From: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Subject: Re: Transport subsidies - Was: Car Parking
Followup-To: uk.transport
Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Organization: Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 20:07:30 GMT

[Please note follow-up!]

In article <11322@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk
(Simon B Proven IE91) writes:
>In article <1992Dec14.132936.2830@lsl.co.uk> snail@lsl.co.uk writes:
[why is walking/cycling to be free on toll roads?]
>I'd say it was a pretty valid thing to say: the users should pay a charge
>proportional to the damage done to the road (IMH).

	Umm.  Tolls are usually based rather on what the market will stand.

>I don't honestly believe that motorways or other heavy roads contribute
>anything to society.

	Do you remember the days *before* motorways and [most] dual
carriageways?  If you think that town centres and travel generally are
bad today, they were *much*, *much* worse then, despite the much lower
traffic densities.

>								  It is
>selfish to build a road over someone's property, so that you can drive
>from Carlisle to Birmingham, when you could get a train which takes up
>far less land space.

	But the road *isn't* built for that reason.  It's built for the
goods traffic, after which cars can use it almost for free.  [There are
a *few* motorways/dcs which *do* seem to have been built mainly for
car traffic.]  Is it equally selfish to drive a bus on these routes?
You may want to know why lorries use motorways;  mainly (of course)
expense, and partly the problems of transferring lorry loads [you can't
run a railway to *every* farm, factory, shop in the country] onto goods
wagons.

>		       It is selfish to expect society to provide roads
>for the minority that own cars (it certainly is a minority in Scotland)
>by making life harder for the people who don't own cars, and then expect
>them (the non car owners) to pay for the privelidge through taxes, costs
>to industry that get passed on to the customer etc.

	Since car ownership is very strongly correlated with income, I
think you'll find that it is overwhelmingly the car-using part of the
population that is paying the taxes.  Even non-car owners get to use the
public roads either directly [eg, by bus] or indirectly [benefits from
deliveries to shops, ambulances, ...].  As you are in Scotland, you
might ponder whether the inhabitants of the remoter parts thereof would
agree with you;  I suspect that *everyone* in Durness or Applecross or
Mull [for example] is very happy with the improved roads there.

	In addition, there are surprisingly many private road users from
whose services we all benefit and who cannot reasonably use public transport.
In the last couple of weeks, my house has been visited by the piano tuner
[with a *very* heavy set of tools], the window cleaners [ladders], the
gardeners [tools, and trailer for disposal of refuse], tree loppers [well,
we didn't use them, but they did call!], charity jumble collectors, etc.
We have in the past had decorators, builders, wine merchants, washing-machine
repairers, carpet layers, ....  Not to mention doctors, midwives, refuse
disposal operatives, assorted delivery people, etc.  It isn't *just* the
selfish motorist, commuting to and from the centre of town in the rush
hour, who uses the roads.  Lots and lots of people do, and it's almost
impossible to draw a reasonable line between "public" [== "good"] use
and "private" [== "selfish"] use.

	We *used* to have lots of toll roads;  on the whole, it seems to
me to have been a good thing that we now all have the right of free use of
nearly all our main roads, without an army of snoopers determining why we
choose to use them.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk