"Socialism means the government owns everything!"

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  • Because shared self-driving cars will give people the benefits of travelling everywhere by cab at less than the cost of having your own car, with the bonus of being able to swap to the most appropriate vehicle for the task. You might book a low-end Smart car-equivalent for your daily commute, but pay for an upgrade to a Volvo estate to go on a longer journey with family. You don't need somewhere to park it, you aren't left with the bill when something electro-mechanically expensive goes wrong. It would happen gradually, but I think there would be a definite shift towards car ownership being a niche attraction.

    OK, I see where you're coming from. But I think the appeal of having exclusive, on-demand use of a self-driving car would be enough for most people to want to have their own, even if it would be more expensive.

    I wouldn't like to guess at the figures. Certainly I can see a situation where fewer families have multiple cars.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    Naturally this clown wanted the same VED on electric vehicles

    Road damage scales like the fourth power of axle weight. I'd be happy to pay my fair share per mile for my bicycle on that basis, just as soon as he is...
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    edited January 29
    Hence, as I said, the whole ownership thing is a nonsense argument about socialism.

    That’s probably why we’re now talking about individual autonomy and freedom of choice rather than nominal ownership.

    You should move to America, the government doesn’t do anything for us! You have to buy your own car because otherwise you can’t go anywhere, you have to buy your own healthcare because otherwise you’ll die in a ditch, and whenever you suggest changing either of these scenarios you’re denounced as a raving communist. Yeah, freedom!!
  • Because shared self-driving cars will give people the benefits of travelling everywhere by cab at less than the cost of having your own car, with the bonus of being able to swap to the most appropriate vehicle for the task.

    This assumes that the self-driving cars are priced at something close to cost, rather than at something close to taxi. I suspect that initial forays into self-driving taxis will try to compete with the taxi market, rather than personal car ownership, and at taxi prices, they don't compete with ownership.

    You raise an interesting question with "appropriate vehicles" which is the availability of vehicles. One feature of your personal car is that it is always available to you. If a robo-taxi fleet is to compete with personal car ownership, the fleet has to have sufficient availability that there are "always" cars available for journeys people want to make. The more different kinds of robo-taxi you have, the larger the pool of unused vehicles you need to have available to meet this guarantee.

    And then there are niche users. Large families, who require seating for 8+ children, plus associated luggage space. Vehicles adapted for the needs of disabled people. Presumably these users will need to retain control of a dedicated vehicle, as their needs won't be met by whatever's available from the pool.

  • (Another question about robo-taxis: how does cleaning work? Can the taxi tell when it is dirty, and report itself for cleaning (at the cost of the offending user, if we're not just talking about general gradual accumulation of dirt)? Does it require the new customer to reject the taxi as dirty before it goes off to clean itself? Is the offending customer expected to report that they made a mess in the taxi so that the taxi can remove itself from service?

    Real taxis tend to be kept clean by their drivers. Real trains are usually filthy. Real buses are usually filthy too.)
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    Hence, as I said, the whole ownership thing is a nonsense argument about socialism.
    That’s probably why we’re now talking about individual autonomy and freedom of choice rather than nominal ownership.

    In a discussion about the evils/disadvantages of socialism I think it's worth noting that private vehicle ownership is in a lot of ways an example of what economists refer to as "lemon socialism", a system where benefits (personal travel autonomy) are privatized but costs (infrastructure, pollution, etc.) are socialized.
    Russ wrote: »
    Robotaxis are an interesting concept, although the difference between a taxi and a robotaxi is primarily one of price. Taxis are an expensive way of getting around because you're paying for the one-on-one time of another human being. I'm wondering whether it's the case that any transport system built around robotaxis could also operate without the technology ? Government to pay the unemployed to be taxi drivers, so that taxis are very cheap at point of use ?

    Or why not go all the way and use slaves? They're really cheap. Arguments about the benefits of minimizing worker pay usually end up here in one way or another.
    Because shared self-driving cars will give people the benefits of travelling everywhere by cab at less than the cost of having your own car, with the bonus of being able to swap to the most appropriate vehicle for the task.
    This assumes that the self-driving cars are priced at something close to cost, rather than at something close to taxi. I suspect that initial forays into self-driving taxis will try to compete with the taxi market, rather than personal car ownership, and at taxi prices, they don't compete with ownership.

    One of the frustrating things about these robotaxi discussions is that they're making a lot of assumptions around a technology which doesn't exist yet and doesn't yet have a plausible development date. Fully autonomous self-driving cars have been "just 6-12 months away" for nearly a decade now. Elon Musk says he'll have a fully autonomous vehicle by the end of the year, but he's been making that claim since at least 2016. At some point credibility should be lost, but for some reason it never is.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    (Another question about robo-taxis: how does cleaning work? Can the taxi tell when it is dirty, and report itself for cleaning (at the cost of the offending user, if we're not just talking about general gradual accumulation of dirt)? Does it require the new customer to reject the taxi as dirty before it goes off to clean itself? Is the offending customer expected to report that they made a mess in the taxi so that the taxi can remove itself from service?

    Real taxis tend to be kept clean by their drivers. Real trains are usually filthy. Real buses are usually filthy too.)

    I expect there would be someone nominally responsible for cleaning, which would only happen if a sufficient fuss is kicked up. See trains and buses as you mention.

