Private cars should be banned from city centres.
cntl
Posts: 290
Hefty congestions charge increases in London and the expansion of the zone are steps in the right direction.
However, I think all private cars should be banned from all city centres, at least between 7am and 6.30pm. Residents should pay tousands per year for permits. Goods deliveries should be done outside rush hours as well. And yes, I am a driver as well as a cyclist.
However, I think all private cars should be banned from all city centres, at least between 7am and 6.30pm. Residents should pay tousands per year for permits. Goods deliveries should be done outside rush hours as well. And yes, I am a driver as well as a cyclist.
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>>But obviously not a realist!!!
haha, yes, I know, I know. Just a session of day dreaming :roll: But, hey, I guess some years ago people would say the same about congestion charging... you never know in life...
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Well, it does sound good, but paying thousands for parking permits? There are enough govermnent-induced warpings of the housing market as it is!0
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cars don't drive around by themselves.
the problem is population, growing at, what, 3+ times the death rate?
we all have to kill at least 3 people during our lifetimes to even things out, are you prepared to do so?__________________________0 -
City centre residents should have to pay thousands for parking permits? That's hardly looking at the big environmental picture is it? (But then who does?)
People who live and work in city centres probably drive many less miles per year than people who live in the 'burbs and work in the city centre. Most people who live and work in city centres use alternative modes of transport to get to work, it doesn't matter if it's by public transport, cycling or walking it's better for the environment and congestion than driving a car.
Penalising people for living close to their work place is about as arse about face as you can get.
Penalties are seldom the answer anyway. They always hit the less well off the hardest and are no particular deterent to the well off. Look at the Parisian number plate rule where the well off have multiple number plates to skirt the rules and the less well off have to comply.
Incentives will always work better than penalties, but then offering incentives will always cost the authorities money. Penalties make for huge revenues.
Employers need to pay their part in the incentive game as well. I have recently been forcibly relocated to an office that is ten miles or so further from home. I will receive over £1500 in excess travel allowance. If I were to use public transport I would receive half as much. If I were to cycle to work I would receive about 1/6th the amount. That's certainly no way to encourage people to find alternatives to the car even though they have given a commitment to do so."Swearing, it turns out, is big and clever" - Jarvis Cocker0 -
>>People who live and work in city centres probably drive many less miles per year than
>>people who live in the 'burbs and work in the city centre
Speculation. May be, and then, may be not
>>Most people who live and work in city centres use alternative modes of transport to get to work
I would think the opposite to be the case since pretty much everybody who lives in Greater London or outside M25 and works in the City or whatnot, takes the train. But again, who commutes to Central London by car?
>>City centre residents should have to pay thousands for parking permits?
Well, on the spur of the moment I might have exaggerated, but certainly it should NOT be cheap. What is happening now is that councils are introducing permits based on engine size, so that an owner of a 4x4 would have to pay around 50 quid a month or so. That's probably more fair, although is way too low IMHO.
>>Penalising people for living close to their work place is about as ars* about face as you can get
No one wants to penalise people for living close to work. All I wrote was that people living in city centres and owning cars should pay for driving there a premium (say, if they want to drive between 7am and 6.30pm weekday - something similar to the existing system in Central London, where residents pay congestion charge at a discounted rate.)
>>That's certainly no way to encourage people to find alternatives to the car even though they have given a commitment to do so.
I agree.0 -
Actually, the system we have in Central London is not THAT bad: everybody pays for driving there, including residents. The zone's expansion is a positive. It should be extended to all major (or even not so major
) cities. The congestion charges are too low however, and the discount for residents is way too BIG. 0 -
I don't think the congestion charge is variable enough. It should be levied on a sliding scale based on the time of day and day of the week. Done properly this would definitely
encourage the staggering of the working day.
Better yet it could be weighted based on current congestion. Traffic sensors could measure current congestion, the charge be raised the higher the congestion and matrix displays on the approach to the zone could display the current charge.
However I think that one thing that is ignored in this country when it comes to congestion is the size of the car. It's pretty obvious that the longer the car the larger it's contribution to the jam. Some sort of charge should be levied based on longer cars."Swearing, it turns out, is big and clever" - Jarvis Cocker0 -
>>I don't think the congestion charge is variable enough. It should be levied on a sliding
>>scale based on the time of day and day of the week
Yes. And actually, this is what is going to happen with the pay per mile system due to be roled out in 10 years or so. All cars will be fitted with a GPS based 'black box' transmitting vehicle location and times of travel. The charges will be dependent on the types of roads used and the time of day. According to current plans, traveling 10 miles on M25 peak time will cost well over 10 quid (I think they said it would be pound something per mile).0 -
Making the charge more fleible to encourage staggering of travel times is in some ways counter-productive, depending on ones objectives. If it is to ease comgestion at the same time as maximising the number of journeys accross the day, then staggered charges will encourage this, however the total number of journeys and the consequent polution will increase.
