You don't pay no road tax

[Cudzoziemiec]

Back to the 2 ton death cages. I can see in the next few years the rise of Yet Another Scrapage Scheme, as the government tries to get the worst polluting vehicles off the road, as well as try to stimulate a car manufacturing sector that will be well and truly fucked by certain events...

I suppose someone in the Department for Transport has given you an exclusive scoop?

More scrappage schemes seem a fairly safe prediction, for a number of reasons. No scoop needed.

[Greenbank]

Just change it to a tax on on-street parking.

Have a nice big house with a nice big driveway or a nice big garage and you don't pay a sou for your six litre Bentley, the three tonne Q7 (for the school run, obv) and the au-pair's runabout but if you have the temerity to be less well-off, living in a terrace and running a fifteen year old econobox you have to cough up?  Sounds fair, comrade.

So publicly owned space should be annexed by car drivers for no cost? What else are we allowed to store on the public highway? Garden table? Shed? Bike locker? No, just cars.

Maybe the local council should charge for it as they do in large swathes of major cities.

I have to pay £165 a year to park my car on the road.

(I'd agree that on-street parking has gotten out of hand, the answer is decreased car ownership as without that the existing cars have to go somewhere.)

[De Sisti]

Back to the 2 ton death cages. I can see in the next few years the rise of Yet Another Scrapage Scheme, as the government tries to get the worst polluting vehicles off the road, as well as try to stimulate a car manufacturing sector that will be well and truly fucked by certain events...

I suppose someone in the Department for Transport has given you an exclusive scoop?

More scrappage schemes seem a fairly safe prediction, for a number of reasons. No scoop needed.

Remind us of those number of reasons.

[Ham]

Back to the 2 ton death cages. I can see in the next few years the rise of Yet Another Scrapage Scheme, as the government tries to get the worst polluting vehicles off the road, as well as try to stimulate a car manufacturing sector that will be well and truly fucked by certain events...

I suppose someone in the Department for Transport has given you an exclusive scoop?

More scrappage schemes seem a fairly safe prediction, for a number of reasons. No scoop needed.

Remind us of those number of reasons.

1 - Need to support dropping car sales
2 - Convince people to keep on buying new cars
3 - Keep the idea of new cars firmly in people's minds while trading on a scheme that makes it sound like you are being given something
4 - Make cars less polluting

[quixoticgeek]

Remind us of those number of reasons.

Tanking economy, tanking car manufactoring sector, need to meet much tougher emissions targets, etc...

Or we may just end up scavenging for water among the ruins of a once great civilisation...

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

To Ham's list we could possibly add:
5 - To mop up overproduction
6 - To support employment at car factories
7 - (UK-specific) At attempt to delay the closure of those factories due to loss of markets

But those are really subsets of the reasons Ham's given.

[ian]

The car industry is one of the most parasitical, we pay the costs – direct and indirect – they simply take the money. Society has been tailored to simply hand them the money. Ironically, there's little national loyalty, once governments stop ponying up taxpayer cash, they go somewhere else. Plus more and more car sales are simply financial instruments, that debt gets derivatized, securitized and sold on in the usual ways.

I'm really not clear on the benefits – if there's any benefit – of widespread car reliance.

[quixoticgeek]

The car industry is one of the most parasitical, we pay the costs – direct and indirect – they simply take the money. Society has been tailored to simply hand them the money. Ironically, there's little national loyalty, once governments stop ponying up taxpayer cash, they go somewhere else. Plus more and more car sales are simply financial instruments, that debt gets derivatized, securitized and sold on in the usual ways.

I'm really not clear on the benefits – if there's any benefit – of widespread car reliance.

Jobs.

Manufacturing jobs.

Servicing jobs (the garage doing the maintenance work etc...)

Admin jobs (managing all that debt and loan setups)

Transport to/from jobs (Our society is setup where for many people there just isn't an alternative to the car for getting to work, sure a bike works but over 20km, each way and even someone like me starts to think it's a bit far. When I lived in Canterbury the places I could reasonably get a job were largely limited to poor bus routes and the trains routes, because I didn't own a car. I missed out on one job as there was no bus that could get me there early enough in the morning, by 20 minutes. Another I could get to, but not home from. etc...)