    Currently, if you want to see a business where nothing is done after the initial setup, car parking is definitely the thing. My work car park in a basement, which we have a long-term lease on, clearly has no-one check things like whether the sensor lights are working or whether the stairs are covered with water until a customer such as me engages Full Cranky Mode to make a fuss. And the actual car parking company makes itself as difficult as possible to contact; this car park happens to be attached to a hotel and I've learned the most effective approach is to get cranky at the hotel instead.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    ...shared self-driving cars will give people the benefits of travelling everywhere by cab at less than the cost of having your own car...
    ...You don't need somewhere to park it, you aren't left with the bill when something electro-mechanically expensive goes wrong.

    The users of the system will have to pay somehow to cover the cost of electrical / mechanical failures. Pooling the costs over the user base reduces the risk but doesn't reduce the average cost.

    My understanding is that "car clubs" exist in some cities, as a way of paying for car use by the hour at point of use. The average cost per mile is higher than that paid by owners of a similar vehicle.

    So the idea that costs are automatically lower is questionable.

    It may be that everybody's usage requires fewer vehicles under a shared-use system, so the total cost of producing the vehicles is reduced. But the amount of empty running and thus total mileage (and thus energy costs & maintenance costs) would increase.

    Seems to me that lots of people are very willing to devote their front garden to parking their car, rather than parking on the street (with the uncertainty of where there will be spaces and the likelihood of having some distance to walk between home and parking space). Which suggests that the value people place on control, on having their means of transport right there whenever they want it, is higher than the value they place on the land needed to park it.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Or over the last century we've so based our society on the presumption of car ownership that participation in society has become impossible without it.
  • You're referring to the Zipcar schemes I presume?

    You can just about cope without having a car, but it's not easy. In London a lot of people don't have cars, it's more sensible to use public transport, cycles and the occasional taxi (to bring home large loads of shopping or get home safely from a night out). I priced up a car in London when I lived there and I spent less than the tax and insurance on my travel costs for the year. But I was happy taking a bike on a train and cycling at the other end to get to places. (One of my worst trips was from Brackley to Banbury, because no cycles expected). Before anyone asks, for some of that time I was also transporting a baby and then a toddler.

    I have more problems now convincing employers who are convinced of the need of a car that their job is achievable without (and no, I wouldn't try if I didn't think it was possible).
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    @Curiosity killed "I have more problems now convincing employers who are convinced of the need of a car"

    Looked at dispassionately, it's astounding that an employer should consider that an item so expensive as a car, if required for a job, should be provided by the employee. We don't routinely expect people to provide their own desks, chairs, computers, forklift trucks, cash registers, burger grills...

    It is an illustration of our car-centric society that no-one bats an eyelid at this standard practice.
  • Russ wrote: »
    My understanding is that "car clubs" exist in some cities, as a way of paying for car use by the hour at point of use. The average cost per mile is higher than that paid by owners of a similar vehicle.

    So the idea that costs are automatically lower is questionable.


    "questionable" ? What rubbish! Let me explain it in simple terms: for someone with a perceived need for regular use of a vehicle and no economic constraints, having a car makes sense; for many, many people who need one sometimes, paying by the hour when it's needed is better for their finances.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    @Curiosity killed "I have more problems now convincing employers who are convinced of the need of a car"

    Looked at dispassionately, it's astounding that an employer should consider that an item so expensive as a car, if required for a job, should be provided by the employee. We don't routinely expect people to provide their own desks, chairs, computers, forklift trucks, cash registers, burger grills...

    It is an illustration of our car-centric society that no-one bats an eyelid at this standard practice.

    In fairness many employers who require you to use your own vehicle pay quite a generous mileage allowance. It might well be sufficient to fund a PCP-type deal. Of course this might be the case for professional work but it's emphatically not for the likes of Hermes couriers.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited January 30
    KarlLB wrote: »
    @Curiosity killed "I have more problems now convincing employers who are convinced of the need of a car"

    Looked at dispassionately, it's astounding that an employer should consider that an item so expensive as a car, if required for a job, should be provided by the employee. We don't routinely expect people to provide their own desks, chairs, computers, forklift trucks, cash registers, burger grills...

    It is an illustration of our car-centric society that no-one bats an eyelid at this standard practice.

    In fairness many employers who require you to use your own vehicle pay quite a generous mileage allowance. It might well be sufficient to fund a PCP-type deal. Of course this might be the case for professional work but it's emphatically not for the likes of Hermes couriers.

    Yeah, but that isn't quite the point. It's the assumption that if one has a car one would drive it to work so it was available for the employer. This prevents the employee from walking, cycling or taking public transport to work. The point is that this so much considered what one does anyway that no-one notices the imposition.

    I had this argument with my boss once. He could not understand why I didn't think it reasonable I should usually drive to work rather than cycle because there was a tiny chance I might need to attend a site at some point - something that happened perhaps twice in a year. Especially given I'd a number of times used a train/bike combination to get to remote sites.

