Petrol

[AThirdWay]

You think its a good thing to have the first 2 hours of work taken off you for travelling costs?

Are you just saying let them eat cake? City centre property isn't exactly cheap either and nor are the rents, so people live far out.

The microcosm of Hong Kong is an excellent example, rents are higher as you get closer to Kowloon, the problem is you spend more money on commuting therefore it makes less sense.

"booornn to be miiiilllddd!"

http://www.alienbikes.co.uk/page25.htm

[AThirdWay]

Trikes etc might be fun. But unless they are fully enclosed you might as well have a bike and get the traffic dodging advantages as well.

Also you'd never get me strapped into something less visible than my bike.

edit: Trikes are clearly the future though, as demonstrated in Terry Gilliams masterpiece Brazil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_KR200

My current trike favourite....

http://spyder.brp.com/en-GB/

Won't be trading in the Blackbird though, for the very reasons you mention

[Traktion]

Its a strange way of 'reducing emissions' the road fund licence - some old guy near me has a big Jag - pays nearly £500 road tax a year -but He probably drives it less than 1000 miles a year -dont care how big the car is - its hardly ever used - like you say, it only really makes sense to charge tax on petrol.

OTOH i agree with the libdems that people in rural areas who have less public transport provisions should pay less - maybe offset by an annual registration charge for Londoners who want cars - given they have the benefit of a massively subsidised public transport system.

Id still have a luxury car tax or double rate VAT on cars over £30k - dont even think it would cut sales - people are so vain where cars are concerned in this country theyd probably pay more in tax than on the car RRP itself.

The problem with giving rural dwellers a tax cut (of which I am one, but I work from home anyway) would be fraud. Even if you hand out discount cards to anyone considered rural enough, could move and not hand the card back, paying for other people's fuel etc. Maybe you could have a discount card, capped to a max. quota each month or some such. Perhaps it is workable.

That said, rural driving is more efficient than city driving (at least for non-hybrids). There isn't that stop/start stuff which causes your car to drink fuel. So, in some respects, rural dwellers already get an efficiency discount.

P.S. Not even a bus goes through our wee hamlet, so public transport is of little use alone. It's about 4 miles to the nearest decent bus stop, so it's not all bad though. As I work from home, I agreed to share a car with the other half, so I have taken a taxi to the bus stop, then used a bus to get into town a few times. It's a bit of a ball ache, costs a lot more and takes a lot longer, but it's do-able. I would get my own car again if I had to do it daily though - it's just not very practical to use public transport out in the sticks.

Edited June 22, 2010 by Traktion

[Rare Bear]

We drive a diesel A3, petrol polo and a lotus elise (1.8).

All get 40+ mpg even the lotus! The problem is that people buy the wrong sort of car for the job in hand.

Yes, the Mk1 Elise that I had probably used as little fuel as my wife's Ka. The Exige definitly uses a lot more but the only time I checked it was on a trip to Ireland, 35mpg over 1300 miles. The wife was on board which of course limited the use of the wee donkey.

[Rare Bear]

Its a strange way of 'reducing emissions' the road fund licence - some old guy near me has a big Jag - pays nearly £500 road tax a year -but He probably drives it less than 1000 miles a year -dont care how big the car is - its hardly ever used - like you say, it only really makes sense to charge tax on petrol.

OTOH i agree with the libdems that people in rural areas who have less public transport provisions should pay less - maybe offset by an annual registration charge for Londoners who want cars - given they have the benefit of a massively subsidised public transport system.

Id still have a luxury car tax or double rate VAT on cars over £30k - dont even think it would cut sales - people are so vain where cars are concerned in this country theyd probably pay more in tax than on the car RRP itself.

The original concept of fuel tax was based on the premise that someone who drove a bigger car or who drove faster or who drove more caused more wear and tear on the roads. It was deemed a fairer way to pay than the rod fund licence bu as someone said, 'No politician can resist stealing with the right hand while he is stealing with the left'. Hence we have both fuel taxes and road fund licence, now VED.

[The Knimbies who say No]

Most motorists largest cost is depreciation, even for some pretty low-cost used cars

Depreciation costs/mile on my old Toyota are still(just) above the fuel costs/mile, and that is after 14,000 miles over the two years owned and a purchase cost of well under 2 grand.

Edited June 22, 2010 by cheeznbreed

[Mega]

New Rover.......sorry Roewe 350:-

http://car.autohome.com.cn/pic/series-s7654/2062.htm

Might be coming here, with a Fiat diesel motor ...............Cheap low CO2 lease hire car.