The dependency tree of the car, and the critical path analysis to get rid of it is rather complex. With massive amounts of chicken/egg involved.

J

[PhilO]

VED provides an annual shock of the cost of car ownership, and as Cudzo says hits low mileage users of cars too.

Basically, there needs to be behavioural change level charges on private transport.

£30 p.a. for my car. Hardly a significant cost, compared to servicing or insurance. Anyone paying significantly more has chosen to drive an inefficient vehicle.

One take, but tell me, how would your choice fare, driving four people and luggage on holiday? Carrying 700kg of stone? etc etc.

We have two cars, my wife's £25 VED p.a. petrol fuelled is the local runaround, ten years old and averages less than 3000 miles a year. My diesel grandpawagon is as big as it gets for load carrying, relatively tardis like as it is smaller on the outside yet of larger internal capacity than the competition (yeah, I know it is still big). Used overwhelmingly for long trips and load carrying capability, average around 8k miles pa. It is  currently averaging the same sort of consumption as the small petrol and it is capable of genuine mid-to-high 60's mpg consumption on an economy run. So, actually very efficient for its size and reasonably efficient in absolute terms. My VED? Currently £500 pa.

I can't speak for Jaded, but our main family car is a huge estate (Dacia Logan), only slightly smaller than the Passat Est I had 15 years ago, and VED is 'Nil' on the form we received yesterday. 

But while it does nearly 3 times the mpg of our second vehicle (a campervan) it also does over 4-times the annual miles, so there's definitely a mismatch in the taxation system. I'd favour a fuel (or power-source in deference to EVs) levy in general, but that does have the psychological problem of being absorbed into the 'general living expenses' bill. Perhaps there should be a mileage-based charge levied at the MOT test (or scrappage date for those that don't get re-MOTed)?

[quixoticgeek]

One take, but tell me, how would your choice fare, driving four people and luggage on holiday? Carrying 700kg of stone? etc etc.

We have two cars, my wife's £25 VED p.a. petrol fuelled is the local runaround, ten years old and averages less than 3000 miles a year. My diesel grandpawagon is as big as it gets for load carrying, relatively tardis like as it is smaller on the outside yet of larger internal capacity than the competition (yeah, I know it is still big). Used overwhelmingly for long trips and load carrying capability, average around 8k miles pa. It is  currently averaging the same sort of consumption as the small petrol and it is capable of genuine mid-to-high 60's mpg consumption on an economy run. So, actually very efficient for its size and reasonably efficient in absolute terms. My VED? Currently £500 pa.

And this is why I say scrap VED, it's no longer fit for purpose.

One question I have for you tho is this: What is the PM2.5, PM10, and NOX emissions like on your vehicle?

J

[Jaded]

VED provides an annual shock of the cost of car ownership, and as Cudzo says hits low mileage users of cars too.

Basically, there needs to be behavioural change level charges on private transport.

£30 p.a. for my car. Hardly a significant cost, compared to servicing or insurance. Anyone paying significantly more has chosen to drive an inefficient vehicle.

One take, but tell me, how would your choice fare, driving four people and luggage on holiday? Carrying 700kg of stone? etc etc.

We have two cars, my wife's £25 VED p.a. petrol fuelled is the local runaround, ten years old and averages less than 3000 miles a year. My diesel grandpawagon is as big as it gets for load carrying, relatively tardis like as it is smaller on the outside yet of larger internal capacity than the competition (yeah, I know it is still big). Used overwhelmingly for long trips and load carrying capability, average around 8k miles pa. It is  currently averaging the same sort of consumption as the small petrol and it is capable of genuine mid-to-high 60's mpg consumption on an economy run. So, actually very efficient for its size and reasonably efficient in absolute terms. My VED? Currently £500 pa.

The question is more about whether it will be possible to go on ‘holiday’ in such a way. If one has a big car, it gets used.

Fewer holidays, less luggage, I imagine is the answer to your question. Not very palatable, though.

