Can you defend VED?

rjsterry

bails87 wrote:

jonomc4 wrote:

I don't think 25mpg combined is unreasonable.
the few miles I do - I like to do in comfort.

Really? Cars that do near 50mpg are uncomfortable?

It's not a choice between a Bentley or a moped, with nothing in between.

A 3 litre diesel Audi A6 will do over 53mpg (claimed, anyway, and that's what matters). I'd hardly consider that uncomfortable.

Edit: Not that I agree with the ban on anything under 50mpg, but I don't think the poster who suggested it does either, it was just an example of what could be done.

Oh the agony of travelling in a cheap car! [clutches forehead melodramatically)

mudcow007

rjsterry wrote:

bails87 wrote:

jonomc4 wrote:

I don't think 25mpg combined is unreasonable.
the few miles I do - I like to do in comfort.

Really? Cars that do near 50mpg are uncomfortable?

It's not a choice between a Bentley or a moped, with nothing in between.

A 3 litre diesel Audi A6 will do over 53mpg (claimed, anyway, and that's what matters). I'd hardly consider that uncomfortable.

Edit: Not that I agree with the ban on anything under 50mpg, but I don't think the poster who suggested it does either, it was just an example of what could be done.

Oh the agony of travelling in a cheap car! [clutches forehead melodramatically)

my cheap taxed diesel (£150 per year) Signum averages about 32mpg an that's a polar bear hugging oil burner!!

jonomc4

bails87 wrote:

jonomc4 wrote:

I don't think 25mpg combined is unreasonable.
the few miles I do - I like to do in comfort.

Really? Cars that do near 50mpg are uncomfortable?

No - I am not saying that - I am saying the cars I wanted are not 50 mpg cars - Forgive me but I was unaware that Governments were supposed to have minute control over our choices - I do believe that Government has to create a stable and legal society - but people must be free to choose. (I am aware you agree with that - I am just trying to reiterate that point above).

Given my use of car is limited to one shop a week and then maybe one trip at the weekend to see friends / go out - I do very few miles (about 3,000 a year), therefore fuel consumption is not a prime driver for me.

bails87

jonomc4 wrote:

bails87 wrote:

jonomc4 wrote:

I don't think 25mpg combined is unreasonable.
the few miles I do - I like to do in comfort.

Really? Cars that do near 50mpg are uncomfortable?

No - I am not saying that - I am saying the cars I wanted are not 50 mpg cars - Forgive me but I was unaware that Governments were supposed to have minute control over our choices - I do believe that Government has to create a stable and legal society - but people must be free to choose. (I am aware you agree with that - I am just trying to reiterate that point above).

Given my use of car is limited to one shop a week and then maybe one trip at the weekend to see friends / go out - I do very few miles (about 3,000 a year), therefore fuel consumption is not a prime driver for me.

We agree on the bit in bold. But it was you who suggested that anything that got near 50mpg would be uncomfortable, which isn't really true. If you want a car that does 25mpg then fine, it's your money, your choice. And that car may well be comfortable, but it's very difficult to justify that choice on the basis of comfort seeing as there are plenty of comfortable cars that do a lot more the the gallon. It's like saying you want a car with an upright driving position because you've got a bad back. So you buy a Porsche Cayenne Turbo. It may well have the upright driving position, but so do plenty of other cars.

SimonAH

Sorry, I should clarify.

I'm not seriously advocating 50mpg plus cars only - but what I was saying was that if the government (presumably, this being a democracy, at least nominally on the instructions of the majority of the voting populace) wanted to push a green agenda then this should be done via legislation rather than taxation.

If you push it through taxation (apart from it being inherently dishonest as the agenda is usually there to justify the taxation rather than the other way around) then you create a position where those with sufficient wealth can simply buy immunity from the common good.

I am not advocating a green standpoint one way or the other, just saying that we should be honest about why we are doing things.

For example the vast majority of VED payers are under the impression that the money is spent on the road network.................

Having said all of the above however, I should point out that (real world figures as I have to lay it all out in my expenses) my 2.0L diesel is returning 56.5 MPG combined. This is a sporty model too and boasts every optional extra and comfort enhancing addition that the VW catalogue offers.

flimflam_machine

bails87 wrote:

If you want a car that does 25mpg then fine, it's your money, your choice.

