[Gllug] [OT] Times Article on ABD was Fighting a virus

[John G Walker]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 19:29:04 +0000 Adrian McMenamin
<adrian at newgolddream.dyndns.info> wrote:

> On Sun, 2007-02-18 at 19:01 +0000, t.clarke wrote:
> > I fail to see how the 'special case' of London congestion can be
> > used to justify wholesale road pricing across the UK!
> 
> As the idea of any charge will be based on the externality it causes
> it therefore is the case that in areas where there is low congestion
> the charge will be small - essentially moving to the limit of the
> current level of fuel tax
>

Except that most people, by definition, live where congestion is
highest. It's the rich, with their greater access to private transport,
that live way out in the countryside.
 
> 
> > In the case of the central London charging zone there are plenty of
> > alternatives for getting to work, so penalising car travel is a
> > viable strategy.
> 
> It's not penalising car travel. It is making car users pay the full
> costs of their travel (instead of it being paid by everybody). This is
> one element of why it is a progressive form of taxation. To repeat:
> the wealthy have far greater access to car travel than the poor. But
> the poor still pay taxes to subsidise the rich car users.
> 

Since you mention paying for externalities above, the I assume that, by
'full cost', you mean marginal social cost. Okay, so let's have wage
rates adjusted to cover this. People's incomes should reflect the
marginal social costs of conducting their daily affairs.  Wage control
anyone?

In any case, the point about alternatives to private transport in
central London stand. Indeed, by clearing out masses of private
transport, public transport in central London has improved. This is not
likely to happen in other areas, for the reason stated below.

> > In the case of the UK in general, for many people there is no
> > viable alternative to the car for getting to work, since public
> > transport networks are very often 'radial' in nature.
> 
> Actually, that is garbage. Most people live in urban areas and
> therefore have access to a variety of means of getting to work. Yes,
> some people will not, but why is it right that the rest of us
> subsidise their journey to work?
> 

This contradicts what you say above. If people should pay for
externalities, then journeys to work should be subsidised by those who
benefit from them. If you have an interest in someone else getting to
work, you should pay towards their transport costs.

> 
> > In my younger days I worked in central london, wlaked to the
> > station and took the train.  Then businesses were told to
> > decentralise - and I was forced to drive to work, since the
> > alternative by public transport was hopelesly unrealistic.
> > 
> 
> Your personal experience is not universal.
> 

It's the experience anyone who doesn't work in the centre of a large
metropolis - a lot of people.

> 
> > If you apply the same logic to rationing food as some would do to
> > rationing road usage, only the rich could afford a decent diet and
> > the rest of us would be living on gruel !
> > 
> 
> No, the correct analogy is that we have a system today that subsidises
> food and the poor have to pay a disproportional (as against their
> income) because the rich can buy more more and therefore access
> subsidy. Road pricing is not a rationing system, it's a market for
> road use.
> 
> 
> > If road usage HAS to be rationed,  doing it by price alone is not
> > the answer in my view.  
> 
> It's not rationing.
> 

Yes it is. A market is a form of rationing. It's a means of allocating
scarce resources. 


> <snip>


-- 
 All the best,
 John
-------------- next part --------------
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug