Taxation on Motoring

[presta]

From the London School of Economics:

"Passenger transport has significant externalities, including carbon emissions and air pollution. Public health research has identified additional social gains from active travel, due to the health benefits of physical exercise. Per mile, these benefits greatly exceed the external costs from car use. We introduce active travel into an optimal fuel taxation model and characterize analytically the second-best optimal fuel tax. We find that accounting for active travel benefits increases the optimal fuel tax by 44% in the USA and 38% in the UK. Fuel taxes should be implemented jointly with other policies aimed at increasing the uptake of active travel."

TLDR? Short blog here.

 

[Drago]

It don't work, at least not in the UK. People would go bankrupt or lose their houses through mortgage non-payment before walking half a mile each day.

It raises cash, but unless its so extreme it simply makes motoring unaffordable, it isn't much of a behavioural incentive in the lazy, self entitled, climate change denying UK.

 

[Moodyman]

Our local authority is increasingly making driving less appealing by closing many side roads through planters and building more cycle paths (Dutch style segregated). They’ve removed lots of free parking and reduced speed limit to 20 mph.

 

[albion]

It would work. Car tax is an easier route to take than taxing per mile.
Upping taxes is the way to go, especially in this current fossil fuel emergency.
Small electric 28mph quadricyles at zero tax would make for a near instant sea change them being suitable for much of travel to work transport.

I would go even further and also add car ownership to council tax.

 

[presta]

It don't work, at least not in the UK. People would go bankrupt or lose their houses through mortgage non-payment before walking half a mile each day.

It raises cash, but unless its so extreme it simply makes motoring unaffordable, it isn't much of a behavioural incentive in the lazy, self entitled, climate change denying UK.

The very least we can do is correct a dysfunctional transport market in which the sirloin costs more than the offal, and congestion is the only deterrent to more demand.