Road Tax does exist

Alder wrote:

Motorists pay more tax than is spent on motoring infrastructure. https://www.racfoundation.org/data/road-user-taxation-highways-spending-... The data in the link show that VED and fuel duty are about 3x that spent on roads (2017/18 - £33bn vs £11bn). If you take into account other taxes which are related to motoring (e.g. VAT on fuel, vehicles, parts, servicing, insurance tax, parking charges, bridge tolls, fines) it is higher. Health and environmental costs are not taken into account in these figures. The NHS has an estimate of £42 million for last year, with a forecast of £5bn by 2035 (assuming we do nothing). I've seen calculations of the environmental equivalent "cost" of CO2 emissions at about £3bn per year but I can't find the references.

And from the same site: https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/safety#a10

Alder wrote:

Motorists pay more tax than is spent on motoring infrastructure. https://www.racfoundation.org/data/road-user-taxation-highways-spending-... The data in the link show that VED and fuel duty are about 3x that spent on roads (2017/18 - £33bn vs £11bn). If you take into account other taxes which are related to motoring (e.g. VAT on fuel, vehicles, parts, servicing, insurance tax, parking charges, bridge tolls, fines) it is higher. Health and environmental costs are not taken into account in these figures. The NHS has an estimate of £42 million for last year, with a forecast of £5bn by 2035 (assuming we do nothing). I've seen calculations of the environmental equivalent "cost" of CO2 emissions at about £3bn per year but I can't find the references.

I don't get this strange logic that says the only 'cost' of using roads is the cost of maintaining them or building them.  Nobody applies that same logic to, say, housing.  Try renting a house from a private landlord and saying you are want exclusive use of it but you will only pay the maintanence cost of that house, nothing more.

What do you imagine the rental value of the land used by urban roads is?  I'm betting it would dwarf all those taxes put together (and I don't see the logic in inlcuding VAT, which is levied on almost all goods, including bikes, nor do I get what parking charges have to do with it - those are charges for using public land for storing your property, what does that have to do with the topic?).

Motorists get, in effect, near-exclusive use of that very expensive urban land (because they drive everyone else off of it), including for storing their vehicles.  Why should the value of that not be included in the figures?

You also don't account for the cost of the adverse health effects, which some studies put at 30,000 premature deaths a year due to traffic pollution [Edit - I grant that you do acknowledge this, fair enough on that], or the cost of delays caused to cyclists and pedestrians by the use of such oversized vehicles.

In short I don't really accept your figures, they are massively incomplete.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

In short I don't really accept your figures, they are massively incomplete.

And all that is ignoring the costs to the nation of providing policing for the roads, the courts system dealing with the more serious offenders, the cost of the DVLA, the costs to the NHS not just from pollution but the results of major and minor traffic collisions, and the costs to ambluance and fire services dealing with such incidents, repairs to road and related infrastructure by local councils following incidents. And on and on ...

The idea that comparing the amount raised in motoring taxes to the amount spent on building and maintaining roads is by any measure a reasonable comparison of the income and outgoings related to motor vehicles is, frankly, poppycock.

Jetmans Dad wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

In short I don't really accept your figures, they are massively incomplete.

the costs to the nation of providing policing for the roads, the courts system dealing with the more serious offenders...

Oh, don't worry. The Tories are doing their bit to cut those costs, too.

Nick T wrote:

Wasn’t it one of Osbourne’s big budget policies, to ring fence road funding under a new banner of “road tax” rather than the established VED

The blog post above contains the text

“The income from this duty is to be restricted to the Strategic Roads Network – motorways and trunk roads – rather than the urban and quiet countryside roads that cyclists typically make use of.”

But the worry is that, say, the irate motorist brushing past you at the top of your street will not be interested in such a fine distinction. 

One thing that this ring-fencing business points up is just how little the money raised from VED stretches when compared to the overall roads budget. More here:

http://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/vehicle-tax-proceeds-ring-fenced-...