Yes, but that choice has an impact on the rest of us. One issue with taxing on the basis of the amount of pollution generated is that you risk not changing people's behaviour while nicely allowing them to salve their conscience because they believe that the tax somehow reduces the impact of their polluting. We risk moving from a view that it's not ok to pollute to a view that it's ok to pollute if you pay for it.

This is an example of the principle, from here

"Sandel knows well the economists’ case for pricing anything and everything: it is the most efficient and least coercive way, they say, of allocating goods to those who want them most. Sandel accepts that with many commodities, the economists are right. But pricing items can produce effects opposite to those intended. He cites a study of a nursery in Israel where some parents were persistently late in picking up children. The owners of the nursery introduced a system of fines as a deterrent.

The effect was to double the number of parents who were late. Sandel says this is because parents regarded the sum they had to pay as a fee for being able to leave their children for longer at the nursery. The constraint on behaviour changed from “I do not want to be late and inconvenience other people” to “Can I afford to pay the fine?” The nursery responded to the explosion in late-arriving parents by scrapping the fine and going back to the “honour” system. But the ethic of responsibility had been damaged: the number of late pick-ups stayed at the higher level."

jonomc4

I think that I should make a few things clear.

With respect to the mileage of cars - the mileage of the cars I chose was not an important factor - my miles are low and I chose my car for other reasons. Yes there are plenty of cars that are wonderful and do 50mpg + but the ones I wanted didn't.

With respect to fuel taxes etc. and the green agenda - the tax we pay for carbon fuels, is the only way we are ever going to be able to pay for "renewable" energy. If you come from a poor country where they cannot afford to pay for the infrastructure for solar/tidal/wind power (and they are not allowed atomic even if they could afford it) then you are going to get less power - many countries have large reserves of coal but are no allowed to access it for climate change reasons. The people in these countries have to live (or not as the case may be) with fuel poverty. But in lucky countries like the UK we can tax to the hilt car owners (large car owners especially) smokers, drinkers, high earners and therefore we can subsidise renewable energy.

When looked at the argument as above - maybe we should be thanking the large car owners paying all the fuel tax? one thing that is for sure - they aren't spending the money fixing the pot holes (I know differences between local and national government taxes and responsibilities etc).

DonDaddyD

OK so fuel is inelastic, fine.

Who actually wants fuel prices to go up? The Government would be playing politics with fuel/green campaign and to the lay person/masses used to driving this just wouldn't wash. It would amount to the same effect as Lansley playing politics with the NHS.

Plus there are other more effective ways to help reduce polution or provide alternative options to driving.

Personally I think VED works better as an incentive to go green than scrapping it and adding the prices to fuel. Each year I have to drop £125 - £250 on VED for my car. My next car will likely be diesel and if possible a lower VED. In truth I, the layman, do not have the time or probably the smarts to work out what I'm saving on fuel - it goes into the car and I go vroom - which is why it is pretty inelastic. VED that is elastic, as a concept its easy to grasp and the goal, to pay less for me is achievable. This at the same time achieving the reduced pollution goals, which I think most don't really care about beyond the savings they are making by paying less.

daviesee

DonDaddyD wrote:

VED that is elastic, as a concept its easy to grasp and the goal, to pay less for me is achievable. This at the same time achieving the reduced pollution goals, which I think most don't really care about beyond the savings they are making by paying less.

Currently.
If enough people go green/save money by buying lower banded cars then the Government is simply going to increase the prices of the banding and you are back where you began. There has already been a study and report of this.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/gre ... green.html
The Government talks green but acts in the interest of it's revenue.

bails87

DonDaddyD wrote:

Who actually wants fuel prices to go up?

Me.

People drive loads more than they should because it's relatively cheap.

In truth I, the layman, do not have the time or probably the smarts to work out what I'm saving on fuel - it goes into the car and I go vroom

And if you're genuinely worried about cost and you don't take a bit of time to think about mpg when buying a new car then you're [politely] of questionable intellect! Almost all drivers will spend loads more on fuel than on VED.

davis

DonDaddyD wrote:

Personally I think VED works better as an incentive to go green than scrapping it and adding the prices to fuel. Each year I have to drop £125 - £250 on VED for my car. My next car will likely be diesel and if possible a lower VED. In truth I, the layman, do not have the time or probably the smarts to work out what I'm saving on fuel - it goes into the car and I go vroom - which is why it is pretty inelastic. VED that is elastic, as a concept its easy to grasp and the goal, to pay less for me is achievable. This at the same time achieving the reduced pollution goals, which I think most don't really care about beyond the savings they are making by paying less.

If you're talking as the layman, I think you're doing the layman a disservice by saying they can't do simple maths. Most people can work it out easily enough. Otherwise no-one would bother e.g. having LPG conversions.

I will say that it's rather pointless changing cars to go for a lower VED, or, in many cases, slightly better fuel economy for purely "cash in the pocket" reasons. The 5-10k (say) extra that you'd outlay on another car buys a hell of a lot of VED and fuel. For most people it makes economic and ecological sense to keep their existing car for a hell of a lot longer than most people (appear to) do.

rick_chasey

I'll say it again.

The gov't has no interest in making travel expensive - at least, they shouldn't.

They should have an interest in preventing people travelling in an excessively consumptive manner. Whether that's petrol, or road degredation, or whatever.

That's why VED is in some ways better than very expensive petrol. Expensive petrol makes all petrol based travelling expensive, whatever - it just becomes a degree of how expensive.

A well placed tax to make excessively consumptive cars expensive punishes that type of travel, but not travel per se.

flimflam_machine

Rick Chasey wrote:

I'll say it again.

The gov't has no interest in making travel expensive - at least, they shouldn't.

They should have an interest in preventing people travelling in an excessively consumptive manner. Whether that's petrol, or road degredation, or whatever.

That's why VED is in some ways better than very expensive petrol. Expensive petrol makes all petrol based travelling expensive, whatever - it just becomes a degree of how expensive.

A well placed tax to make excessively consumptive cars expensive punishes that type of travel, but not travel per se.

I reckon this view has quite a lot going for it, since it's effectively a tax on the rich. by making VED a much more substantial hit you penalise people with huge cars for the fact that they could have made their journey much more frugally.

London_Falcon

flimflam_machine wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I'll say it again.

The gov't has no interest in making travel expensive - at least, they shouldn't.

They should have an interest in preventing people travelling in an excessively consumptive manner. Whether that's petrol, or road degredation, or whatever.

That's why VED is in some ways better than very expensive petrol. Expensive petrol makes all petrol based travelling expensive, whatever - it just becomes a degree of how expensive.

A well placed tax to make excessively consumptive cars expensive punishes that type of travel, but not travel per se.

I reckon this view has quite a lot going for it, since it's effectively a tax on the rich. by making VED a much more substantial hit you penalise people with huge cars for the fact that they could have made their journey much more frugally.

Sorry but this doesn't make sense to me.

Higher VED penalises owning a gas-guzzler, not driving one.

By putting the tax on petrol you are directly taxing the higher fuel consumption at source.

jonomc4

flimflam_machine wrote:

I reckon this view has quite a lot going for it, since it's effectively a tax on the rich. by making VED a much more substantial hit you penalise people with huge cars for the fact that they could have made their journey much more frugally.

Just a little pointer here - VED is not based on the price of your car! It is not a tax on the rich as an old car can cost just as much (bar the one off first payment). Have you any idea how much a current hybrid is? Well out of the reach of the less well off - of course they could get one when they becomes 10 years old and their expensive batteries need replacing.

Really there is a lot of scratch the surface economics by some here. Anyway if the Gov can't make the tax on cars - then they will have to find a new target - the reality is the Gov needs lots of our money for all it's little spending policies - really there is only one way tax can go down - the Gov Spends less.

roger_merriman

Rick Chasey wrote:

I'll say it again.

The gov't has no interest in making travel expensive - at least, they shouldn't.

They should have an interest in preventing people travelling in an excessively consumptive manner. Whether that's petrol, or road degredation, or whatever.

That's why VED is in some ways better than very expensive petrol. Expensive petrol makes all petrol based travelling expensive, whatever - it just becomes a degree of how expensive.

A well placed tax to make excessively consumptive cars expensive punishes that type of travel, but not travel per se.

It also impacts more on areas that aren't urban. Both in terms of personal transport and economy. Fuel costs that is.

DonDaddyD

If you're talking as the layman, I think you're doing the layman a disservice by saying they can't do simple maths. Most people can work it out easily enough. Otherwise no-one would bother e.g. having LPG conversions.

