The car economy and the morality of driving
In the UK, people drive millions of cars every day. Road congestion has become an issue.
The British motorways are free. So some people think road charging is the unavoidable answer to cut traffic congestion. A study commissioned by Chancellor Gordon Brown into future transport options for the UK supports road charges. Drivers must pay to use the roads.
But should drivers have to pay to use the roads? Is road pricing the best way to tackle congestion? Will it encourage people to use other forms of transport? What are the alternatives?
The DAILY TELEGRAPH has published an interesting text on this issue.
Supporters of road pricing are ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so, about what they want it to achieve. On the one hand, charges are presented as a tax on polluters; on the other, as an anti-congestion device. But these two ambitions are incompatible. The first aims to make driving less attractive, the second more so. This confusion runs through the Government's charging scheme, unveiled yesterday. And, to be fair, ministers are accurately reflecting the inconsistency of the rest of us. According to every opinion poll, most of us think that there are too many cars; yet we keep buying them. We want something done about congestion, but resent the idea of paying any more levies.
The Daily Telegraph suffers from no such doubts. Cars, with all their faults, are a necessity for many people. Those who live in rural areas cannot rely on public transport. Nor can parents who need to get their children to school (just try manoeuvring a couple of children and perhaps a pushchair too, on to a bus). Women understandably prefer driving to hanging around on station platforms after dark. Our roads are vital economic arteries: the prosperity of a modern nation depends on the velocity of exchange. To be anti-car is therefore, in varying degrees, to be anti-countryside, anti-children, anti-women and anti-business.
Road pricing should be used as a way to improve and extend our highways; it should not be simply another way to raise revenue for Gordon Brown. There may also be a case for some congestion charging in cities. But we must first move away from the idea that driving is either immoral or ineffective. "If you build more roads, you get more cars using them," say critics. Indeed. If you build more hospitals, you get more patients using them: hardly an argument against doing so.
Read the whole text here.
The British motorways are free. So some people think road charging is the unavoidable answer to cut traffic congestion. A study commissioned by Chancellor Gordon Brown into future transport options for the UK supports road charges. Drivers must pay to use the roads.
But should drivers have to pay to use the roads? Is road pricing the best way to tackle congestion? Will it encourage people to use other forms of transport? What are the alternatives?
The DAILY TELEGRAPH has published an interesting text on this issue.
Supporters of road pricing are ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so, about what they want it to achieve. On the one hand, charges are presented as a tax on polluters; on the other, as an anti-congestion device. But these two ambitions are incompatible. The first aims to make driving less attractive, the second more so. This confusion runs through the Government's charging scheme, unveiled yesterday. And, to be fair, ministers are accurately reflecting the inconsistency of the rest of us. According to every opinion poll, most of us think that there are too many cars; yet we keep buying them. We want something done about congestion, but resent the idea of paying any more levies.
The Daily Telegraph suffers from no such doubts. Cars, with all their faults, are a necessity for many people. Those who live in rural areas cannot rely on public transport. Nor can parents who need to get their children to school (just try manoeuvring a couple of children and perhaps a pushchair too, on to a bus). Women understandably prefer driving to hanging around on station platforms after dark. Our roads are vital economic arteries: the prosperity of a modern nation depends on the velocity of exchange. To be anti-car is therefore, in varying degrees, to be anti-countryside, anti-children, anti-women and anti-business.
Road pricing should be used as a way to improve and extend our highways; it should not be simply another way to raise revenue for Gordon Brown. There may also be a case for some congestion charging in cities. But we must first move away from the idea that driving is either immoral or ineffective. "If you build more roads, you get more cars using them," say critics. Indeed. If you build more hospitals, you get more patients using them: hardly an argument against doing so.
Read the whole text here.
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