Whats up with our roads

[alancdavis]

Just had a week working in Germany ,, great roads with no holdups and constant free flowing traffic

Home to day and the M6 was a bloody car park

[wetandwindy2]

when i was living in germany believe me it wasnt all plain sailing many a 2 hour traffic jam i sat in

[Blower]

The School Holidays have started

Tonight at work has been the quietist since records began

At least since last years hols

[Tel911S]

I have driven over 1/2 million miles around Europe , & as you say , most of the time [ if you know where not to go at certain times ] the traffic flows much better than here .

But one thing to remember is the last government wanted to bring in road charging , which would have been the biggest stealth tax ever , so they started to deliberately cause jams .
Like Ken Livingstone did in London , by playing around with restrictions & changing traffic lights , he got the average speed of traffic down from 14 MPH [ which it had been at for about 40 years ] to 3 MPH so he could try to justify his congestion charging .

With help from looney left groups like BRAKE etc , & sympathetic councils & other organisations the last lot were getting traffic slower & slower until they hoped motorists would say " Lets try road charging as the traffic might move better "

[alancdavis]

So it would be a pay as you go system and we can dump the road fund licence

[Tel911S]

So it would be a pay as you go system and we can dump the road fund licence

That was the idea . They tried to bring it in in Greater Manchester [ I think ] , but it was voted out .
You can be sure that even if they ditched the road fund licence , you would finish up paying much much more for driving .And the beauty of the idea is everybody would be paying much more , even those who do not drive because about 97% of all goods movements in this country are by road . So the cost of everything [ from goods to utilities & everything else ] would have to increase .

[katana]

So it would be a pay as you go system and we can dump the road fund licence

Yeah Right! Like thats gonna happen! Whose going to pay for all the NPR cameras to monitor traffic on every single mile of road in the UK which will obviously cost more than the road licence pulls in every year but several 1000's of times!

Forget the camera's and licence fees and road charging and just add it to fuel duty then EVERYONE pays according to their road usage - even tourists if they have to fill up!

[Tel911S]

Yeah Right! Like thats gonna happen! Whose going to pay for all the NPR cameras to monitor traffic on every single mile of road in the UK which will obviously cost more than the road licence pulls in every year but several 1000's of times!

Forget the camera's and licence fees and road charging and just add it to fuel duty then EVERYONE pays according to their road usage - even tourists if they have to fill up!

The problem with that idea is that it would only benefit a tiny number of people who have several cars to tax & only use one at a time .
Figures show that over 90% of fuel duty is paid by business , & less than 10% by private motorists . So raising fuel duty would mean that everybody else would be paying so that a few individuals could save a few pounds on taxing all of their cars .
It might be said that if the duty was only raised on petrol that would be better , but again , that would only benefit those with more than I car to tax .

[alancdavis]

Forget the camera's and licence fees and road charging and just add it to fuel duty then EVERYONE pays according to their road usage - even tourists if they have to fill up![/QUOTE]


Might be the solution

[i-am-the-peel]

state of our roads is because of a lack of investment in infrastucture now and in the past. doesn't matter how you fund it it still needs to be spent on rebuilding and it doesn't seem to be.

[alancdavis]

But sections are always bollarded off and lanes closed with speed restrictions

Granted you never see any one working ,

[katana]

The problem with that idea is that it would only benefit a tiny number of people who have several cars to tax & only use one at a time .
Figures show that over 90% of fuel duty is paid by business , & less than 10% by private motorists . So raising fuel duty would mean that everybody else would be paying so that a few individuals could save a few pounds on taxing all of their cars .
It might be said that if the duty was only raised on petrol that would be better , but again , that would only benefit those with more than 1 car to tax .

So the ones who have multiple taxed vehicles and only use one at a time are effectively subsidising those that haven't as at present and thats ok? My bike tax is nearly £70 a year - I use a 1/6th of the road space as a car and weigh about a 1/4 of a small car but I pay 1/2 of the cars tax - and thats fair? I only benefit in fuel consumption by about 10mpg against a car so I would hardly be £££ in but at least everybody that doesn't pay for car tax would be paying and not avoiding (illegally or legally!) A 'Historic' vehicle doesn't cease to cause damage when used so why give it a free ride?

[alancdavis]

As I say ,,,,,Pay as you go ..

[Tel911S]

So the ones who have multiple taxed vehicles and only use one at a time are effectively subsidising those that haven't as at present and thats ok? My bike tax is nearly £70 a year - I use a 1/6th of the road space as a car and weigh about a 1/4 of a small car but I pay 1/2 of the cars tax - and thats fair? I only benefit in fuel consumption by about 10mpg against a car so I would hardly be £££ in but at least everybody that doesn't pay for car tax would be paying and not avoiding (illegally or legally!) A 'Historic' vehicle doesn't cease to cause damage when used so why give it a free ride?

No , the business users are subsidising the private motorists by paying over 90% of road taxes [ fuel duty & vehicle tax ] in this country .
So if you increase fuel duty & scrap car tax , it would be about the same overall cost for some private car drivers , but a huge increase for over 90% of road users which are businesses .
Which of course would mean an increase in costs for everybody , even the ones who don,t drive , as businesses would have to put prices up .

[wetandwindy2]

Yeah Right! Like thats gonna happen! Whose going to pay for all the NPR cameras to monitor traffic on every single mile of road in the UK which will obviously cost more than the road licence pulls in every year but several 1000's of times!

Forget the camera's and licence fees and road charging and just add it to fuel duty then EVERYONE pays according to their road usage - even tourists if they have to fill up!

well that wonnt work as it makes sense and you know how our gov works