  • Given the current lack of infrastructure for public transport, there may be need for an employee to have a driving licence. For us, work provides a car for business trips where public transport isn't viable (which admittedly often comes down to "I don't want to take a bus"), if we were on campus the University has a larger fleet of assorted vehicles available. But, even that reflects the way the system is biased against non-car transport. Though it requires the car to be available, so booking often weeks in advance. If the car isn't available and a car is needed then knowing that I'll need my own car the following day isn't a problem - indeed for me needing my car at shorter notice isn't too bad as it's a 10 min walk home to get it, not everyone lives that close to work. Where the system often breaks down is if we run out of something which is needed there and then ... and you can't just pop over to B&Q for a roll of insulating tape (or whatever); and you'll get dirty looks from the office for an expense claim for a couple of quid and a two mile trip. Shouldn't be needed, should be raising a purchase order and getting that sort of supply delivered.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    @Curiosity killed "I have more problems now convincing employers who are convinced of the need of a car"

    Looked at dispassionately, it's astounding that an employer should consider that an item so expensive as a car, if required for a job, should be provided by the employee. We don't routinely expect people to provide their own desks, chairs, computers, forklift trucks, cash registers, burger grills...

    It is an illustration of our car-centric society that no-one bats an eyelid at this standard practice.

    In fairness many employers who require you to use your own vehicle pay quite a generous mileage allowance. It might well be sufficient to fund a PCP-type deal. Of course this might be the case for professional work but it's emphatically not for the likes of Hermes couriers.

    Yeah, but that isn't quite the point. It's the assumption that if one has a car one would drive it to work so it was available for the employer. This prevents the employee from walking, cycling or taking public transport to work. The point is that this so much considered what one does anyway that no-one notices the imposition.

    I had this argument with my boss once. He could not understand why I didn't think it reasonable I should usually drive to work rather than cycle because there was a tiny chance I might need to attend a site at some point - something that happened perhaps twice in a year. Especially given I'd a number of times used a train/bike combination to get to remote sites.

    I see where you're going wrong there: you have forgotten that as an employee, your employer owns the fruits of your labour, your intellectual acumen, your car, your life, your firstborn child and your very soul.

    Remember, the only alternative to this kind of exploitative capitalism that is bad for people and killing the planet, is for the government to own everything and everyone. Then no one has any freedom or any fun and everything is in Black and White too.

    (Can you see what I did there? :wink:)

    So, drive to work like a normal person, you Pinko Bastard!

    AFZ.

    Too much?
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    @Curiosity killed "I have more problems now convincing employers who are convinced of the need of a car"

    Looked at dispassionately, it's astounding that an employer should consider that an item so expensive as a car, if required for a job, should be provided by the employee. We don't routinely expect people to provide their own desks, chairs, computers, forklift trucks, cash registers, burger grills...

    It is an illustration of our car-centric society that no-one bats an eyelid at this standard practice.

    In fairness many employers who require you to use your own vehicle pay quite a generous mileage allowance. It might well be sufficient to fund a PCP-type deal. Of course this might be the case for professional work but it's emphatically not for the likes of Hermes couriers.

    Yeah, but that isn't quite the point. It's the assumption that if one has a car one would drive it to work so it was available for the employer. This prevents the employee from walking, cycling or taking public transport to work. The point is that this so much considered what one does anyway that no-one notices the imposition.

    I had this argument with my boss once. He could not understand why I didn't think it reasonable I should usually drive to work rather than cycle because there was a tiny chance I might need to attend a site at some point - something that happened perhaps twice in a year. Especially given I'd a number of times used a train/bike combination to get to remote sites.

    I see where you're going wrong there: you have forgotten that as an employee, your employer owns the fruits of your labour, your intellectual acumen, your car, your life, your firstborn child and your very soul.

    Remember, the only alternative to this kind of exploitative capitalism that is bad for people and killing the planet, is for the government to own everything and everyone. Then no one has any freedom or any fun and everything is in Black and White too.

    (Can you see what I did there? :wink:)

    So, drive to work like a normal person, you Pinko Bastard!

    AFZ.

    Too much?

    Your Marvin impression is disturbingly accurate.
  • When I worked at The Other Shack, and used to take the Sunday collection - large church, usually many hundreds of pounds and sometimes more in cash and cheques - to the bank on a Monday morning. As I cycled to work, I also cycled to the bank, sometimes listing heavily to starboard under the weight of the loose change. I have at other times been cycling between banks and building societies on the last Friday of the month, drawing and depositing banker's drafts for completing mortgages before the deadline. I think the most I had was just north of half a million quid (this was 30 years ago, so house prices were generally lower then).

    I was happy to use my bike for work, as I knew doing these things were part of my duties, but would have baulked at being told what specific form of transport I'd be required to bring.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    Seems to me that lots of people are very willing to devote their front garden to parking their car, rather than parking on the street (with the uncertainty of where there will be spaces and the likelihood of having some distance to walk between home and parking space). Which suggests that the value people place on control, on having their means of transport right there whenever they want it, is higher than the value they place on the land needed to park it.

    This is a silly argument. That's a question about where to put your car if you have a car, which does nothing to address the changing pros and cons of actually owning a car in the first place.

  • RussRuss Shipmate

    Russ wrote: »
    My understanding is that "car clubs" exist in some cities, as a way of paying for car use by the hour at point of use. The average cost per mile is higher than that paid by owners of a similar vehicle.

    Let me explain it in simple terms: for someone with a perceived need for regular use of a vehicle and no economic constraints, having a car makes sense; for many, many people who need one sometimes, paying by the hour when it's needed is better for their finances.

