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SUMMARY ABOLISH ALL ROAD-SPECIFIC TAXES I hear cheers and support from millions of motorists. O.K. you don't want to pay taxes when you drive. But how can this recommendation be economically and environmentally sustainable? To find out please read on with an open mind, and then give the politicians your feedback. Discover a way to give responsibility for roads to each individual user without the interference from politicians' short-term desire to win elections. It is so easy to blame politicians for road congestion, high taxes and poor road maintenance. Rather than blame politicians, let's take the responsibility ourselves. We own the roads so let us, the users finance them, take decisions with the responsibility that comes from ownership, embracing the full consequences for decisions made without passing the buck to politicians. Conventional wisdom says the road user is over-taxed and being fleeced as an easy target for the Treasury to collect money. What happens if responsibility for roads is taken from the State and given to the citizen? Roads then have to become completely self-sufficient. This book shows that roads have been a drain on State finances costing general taxpayers substantially more than is raised in specific road taxes. It therefore follows that if roads become self-sufficient they will cost even more at point of use. However, the money saved by the State if shared out amongst all citizens would give individuals the free choice currently denied for accessing needs of modern life: - Choosing whether to spend on: - * Road use as now, * Road use but changing destination to save money, * Change mode to walk, cycle or public transport, * Not travel, accessing needs at home. Each individual citizen will have the money and choose how to spend it instead of the State spending the money preventing individual choice as happens now. Most transport is used as a facilitator, a means to an end, not an end in itself. What is really required is access not transport. Where access is not immediately available, transport is required. This book examines the need for access; where access requires transport, how to encourage use of the most appropriate mode for the purpose. PART (1) ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT IN RELATION TO TRANSPORT State involvement in transport is examined, differing views discussed followed by some radical and innovative proposals. PART (2) THE COSTS AND PRICE OF TRANSPORT The road network has been examined to try and discover its full costs, including externalities, and how the user and the State pay for it. An attempt has been made to find what an appropriate commercial road charge would be together with how this may be collected. What effect this may have on road use and how acceptable it would be to return money to citizens to choose for themselves how much to spend on road transport at a much higher commercial price. Use has been made of different sources of research. Although there is no agreement what the true costs of roads are - what is very clear is that contrary to conventional wisdom the road user nowhere near covers the cost of road use through road specific taxes. Even research on behalf the dominant road user pressure group, the AA, shows a significant shortfall between what the road user pays and how much roads cost despite the spin they put in the forward of these papers and reports. Creating equal, high, safety standards for different modes. To ensure unsafe modes do not gain commercial advantage by failing to invest in safety procedures that safer modes do, thus ensuring the safety related costs passed on to the user are equal for all modes. PART (4) COMMERCIALISATION OF THE UK ROAD NETWORK Creating a framework to manage the road network that could be commercialised is discussed. UK citizens own the road network, how can this ownership be formalised with the rights and responsibilities of ownership passed to individual citizens? With citizens exercising their rights as shareholders and the roads taken away from Government Control and funding, shareholders will have to charge commercial rates to use the roads which they will have to pay as customers. However, they will receive a dividend on profits: Will this take the politics of road policy away from short-term electoral posturing and empower UK citizens? |