• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Roads, petrol and motoring costs generally

Crawley

Crawley

Board Legend
Been done before, but thought I'd raise it from the dead in lieu of the atrocious state of the roads in my (and I'm sure others) area right now.

My main question is, does the "Road Fund Licence" go towards the upkeep of highways in ANY shape or form any more?
And if, as I suspect, not then why?

Are we being short changed?

Also, is it not time a fairer system of paying was established? One where EVERYONE pays their fair share, and the tax dodgers can not get away with it?
My solution here has always been scrap the RFL and put it directly on petrol, so the users pay the most.

Right now, for a 1.8L car, I pay £230 per year, but only cover around 6000 miles annually. Is it right a driver in an identical vehicle could cover 50,000 miles per year yet pay the same tax?

By putting this tax on petrol, those that use the roads more, pay for it more.

In the same way, someone may have a guzzler 4x4 but go on the school run and nothing else, doing low mileage annually, but the tax on the vehicle is obscene. So they are being penalised for achieving ownership of a high class vehicle.

Thoughts?
 
Actually, they pay nothing (or next to nothing ) now don't they?

So would make no difference as they are contributing zero, and still would. Maybe marginal for hybrids as they have to have some petrol.
 
I think its a difficult one to assess and as with anything, there will be winners and losers. I have just moved and will now have no real choice but to drive to work which is a 60/70 mile round trip each day whereas before although I drove, I could use transport and it was only 16 miles to work. I suppose overall, it would be a fairer way to look at it by adding it to the Petrol but then I suspect that prices would have to rise quite a bit now from what they are, maybe another 8-10p a litre which be pushing £1.50 a litre which is just too high.

I can't really give an answer - Maybe a small added tax for electrical cars and a slightly higher one for hybrids could help. Electric cars still have an environmental effect although much smaller so it can be justified. Either way, plenty of people would not be very happy!
 
Higher taxation of tyres, then the people who drive more contribute more no matter what fuel they use.

Next...?
 
i think increasing fuel duty is a great idea, it will hit heavy vehicles harder but they are the fudgers doing the damage anyway

the roads where i live (Epping) are falling apart at the minute, absolutely disgraceful
 
pass a law stating that all electrical,gas,telephone and cable companies plus councils have a duty of care to tarmac roads after digging them up with a guarantee that they won't fall apart after they resurface them.

Also these costs shouldn't be pass onto the consumer in the long run.

how many times have you seen a road beautifully tarmaced then a few months later a gas company comes along digs the road up and put down some crap tarmac that cracks up when it starts to rain or freezes over and pot holes appear. They should be fined full stop.
 
I had an Alfa Spider which did 9mpg - ridiculous as a Lambo is like 11mpg. So fuel had cost me brickloads - even though I did like 100 miles a month. In addition to that road tax was £440, insurance was £1200 and service was £600. I sold it.

I have now a tonne of money and dont miss my car. I barely drove it and when I go out I drink so I could never drive anyways.

Tubes are still expensive I think but theyre very convenient and I think this whole 'public transport service is poor' mentality is vastly overstated and exaggerated.
 
I think we're back to the lobbying argument that seems to keep cropping up here lately.

Businesses lobby heavily against per mile charging as it would make relatively cheap transport suddenly very expensive. There is a good reason why though - there is virtually no alternative to road transport in this country.

I went to a couple of environmental forum meetings on behalf of my company with the local council in Portsmouth where one of our factories is based. They wanted to decrease pollution and found that most of the problem comes from the port and container transport. Apparently upgrading the railway station (which is at the port) for freight would cost £100M and was therefore unviable. Try and think where there's a train freight station near you - they're virtually non-existent.

There's also a canal outside our Birmingham factory but the council aren't interested in improving that either.

Until there's a viable alternative for freight transport the problem will remain and charging businesses accordingly will only make them less competitive than they already are.

Besides, you charge businesses and the consumer will only end up paying. That only doesn't happen on exports and we export next to nothing as it stands.
 
i think the freight rail in this country is actually pretty good, use of it is increasing again apparently, not sure where I read that though, probably in one of my dads Rail news magazines
 
Crawley said:
Right now, for a 1.8L car, I pay £230 per year, but only cover around 6000 miles annually. Is it right a driver in an identical vehicle could cover 50,000 miles per year yet pay the same tax?
Click to expand...

Same with me I do max 2,500 miles a year, my road tax is £190 a year, should people that use the roads more pay more, im not sure, good topic though
 
DHSF said:
Tubes are still expensive I think but theyre very convenient and I think this whole 'public transport service is poor' mentality is vastly overstated and exaggerated.
Click to expand...

Be interesting to see how they price the Crossrail when it comes in 2018, it basically is taking so much pressure off the tube and also almost halving most of the journeys, no doubt itll be £10 per single journey or something ludicrous
 
markysimmo said:
Be interesting to see how they price the Crossrail when it comes in 2018, it basically is taking so much pressure off the tube and also almost halving most of the journeys, no doubt itll be £10 per single journey or something ludicrous
Click to expand...

I dont know if Crossrail is part of the same organisation but it may reduce tube prices - in real terms although by 2018 it will still go up, im assuming at this current rate, to about £5-£6 a single journey or something.
 
DHSF said:
I dont know if Crossrail is part of the same organisation but it may reduce tube prices - in real terms although by 2018 it will still go up, im assuming at this current rate, to about £5-£6 a single journey or something.
Click to expand...

Thats the danger if they overprice it and get greedy people wont use it
 
Crawley said:
Been done before, but thought I'd raise it from the dead in lieu of the atrocious state of the roads in my (and I'm sure others) area right now.

My main question is, does the "Road Fund Licence" go towards the upkeep of highways in ANY shape or form any more?
And if, as I suspect, not then why?

Are we being short changed?

Also, is it not time a fairer system of paying was established? One where EVERYONE pays their fair share, and the tax dodgers can not get away with it?
My solution here has always been scrap the RFL and put it directly on petrol, so the users pay the most.

Right now, for a 1.8L car, I pay £230 per year, but only cover around 6000 miles annually. Is it right a driver in an identical vehicle could cover 50,000 miles per year yet pay the same tax?

By putting this tax on petrol, those that use the roads more, pay for it more.

In the same way, someone may have a guzzler 4x4 but go on the school run and nothing else, doing low mileage annually, but the tax on the vehicle is obscene. So they are being penalised for achieving ownership of a high class vehicle.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Here's my really simple formula, feel free to tinker with it.

If a car is achieving 35MPG on the average urban/mixed motoring run and covering say 11,000* miles per year and you want to generate £200 of RFL income from that car then it's 11,000 divided by 35 mulitplied by by 4.54 = 1426 litres a year. 200 divided by 1426 would mean fourteen pence on a litre of fuel for an average car doing an average mileage to abolish RFL. Feel free to substitute your own figures if you disagree. Commercial vehicles would have different weightings per gallon due to the higher mileages they cover and the nature of the business needs.


*Some say average mileage is 10,000 miles, others say 12,000 so I split the difference.
 
Surely there would be other savings in scrapping it? The cost of enforcing it, the cost of running it?

Although I guess there would be job losses involved?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back