[ian]

The car industry is one of the most parasitical, we pay the costs – direct and indirect – they simply take the money. Society has been tailored to simply hand them the money. Ironically, there's little national loyalty, once governments stop ponying up taxpayer cash, they go somewhere else. Plus more and more car sales are simply financial instruments, that debt gets derivatized, securitized and sold on in the usual ways.

I'm really not clear on the benefits – if there's any benefit – of widespread car reliance.

Jobs.

Manufacturing jobs.

Servicing jobs (the garage doing the maintenance work etc...)

Admin jobs (managing all that debt and loan setups)

Transport to/from jobs (Our society is setup where for many people there just isn't an alternative to the car for getting to work, sure a bike works but over 20km, each way and even someone like me starts to think it's a bit far. When I lived in Canterbury the places I could reasonably get a job were largely limited to poor bus routes and the trains routes, because I didn't own a car. I missed out on one job as there was no bus that could get me there early enough in the morning, by 20 minutes. Another I could get to, but not home from. etc...)

The dependency tree of the car, and the critical path analysis to get rid of it is rather complex. With massive amounts of chicken/egg involved.

But these are engineered outcomes. People often state jobs, but really cars just enabled jobs to delocalize, so workers instead spend 45 mins a day in traffic to an out-of-town industrial estate. The business get cheaper rents and leases; the employees pay for a car, fuel, and their time. The benefits don't accrue to the car owner. Couple that with the obsession that everyone has to work, all families must have two jobs, because that's the only way to pay for a lifestyle that requires multiple cars, etc. Cars are sold as aspirational avenues to freedom when really they're the complete opposite.

Think of the nicest places to live and work and what they have in common? It's a lack of vehicles and the dependency.

[Jaded]

^ spot on.

[quixoticgeek]

One take, but tell me, how would your choice fare, driving four people and luggage on holiday? Carrying 700kg of stone? etc etc.

We have two cars, my wife's £25 VED p.a. petrol fuelled is the local runaround, ten years old and averages less than 3000 miles a year. My diesel grandpawagon is as big as it gets for load carrying, relatively tardis like as it is smaller on the outside yet of larger internal capacity than the competition (yeah, I know it is still big). Used overwhelmingly for long trips and load carrying capability, average around 8k miles pa. It is  currently averaging the same sort of consumption as the small petrol and it is capable of genuine mid-to-high 60's mpg consumption on an economy run. So, actually very efficient for its size and reasonably efficient in absolute terms. My VED? Currently £500 pa.

The question is more about whether it will be possible to go on ‘holiday’ in such a way. If one has a big car, it gets used.

Fewer holidays, less luggage, I imagine is the answer to your question. Not very palatable, though.

I don't keep an aeroplane in the basement for the 1 week a year I want to fly away on holiday. So why keep a car around for the one week a year you need to drive on holiday? Surely if you need a car to get to/from work. Then owning a cheap EV runabout, and then hiring something bigger for the 2 week holiday has to be more cost effective?

But these are engineered outcomes. People often state jobs, but really cars just enabled jobs to delocalize, so workers instead spend 45 mins a day in traffic to an out-of-town industrial estate. The business get cheaper rents and leases; the employees pay for a car, fuel, and their time. The benefits don't accrue to the car owner. Couple that with the obsession that everyone has to work, all families must have two jobs, because that's the only way to pay for a lifestyle that requires multiple cars, etc. Cars are sold as aspirational avenues to freedom when really they're the complete opposite.

Think of the nicest places to live and work and what they have in common? It's a lack of vehicles and the dependency.

Agreed. But how do we change it? How do we make the firms move their offices back into the city centre? Do we want the steel plant closer to town so people don't have to drive etc... ?

We need to massively improve public transport, running it as something where the purpose is to transport the public, where they need to go, when they need to go. Once public transport, accompanied by active travel, are available, then people can start thinking about getting rid of their cars. But unless we provide an alternative, it's not gonna happen.

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

Re: scrappage. That's about government-sponsored scrappage schemes. Manufacturer and dealer scrappage schemes are going on all the time.

[Jaded]

One take, but tell me, how would your choice fare, driving four people and luggage on holiday? Carrying 700kg of stone? etc etc.

