From: snail@lsl.co.uk
Newsgroups: uk.misc
Subject: Re: Transport subsidies - Was: Car Parking
Date: 7 Jan 93 13:26:11 GMT
Distribution: uk
Organization: Laser-Scan Ltd., Cambridge

In article <14072@ecs.soton.ac.uk>, nwp90@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Nick Phillips) writes:
> Now I've finally decided which post to use to reply to, here goes:
> 
> In <29907@castle.ed.ac.uk> eset08@castle.ed.ac.uk (J Strobridge) writes:
> 
>>There really *is* a problem with subsidies though and not paying full
>>costs for things such as public transport.   I was down in rural Devon
[deleted]
> It depends who you think is more important, and how good the public
> (subsidised) service is. If you think that people who can afford to
> start up bus companies should be able to make profits by providing a
> service which some people have no choice but to use, or if the public
> service is crap, then you will quite likely think that the free market
> should be left to run its course.
> 
> If, however, you think that in certain areas (transport, provision of water
> & other 'essential' services) the "customer"'s needs are more important than
> allowing people to make money by providing this service, then I can't see
> how leaving it to the free market can possibly be the right thing to do.
> 
> If you leave public transport to the free market, then people in busy areas
> will quite possibly be well-served (well maybe not - look at London), but
> those in more remote areas will likely as not get no service at all.

Cambridgeshire is a fine example of this. 

> In
> respect of transport, I would like to see a subsidised and efficient (ha ha)
> service, which provides everyone with what they need.

That'd be nice, but in libertarian terms I'd be called selfish for wanting
to help others.

> I suppose it comes down to individual laziness and, for want of a better word,
> greed again. Even if the London underground were cheap and efficient and clean
> and wonderful, I can imagine stereotypical 'rich executives' still demanding
> to be driven around because of the way they perceive public transport.
> Even if British Rail ran services which ran quickly, cheaply, regularly, on
> time etc. people would still want cars because they would be slightly more
> convenient - people would still perceive them as being 'door-to-door'
> transport, even if parking problems meant that they couldn't park within a
> mile of either door.

Too true.
> 
> And to answer someone else, road tax does not nearly pay for the roads.

I'd always wondered, I've still not seen evidence either way though.

> It's
> like national insurance - just a token payment which you think goes to pay
> for something specific. Whack the duty on petrol sky-high,

Finally someone has mentioned it. I've been waiting for someone to mention this
since it started. This is by far the best solution in my view. You pay for the
distance you travel, you don't pay some fat cat who owns the road. You also
pay more for having an inefficient car, hence it's more green than having toll
roads instead.

There is a problem with this though:-
1) What happens when the petrol runs out?
2) (same as 1) What happens when we all run electric cars or
   test-tude-powered-nuclear-reactor cars?

Whatever the answer to 1 & 2, the principle is right, pay by the miles and
non-greenness of the vehicle, not toll roads.

(For anyone who thinks I've jumped a bandwagon here, well I suggested such
an argument to Mr Smee in Bristol during his big discussion with FoFP, but
that is now dead, so it never saw the light of day).

> I say - and
> provide a decent public transport system (decent == cheap, efficient, clean,
> goes roughly where you want to go).

I'll agree with this, problem is society relies on petrochemical transport,
rightly or wrongly.
-- 
snail@lsl.co.uk      

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless
 means to side with the powerful, not to be Neutral."
                                                     Quote by Freire.
                                                     Poster by OXFAM.