    You're quite right. People vary in how much use they make of a car (or would if one was available). If your usage is low, paying by the hour is cheaper than owning. If your usage is high, owning is cheaper than paying by the hour.

    That's consistent with owners having a lower cost per mile. (If everyone is a cost-minimiser, then people don't become owners unless the cost is lower).

    But whilst minimising cost may be an over-riding concern for those on a low income, many others are willing to pay extra not only for the convenience of having transport right there whenever you want it, but also for the psychological aspects of ownership. For example, I'm told that people attach value to being able to choose the colour of their car.

    People are more than economic units of production...
    orfeo wrote: »
    That's a question about where to put your car if you have a car, which does nothing to address the changing pros and cons of actually owning a car in the first place.

    The pros and cons of owning (versus renting by the hour from a car club) include both any costs of parking an owned vehicle and the distance from one's home to the pickup point for the rented vehicle. I'm saying that we can learn something about what value people place on these pros and cons by observing the parking choices of those who have a car.

    Although arguably the same self-selection bias is present; in cities those who choose to own a car may be atypical.
  • Russ wrote: »
    That's consistent with owners having a lower cost per mile. (If everyone is a cost-minimiser, then people don't become owners unless the cost is lower).

    That's consistent with all the hidden subsidies paid to car owners. If we shifted those subsidies, other forms of transport and different kinds of journeys become cheaper.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Or why not go all the way and use slaves? They're really cheap. Arguments about the benefits of minimizing worker pay usually end up here in one way or another.

    People who drive their own cars work for free. It's hard for a chauffeur to compete with "free".
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    That's consistent with owners having a lower cost per mile. (If everyone is a cost-minimiser, then people don't become owners unless the cost is lower).

    That's consistent with all the hidden subsidies paid to car owners. If we shifted those subsidies, other forms of transport and different kinds of journeys become cheaper.

    The interesting number for comparison is the unsubsidized cost (which of course is something nobody actually experiences) - once you've made that comparison, you can have a rational discussion about subsidies.

    The specific comparison that Russ was making, however, was car-owners to car-sharers. In that comparison, the subsidies experienced by the two groups are the same. And it's sort of obvious that car-shares have greater running costs than single-owner cars: A car-share needs administration to manage booking its use, making its keys available to the user, and so on - that stuff costs money, and isn't necessary for a single-user car. A car-share probably also has regular paid cleaning, and probably more regular maintenance than the typical single-user car. Also, car-shares probably don't buy second-hand cars, so car-shares eat more depreciation than typical owners.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    That's consistent with owners having a lower cost per mile. (If everyone is a cost-minimiser, then people don't become owners unless the cost is lower).

    That's consistent with all the hidden subsidies paid to car owners. If we shifted those subsidies, other forms of transport and different kinds of journeys become cheaper.

    If you shift the subsidies onto car owners then all you're doing is pricing people out of car ownership. It doesn't make the other transport options better, cheaper, or more desirable. And it certainly doesn't improve the lives of those who have been priced out of car ownership.
  • If you shift increasingly larger amounts of the subsidies onto car owners and simultaneously use the revenue to invest in public and active transport so that people have options to get around without using the car all the time.
  • Furtive GanderFurtive Gander Shipmate
    edited February 1
    I suspect you mean if we shift subsidies away from car owners to public transport, then car owners will pay the actual costs of car usage and the money can be used to improve public transport. If some people who can just about afford to run a car (if it's subsidised by everyone else) then can't afford the economic cost of running a car - but lots more people find improved public transport is now perfectly usable (more routes, extended routes, higher service frequency...) that's an overall good.
  • Mr.Google tells me that the UK public sector spent 11 billion quid on roads last year (2019-20). 356 billion vehicle miles were driven, being 278 billion miles of cars and taxis, 55 billion miles for light commercial vehicles, 17 billion for HGVs, and about 3 billion each for bikes, motorbikes, and buses/coaches.

    So the total state expenditure on roads is about 3p per vehicle mile. Petrol costs an average of 15p a mile for UK cars, of which about half is fuel duty.

    Clearly when @Doc Tor talks about hidden subsidies paid to car owners, he's talking about something other than this. Perhaps he or @Alan Cresswell could show us their figures?
  • So the total state expenditure on roads is about 3p per vehicle mile. Petrol costs an average of 15p a mile for UK cars, of which about half is fuel duty.

    Clearly when @Doc Tor talks about hidden subsidies paid to car owners, he's talking about something other than this. Perhaps he or @Alan Cresswell could show us their figures?
    Government estimates for 2015 suggest that each additional kilometre driven caused an average of 17p of societal harm
    Source

    If fuel duty is 7.5p a mile, and the wider cost is (at least) 17p a mile on top of the 3p spent on the network, then there's a huge deficit.

    On top of which, free parking, out-of-town shopping centres you can't walk or bike to, having road traffic laws designed almost solely for automotive transport. How much is planning laws? How much is a rarely-enforced 30mph speed limit? How much is the legacy of 70 plus years of car-first traffic management?

    My own local area - my own council - have been trying to regenerate the town centre for probably 3 decades now, ever since they broke ground on the largest out-of-town shopping centre in Europe, and wondering why nothing they do has worked. When the car parks are larger than the footprint of the mall, it doesn't take much to realise they gone done fucked up.

