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Jenny Jones takes "a different approach" to road tax debate

Green Party politician looks at things cyclists don't contribute too - pollution and congestion are among them...

Congestion, pollution, other people’s ill-health, damage to roads and waiting lists at hospitals or queues at doctor’s surgeries – just some of the areas that cyclists don’t contribute to, says Green Party politician Jenny Jones in a blog post for road.cc.

The London Assembly member, who also sits in the House of Lords after being created a life peer in 2013, was writing in reaction to the storm on Twitter created by Transport for London board member Brian Cooke due to his comments about cyclists and “road tax” – something abolished in the 1930s, as Jones points out.

Her blog post seeks to take “a different approach” to the issue rather than setting out what she describes as “the well-worn rebuttals about how much general taxation pays for roads, how many cyclists are also drivers and how many drivers are exempt from what the motorheads mistakenly still call ‘road tax’.”

In it, she looks at how cyclists benefit society through not contributing to those issues outlines at the start of this article, or at least contribute less than the average person would, how they cities nicer places to live, and how improvements they fight for make roads safer for pedestrians too.

You can read her post here.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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25 comments

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ianrobo | 9 years ago
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in the scheme of things VED is very small beer though, people make it sound like a lot but for most people on average it is £2 per week

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Stumps | 9 years ago
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Get rid of the excise licence completely and put it on the price of a litre of petrol. It means the people who use the roads more pay more.

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jollygoodvelo replied to Stumps | 9 years ago
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stumps wrote:

Get rid of the excise licence completely and put it on the price of a litre of petrol. It means the people who use the roads more pay more.

Completely agree. It's the only sensible course of action.

Currently a normal family car that emits 200g/km pays about half the VED than a Ferrari that emits 400g/km does. Yet the average mileage of a family car is 12000 miles a year, the average mileage of a Ferrari is about 2000. I'm not suggesting everyone should have Ferraris but the current system clearly targets people who are perceived to have the money to pay the tax rather than the people who actually produce the emissions, which is pretty crap.

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Ghedebrav | 9 years ago
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Literally nobody ever has raised road tax with me.

Plenty of other general abuse on the road from motorists, often re. RLJing (not by me, I hasten to add) or, weirdly, aggressive knobheads making dog noises - anyone else had that?! - but never the road tax thing.

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brakesmadly replied to Ghedebrav | 9 years ago
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Ghedebrav wrote:

... or, weirdly, aggressive knobheads making dog noises - anyone else had that?!

Yeah, someone shouted "Where's your dog?" at me as I cycled past them recently. No idea what that's about.

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HarrogateSpa | 9 years ago
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Road.cc writers should proofread their articles. You just need to read them through once, then you would see all the mistakes, and could correct them.

The penultimate paragraph of this article is a particularly shabby piece of work.

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Housecathst | 9 years ago
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As I cyclist I would "love" to pay a road tax if it get motorist off my back (we all know it wouldn't) .

That being said it would have to be directly proportional between bikes and cars. It could be based on engine size or weight of the vehicle (both reasonable ways of determining how much damage a vehicle would do to a road). As a cyclist I would happily pay in the region of £1000 a year for the use of the roads. Putting all vehicles on that kind of sliding scale of taxation would make the average family car in excess of £10,000 year to drive on the roads, hopefully pricing the great unwashed off the roads along with scum bags in their rusting white vans making the roads a much more pleasant place to be.

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ronin replied to Housecathst | 9 years ago
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Housecathst wrote:

As I cyclist I would "love" to pay a road tax if it get motorist off my back (we all know it wouldn't) .

That being said it would have to be directly proportional between bikes and cars. It could be based on engine size or weight of the vehicle (both reasonable ways of determining how much damage a vehicle would do to a road). As a cyclist I would happily pay in the region of £1000 a year for the use of the roads. Putting all vehicles on that kind of sliding scale of taxation would make the average family car in excess of £10,000 year to drive on the roads, hopefully pricing the great unwashed off the roads along with scum bags in their rusting white vans making the roads a much more pleasant place to be.

Perhaps as you got fitter and lost weight you paid less...now that's an incentive.

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jestriding replied to Housecathst | 9 years ago
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I'd rather advocate for a financial incentive to ride to work. There are plenty of known benefits from cycle commuting and it's time to put a dollar figure on the savings to society.

We have a hypothocated petrol tax and car registration here which is currently around 67 cents a litre. There's still 2-3 Billion dollars worth of public funds going towards roads out of a total road bill of around 10 Billion (pop 4.4 mil - 2.8 mil cars - average distance driven ~10,000 km per year). http://www.gw.govt.nz/assets/Transport/Regional-transport/Pics/NewFolder...

