel duty) to Orwellian tracking (GPS everywhere). Seems like a simple scheme of mileage tracking and net charge tracking would do. You then have an overall energy use / mile figure that you can use to price each mile so people who buy more efficient cars are rewarded, and then charge by total number of miles, so people who do fewer miles pay less.

Every single car should be tracked at all times. They are a deadly weapon, kill a million people every year around the world, and seriously injure many more.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#270

Post by asdff »

techterrier wrote: post #8
chrisco255 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of road taxes is to pay for maintenance and expansion. Roads break down over time if you do not maintain them.

this is paid out of local taxation. Which is why pedestrians, cylists, equestrians, tractors, cows and ducks are allowed to used the road. There is no such thing as road tax.

There is such thing as a road tax and not all roads allow cows and ducks and lions and bears. Note the sign on the highway onramp that says something like "no pedestrians or cyclists" and the fact that every car on the road has to pay a yearly fee in order to not be impounded by the local government for neglecting to pay for fees that go on to maintain the roads.
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