Safe Speed Forums

Are you serious about this "beleaguered motorist" being taxed beyond endurance malarkey?
Take a look at this:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 4w0008.htm
Apologies for the long link.
So, cost of motoring down 10% in real terms over last 30 years. Disposable income more than doubled during the same period. Public transport costs up 50% in real terms.
Facts. Don't you just love 'em?

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.... if they were up to date!

There's the recent national almighty hike in petrol costs, increase in VED and the extortionate parking charges (when it used to be free). And what of the CC charge to London motorists?

Bottyburp also referred to congestion (something not covered in the link) a lot of which is deliberate and totally unnecessary, such as randomised phasing of traffic lights, or the so-called ‘traffic calming’.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

And a large part of the decline in motoring costs is due to the falling price in real terms of new cars, due to improved manufacturing productivity. But that, of course, has no effect on day-to-day running costs, and indeed often means simply that people buy a better or newer car.

Public transport costs have risen despite huge amounts of subsidy, whereas motorists make an annual net contribution to the Treasury of tens of billions.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

If you can afford a brand new car then you probably aren't the sort of person being affected by small-medium rises in running costs.

No, it's the people stuck in sub £1000 sheds because that's all they can afford and they have no other way of earning a living who this hits the worst.

How do they work out this "real terms" crap anyway, I really don't understand it, perhaps this is because I am currently earning less in actual numerical terms than I was in 2001 due to the devaluation of skills in my chosen industry?

Got any sources for your airy assertions guys?

I've heard motorists receive a net subsidy from the taxpayer of circa £19 billion.

And what's 'almighty' in percentage terms?

'Extortionate' parking charges? (Old) DfT figures suggest an annual cost, to the provider, of a parking space to be between £300 and £500. £700 was a more recent figure for Leeds. London you're looking at upwards of £1000. Who should be paying this?

Peter, this site's founder would be proud of you! Are you disputing that the cost of motoring, in real terms, has fallen by 10% over the last thirty years? Are you saying the cost has risen?

Anyone remember the news item from earlier in the year reporting research linking exposure to vehicle exhaust fumes with permanent damage to the developing lungs of children?

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

I've split this into a separate thread as it had gone very much off-topic from the original post.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Well, as for mine, any motorist will be able to confirm. Do you drive? Given the last comment below I strongly suspect not; therefore it is not surprising you do not know or appreciate the problems faced by the motoring public.


20-25% from 2005 (back then the average price of unleaded petrol had hit 90p), that's a bit higher than inflation.


More out of date facts?
”Suggest”? Care to substantiate that suggestion? Even if true, ask yourself: how can that be? That fact is: it supports my original point about the parking charges.


Given the almighty subtopic change, I think we've edged closer to the underlying intent.

Would you prefer us to take a bus? Oh wait, aren’t those smelly old diesels the worst offenders of all?
Also, how would you like your food? The fact is that society has accepted some unfortunate sacrifices in order to accommodate the density of our population. At this point, implementing an effective alternative would have far, far worse consequences. Think of the bigger picture, then ask yourself “what is the cost of not motoring?”

I would bet money that people will still be whinging even if we all drove cars powered entirely from heat of the surrounding air.

Nahhh. The REAL figure [green party] is 69 billion subsidy to the motorist.
The price of petrol should be raised to £2.69 per litre. VED should be equal to the cost of the car (annual). New road building should cease and maintenance only should be performed. Buses should be increased (we'd need an increase of about 3500% to cope with the increased passengers due to car use being uneconomical). Rail couldn't be increased, the lines are at capacity at peak times. Air travel....a thorny issue this. Due to the aircraft makers reucing the fuel used, year -on-year, and their increasing use of "green" fuels (bio-avtur !), aircraft may well be carbon-neutral in a few years. This has caused real problems in the greenies.....to the extent that they may well ban green avtur....
They may ban (or attempt to have one done) the import of goods from abroad....not a bad idea that, no tvs' means I won't have to watch their increasingly boring immature political thinking (if it works, ban it and make it green)

Are you seriously suggesting that the cost of motoring has spiked by an additional 20-25% since 2005?
The price of fuel is lower now - in real terms - than it was in 1983, 97.4% of the 1983 price.
It beggars belief that motorists can find anything here to whinge about. When you gripe about being beleaguered by spiralling motoring costs you can only mean that the cost of motoring isn't falling as fast as you would like.
It's pitiful.

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This was a naff bit of editing. This belongs on the original thread, the point being that the anti-social, truculent and dangerous behaviour of frustrated drivers can't be justified with appeals to motorists being beleaguered by swingeing and punitive costs.
Hived off like this my purpose in posting loses all context. It looks like a provocative non-sequitur.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

Not based on the cost of fuel alone no, but add all the other factors together that I had previously mentioned (and there might be more that I missed) and you might actually get there.


Why use one of the most expensive years as the reference? Doing so adds unnecessary bias to the comparison. One could have done the same with the 1990 figure.


I repeated the issue about engineered congestion (on roads motorists pay for but everyone uses), it was part of BP’s original whinge, yet you still don't acknowledge that. Isn’t that worth whinging about?