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that LPG conversions had become the norm and liquefied petroleum gas (yes I had to look that up as I always wondered what it was) was now the preferred choice over petrol and diesel.

The layman is the everyday joe bloggs majority who doesn't bother researching into fuel options beyond knowing the generalised rule that petrol is cheaper at the pump but you use more of it and diesel is more expensive at the pump but you less of it = Petrol more expensive than diesel. Some may factor in that diesel cars tend to be more expensive because of this. Beyond that they do not sit there are work out the yearly costs of petrol (most people estimate it anyway) against the yearly costs of VED (which is often combined with MOT, repairs and other running costs of the car) and come to the conclusion that VED should be abolished and the shortfall in revenue made up by an increase in fuel costs. When has an increase in petrol/diesel prices ever been met with acceptance from the (majority of) voters?

If they did (want VED abolished and want the shortfall added to fuel prices) where is the outcry? The public demand? The lobbying? No the majority think fuel prices are expensive enough and want cheaper VED.

I will say that it's rather pointless changing cars to go for a lower VED

It is pointless. From a psychological point a car with cheaper VED or none at all saves you loads of money because that one month in the year you didn't have to fork out a lump sum in full. It feels good.

Part of the reason why fuel is inelastic is the way its purchased. £5 here, £10 here, maybe £16.72 there. It all adds up but honestly, does the layman majority really count in 30day windows? Nope. I don't, I think I do but I really don't. If they had to buy a years supply of fuel up front then it wouldn't be inelastic. Same priciple works with VED. It is elastic because its a one off payment that can quite easily be tracked and made cheaper. If I could pay installments over 12months the costs wouldn't bother me as much as a lump sum payment.

So whether the impact makes much difference or not. I'd argue that people will always react more positively to the chance of reducing VED than petrol.

roger_merriman

The danger is assuming other people do the same as you, personally I do not chuck a top the car up with fuel.

I run the car emptyish ie below a 1/4 and then fill it up, life is too short, for hunting down petrol stations.

i'd not assume that I or any one here would know what the public would want, I guess would depend on how it much it ramped up the price at the pump.

I personally don't see much reason to change they can ramp up the VED on some, and less for others.

DonDaddyD

We can at least generalise common trends and habits.

It's fairly clear that people when purchasing a new (or new second hand) car, do so with VED in mind. So obviously, even if not in real terms, there must be some psychological cost savings/benefits to reducing VED. There is also the whole car market and it's actions promoting greener, clearner cars that are cheaper to run because they are road tax exempt or only require the very cheapest road tax (road tax is VED to the non-layperson).

I don't buy that the majority want VED abolished and subsequently petrol prices put up. If that was the case it would be on the political agenda and we already know that increasing fuel prices (regardless of how inelastic) is always an unpopular decision.

And the way petrol is paid for at the pump is a big contributing factor to why its inelastic.

jds_1981

DonDaddyD wrote:

It's fairly clear that people when purchasing a new (or new second hand) car, do so with VED in mind. So obviously, even if not in real terms, there must be some psychological cost savings/benefits to reducing VED.

I've been considering buying a car recently. VED hasn't come into it. Been looking for the most powerful engined estate car I can get for a reasonable price. Insurance has factored into my calculations a bit but between my current 1.3 litre car (£800) and a 3 litre estate (£1300) there isn't really that much difference.

jonomc4

I think the question can be answered quite quickly by whether VED is a useful tax or not by the reality on the ground.

1) People are buying smaller cars (this could be fuel price related though).
2) Government is thinking of increasing the tax on small cars because the revenue is dropping off from VED.

Only if the Government do increase the VED on small cars will we then have empirical evidence that it was the reason for the buying of smaller cars - if small car sales drop then it was VED and not petrol that lead to people buying smaller cars as a rule - until that point I reckon we are all guessing.

What we do know though is that VED is not an efficient tax it has failed as the revenues have dropped, and so it has to be re-adjusted - so from a Government point of view it has failed.

But VED is an easy sell to the public (as seen on this forum). It ticks the green box - and therefore to complain about it makes you a polluter scum, it has the moral high ground (like the tax on cigarettes). And secondly most people think it is taxing the rich Chelsea tractor drivers - but as I said before apart from the initial up-front payment when you buy a car (and that is not really a purchase stopper compared to VAT and depreciation of a new car) VED affects poor and rich equally - maybe more so as older cars tend to be less efficient and this therefore punishes people who cannot afford a new car (same as tax on fuel though).

