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Should it ever happen, it will of course be the honest driver who suffers. Those that don't register the car in their name will benefit even more.
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Where do they get this "38 million cars" figure from? Do they just look at the graph of increasing car use and then just extrapolate the line upwards? How stupid can you get? Sure, many families now have two or more cars, but they can't drive all of them at the same time!
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Err thats just the problem your kingship, they DO drive them at the same time. Look out your window onto that main road and tell me there aint a LOT more cars out there. The historical data works and can be trended upwards with fair accuracy.
Wear your armour by all means Arthur Pendragon, but I hope it has crumple zones cos your are gonna get rear ended by one of the 38 million mobile serfs in a few years.
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The Soviet Union did not die, it just moved west a few hundred miles. No doubt when the technology fails the taxpayer will pick up the bill as usual.
£20 says Capita will get the contract...........
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>>£20 says Capita will get the contract...........
I'll put £20 on EDS.
VD5D.
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Err thats just the problem your kingship, they DO drive them at the same time. Look out your window onto that main road and tell me there aint a LOT more cars out there. The historical data works and can be trended upwards with fair accuracy. Wear your armour by all means Arthur Pendragon, but I hope it has crumple zones cos your are gonna get rear ended by one of the 38 million mobile serfs in a few years.
Yes but the number of cars on the road cannot grow past the point where everyone who needs a car already has one. You can own two cars at the same time but you cannot drive them both at the same time. So at some point, car usage will hit a ceiling. There may end up being 38 million cars registered for use on UK roads, but that doesn\'t mean there will be 38 million people all trying to drive on the roads at the same time.
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"Yes but the number of cars on the road cannot grow past the point where everyone who needs a car already has one. You can own two cars at the same time but you cannot drive them both at the same time. So at some point, car usage will hit a ceiling. There may end up being 38 million cars registered for use on UK roads, but that doesn't mean there will be 38 million people all trying to drive on the roads at the same time."
Now let me see. There is three in my family. Nicolle drives, Papa drives. Thats 2/3rds of this family on the road at the same time. Now The population of the uk is about 56 million.
Two thirds of 56 million is, Blimey look at this, 36.9 million.
in 4 years time junior will be driving AT THE SAME TIME (about 8:00am) AS PAPA AND NICOLLE.
Next door, father mother two girls. Two cars now, three four cars in 5 years time? all going to work at about the same time.
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Sorry to break it to you, but people stop driving... due to natural passage of time or just deciding to stop.
Last I heard was that the UK's population was dropping, if that is true surely it screws up their revenue earning scheme?
Kev
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BUt people live longer and drive longer. The chances are my son, his father, his mother and his grandmother will still be driving.
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Short answer: retest at 65. They'll mostly fail and our streets will be quieter and safer.
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Ban French cars... :-P
Also has added benefit of keeping the hard shoulder clear, which in time could be used as another lane on the motorway... :-P ;-P
Seriously, I understand your point, but isn't it funny that they are trying to ease congestion at airports by building more airports for rather unhealthy untaxed planes, yet they're trying to reduce the number of comparatively healthy massively overtaxed cars...
Kev
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agreed. The point is that there are more and more cars on the road. Something will have to be done (its started now - London CC) its happened in other parts of the world. If the government can see a way of making money, cutting car use ( so easing road maint cost) AND provide tabs on who is going where and when - well what would you do? Its a government dream come true.
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A thought struck me listening to it this morning. The reports and such that this is based on (and the Minister's comments on Today) seem to be of the opinion that the problem boils down to Rush Hour - if they could get us not to all drive a long way to start work at the same time everyday.
Well, in that case there seem to be a lot of things you could do that don't involve knowing where every car is at any given moment.
For example, Darling is already asking Clarke to make schools start at staggered times to spread the school run over a longer period. Why not something similar with industry? Persuade firms to run 10-6 instead of 9-5. Give em a tax break or something.
And if you're complaining about people (like me) driving a long way to work, well, fix the housing market so people can afford to live near where they work!
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Flexible working hours is one way of reducing congestion at peak times. Allowing everyone with a suitable job to work at home for one day per week would reduce traffic immensely (assuming all those had driven in). Public transport is also overloaded and people are being encouraged not to use rail as there are too many commuters. Ironically if more people used rail then it is harder for the govt to track movements....
Universal broadband provision would also make the working at home fantasy a greater reality for most people. You could then have people working at home for 4 days a week and only going into work 1 day a week. If more people did than then the rush hour problems would probably disappear over night.
None of the above generate revenue so the government won't support it as their whole goal is to generate more money. There is too much emphasis on the problems of the south east and its congestion and assuming the whole country is like this. It isn't. The south east is over populated.
The housing problem is also making things a lot worse. This congestion charging could end up putting a lot of families in an impossible situation. They can't afford to live where they work and they can't afford to travel there either because they are stung by congestion charging. It would be backing a lot of people into a corner and it would make house price inflation in areas close to big employers go through the roof. The government are also planning to allow councils to charge up to £2k a year for each parking space.