    To add insult to further injury, the councils have been trying to impose a Low Emissions Zone to combat pollution - laudable in itself - without acknowledging that all the past road planning has specifically and deliberately driven all traffic through two pinch points creating huge pollution corridors next to where people live and work. With no alternative routes people can take to go either east-west or north-south, the LEZ was easily derided as a money-spinner for cash-strapped councils, rather than a necessary imposition to save lives and improve the environment.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    Government estimates for 2015 suggest that each additional kilometre driven caused an average of 17p of societal harm Source

    Thanks, Doc. I'll note that 80% of that cost is attributed to "congestion". I'll need to read the full document to understand what it means by that before I can sensibly comment.
  • The category "congestion" is largely the time spent by drivers sitting in congestion. Maybe you think that as that's a self-imposed cost (after all, those drivers are all in the queue adding to the congestion), and it goes against the "driver doesn't pay for their own time" argument. If you want to take that out of the equation then you get 4p per km of costs (6p per mile) to add to the 3p per mile for road construction and maintenance = 10p per mile cf 7.5p per mile from tax on driving. And, that subsidy is much higher for hybrid and electric vehicles where there's no fuel duty to offset the costs (the pollution and greenhouse gas costs will be reduced, but not the road building/maintenance, and we can assume the costs of accidents would be similar.
  • Thanks, Doc. I'll note that 80% of that cost is attributed to "congestion". I'll need to read the full document to understand what it means by that before I can sensibly comment.

    OK, so that congestion cost is dominated by the value of the time of the car users, drawn from some standard table of how much an average person's time is worth. There's a small contribution from the extra fuel costs for all those cars idling in traffic jams, but almost all of it is derived by comparing the time it would take to make the journey on uncongested roads with the time it takes in the presence of congestion, adding up all this wasted time, and labelling it as a societal cost of congestion.

    That's not an unreasonable approach, so long as the same approach is taken to costing alternative transport modes. So if Joe could drive to work in 20 minutes in the absence of congestion, but congestion means it takes him 45 minutes, that's 25 minutes of societal cost. If Joe, instead, rides the bus, and the bus takes half an hour to go from the stop closest to Joe's work to one closest to his home (let's assume Joe is fortunate to work on a single bus route from his home; that the bus is not impeded by congestion; the bus will be slower than the uncongested car, because it has to stop at stops, and probably takes a slightly less direct route 'cause it goes past other people's houses first), let's assume that Joe has to wait an average of 5 minutes at the bus stop for his bus to arrive, and has to walk 5 minutes home from his bus stop. So Joe's bus journey takes him 40 minutes, which is a societal cost of 20 minutes vs the uncongested car cost that we were using as a benchmark.

    Now sum over all people.

    You make the point that a lot of the "hidden subsidy" is caused by the fact that our towns and cities have been designed around car use, citing large out-of-town shopping centres with massive car parks as an example. The "subsidy" here being that the owner of the shopping centre doesn't have to pay much tax on the portion of the site that is used as a car park, but would have to pay lots of tax if it was more shops?

    I'll certainly agree that we assume that people drive, and that this assumption means that if you don't drive, it's harder for you to access many things. Assume that cars magically vanished, and everyone rode the bus (at least within large towns and cities). All those massive car parks would vanish, to be replaced by somewhat larger bus stops to handle the increased traffic; the absence of car parks would mean that you could pack more shop & things closer to the bus stop. You also wouldn't have people going to the supermarket to do a week's shop for a family, because nobody can carry that much. Either you have a massive shift to deliveries, or people have to shop every day. Currently, both of these things take too much time: unless you can just nip in to the shop for 5 minutes on the way home from work, shopping every day is too time-consuming (that'll be a big societal cost by the metric used above). Deliveries currently take a long time because the system is crap - supermarkets give you big time windows when you have to commit to being at home waiting, on the off chance that some food might arrive. If we magically restructured our society around deliveries, we'd have some better arrangement that didn't require people to hang around (big societal cost!) so much.
  • And, that subsidy is much higher for hybrid and electric vehicles where there's no fuel duty to offset the costs (the pollution and greenhouse gas costs will be reduced, but not the road building/maintenance, and we can assume the costs of accidents would be similar.
    Yeah - that paper is pointing out that the taxation regime hasn't really caught up with the technology. And it's true enough that you need to find a way to charge electric & hybrid cars for road use, although you could argue in favour of a short-term subsidy to help encourage people to switch to electric. Ideally a way that doesn't require lots of expensive infrastructure.
  • And it's true enough that you need to find a way to charge electric & hybrid cars for road use, although you could argue in favour of a short-term subsidy to help encourage people to switch to electric. Ideally a way that doesn't require lots of expensive infrastructure.

    A power station at every single motorway service station. An almost complete rewiring of the National Grid. Turning every lamppost into a plug-in point. The increased wear-and-tear on the roads due to EVs being proportionally heavier than their IC counterparts.

    Good luck with that.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    A power station at every single motorway service station. An almost complete rewiring of the National Grid. Turning every lamppost into a plug-in point. The increased wear-and-tear on the roads due to EVs being proportionally heavier than their IC counterparts.

    Good luck with that.

    Sorry - what I wrote was confusing. I meant that you don't want expensive infrastructure to be necessary to support however you charge for road use in the absence of fuel tax. Infrastructure for electric vehicles themselves - well, sure - if you want electric vehicles, you've got to have the infrastructure to support them.