We have two cars, my wife's £25 VED p.a. petrol fuelled is the local runaround, ten years old and averages less than 3000 miles a year. My diesel grandpawagon is as big as it gets for load carrying, relatively tardis like as it is smaller on the outside yet of larger internal capacity than the competition (yeah, I know it is still big). Used overwhelmingly for long trips and load carrying capability, average around 8k miles pa. It is  currently averaging the same sort of consumption as the small petrol and it is capable of genuine mid-to-high 60's mpg consumption on an economy run. So, actually very efficient for its size and reasonably efficient in absolute terms. My VED? Currently £500 pa.

The question is more about whether it will be possible to go on ‘holiday’ in such a way. If one has a big car, it gets used.

Fewer holidays, less luggage, I imagine is the answer to your question. Not very palatable, though.

I don't keep an aeroplane in the basement for the 1 week a year I want to fly away on holiday. So why keep a car around for the one week a year you need to drive on holiday? Surely if you need a car to get to/from work. Then owning a cheap EV runabout, and then hiring something bigger for the 2 week holiday has to be more cost effective?

But these are engineered outcomes. People often state jobs, but really cars just enabled jobs to delocalize, so workers instead spend 45 mins a day in traffic to an out-of-town industrial estate. The business get cheaper rents and leases; the employees pay for a car, fuel, and their time. The benefits don't accrue to the car owner. Couple that with the obsession that everyone has to work, all families must have two jobs, because that's the only way to pay for a lifestyle that requires multiple cars, etc. Cars are sold as aspirational avenues to freedom when really they're the complete opposite.

Think of the nicest places to live and work and what they have in common? It's a lack of vehicles and the dependency.

Agreed. But how do we change it? How do we make the firms move their offices back into the city centre? Do we want the steel plant closer to town so people don't have to drive etc... ?

We need to massively improve public transport, running it as something where the purpose is to transport the public, where they need to go, when they need to go. Once public transport, accompanied by active travel, are available, then people can start thinking about getting rid of their cars. But unless we provide an alternative, it's not gonna happen.

J

Public transport doesn’t work for many/most because of private transport, which, as ian says, has developed a dependency in society. It took us 70 years to get into this mess,  we haven’t got 70 years to get out of it.

[quixoticgeek]

Public transport doesn’t work for many/most because of private transport, which, as ian says, has developed a dependency in society. It took us 70 years to get into this mess,  we haven’t got 70 years to get out of it.

Lets get radical. Lets make public transport that works.

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

Public transport doesn’t work for many/most because of private transport, which, as ian says, has developed a dependency in society. It took us 70 years to get into this mess,  we haven’t got 70 years to get out of it.

Lets get radical. Lets make public transport that works.

J

That's not even radical, it's simultaneously impossible and already here, depending on where you are (mostly but only geographically). But it's not getting us out of either the car-dependency mess or the planet mess. Probably because it's still transport.

[Jaded]

Public transport doesn’t work for many/most because of private transport, which, as ian says, has developed a dependency in society. It took us 70 years to get into this mess,  we haven’t got 70 years to get out of it.

Lets get radical. Lets make public transport that works.

J

You are missing the point industrially. Public transport will not work in an society where almost every journey made, almost every employment choice, almost every house purchase or rental, is a private journey. Public transport works when clumps of people go from one place to another, or along a route.

We have set up a society where cars allow us to go where we want when we want. Public transport doesn’t do that. A major cost of the cheaper premises out of town is the loss of public transport.

[grams]

I don't keep an aeroplane in the basement for the 1 week a year I want to fly away on holiday. So why keep a car around for the one week a year you need to drive on holiday? Surely if you need a car to get to/from work. Then owning a cheap EV runabout, and then hiring something bigger for the 2 week holiday has to be more cost effective?

Renting a large car at peak holiday time even once a year is going to kill any cost savings of having a smaller regular car. And that’s before the rental company adds spurious charges (or not spurious, if kids have been near it). And assuming you can get one - rental fleets tend to be mostly small/medium cars.

Also i don’t think there’s such a thing as a cheap EV runabout yet.