Locally unleaded has risen in price by 50% in the last 3 yrs (66.9p to 99.9p /l)
The 2.6% drop from 1983 is most easily explained by the economies of scale, as a consequence of more vehicles on the road and the demise of small local independant petrol filling stations (pfs), 10+ pumps in a modern PFS is not unusual, in 1983 there was only 4 star (was 5star still available then), diesel was often only available at taxi and commercial garages. There were very few supermarket pfs's these now dominate the market, so there are too many variables to give an 'eggs with eggs' comparison with 24 years ago.

If you want water in your taps, electricity in your sockets, gas in your pipes, roads for the buses to run on, and buildings to live and work in I will need a car to get me and my work equipment from site to site to build and maintain these essentials of modern life.

fatboytim

ps I also can inspect the underside of bridges, do YOU know of any 'homely' bridges I could inspect

fatboytim

From, june 1993 to june 1995 I had an H reg Skoda Favorit and did almost exactly 40,000 miles in it. Petrol was 38ppl ish and that car cost me 17pence per mile. I do earn more now than I did then, but my wages haven't increased like fuel has, which is why my annual milage is less than half.

From July 1996 to April 2002 I ran a J reg MKII Golf Driver 1.8 (90hp) and it did 72,000 under my owner ship and cost me 22 pence per mile.

Since the Golf I now run a 1998 Honda Civic 1.4SE (89hp) which is costing me about 37 pence per mile.

A tank full of petrol and tax for the Honda releaves me of 15% of my basic, pre tax weekly wage, That is like John Terry spending £18,000 to fill up what ever car he drives.

The honda is a lower tax braket than the Golf was, but the only other cost that has gone down is insurance and that is because I am older and wiser.

In 1999 when DVD players started to come in the were £450, you can get one in Tesco for £17.99. So their real cost has plummeted. Should they be taxed to stop us buying them and emmitting CO2 as they are shipped from China?

In 1982 a tonne of wheat was £120, this time last year it was £85 with a massive increase in production costs.

I don't buy any of these "real cost" of motoring excuses. In just about every other area of expense, prices come under pressure to go down, unless there is an added value. But because the government gets so invloved in transport they whack the cost up with tax. I can shop around for different cars, insurance and maintainance, but I can't buy my public services off anyone other than Gordon Brown, so he just hammers me for them were ever he can. Petrol being his favourite.

Anyone that claims motoring is getting cheaper simply does have to run a car.

I noted a fuel price comparison (not the bbc one, an organisation so far to the left it makes marx look right wing) that came to the conclusion, all-in-all, that fuel is about where it should be (in un-real terms).
The price of vehicles has not risen as it should, but the cost of service and repair is higher than it should be (mechanics (sorry, vehicle technicians) have to drive to work as well).
Wages, in the majority of cases, have not risen with inflation but are (in the main) about 13-14% lower than they should be....comparing today with 10 years ago (higher general taxation and the rpi index being fiddled to give lower than expected price rises) (I promise not to mention the bribes being given to some public employees in low-interest loans for housing etc)
For all those "use public transport to go shopping" types..... bus drivers don't let you on with more than two bags of shopping.
Try a taxi ?
Yes, at £12.50 one way....I think not.
My fuel cost for home-work-home is about £35.00 / week (diesel) for a 11-13 hour travel. public transport would be £17.00 per day, for a 16-24 hour travel (train v bus) (if I can get a return) (if I can figure out the timetable...and why do I have to pay for a ticket to the NEXT station up from the one I want ?) No, public transport is a good way for the gov to save money on pensions (get all the pensioners on the bus then have them get flu....save a packet) but F.A use to get to work. Oh, and you cannot carry tools on PT.

I suspect he is using this table on my website:

http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/petrolprices.html

You are quite right that 1983, after the 1979 Iranian oil shock, was one of the most expensive years in real terms, as others have in the past pointed out. However, that just happens to be when I started keeping a record of petrol prices.

Also the current price of unleaded (around here typically 101.9p/litre) is now 16% above the March 2007 price quoted on the web page.

The table also shows that in the five years from 2002 to 2007, the cost of fuel rose by 25.6%. If you extend that to today's price, since 2002 it has risen by 46%. In anyone's book that is a pretty substantial rise.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Getting the occasional taxi when you have to would be far cheaper than owning a car. The more expensive cars can depriciate by more than £12.50 a day.

Isn’t that a bit selective? Why compare against "The more expensive cars"?

What exactly is the difference between using a taxi and using a car? (let alone a van)

What if you need to use the taxi more than once per day - like when you need to return home? (let alone travel to a supplier to pick up a part)

I cannot believe that there is anyone in this world who actually accepts government figures as the truth!

I wuz wrong......



there're two of 'em

Four of which years will have been factored into the conclusion that motoring is cheaper in real terms than it was thirty years ago.
Once more then: are you claiming that the real cost of motoring has risen in the last 30 years?

This
doesn't help at all. For, of course, you "might actually not get there".

If you're looking for reasons why some motorists act like arseholes in traffic jams - which is the thread from which this is a spin off, remember - it isn't because they're being overcharged for the privilege. This theory has been disproved by available data. And if we're weakly speculating and trading anecdotes, I can think of a host of more plausible reasons for some motorists being dickheads.

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Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

Then its still probably cheaper to use the occasional cab than running a car when you figure all costs into it. Sure, it might not be if you don't have access to any form of public transport, but I reckon most people would save quite a lot of money by ditching their car, certainly those that live in towns; I certainly would.