    HGVs weigh about 10 tonnes per axle. Electric cars weigh one tonne per axle. Road damage scales like the fourth power of axle weight. Cars drive 20 times as much as HGVs per year. Which means that HGVs do 500 times the damage that cars do to roads. Double the mass of each car, and HGVs still do 30 times the damage that cars do.

    Except in unusual circumstances, I don't see that the mass of private cars makes a difference to your road repair costs.
  • Except in unusual circumstances, I don't see that the mass of private cars makes a difference to your road repair costs.
    I've not done the calculations, but as a BOTE estimate, if 50% of the spend is on local roads, and most HGV miles are on national roads, then increasing the weight of private cars is indeed going to cause costs to increase.

    I do get the personal freedom that comes with a car, but I also understand that that is definitely a trade-off with other forms of transport and at a cost to other people.

    If I drive into town, I can park for 60p an hour. If I take the bus into town, it's £4 return (it's about 3 miles), and I've already paid for the car, the fuel, the insurance, and I've baked in the repairs and servicing. If the parking was more expensive, or the bus cheaper, that matrix of costs would change. It would change again if I paid an extra 20p a mile, and again if I had to pay a LEZ charge. And again if I knew I could get any bulky purchase delivered back to my house for a small fee. And would certainly change again if I knew I could leave my bike in a manned secure storage area like they have for car parks. And again if I wasn't forced to mix with badly-driven traffic moving at 30-40mph. And so on.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    I've not done the calculations, but as a BOTE estimate, if 50% of the spend is on local roads, and most HGV miles are on national roads, then increasing the weight of private cars is indeed going to cause costs to increase.

    Fair enough - if you have roads that are only driven on by cars, then that seems reasonable enough.

    A double decker bus weight 12 tonnes or so (6 tonnes per axle) and carries maybe 100 people, if it's packed full with standing passengers and no Covid. If you replace cars carrying individual people with full buses, your road damage goes up by a factor of 13 (assuming your cars are 2 tonnes each).

    If you want to minimize road damage, you want us all on bicycles. (I don't actually know how little traffic you have to have before weather damage is more important than vehicle damage. Motorbikes?)

    Doc Tor wrote: »
    If the parking was more expensive, or the bus cheaper, that matrix of costs would change.

    Sure. Last time we had a family trip to the UK, we wanted to take the train (because we were going from the airport to my parents' house, and hanging out with them for a week - we didn't really need to have our own car). But it was cheaper (by a factor of 2 or 3) to rent a car from the airport, drive it to my parents' house, and park it on their driveway all week than it would have been to take the train (and that was with cheap advance purchase tickets. I shudder to think how much we'd have had to pay to travel at peak times). And then we had the car, which meant I could drive and Mum didn't have to. To be fair, a car that's full of people scores quite favourably on emissions and congestion scores, too.

    I think there's two different ways you can think about this sort of thing. You can start from the status quo, and then think "what changes if I make this change to the cost of car operation, bus service, or whatever" or you can think about unsubsidized costs, and then consider what social goals are worth subsidizing, and what's the most efficient way of achieving them. But it's critical that the comparisons are made on a fair basis - if time spent sitting in a car is counted as a cost, then time spent sitting on, or waiting for, a bus is also a cost. And perhaps this is as good a way of incorporating service frequency as any - if there's an hourly service, you have to wait half an hour, on average, for it to come, so you incur a time cost of half an hour plus journey time.
  • So there is a problem with bicycles.

    Leaving aside the issue of appearing/disappearing cycle paths, being a vulnerable road user etc. (Having great metabolic fitness is less use when run over by an articulated lorry.). There is the issue of job design - how far you need to travel in a day (though that may reduce with widespread video calling.)

    More immediately there is the problem of it often being painful. Most people are pain averse. The saddle issues need sorting.

    There is the issue of maintenance - the thing about driving is convenience. Getting a chainless bike, with solid tyres, hub integrated gears with dynamos that run the lights is possible - it is not cheap.

    There is the issue of fitness, electrically assisted bikes need to come down in price. People acquire underlying conditions and injuries as they age and they still need to be able to travel.
  • A double decker bus weight 12 tonnes or so (6 tonnes per axle) and carries maybe 100 people, if it's packed full with standing passengers and no Covid. If you replace cars carrying individual people with full buses, your road damage goes up by a factor of 13 (assuming your cars are 2 tonnes each)
    While it's true that a 12t bus does more road damage than a 2t car, I'd be surprised that the bus does more damage than 100 cars. Or, even 50 cars if we assume an average occupancy of two per car.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    I do get the personal freedom that comes with a car, but I also understand that that is definitely a trade-off with other forms of transport and at a cost to other people.
    [my emphasis]

    I don't think anyone doubts that there are trade-offs when making transport choices.

    The thread started off about socialism. For me the interesting question here is something like "what is it about socialism that makes socialists consistently favour public transport ?"

    And of course the socialists among us will try to argue that both are entirely rational. But that's no real answer.

    The point is less whether cost-per-mile calculations show that cars are subsidised than why you want to interpret the numbers that way.

    Doc's sentence above suggests that individuals choosing the best mode of transport for them are somehow being selfish. That individually-owned vehicles somehow embody an I'm-alright-Jack attitude which is morally bad.