Mike

[Johnny Storm]

You think its a good thing to have the first 2 hours of work taken off you for travelling costs?

£80? Dont be silly i get to work all month for 2 hours of pay.

Petrol price should double, as long as it halves the number of people on the road.

[Guest sillybear2]

"The Liberal Democrats said they would reduce fuel duty in rural areas."

If only people owned some kind of movable vehicle with a tank, a device that could be driven to the cheapest source of fuel.

[White Craw]

"The Liberal Democrats said they would reduce fuel duty in rural areas."

If only people owned some kind of movable vehicle with a tank, a device that could be driven to the cheapest source of fuel.

I'm sure the idea is to reduce high rural prices towards urban levels by this reduction in duty, not to make fuel in rural areas cheaper than elsewhere.

[Guest sillybear2]

I'm sure the idea is to reduce high rural prices towards urban levels by this reduction in duty, not to make fuel in rural areas cheaper than elsewhere.

It's a shame rural folk don't have a magical movable tank device that allows them to fill up in urban areas

[gf3]

The trouble with getting rid of road tax is that people would be tempted to have more than one car and park them on the street. If I seen a transit van for 250 pound I may buy that maybe I would keep every car I have ever owned rather than scrap them.

But I must say that having just converting my mountain bike to electric and cut my fuel costs by more than a half still having to pay road tax and insurance on a car I haven't used for a week is a bit irksome.

[Guest sillybear2]

The trouble with getting rid of road tax is that people would be tempted to have more than one car and park them on the street. If I seen a transit van for 250 pound I may buy that maybe I would keep every car I have ever owned rather than scrap them.

There would always have to be a VED in order to keep the DVLA records straight, not to mention the insurance tie in helps cut down uninsured drivers. Obviously you could reduce the cost of the road fund to a basic administration fee but wouldn't levying it all on fuel duty pee the haulage industry off?

The government also loves VED because it allows them to punish those Chelsea Tractors with £420 levies, and double that for a show room tax, they probably wouldn't make that up in fuel duty alone if these 4x4's are only ever driven on a 5 mile school run.

Edited June 22, 2010 by sillybear2

[zceb90]

It's a shame rural folk don't have a magical movable tank device that allows them to fill up in urban areas

I agree there's quite a discepancy - unleaded in my area is around £1.18/litre but a few days ago I was in a friend's car and he needed fuel at Kinlochewe where price was £1.30/litre which is pretty high for the mainland. It's more expensive still on some of the islands such as Harris, Shetland etc, the latter reported to be charging £1.37/litre recently.

The oil companies themselves could eliminate the differential given that only a fraction of 1 percent of the population live in the Highlands and Islands, for example. An extra 0.2p/litre on the national price wouldn't really be noticed and could smooth out the price 'spikes' in remote areas. Regardless of whether the oil co's or Gov't introduced a scheme to eliminate large differentials it would not encourage fraud as the price would then be more or less national with no economic benefit to 'fill up elsewhere'.

To me it appears likely that the price will need to rise significantly within a few years as indigenous N Sea oil is replaced by imports to offset the ongoing (steep) declines....UK is on track to require £50bn pa in foreign currency to fund energy imports alone within a few years. Including other factors such as China adding 1m+ vehicles to their roads each month and a significant loss of oil output within a few years due to new drilling constraints following recent BP disaster make it likely that world prices will rise further. Against this background it makes one wonder how long the current practice whereby around 80% of vehicles at peak hours contain just a single occupant can continue.

Edited June 22, 2010 by zceb90

[pie-eater]

I'd cry if I had to rely on a car for work.

Petrol should be more expensive to clear the roads of the lazy ***** that ferry their kids the 500m to school.

My neighbour does 2000 miles per month to commute. He gets no help for petrol and has to use his own car - fook that.

My 30 mile round trip on my bike keeps me fit and my pockets full of my own money. There's nothing quite as satisfying as streaming past the mile long queues of frustrated motorist on my bike as they struggle to average 10mph for their morning commute.

[zceb90]

Petrol should be more expensive to clear the roads of the lazy ***** that ferry their kids the 500m to school.

My neighbour does 2000 miles per month to commute. He gets no help for petrol and has to use his own car - fook that.

The problem with such short 'school runs' is that the distance is so short i.e. for many even £5/litre wouldn't deter them. How about a 1km 'no stopping' zone around schools at start and quitting time (with exemptions in case of disabled pupils)?

If I were talking to your neighbour I would be hinting at moving closer to work or working closer to home. Based on what I believe is headed our way such long commutes with (presumably) single occupancy vehicles are going to become unsustainable....and soon.