What a future where a lot of people can't afford to live close to their work, can't get there by public transport get screwed by congestion charging and paying to park the only feasible method of transport at their place of employment.
teabelly
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Teabelly has it right. Traffic congestion is the symptom. The cause is a social one: burgeoning overpopulation in an area with already strained infrastructure and without the capacity to add much more.
Your perfect example of this is Manila. Already one of the world's megacities: we have 2030 here now. You'll find as much traffic on the highways at 0300 as you do at 0900. Solution: hire a driver (£100 p.m.), sit in the back and work in the car.
Given that New Labour's limited abilities are mainly focussed on addressing the symptoms of anything rather than the real causes -Railtrack, A Levels, NHS, universities, illegal immigrants (PC name asylum seekers) - need I go on....
(a) because quick hits and fixes look good on the front pages, (b) because they appoint all these over-educated amateurs to posts which should be filled by technical professionals, and (c) because the real stuff is just too hard, I don't hold out a lot of hope. They'll probably be long bounced out of power with all these self-important pimply over-compensated urbanites writing their memoirs for each other to read, long before the fruits of their cock-ups are visited upon the poor suffering Joe Six-Packs.
Little Bahrain, where I lived for many years, has exactly the same problem in microcosm. Because it's a small island which is relatively prosperous, has a rapidly growing population and a vehicle growth > 10% per annum, its government is considering raising the age at which a drivers' license is awarded, putting a cap on the number of new vehicles allowed on the road each year. In other words in a much smaller way it is managing as opposed to reacting to a problem with yet more layers of expensive bureaucracy addicted to junk-tech, which soaks up wealth and adds nothing of value to national social, financial or human capital.
Right, Growlette, move that superb little derriere of yours off my knee and see if you can find a spot more of that cheeky little Merlot we had somewhere......
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How can Darling talk about reducing traffic when he allows the Post Office (which is still nationalised) to scrap the postal trains in favour of sending all mail by road,that PO advert showing a junction and flyover full of RED vans will be all too true
ndbw
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I've said it before, but if Darling makes such a hash of it as he did the new Child Support Legislation, it'll never happen anyway. He cocked this one up when he was Secretary of State for Social Security and then Work and Pensions by failing to monitor the IT company doing the systems. This would be so essential for road traffic monitoring that the whole idea is dead in the water. You can guarantee he hasn't learnt his lesson.
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Even having to apologise to the Commons and explain why the whole thing has been delayed 6 months, then a year, then 2 years won't have done the trick.
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I am the last person here to support the current administrastion and their half baked plans to deal with Britain's growing traffic nightmare. If you live in Kent (as i used to) then you will realise that for those of us in the SE of England the congestion problem is starting to spin out of control. It can take 4hrs to reach outer London from Canterbury (a distance of 75m) if you travel at peak times or on a weekend morning/evening. In fact things a getting so bad in Kent that people like me are simple not using their cars as it is often quicker to walk or (would you believe it) train it. But the car was invented to free us from labour, to make our lives easier and quicker, so what has gone wrong?
Clearly something needs to be done. If it really reaches 38million cars (however approximate this figure may be) then Britain will essentially be one massive car park during certain hours of the day. I certainly would'nt want to have to commute under such conditions, but then i dont have to live in the UK either, thank God. So what is to be done? Satellite sysemts, toll roads? Here in France we have a decent toll system and no car tax, this seems to work well. But similarly, if you drive in any city between 5 and 7 pm it will be difficult in the extreme, which is why many more poeple are choosing cycling as an alternative. Of course S.France has a Med climate, so cycling is a pleasure, but the crisis facing French cities at commuter hours is at last getting people out of their cars!
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Does anyone really believe that our wonderfully efficient public sector* is capable of delivering this?
(BTW I appreciate that "delivering" means project-managing delivery by a contractor.)
Peter
* No disrepect to the many hard-working individuals labouring in the public sector. However the whole seems to be much less than the sum of the parts.
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Well, Mr Livingstone seems to have delivered the CC. Yes I know it has had problems, but it seems to have been delivered on time, within budget, and given the complexity of the solution it does seem to be working (reading plates, checking payment, sending out fines) Wont comment on the economic model or the effectiveness re reducing traffic.
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Point taken, but it's a long way from controlling access to a discrete area to tracking everyone's movements by satellite.
Let's face it, if "New" Labour were any good at implementation (as opposed to headline-grabbing "intitiatives") they'd have sorted-out health, education, the railways....
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I can't see why the UK just can't get some decent toll rodas, like the rest of Europe (bar a few countries). Here in France they work real well and are nearlly always farily clear (unless you choose to take them on National Holidays such as Bastille day, which is plain stupid). Sure France has an excellent public transport system, which many car drivers also choose to use, it is cheap enough to remain viable.
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