British auto drivers pay something like $4 in auto-related taxes for every dollar that the government spends on highways. The surplus goes for transit, intercity rail, and other government operations.
Meanwhile, the government is doing much to discourage auto driving, including installing speed humps, red-light cameras, and the famous cordon charge for entering inner London.
All of this rankles Malcolm Heymer, a civil engineer and member of the Association of British Drivers. Heymer gave a presentation (10MB) at the San Jose Preserving the American Dream conference last weekend. You can also download the text of his presentation, which is only 248-kilobytes.
The so-called congestion fee for driving into inner London, says Heymer, is not really a congestion fee because it does not discriminate between people who drive at congested times or on congested streets from those who do not. He points to data showing that the cordon charge initially reduced traffic in London, but in just five years traffic returned to pre-charge levels.
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The cameras also bother Heymer. While red-light cameras sound good, he notes that they can result in more accidents, not less, as people get rear-ended after slamming on their brakes to avoid getting caught crossing an intersection as the light turns red. Heymer observes that Britain has more than 4 million closed-circuit cameras watching everyone’s every move (including, ironically, several aimed at George Orwell’s former home), and many of these are programmed to recognize and record automobile license plate numbers.
Planners justify speed humps and other traffic-calming devices on safety grounds. But Heymer points out that auto safety had been increasing dramatically long before anyone began installing speed humps. Total traffic fatalities in Britain fell by more than 50 percent between 1966 and 1993. Since then — the time period in which various traffic calming measures have been installed — the fatality rate has flattened out, suggesting that traffic calming has done little to improve safety.
Of course, much of what Heymer says about Britain applies to the U.S. too. American auto drivers need to make sure that any fees they pay, including existing gas taxes and new congestion tolls, are not simply diverted to expensive rail projects or other pork-barrel programs. Red-light cameras and traffic calming should be carefully evaluated and used only if they truly increase safety, not simply as a social engineering measure to discourage driving or (in the case of cameras) increasing municipal revenues.
Note: In the aftermath of the conference, the Antiplanner has fallen a bit behind in postings. I hope to catch up by next week and resume having a fresh new post every weekday morning.
I should start by explaining how the UK’s finances work. Income tax is one of the most progressive forms of taxation available, but the problem is that it is printed prominently at the top of every pay slip. Politicians in the UK have got wise to the fallacy of promoting increases in income tax. The voters strongly support the measure in public, but then vote for the other party in the election booth. The result is that a large part of the income to the UK exchequer comes from so-called ‘stealth taxes’ – including taxes on cars. Very little of the money goes on trams and trains – most goes on health and education.
ABD, the Association of British Drivers does not speak for the majority of car drivers in the UK – despite the title. Also, it seems that none of them is a qualified transport planner – or if they are, they are hiding their light under a bushel. Nor, in many cases, do they actually read the sources that they put forwards as evidence for their beliefs.
They believe that bus lanes cause congestion. Bus lanes, properly designed, do not cause congestion. Bus lanes do not ‘halve capacity’.
http://uk.geocities.com/francisking381@btinternet.com/PublicTransport/BusLanes/BusLanes.htm
They believe that cyclists slow cars down. They don’t. Cars slow cars down, because the junctions are a bottleneck. Each bicycle takes up only 20% of the junction capacity that a car does.
They believe that traffic lights reduce capacity. Traffic lights increase capacity.
http://uk.geocities.com/francisking381@btinternet.com/Cars/SignalisedJunctions/SignalisedJunctions.htm
They believe that subways are an acceptable form of road crossing for pedestrians. They are not. Down-and-outs use subways as their homes.
They believe that man-made global warming is wrong. To support this, for a while they prominently displayed Bjorn Lomborg’s new book called ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ as evidence. Bjorn Lomborg stated quite clearly in his book that man-made global warming is a fact – and also, that panicking about it is ridiculous. I support Bjorn Lomborg, and would urge others to also do so.
They don’t like speed humps, and other forms of traffic calming – who does? – but they don’t like speed cameras either. Or speed limiters. So how are car speeds to be controlled?