    Or am I reading more than is there ?


  • No, and yes.

    Why should you, the libertarian, be forced to pay - through worse health, lower house prices, higher transport costs - for my individual choices? You'd have every right to present me with a bill for the extra costs you've incurred.

    On the other hand, a moral person recognizes that selfishness does often mean that others are inconvenienced, harmed, and they have to spend time and money clearing up other people's shit. And they're not going to want to inflict that damage on their community.

    Obviously I'm B rather than A, but if putting the case for change in purely monetary terms gets us the change we need, then okay.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Of course, the whole conversation about how essential cars are does to some extent paper over the fact that they're only a bit over a century old.

    They replaced previous transport infrastructure. I don't particularly see why they shouldn't be replaced in their turn by some kind of improved transport.
  • A double decker bus weight 12 tonnes or so (6 tonnes per axle) and carries maybe 100 people, if it's packed full with standing passengers and no Covid. If you replace cars carrying individual people with full buses, your road damage goes up by a factor of 13 (assuming your cars are 2 tonnes each)
    While it's true that a 12t bus does more road damage than a 2t car, I'd be surprised that the bus does more damage than 100 cars. Or, even 50 cars if we assume an average occupancy of two per car.

    @Alan Cresswell - I understood @Leorning Cniht to be saying that a bus does 13 times the damage of a car, while carrying up to 100 people compared with the usual car load of 2 people (to average out all the single passenger cars and cars carrying 4 or 5 people).

    AIUI that's a calculation that is done, constraining the design of public transport to ensure that the public transport conveyance is less damaging per person.

    However, we're currently fixated on bus use on the thread in comparison to the car. Train, underground railway and tram are comparatively less damaging once the infrastructure is in place. Train is more efficient for long distance travel, trams are better for metro travel, which is why the huge programmes in south London (the Croydon tram), Nottingham and Edinburgh in recent years.

    I would also suggest that car use tends to increase our more sedentary lifestyles* and leads to dormitory towns, which are societal ills not added into the calculations. I have in my time walked, bussed, cycled and commuted to work using the Tube, and travelled around for my job in several of those roles, one of which was peripatetic across London. I worked on the tube regularly, using a laptop on my lap. I wasn't the only one. Another one I cycled, and usually, across the short distances we were mostly travelling, faster than the drivers.

    I don't find shopping to be the issue many of you are suggesting. I would normally shop several times during the week, although I'm limiting my trips out currently. But I have two supermarkets, several other food stores and a weekly market within 10-15 minutes walk, so it's usually quick and easy - I can pop out for 30 minutes fresh air to get something and take the long way back if I want to stretch my legs or think and walk. I am also using click and collect to get things not available in the local small chain stores but available in the company (e.g. bedding from M&S where I only have a local M&S food, I can do the same from a number of other shops). The way to get more home is use a trolley (from the shop and return it, if being naughty, but that's standard across London).

    * when we used to run the January fitness thread, those of us who were at the top of the table didn't use cars, and automatically exercised more accessing work and play.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    On the other hand, a moral person recognizes that selfishness does often mean that others are inconvenienced, harmed, and they have to spend time and money clearing up other people's shit. And they're not going to want to inflict that damage on their community.

    I think part of the problem some of us have is that you don't seem to be counting the negative aspects of your preferred system as "damage" with quite as much rigor.

    So, for example, having to spend 30 minutes in a traffic jam is classed as a major negative of car use, but having to spend 30 minutes getting to the station/stop then waiting for the train/bus/tram to arrive isn't classed as a major negative of public transport, or is handwaved away with "just have more and more frequent services".
    A double decker bus weight 12 tonnes or so (6 tonnes per axle) and carries maybe 100 people, if it's packed full with standing passengers and no Covid. If you replace cars carrying individual people with full buses, your road damage goes up by a factor of 13 (assuming your cars are 2 tonnes each)
    While it's true that a 12t bus does more road damage than a 2t car, I'd be surprised that the bus does more damage than 100 cars. Or, even 50 cars if we assume an average occupancy of two per car.

    How often do buses actually travel at full capacity? If you want services to be available virtually on demand to virtually everywhere then you are going to have a lot of virtually empty buses driving around. If you set service levels and destinations so that all buses are at or near to capacity then you have a lot of people who can't make the journeys they want to make.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    I don't particularly see why [cars] shouldn't be replaced in their turn by some kind of improved transport.

    The key word there is improved. Once we have an alternative that people consider to be better cars will be replaced.

    But that has to be better in the sense of people choosing it for themselves, not in some kind of ideological, imposed-from-on-high "this is for your own good" sense.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    On the other hand, a moral person recognizes that selfishness does often mean that others are inconvenienced, harmed, and they have to spend time and money clearing up other people's shit. And they're not going to want to inflict that damage on their community.

    I think part of the problem some of us have is that you don't seem to be counting the negative aspects of your preferred system as "damage" with quite as much rigor.

    So, for example, having to spend 30 minutes in a traffic jam is classed as a major negative of car use, but having to spend 30 minutes getting to the station/stop then waiting for the train/bus/tram to arrive isn't classed as a major negative of public transport, or is handwaved away with "just have more and more frequent services".