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brakesmadly replied to Housecathst | 9 years ago
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Housecathst wrote:

As I cyclist I would "love" to pay a road tax if it get motorist off my back (we all know it wouldn't) .

That being said it would have to be directly proportional between bikes and cars. It could be based on engine size or weight of the vehicle (both reasonable ways of determining how much damage a vehicle would do to a road). As a cyclist I would happily pay in the region of £1000 a year for the use of the roads. Putting all vehicles on that kind of sliding scale of taxation would make the average family car in excess of £10,000 year to drive on the roads, hopefully pricing the great unwashed off the roads along with scum bags in their rusting white vans making the roads a much more pleasant place to be.

There's an even simpler route. I point out to my cycle-bashing colleagues that I would be very happy to pay VED on the same basis that they do: As it's emissions based I'd pay nothing, but the administration costs of millions of cyclists would have to go somewhere, logically onto the VED paid by motorists. They soon change their minds then.

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Pub bike | 9 years ago
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As I was being shunted up the back mudguard by an idiot in a black Mercedes Vito taxi this morning (you know who you are) whilst waiting at a red traffic light behind two cars, I thought to myself…wouldn’t it be nice if there was a cycle lane up the left side of the A12 then I could get from London to Colchester in 3 hours rather than the 5 it takes on the back-roads. It is easily wide enough.

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Daveyraveygravey replied to Pub bike | 9 years ago
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Pub bike wrote:

As I was being shunted up the back mudguard by an idiot in a black Mercedes Vito taxi this morning (you know who you are) whilst waiting at a red traffic light behind two cars, I thought to myself…wouldn’t it be nice if there was a cycle lane up the left side of the A12 then I could get from London to Colchester in 3 hours rather than the 5 it takes on the back-roads. It is easily wide enough.

Have you reported the taxi driver to his employers?

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therevokid | 9 years ago
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don't motorways already have a monster cycle lane on the left ?
Well they might as well user it for that given the lack of flow on
some m ways  3

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ibike | 9 years ago
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Why do you call it a "debate"?

It's a simple matter of correcting an inaccuracy.

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oozaveared replied to ibike | 9 years ago
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ibike wrote:

Why do you call it a "debate"?

It's a simple matter of correcting an inaccuracy.

I'm with you on that. In trying to increase her own visibility on the issue she has in effect turned an erroneous load of tosh into one side of a debate so she could be on the other. In so doing she has actually taken this idiot seriously and given him the status of protagonist in a debate. Cooke is wrong. Just wrong. Taxpayers pay for roads the costs from general taxation and VED or fuel taxes are not hypothecated. More importantly most all adult cyclists are also drivers and income tax payers.

So yes I am a cyclist and I do contribute to congestion and pollution when I am driving my car, but not when I am cycling but I pay for the roads as a taxpayer whether I am walking, running, cycling, riding a horse, riding a motorbike, driving a car or van or lorry or whether I never use them at all.

It would have been far better to make this point than for her to have engaged this Cooke idiot. Because you know what it has more impact. That pedestrian waiting to cross at a junction while most motorists ignore the fact that they should give way to pedestrians at junctions is also paying for the roads.

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Municipal Waste | 9 years ago
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 37

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truffy | 9 years ago
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But what are her views on the helmet debate?

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ron611087 replied to truffy | 9 years ago
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Does Jenny wear a lid? Don't think I've ever seen her under one.

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andyp replied to ron611087 | 9 years ago
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ron611087 wrote:

Does Jenny wear a lid? Don't think I've ever seen her under one.

Does it matter in the slightest?

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ron611087 replied to truffy | 9 years ago
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Does Jenny wear a lid? Don't think I've ever seen her under one.

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earth | 9 years ago
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And we don't ride on Motorways.

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Leviathan replied to earth | 9 years ago
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earth wrote:

And we don't ride on Motorways.

I would if I could, they are so smooooth.

NO! This is not a helmet debate. Stop that right now. We don't need another off topic slanging match.

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jollygoodvelo replied to Leviathan | 9 years ago
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bikeboy76 wrote:
earth wrote:

And we don't ride on Motorways.

I would if I could, they are so smooooth.

They're not actually - motorway road surfaces are actually rougher than normal roads to help reduce spray when wet and to increase grip for braking.

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Rich71 replied to Leviathan | 9 years ago
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Motorways smooth? i dont think so, maybe in a coach but on a 23mm tyre it would be a juddering misery

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Rupert replied to earth | 9 years ago
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earth wrote:

And we don't ride on Motorways.

Cometh the day when the "cycling party" wins the election those motorways will be ours  36  35

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