They believe that the London Congestion Charge has not succeeded in reducing car levels. This is the document that was produced by Transport for London, TfL. The graph on p.28 definitely shows a sudden and then constant reduction in the number of the cars. Congestion has increased, because the city is digging up the streets in order to fix the ancient leaky water mains. Thames Water is currently losing something daft like one-third of the water that they supply through leaks in their pipes. I don’t much care for congestion charging, but it has to be admitted that London would be at gridlock now without it.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/fifth-annual-impacts-monitoring-report-2007-07-07.pdf
The statistic that road traffic deaths were falling and then stopped is less useful than the fact that they have started falling again, and also that the measure of deaths per billion km has always been in decline, despite the increased number of born-again bikers.
Sorry if I sound negative, but transport planners keep coming up against these beliefs which are published as facts. Every so often an elected representive acts on these beliefs – and wonders of wonders, the beliefs are wrong. Well!
Antiplanner,
I spent 9 weeks in London for my company between December 2006 and late April 2007.
1) The gasoline tax in Britain is about $5.00 per gallon. I have a photo from early this year where gas was selling at 95 pence per liter. At the time, the dollar was trading at 2 to 1 to the UK pound, ergo the price at that time was $7.20 per gallon. Recently I read somewhere where the price has recently reached over 1 quid per liter, over $8.00 per gallon.
2) The UK consumes somewhere around 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, compared to America’s 20 million barrels. Since America has 5 times the UK population, it could be inferred that Britons consume about 5/8th’s the amount of petroleum that Americans do on a per capita basis. It would seem it would take another 170 percent rise in the price of petrol to effect a 3/8th’s drop in demand, implying a price elasticity of demand of about .20 – .25 for petroleum.
2) In London, there has been a boom in people riding motorcycles since Red Ken’s scheme allows entry into the congestion zone if you ride a motorbike instead of a car. One day I walked around the corner of my company’s building to find 47 motorcycles neatly parked behind the building.
The supervisor of my counterparts complained to me one day that when the scheme was first introduced, he had no problems parking his motorbike in the building garage below ground. Now there are 10 people parking their motorbikes in 4 parking spaces. Yes, the substitution effect is alive and well.
3) There have been accusations that Red Ken has been giving some of the congestion charge monies to the TFL transit workers, something I haven’t been able to substantiate.
4) Here is a link to Conservative Party Councillor, Phil Taylor, from the west London suburb of Ealing. Taylor says that the Tube has swallowed over 12 billion pounds ($24 billion) in subsidies in the past 5 years.
http://tinyurl.com/39nwou
Note that Taylor says that staff costs for the Tube have gone up 52% over the past four years, with an explosion in the number of well paid managers. There are a lot of accusations that TFL is not collecting fares on public transportation.
5) The congestion charge in London is in effect between 7:00am – 6:00pm, Monday through Friday. So, Mr. Heymer’s observation is correct about the congestion charge. It is in effect all day and not just during “rush hours” if you will.
In addition, nearly all neighborhoods in inner London (within maybe 3-4 miles of Parliament and the Strand) require payment of 2.40 pounds per hour to park a car if you are not a resident with your parking permit. They also require moving the car every 4 hours. I counted two parking garages in inner London, one on Oxford Street and another near the City. Still, the roads of the city are lined with cars everywhere you look. The thought went through my head that perhaps some of the reason why housing prices have gone through the roof is because of the value of the parking spot.
All of this is because the layout of inner London is still that of an 18th century city. The outer suburbs 5 miles or so away from the city center start to slowly resemble a more modern city, with two lane roads and some setback parking in front of housing in some areas.
As a whole, London is an agony of a city to get around. A ride on the Cirlce Line train to get from the Strand to Paddington station, about 2.5 miles as the crow flies, takes over 20 minutes. Average speeds of travel around London are around 8-14 mph.
My company moved its London office about 2 miles east to its present location 3 years ago. The co-worker I mentioned above told me when I was there that the company move raised his commute time by about 15 minutes. Some might say that the answer to that issue is easy – just move closer to work. However that is easier said than done in a city whose average cost of housing is now over 300,000 pounds and which have apartment rents that are now 400-425 pounds per week.
I would say that the best thing that could be done for London is to take some money, start widening roads to at least two lanes, and allow for building parking garages. That and allow the city to break through the urban growth belt and suburbanize another several miles outwards to alleviate housing prices.