    Except I've repeatedly expressed my thoughts as existing in a complex matrix of calculations. You, on the other hand, simply express yours as 'will this inconvenience me?' and if it does, you reject it, no matter the cost you impose, unpaid, on others.

    So, yes. Spending 30 minutes in a self-created traffic jam is less about imposing costs just on yourself, and more about imposing costs on those who have to live by the roads where the traffic jams occur.

    For example, the actuarial cost of a life in the UK is £1.8m. It's the figure the government use to work out cost-effectiveness of safety improvements. Government figures also indicate that between 28,000 and 36,000 lives are lost a year through long term effects of pollution. That's a value of £28-36bn, which polluters pay pennies on the pound for, if at all, ever.

    Yes, by all means criticise me for expecting people (myself included) to look up a bus timetable (and honestly, I grew up in a village with precisely zero bus stops and 1 train station 1 mile away. I know how long the walk takes), but you're not actually bothered by this discussion until it threatens to take away a tiny sliver of your personal autonomy.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    I don't particularly see why [cars] shouldn't be replaced in their turn by some kind of improved transport.

    The key word there is improved. Once we have an alternative that people consider to be better cars will be replaced.

    But that has to be better in the sense of people choosing it for themselves, not in some kind of ideological, imposed-from-on-high "this is for your own good" sense.

    I agree, but plenty of people will move on the basis of things like environmental factors.

    Some years ago in Australia, after much resistance, it became a requirement to label whether eggs were from caged hens or free range.

    Within a year or two, one of the major supermarket chains was cutting the range of caged eggs they sold and expanding the range of free range eggs they sold, because more and more customers were buying the free range ones. They were voting with their wallets for it, despite free range eggs generally being a little more expensive.

    As has been discussed here, there are all sorts of things that can be done to tilt the playing field, and that in fact includes some government moves - even government moves that people aren't consciously aware of. Sometimes it's just a question of removing an existing subsidy of some kind.

    But even without that, people's values impact their choices. People do value a cheap cost and convenience, but not absolutely, not over everything else. And the costs of new technologies reduce over time.

    Basically I'm saying "improved" can cover a great many things. And it will be different for different people. When I bought a new car a few years ago, some salesmen were so eager to tell me about various features I was completely uninterested in. The salesman that succeeded in buying me a car was one that asked me questions and gauged what kind of car buyer I was first. Even while we stick with cars, the market will find angles that appeal to people interested in reducing their footprint on the earth. And developers of other forms of transport will do the same.
  • Furtive GanderFurtive Gander Shipmate
    edited February 2
    orfeo wrote: »
    I don't particularly see why [cars] shouldn't be replaced in their turn by some kind of improved transport.

    The key word there is improved. Once we have an alternative that people consider to be better cars will be replaced.

    But that has to be better in the sense of people choosing it for themselves, not in some kind of ideological, imposed-from-on-high "this is for your own good" sense.

    I mostly agree with this, but not the last bit.
    Not "this is for your own good" but "this is for the good of us humans now and future Earth-people and Earth's natural habitats and creatures".

    People do need to choose but less selfishly than we're currently accustomed to.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    Why should you, the libertarian, be forced to pay - through worse health, lower house prices, higher transport costs - for my individual choices? You'd have every right to present me with a bill for the extra costs you've incurred.

    So you're in favour of monetizing all externalities so that individual incentives line up with system-wide optima?

    Carbon taxes at a level that pays for compensating reductions in emissions elsewhere in the economy ?

    Nobody allowed to leave the house unless they compensate others for the delay that their presence on the road or footpath creates ?

    Is this a general principle, or only one you invoke when the choice is one you disapprove of ?
    On the other hand, a moral person recognizes that selfishness does often mean that others are inconvenienced, harmed, and they have to spend time and money clearing up other people's shit. And they're not going to want to inflict that damage on their community.
    This invites the question as to what in your view constitutes selfishness. Is it any choice that is directed at satisfying one's own wants ?
    Obviously I'm B rather than A...
    ¿¿¿
  • orfeo wrote: »
    Basically I'm saying "improved" can cover a great many things. And it will be different for different people. [snip] Even while we stick with cars, the market will find angles that appeal to people interested in reducing their footprint on the earth. And developers of other forms of transport will do the same.

    I agree. But as I've said on another thread today, I think that will be via reducing environmental impact while retaining the autonomy that comes with personal car ownership, not simply imposing the view that autonomy isn't important.

    Not that that necessarily means retaining cars themselves, of course, but any replacement will need to offer (or improve on!) the same freedom and convenience that cars do.
  • I'm not one for pointing out the flaws in right-wing libertarian philosophy, especially when one of its adherents does it so beautifully for me.

    Neither am I going to engage in a basic ethics course for the hard-of-empathising...
  • orfeo wrote: »
    I don't particularly see why [cars] shouldn't be replaced in their turn by some kind of improved transport.

    The key word there is improved. Once we have an alternative that people consider to be better cars will be replaced.

    But that has to be better in the sense of people choosing it for themselves, not in some kind of ideological, imposed-from-on-high "this is for your own good" sense.

    I mostly agree with this, but not the last bit.
    Not "this is for your own good" but "this is for the good of us humans now and future Earth-people and Earth's natural habitats and creatures".

    People do need to choose but less selfishly than we're currently accustomed to.

    You can't change human nature by government edict.
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