[Ham]

I can't speak for Jaded, but our main family car is a huge estate (Dacia Logan), only slightly smaller than the Passat Est I had 15 years ago, and VED is 'Nil' on the form we received yesterday. 

But while it does nearly 3 times the mpg of our second vehicle (a campervan) it also does over 4-times the annual miles, so there's definitely a mismatch in the taxation system. I'd favour a fuel (or power-source in deference to EVs) levy in general, but that does have the psychological problem of being absorbed into the 'general living expenses' bill. Perhaps there should be a mileage-based charge levied at the MOT test (or scrappage date for those that don't get re-MOTed)?

I was more commenting on wycombewheeler's "anything more than £30". Just for the record, the current Dacia logan is actually the same annual, VED as my grandpawagon, except I'm being stiffed £500 as the list price was over £40k (although I paid >1/3 less)

One question I have for you tho is this: What is the PM2.5, PM10, and NOX emissions like on your vehicle?

Data by vehicle doesn't seem to be available, as far as I can see modern engines are better

The question is more about whether it will be possible to go on ‘holiday’ in such a way. If one has a big car, it gets used.

Fewer holidays, less luggage, I imagine is the answer to your question. Not very palatable, though.

Fewer holidays is indeed a lifestyle choice, the mode of going on those holidays will only vary the degree of impact. I chose a big car to do big car things (chuck a pram and bike in the back etc etc) and rarely use it for "convenience" things.

We need to massively improve public transport, running it as something where the purpose is to transport the public, where they need to go, when they need to go. Once public transport, accompanied by active travel, are available, then people can start thinking about getting rid of their cars. But unless we provide an alternative, it's not gonna happen.

This is the heart of it, including making travel options easier (eg cycle infrastructure) and less travelling required.

[Jaded]

A pram and a bike thrown in a car are absolutely modern day ‘convenience things’. They are possible because of the way cars have bludgeoned their way into our society.

[Ham]

A pram and a bike thrown in a car are absolutely modern day ‘convenience things’. They are possible because of the way cars have bludgeoned their way into our society.

Cars haven't bludgeoned there way into our society, they have shaped it and - to anthropomorphise - they have placed themselves at our heart. But of course, it is we who have done that. We who have families that are close but separated by distance (etc etc etc). Blaming cars for that is like blaming them for crashes that happen.

It's not modern day "convenience" it's modern day life. Convenience use is using a car when there are practical alternatives.

[ian]

Public transport doesn’t work for many/most because of private transport, which, as ian says, has developed a dependency in society. It took us 70 years to get into this mess,  we haven’t got 70 years to get out of it.

Lets get radical. Lets make public transport that works.

J

You are missing the point industrially. Public transport will not work in an society where almost every journey made, almost every employment choice, almost every house purchase or rental, is a private journey. Public transport works when clumps of people go from one place to another, or along a route.

We have set up a society where cars allow us to go where we want when we want. Public transport doesn’t do that. A major cost of the cheaper premises out of town is the loss of public transport.

There are lots of things that can be done in addition to better public transport: remove the incentives for out-of-town builds (and do vice versa), stop putting hospitals/schools in the middle of nowhere, stop building disconnected housing estates with laughable transport provision, etc. etc.

Of course, it's a change, but our current behaviour is unsustainable and frankly, when people really think about it, is it really the environment we want to live in. Do people actually enjoy having to rush about in the morning to drive their kids to school, make plans for every afternoon, do they enjoy sitting in traffic, do they enjoyed toiling around the same bloody supermarket? I doubt it. I've yet to see a car advert that pitches this.

[Jaded]

A pram and a bike thrown in a car are absolutely modern day ‘convenience things’. They are possible because of the way cars have bludgeoned their way into our society.

Cars haven't bludgeoned there way into our society, they have shaped it and - to anthropomorphise - they have placed themselves at our heart. But of course, it is we who have done that. We who have families that are close but separated by distance (etc etc etc). Blaming cars for that is like blaming them for crashes that happen.

It's not modern day "convenience" it's modern day life. Convenience use is using a car when there are practical alternatives.

Cars have created situations that are now used to justify car ownership and use.

It may well be 'modern day life' but it isn't sustainable.