Here's another point - how much money does it cost to collect - obviously switching it to fuel would lead to big savings in bureaucracy! But then who is going to make sure cars are MOT'd and insured?

DonDaddyD

jds_1981 wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

It's fairly clear that people when purchasing a new (or new second hand) car, do so with VED in mind. So obviously, even if not in real terms, there must be some psychological cost savings/benefits to reducing VED.

I've been considering buying a car recently. VED hasn't come into it. Been looking for the most powerful engined estate car I can get for a reasonable price. Insurance has factored into my calculations a bit but between my current 1.3 litre car (£800) and a 3 litre estate (£1300) there isn't really that much difference.

To be fair if your not seeing much difference in the cost between £800 - £1300 insurance then VED wouldn't really make much difference to you.

My Uncle pointed this out to me when he purchased his TT - he said the only TT that would affected was the 3.2 V6 Quattro with its £460 VED.

Me? Going from a 1.2 Seat Ibiza where VED cost me £100 to £250 is a leap. Knowing that I could get that back down to £150 or less would be an influencing factor on my car purchasing decision. That said, most cars with a lower VED often come with (hopefully) better (like for like) fuel economy.

flimflam_machine

London_Falcon wrote:

flimflam_machine wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I'll say it again.

The gov't has no interest in making travel expensive - at least, they shouldn't.

They should have an interest in preventing people travelling in an excessively consumptive manner. Whether that's petrol, or road degredation, or whatever.

That's why VED is in some ways better than very expensive petrol. Expensive petrol makes all petrol based travelling expensive, whatever - it just becomes a degree of how expensive.

A well placed tax to make excessively consumptive cars expensive punishes that type of travel, but not travel per se.

I reckon this view has quite a lot going for it, since it's effectively a tax on the rich. by making VED a much more substantial hit you penalise people with huge cars for the fact that they could have made their journey much more frugally.

Sorry but this doesn't make sense to me.

Higher VED penalises owning a gas-guzzler, not driving one.

If you want to own a gas-guzzler and not drive it you can SORN it and pay no VED.

By putting the tax on petrol you are directly taxing the higher fuel consumption at source.

If the aim is to reduce pollution then there are two things you can do: (1) reduce the number of miles driven, and/or (2) reduce the amount of fuel burnt driving those miles (i.e., increase vehicular efficiency or improve driving habits).

Putting more duty on fuel may help with 1 by making people drive less and partly with 2 by making people drive more fuel efficiently. But it also taxes a lot of people who have no choice but to drive because of their location, lack of local amenties, their trade etc. etc. etc. If you make VED much higher, with a much greater differentiation between bands, then you potentially affect 2 without penalising people who have no choice but to drive. The person with the inefficient car gets stung twice, firstly by the cost of the huge amount of fuel that they're burning and secondly by extra VED which reflects the fact that they chose not to buy a car that could have covered the same distance much more efficiently (i.e., they made a socially and environmentally damaging choice). You could easily have special VED bands on business vehicles i.e., company cars, vans registered to a VAT-registered company etc., so that these are not penalised.

davis

DonDaddyD wrote:

If you're talking as the layman, I think you're doing the layman a disservice by saying they can't do simple maths. Most people can work it out easily enough. Otherwise no-one would bother e.g. having LPG conversions.

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that LPG conversions had become the norm and liquefied petroleum gas (yes I had to look that up as I always wondered what it was) was now the preferred choice over petrol and diesel.

The layman is the everyday joe bloggs majority who doesn't bother researching into fuel options beyond knowing the generalised rule that petrol is cheaper at the pump but you use more of it and diesel is more expensive at the pump but you less of it = Petrol more expensive than diesel.

A nice straw-man setup there. I never said that LPG conversion was the norm (although it's probably more common out here in non-London). I was using that as an example that people do the financial sums easily. Your example of people sometimes choosing diesel is yet another example of the fact that people can, and do, do the maths. In fact I'd say that if you haven't calculated the cost of your yearly fuel bill in petrol vs. diesel you're being a bit daft. It's an incredibly simple calculation, in fact... here's one example

flimflam_machine

jonomc4 wrote:

flimflam_machine wrote:

I reckon this view has quite a lot going for it, since it's effectively a tax on the rich. by making VED a much more substantial hit you penalise people with huge cars for the fact that they could have made their journey much more frugally.