I think flexible road pricing to manage the more even distribution of traffic accross the day is suitable for motorways, but in cities there should always be a better alternative to the car for the private traveller.0 -
alfablue wrote:I think flexible road pricing to manage the more even distribution of traffic accross the day is suitable for motorways, but in cities there should always be a better alternative to the car for the private traveller.
The operative word their being "should". I think Londoners are spoiled by the amount of public transport they have at their disposal. Most of the rest of the country is not so well served. Can you believe that in our case the bus that would get you into the city centre for 9am doesn't actually get get into the city centre on time. The reason for this is that a large loop is added to to the route to serve the nearest middle school, in order to save the cost of running a seperate school bus. This means the bus doesn't get into town until well after 9. So if you work 9 to 5 the public transport service doesn't really serve you at all.
Talk to the bus company and they tell you that nobody catches that bus anyway so it's no loss. Well of course they don't catch it, it's no bloody use to them.
I've recently had the problem of the earlier bus simply failing to turn up at all on several occasions, which is adding insult to injury.
And then the transport authority wonder why people commute by car."Swearing, it turns out, is big and clever" - Jarvis Cocker0 -
ridiculous, that would never work. All the people that lived in the city centre would just park in the suburbs, resulting in a massive parking problem in streets just outside the area you have to pay to park in.cntl wrote:Hefty congestions charge increases in London and the expansion of the zone are steps in the right direction.
However, I think all private cars should be banned from all city centres, at least between 7am and 6.30pm. Residents should pay tousands per year for permits. Goods deliveries should be done outside rush hours as well. And yes, I am a driver as well as a cyclist.
The problem with this, aswell as most idealistic attempts at solutions to the congestion problem, is the incorrect supposition that most people will suddenly stop using their car if they are forced to pay more for the privilege of doing so.
In london the congestion charge reduces journeys a lot because london is fairly flat so easy to cycle round, and there is also the tube. But it still doesn't eliminate congestion in london, it simply makes it more bearable.0 -
cntl wrote:Yes. And actually, this is what is going to happen with the pay per mile system due to be roled out in 10 years or so. All cars will be fitted with a GPS based 'black box' transmitting vehicle location and times of travel. The charges will be dependent on the types of roads used and the time of day. According to current plans, traveling 10 miles on M25 peak time will cost well over 10 quid (I think they said it would be pound something per mile).
Wow! Is this really going to happen?
It can't come soon enough for me. I have a car, and I hear too much "civil liberties" blether around the activity of driving. So I think this will be a good step to bring driving under control of the law.
Airline pilots are subject to surveillance to ensure they don't endanger people, so drivers should be too.
GPS tracking could enforce speed restrictions, gather data for crash investigations. It really is about time driving was regulated in a manner that actually works.0 -
no, probably not.CarKiller wrote:cntl wrote:Yes. And actually, this is what is going to happen with the pay per mile system due to be roled out in 10 years or so. All cars will be fitted with a GPS based 'black box' transmitting vehicle location and times of travel. The charges will be dependent on the types of roads used and the time of day. According to current plans, traveling 10 miles on M25 peak time will cost well over 10 quid (I think they said it would be pound something per mile).
Wow! Is this really going to happen?0 -
formerlyknownasbonj wrote:
no, probably not.CarKiller wrote:cntl wrote:Yes. And actually, this is what is going to happen with the pay per mile system due to be roled out in 10 years or so. All cars will be fitted with a GPS based 'black box' transmitting vehicle location and times of travel. The charges will be dependent on the types of roads used and the time of day. According to current plans, traveling 10 miles on M25 peak time will cost well over 10 quid (I think they said it would be pound something per mile).
Wow! Is this really going to happen?
This will never happen as there is already a device that you can buy to block the GPS signal.
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Cancer - Lung Forums~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Porridge not Petrol0 -
The national road charging scheme is pretty much inevitable. Although there's no formal 'green light' yet (except for the pilot scheme), pretty much everybody knows it is bound to happen. More info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6678915.stm0 -
The government (usually advised by the civil cervix) have a habit of coming up with plans that invove technology that they can't make work. The biometric passport? Even the US government have admitted they don't yet have the technology to make this work, but our government claim they already have the technology. Most of these things seem to be plans on the part of the civil service and suppliers to talk ever more money out of the tax payer to develop solutions that never see the light of day.
The GPS solution is unworkable, for many reasons. The main one being that people will find simple ways to disable the GPS units. The only way road charging will ever work will be with ANPR cameras absolutely everywhere. And there are two problems with that. The first as demonstrated by the congestion charge, some people simply use false number plates. There is the case of the owner of a vintage tractor based hundreds of miles from London who received a fine for non payment of the congestion charge, his plate was being used on somebodies car. The other is that they will never get cameras on every road so people will end up trying to avoid cameras leading to congestion in unlikely places.
IOW: Don't hold your breath."Swearing, it turns out, is big and clever" - Jarvis Cocker0
