http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/25/car-pollution-noise-accidents-eu
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Cycling News
Cars are not over-taxed!
(41 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
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Notice this quote from Edmund King:
"Some 86% of passenger journeys and 90% of freight go by road"
The article encourages its readers to think that this means 86% of journeys are by car, but those of us who are paying attention will know that this is not true. I suspect that the figure includes bus passengers but not pedestrians or cyclists - despite the fact that all of these journeys involve the use of a road. It also ignores the fact that, unlike cycling, passenger and freight rail numbers are going through the roof while driving levels off and declines slightly.
The motoring lobby loves to think themselves more important than they are.
Posted 12 years ago # -
"With climate change every burning of fossil fuels creates the same amount of damage, so let's charge the population for driving. Then everybody has a choice. They can use a bike sometimes, or the train, they can drive more slowly, they can think about living closer to their work."
This seems the important point. Politically problematic in the UK, however much it makes sense.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Browsing on greenmotor.co.uk a site encouraging electric cars, I found a nice graph. In 1971 45% of households had one car and 50% had no car. In 2007 the one car figure was still 45% but the no car had fallen to 25% and the two cars had risen to 25% from less than 10%
Not recent and not exact but on a broad brush does seem to me to support the idea that car use has now peaked? With more than 70% of households having at least one car clearly you cannot get moving for the blighters, but the market is at saturation point? If I am correct in my fag packet analysis, the only way is down, albeit from a very high point.
New car sales are up a bit in 2012 from 2011 which were lowest since 1994. 80 % of cars made in UK are exported but European car sales are down.
Posted 12 years ago # -
I think most of the peaking of car use in the last few years has been down to changes in company car taxation that no longer encourage people to do more company miles. The rest comes from people in their 20s putting off learning to drive & then travelling less generally, offset by more women driving (as the generation of women who let their husbands drive them everywhere gradually passes into history). If that generation now in their 20s will continue to drive less once they have kids and so on, then private traffic may well have peaked, at least as long as the population of the country remains roughly the same.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Good point on fleet cars Sally.
Any thoughts on the removal of driving tests for older drivers.? Will google to see if there are more of them
Posted 12 years ago # -
I'd like to think that less car use will be a trend but my last two journeys by public transport wouldn't persuade anyone not to take their car if they had one.
Just spent around four hours doing a journey that should take 1 hour 50 min. No train at Pitlochry with no definite info. Then a late bus which dumped the passengers and their luggage at Perth. Then dragging luggage through the trainless, staffless, expanse of Perth station. Connections there... aren't!
Finally a train at 4.20 - almost two hours for first 30 miles.
Then to cap it all engineering works meant the entire train had to disembark at Haymarket. Scenes of families lugging luggage up narrow staircases.
Then it got worse...! Anyway - have drafted letter to Keith Brown and First.Posted 12 years ago # -
Some facts and figures on car use here http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/on_the_move-le_vine_&_jones-dec2012.pdf
Posted 12 years ago # -
The RAC Foundation report is useful. The overview section paints an interesting broad Rolf Harris-type picture of transport trends and on the subject of 'peak travel' concludes, "there has been a pattern of continuing strong growth in private car use for those aged 30 and over, outside London, up to the start of the economic downturn. This group represents approximately 70% of the population of driving age in Great Britain. Therefore the notion that car traffic peaked in the mid-2000s is at best an oversimplification."
Even though cars also break down, Laidback's experience is the sort of story that keeps people reliant on their cars because almost all the time they deliver on the promise of getting you there more or less when you expect to with very little fuss.
The other trend fuelling car use is housing. I made a nice map before I stopped for Christmas. It used official data on where the cheap houses are, household incomes and mortgage repayment figures to calculate housing affordability for a typical household. Where could they afford to buy? Almost nowhere in Edinburgh. Livingstone, Fife and West Lothian are OK. Not very surprising (except maybe just how unaffordable almost all of Edinburgh is) so you can expect the trend to be for people to live further and further from their workplace and for them to keep driving to get at least part of the way there.
Posted 12 years ago # -
I suppose it depends how you define affordable, I live in a relatively cheap two bedroom house, well made, gardens, on street parking and a big cupboard to put a server in. Since its in an unfashionable part of espc corstorphine its price is much lower than if it were actually in corstorphine. The upside, its less than 20 minutes ride to town and walking distance of virtually all the West to East buses and on the 22 / tram route.
There are much cheaper houses in the estate proper but no one wants to live there, they'd rather spend the same and get a bigger house out of town and spend their life driving.
Posted 12 years ago # -
"There are much cheaper houses in the estate proper but no one wants to live there"
"they'd rather spend the same and get a bigger house out of town and spend their life driving"
I know that was written as one sentence, but it's actually two separate (generally related) points.
We've had threads before about 'where to live' 'why I live in Fife (etc.) before.
As with most things on here it's all related to "personal choice".
There are clearly parts of Edinburgh where 'most' people would choose not live - equally clearly people live there (not just as council tenants) and I'm sure many are happy to be there!
From previous threads, having children is a major factor - this influences choices about size/'value for money' plus things like 'safety' and 'good schools'.
Steveo articulates something that is quite fascinating. I'm sure there is a well known 'official' phrase but I'd call it micro-neighbourhoods.
Not just an Edinburgh thing of course. There are parts of London with expensive Georgian houses on one side of the street and a 'notorious' estate on (literally) the other.
Obviously this will distort 'average' price for an area but it also means places where 'bargains' can be had. I suspect such details are harder to map without some micro-local knowledge.
When people/developers notice this it has often been the start of what has become known as 'gentrification' - it doesn't always work...
Parts of Islington and Leith spring to mind and changes to housing benefit may speed this up (particularly in London).
