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The Forum > Article Comments > Should public transport users pay their way? > Comments

Should public transport users pay their way? : Comments

By Alan Davies, published 1/10/2010

Subsidising public transport makes it less useful to those who really need it.

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Did any of you lot ever do math? Flo, the motorists pays 8 times as much in taxes as is spent on roads.

If everyone stopped driving for one week, every state in Oz would collapse, & the national would be close to them. That is how much our governments depend on the money they rip out of the motorists in fuel excise, tax & GST.

The motorists has paid dozens of times over for the miserable roads we have had in return.

You could drop the fuel tax rip off, & charge only for road usage, but that would have to be so high that to replace the motoring taxes that pay for everything but roads, that the rip off would be obvious & bring huge resistance.

Steven I was referring to the idea, not the person. Hope I didn't shock you too much.

The answer is so simple. Old fashioned city centers are no longer viable. Get most of the bureaucrats out of the city, there is no reason for most of them to be there. Put a moratorium on high rise commercial construction within 10 Km of the city, & convert any that are no longer viable to apartments. Over 10 years the congestion would be cured.

Continued
Posted by Hasbeen, Saturday, 2 October 2010 1:19:56 PM
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Continued

As an employer on the mid Gold Coast, I could offer 15% lower wages than Brisbane city, & be flooded with applicants of people who wanted to just stop having to drive, or public transport to the city.

Many of these people told me it was not only a much better life style, but they were up to 14% better off, financially, despite the lower wages paid on the coast. We even had staff from the southern suburbs of Brisbane, who found the drive, against the traffic flow was so much quicker, easier, & cost effective, they would never go back to working in the city.

Yes, Cities can strangle on their congestion, & asphyxiate on the fumes, but at least stay there.

Alternatively, they can introduce a congestion charge, & go bankrupt, as more people refuse to be ripped off by such rubbish, & just stay away.

I can not imagine anything that any trader in Brisbane could offer me, to get me to drive into the place, & nothing anyone could offer me would get me on a bus. I did quite like trains, when the station was close enough for my restricted walking to allow me to use them. The Air train to the airport was a favourite, but recent unreliability of QLD rail has put trains off the list for me.

Public transport, like the horse & cart, at least while there is any other option, is a dinosaur, it just has not lay down to die, quite yet.

Just what we do if peak oil is a fact, & alternatives are not found I don't know, although I did like steam trains as a boy. Can you imagine how many horse & carts it would take to transfer the stuff from the nearest railway station to your local supermarket?

Congestion might be a very minor problem.
Posted by Hasbeen, Saturday, 2 October 2010 1:28:31 PM
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Fantastic posts Hasbeen, I agree with your proposals.
Posted by King Hazza, Saturday, 2 October 2010 2:38:13 PM
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While this may be a bit out of thoughts, I wonder if you are comparing roads in the UK and the US with what we have got. Understand that the UK is 1/25 of the area of Australia so we may have more road, and it has about 100 times the population, so their ability of financing their roadworks, is at least 2,500 times better than us. If you had been driving on the roads in the '50's and '60's like me and others were, you might appreciate the relatively good roads now. I still think that if the cost of bus transport was taken out of our rates, and would be covering us and our children, I don't think there would be any reason to complain, the busses and the routes they run, makes it available for all on the routes or near obviously, and could be allowed for, and even if you only use it at your convience or not at at all, it is there for you.
Posted by merv09, Saturday, 2 October 2010 7:28:09 PM
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Why should public transport be provided on a full cost recovery basis?

It is a public service, it is not a business and we already pay for the service via taxes. People forget that simple fact. What is really needed is a good look at what services the public get for their tax dollar.

Public transport is not one that should be cut while other areas of extraordinary waste go unchecked.

Often it is those concession users who cannot drive cars including the aged, disabled and the poor who depend on public transport.

Public services are just that 'services'. They are not business enterprises and should not be compared with the profit motives of business - this just repeats the mistakes of economic rationalism which led to crucial services being cut at the expense of window dressing or clayton's policies.

Why is there always a cringe factor when the fact is some services will always need to be subsidised to provide an 'efficient' service that actually meets demands.
Posted by pelican, Sunday, 3 October 2010 10:15:11 AM
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If people were serious about public transport, space & the impact on the environment then we'd would have a monorail network instead of railway & road transport. Just imagine the low cost due to the simplicity of the infrastructure.
Posted by individual, Sunday, 3 October 2010 1:03:35 PM
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