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The Forum > Article Comments > Car madness! > Comments

Car madness! : Comments

By Rob Moodie, published 15/6/2006

We need to be eased out of our cars, onto our feet or bicycles, and onto public transport.

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R0bert, thank you for your concern for my mother. She is making the best of it, as her generation tends to do. She would sooner fly to the moon than accept money from her sons, by the way.

>>I suspect that the only advantage of the under-utilised bus service is that somebody else pays most of the cost rather than the person making the trip.<<

Your logic is that a person who does not use a particular service "subsidises" another who uses it. Once you embark upon that mode of thinking, nothing anyone can possibly say will prevent the conclusion that old people are, by their nature, uneconomic propositions.

In a private health fund the claim statistics are skewed "in favour" of the elderly, and "away from" the young. In other words, the young and healthy are "subsidising" the old and frail. Is this to be tolerated? Why don't we adopt a "user pays" approach and charge the young folk nothing, and soak the oldies?

By their nature, truly public services will be uneconomic. How could they be otherwise? If a service were "economic", private enterprise would take care of it, wouldn't they?

Once again, what services should a government provide with our taxes? How can we possibly avoid the situation where one individual believes that they are "subsidising" another?

Try this exercise. Draw a line down the middle of a page. Make a list of all the places our taxes are spent in the left hand column, and mark off all those that benefit you as an individual on the right.

What do you conclude? That you are paying a motza to the government, and get very little in return.

The key to solving this problem will be to rid ourselves once and for all of the ridiculous concept that you can somehow make taxpayer-funded services equally valuable to every member of the public. Doesn't happen. Cannot happen.

Once again, the question is what is the basic reason that we tolerate taxation, and to what use do we believe those taxes should be put?
Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 20 June 2006 7:13:18 PM
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Let's imagine a transport company taking goods for sale to supermarkets around Sydney. The trucks are costed at an hourly chargeout rate. If at least 10% of private car commuters could be enticed off the roads through massive improvements to public transport, the resulting reduced road congestion might mean that my trucks would spend at least 5 hours per week less time on the road and my entire cost strcuture would be improved. Would I be able to pass part of my savings on to supermarkets and they pass some on to consumers etc etc? What would this do to benefit the economy, would any of the benefit flow back to the government and would that help pay for the transport?

Isn't that scenario worth considering?
Posted by PK, Wednesday, 21 June 2006 11:53:38 AM
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Col Rouge, you claim that public transport is "heavily subsidised by car driver taxes". Really?

Let's consider the costs that cars place on the community. There is the cost of builing and maintianing roads, the cost of air pollution to our public health system, the cost of patching up the victims of car accidents through the public health system (and disability benefits), the consequences of congestion for those things that really do need to be moved by road and the damage of Global Warming.

If the value of petrol taxes and car registration add up to less than the total then in fact car drivers are being subsidised by public transport users and bicycle riders, not the other way round.
Posted by StephenL, Wednesday, 21 June 2006 4:10:58 PM
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re ROberts Taxi option for Gran:- I was recently shocked to discover that I can no longer get into the modern taxis here, due to them being too low to the ground without seat-raising facilities and my busted lumber discs and subsequent impaired leg strength and mobility problems-- I have neither grey hair nor am I a gran, tho I have sustained various injuries, some of them from earlier bike and horse riding-- Do wish i'd been more sedentary in the past, I'd have been better off.
I actually need prising INTO my car, as I now avoid the angst of heavy traffic,and the furnace-like heat of parked vehicles in sub tropical summers etc.Some lo-life stole my 20yr.old car which had appropriate seating, and my new 10 year old one only just accomodates (with difficulty) my impairments.
Although govt. wants to reduce vehicle useage especially during peak hours, I notice they schedule meetings, seminars etc for 9am, schedule thousands of people at public hospitals for 8.30am, students start times, and commercial operators do the same.I'm considered quite peculiar when I refuse 9am appointments because I dont see why I should join the rat-race if I'm available for a later time.
Public Transport has been made less user-friendly recently here..e.g., the bus shelters have been removed around these parts and replaced by a sign with no seating or shade. Havent seen anyone use these of late, whereas the shelters often had bus-users from a local private aged facility. Most of the widows I know who dont drive can't access the bus routes due to physical problems aggravated by heat. Furthermore, the trains are designed for commuters only-- try carrying something or luggage. The windows dont open either; if there are any delays you just swelter.
I havent noticed any innovative ideas from the experts, who I dont believe even use public transport, especially the politicians.
Posted by digiwigi, Wednesday, 21 June 2006 9:37:46 PM
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PK your scenario – the variable and random influences which will challenge your ‘scenario’ would make such simplistic calculations void before you got past day one. I would not trust deploying any resources into such a error prone planning suggestion and therefore, observe, even as a ‘scenario’ is lacks all merit.

StephenL – I would note hospital costs are paid by accident insurance schemes. I would note doubt exists as to the real nature or influences of “global warming” and a lot of “global warming”, so I am told is a function of electricity generation, so should we all switch off our air conditioners or room heaters as well?

If you want to come up with some “costs” which the use of the car places on the community, we can debate them but make sure they are “real costs”, not notional and emotional evaluations of subjective numbers which supposedly have a third party relational effect on “life quality”.

The most significant element in any “life quality co-efficient” is the right to exercise “personal choice” and to suggest any government be empowered to direct matters of their electorates “individual and personal choice” sounds and smells of “dictatorship” to me.
Posted by Col Rouge, Saturday, 24 June 2006 9:00:07 AM
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>>If the “needs” were sufficient, the economics to provide them would be sufficient to warrant their supply on a commercial basis.<<

Col, should we apply this equally to our armed forces and our police? Surely the logic is identical - if we felt the need to be secure, we would be prepared to pay for it on a commercial basis, would we not?

The "needs" in our society change with each generation. A hundred years ago, where buses, according to you, didn't exist, we lived completely differently. The majority of folk lived, worked and died within walking distance of their birthplace. Families were mutual-help units, both within and across generations. And where this was insufficient, there grew institutions such as Friendly Societies, Societies of Oddfellows etc. that were built around the concept of reciprocity, rather than profit.

My white-haired mother, as you divined, is of the school of self-sufficiency. She thought Viscount Stansgate was a communist and a traitor to his class, considers the European Union to be Germany's revenge on England for losing the war (and France's attempt at expiation of their guilt for needing our help), thought Margaret Thatcher was a saint and still actively works for the Conservatives.

However, in my youth we were active users of public transport, for the simple reason that we could not afford a car. It must be admitted that we rather took the services for granted, and living as we did in the outer reaches of the East End of London, we had considerable choice of both the standard red London Transport buses, the more expensive (and more sophisticated) Green Line, as well as the London Undergorund.

Today, she has no car (never learned to drive, did she), cannot afford taxis, all her friends are elderly and in the same boat, and her independence and mobility are severely restricted.

But she simply puts it down to "getting on, dear". And still votes Conservative.

Surely there is room in our society for public transport, funded by the taxpayer, designed for those who are unable to meet your exacting financial standards.
Posted by Pericles, Sunday, 25 June 2006 1:10:04 PM
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