Just a little pointer here - VED is not based on the price of your car! It is not a tax on the rich as an old car can cost just as much (bar the one off first payment). Have you any idea how much a current hybrid is? Well out of the reach of the less well off - of course they could get one when they becomes 10 years old and their expensive batteries need replacing.

Apologies, lazy language on my part. I wasn't suggesting that VED is or should be based on the price of your car. If you increase VED or, more importantly, increase the differential between bands and base it on mpg or gCO2/km it becomes a tax on the inconsiderate and/or profligate i.e., those who choose to drive an inefficient vehicle. This tends to be the rich, since it's relatively hard to be profligate at the level of car purchases if you're poor.

jonomc4

as I mentioned later on - it is normally either the very rich in their big cars - or the very poor (in old inefficient cars that pay the most tax). It is the smug middle class with their Prius and Polo blue motion cars who like all the VED and fuel increases.

Generally speaking a bike forum is a bad place to a reasoned argument on VED - people never vote for more taxes for themselves - only for others! Me being such a nice decent person try to think of all people - truly the answer is for Gov to stop wasting money then everyone can get taxed less.

VED or Fuel tax - it is still tax. I don't believe that taxing people into more fuel efficient travel (i.e. bike) is the way forward - people need to be educated as to do what is best for them and congestion (I choose not to mention the environment on purpose). And proportionally speaking with travel (not a luxury) the poor will suffer more. You only need to see recent surveys as to why people take up biking (for fun firstly and health secondly) cost and environment come a very lowly fourth and fifth a long way behind.

Tax should be paid proportionally more by those able to do it whilst at the same time not being a disincentive to make those people paying tax to stop paying it at all - we are close to this limit already I believe. It should also not punish those less well off - car taxes are now too high and are really hurting the people on low incomes who need to travel to work, or older people on pensions trying to heat their homes.

Roads are too busy - that is agreed by everyone - but people need to start thinking about using a carrot rather than a stick, this is just the lazy way with a benefit of having more money to waste on public services that are inefficient and wasteful.

flimflam_machine

jonomc4 wrote:

- truly the answer is for Gov to stop wasting money then everyone can get taxed less... this is just the lazy way with a benefit of having more money to waste on public services that are inefficient and wasteful.

Without wanting stifle the debate, I'd suggest that these comments don't really add much since they aren't specific to VED. They could equally be applied to any tax, who's to say that the reduction in waste would result in a reduction in VED rather than in, say, income tax. In any case banging on about waste in politics is a bit of a red herring.

as I mentioned later on - it is normally either the very rich in their big cars - or the very poor (in old inefficient cars that pay the most tax). It is the smug middle class with their Prius and Polo blue motion cars who like all the VED and fuel increases.

VED on cars registered before 2006 is capped at £270/year and for cars registered before 2001 it's £135 (<1500cc) or £220 (>1500cc)/year (linky). I don't think these costs are really crippling for a year's motoring. That page also points out that they are already doing something similar to what I suggested: making the difference between bands much greater to apply a really heavy tax on inefficient cars (albeit only for the first year).

VED or Fuel tax - it is still tax. I don't believe that taxing people into more fuel efficient travel (i.e. bike) is the way forward - people need to be educated as to do what is best for them and congestion (I choose not to mention the environment on purpose). And proportionally speaking with travel (not a luxury) the poor will suffer more. You only need to see recent surveys as to why people take up biking (for fun firstly and health secondly) cost and environment come a very lowly fourth and fifth a long way behind...

...Roads are too busy - that is agreed by everyone - but people need to start thinking about using a carrot rather than a stick.

Education is surprisingly ineffective at making people change their lifestyle in substantial ways, especially if it's directed at green/sustainability matters. It's really difficult to make people see that their actions have consequences because the effects are too distant and are the result of mass action rather than clearly attributable to the actions of an individual. I do agree with the more-carrot, less-stick comment though. Many people have pointed out that it's more effective to invite people to cycle, i.e., building better infrastructure and making roads safer, rather than encouraging them to cycle i.e, saying "go on, cycle, it's great" while leaving the crappy infrastructure in place. Do you have a link to the recent surveys by the way?

jonomc4

This is a link to that survey on why people cycle

http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/fun-to ... ort/013240

It has been on a few of the main cycling websites though