It will be interesting to see how (if measurable) the tram, QBC and 'improved' Leith Walk affect house prices.
But apart from the 'property game' I think a key point of this thread is how much (if at all) places to live/work, and how to travel between them, are decided 'rationally'.
Many people only consider fuel costs on the basis that they already/'must' have a car.
Presumably people commuting by train to/from Glasgow consider the extra cost over a bus worth it for time saved/perceived comfort benefits.
Personal choices based on rational (or not) considerations.
The main problem in the UK is the decisions and assumptions made over the last 60 years or so -
Cars good
Public transport not so good (except around London where BILLIONS get spent)
Bicycles irrelevant
Road bridge tolls bad (I bet Fife house prices have gone up more than the cost of MANY FB crossings!)
Housing/transport rational?
Posted 12 years ago # -
"
“Half of Scotland’s most desirable addresses are in the Capital, which has a mixture of classical architecture in the Old Town and Georgian buildings of the New Town.”"
Posted 12 years ago # -
Steveo articulates something that is quite fascinating. I'm sure there is a well known 'official' phrase but I'd call it micro-neighbourhoods.
My mate used to work at the council, apparently at that time, the central line down my road was a the divide between what the council defined as a "deprived" area and not. I'm on the "nice" side, not noticed any difference tbh.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Well if you really want to know which areas are 'desirable' for ordinary people on 'middle incomes' to live, raise kids, etc. then check out this map, which shows areas classified according to the government's indices of multiple deprivation:
https://sites.google.com/site/scotdep2012/home
Basically, if you live in the Southside, or large parts of the north and west of the city, you're fine. Anywhere else, you have to be careful to avoid the 'poor' areas.....unless you like that sort of thing/can't afford anywhere else/don't fancy moving to Fife.
Posted 12 years ago # -
I think it's an oversimplification just to look at the number of cars owned in the UK which I guess is largely static.
The point is people are driving further on average each day, which equates to more cars on the road at any given time.
As roads get widened/'improved' then the magic 'one hour' commute boundary extends further out, encouraging people to live further way from where they work and shop.
Motoring costs are still coming down in real terms, so I don't expect any 'peak car' any time soon, unless something major happens to the price of oil (like quadruples). Most of the reduction in motoring seen today is probably down to the recession biting.
Posted 12 years ago # -
We had this discussion a while back (can't find the thread) and the only place to have experienced 'peak car' in the UK is London. Coincidentally, this city has a huge public transport infrastructure which is continually invested in. There's also a congestion charge zone in the city centre.
Posted 12 years ago # -
@Crowriver
Good map
Some of the Harrison Gdns / Polwarth crew live next to scotlands's least deprived area
Good to see ferguslie park in paisley punching above its weight to keep easterhouse, castlemilk, craigmllar, pilton etc off bottom spot
Posted 12 years ago # -
"We had this discussion a while back (can't find the thread)"
Posted 12 years ago # -
I always wondered how the developers convinced the council to sell off megetland. This map illustrates it nicely. Click on the least deprived map...
Posted 12 years ago # -
"This map illustrates it nicely"
Also shows that the details can be a bit suspect!
"I always wondered how the developers convinced the council to sell off megetland"
In simple terms a developer offered Lothian Regional Council some money and all weather pitches and changing rooms (oh, and a new clubhouse for BRFC). After several years (and lots of objections) the offer was accepted - without anyone else being asked to match or offer more.
Posted 12 years ago # -
@edd1e_h - according to the RAC report it's actually the opposite - there are more cars, but they're each being driven less far on average, I suspect because of the rise of the two car household.
I think there are two big one-off changes going on at the same time which are partly cancelling each other out - the decline in company car use and the rise of women driving. But less clearly, there seems to be a younger generation coming through that are less car dependent for whatever reason. If they stay that way throughout their lives rather than just in their 20s, then we'll have seen peak car at least per head in the UK. Now might be the moment to try and provide the sort of conditions to lock non-car driving in to that generation, even as they start to have kids and settle out in the suburbs.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Number 1 son is 22 and has no licence. He would have been quite happy to get one but I wasn't going to insure a car for him because it would have been thousands per year.
Posted 12 years ago # -
By affordable I mean either that the price:income ratio was less than 4 (which is really pushing affordability) or that the repayments on a mortgage taken with a 90% loan would use less than 30% of a household's net income.
Posted 12 years ago # -
I'm a little confused by the measure, surely that would make virtually any house affordable depending on the income?
I think that a lot of people on a low "professional" income (~£25K) who can afford 4x plus a deposit want more for their money than a smallish house in a (marginally) dodgy area. So they end up spending their life driving and not coming in to the office when the weather is a little off.
Posted 12 years ago # -
As chdot suggested, you really need to factor in schools. I love the area we are in for many reasons, but we would probsbly be elsewhere if it weren't for the schools.
I know most of our primaries are pretty good, but the differentials in the secondaries are pretty striking.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Yes. Any house is affordable if you have enough money. But as you say, if you're on a relatively low or average income the options around Edinburgh, even if you're willing to live in a marginally dodgy area, aren't that extensive. Even if everyone decided to buy in those areas there simply aren't that many houses on the market to allow everyone who wanted on to buy one. Competition would simply push the prices up. Many people are forced out to West Lothian and Fife and into their cars. I think it's far from all personal choice and people opting for something bigger. The new build in Duloch and Inverkeithing are hardly bigger than houses in South Gyle or Forrester Park, although they are new and without any reputational baggage.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Do we know how many people commute to jobs in Edinburgh from the surrounding tributaries?
Posted 12 years ago # -
If you drive south through the edges of Dalkeith, there are loads of estates where you'd basically have to drive to get anywhere. No public transport, no attempt to build in any form of use except cars. Very depressing.
Posted 12 years ago #
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