Jan 31 2007
Slow progress on the roads
A small miracle occurred this week - I received an informative answer from a government department.
I asked the Transport department to tell me how many miles of new motorway and trunk road are planned. The answer is:
2007 28 miles
2008 59 miles
2009
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Fancy a radical solution to the railway problem - tarmac them! Read http://www.transport-watch.co.uk/ it makes a good case.
Dear John
I agree on the need to deal with better support for railways by accelerated programmes for rail junctions.
But Labour are correct to see private vehicle journeys as indulgences. In fact they are much worse. We believe the costs of motoring to the economy are about a third of what they should be. The problem with the taxes on private cars is that they do not take account of the externalities of using the roads, such as the
If this was priced into the use of fossil fuels as a Carbon Tax or similar fiscal measure such as Carbon Allowances, perhaps road users would finaly see that it mad more sense to walk those short journeys to the shops, get a bike for work or start using public transport which I find much less stressfull to use anyway.
There already is a carbon tax. It’s called fuel duty. And according to the Stern report on the economics of climate change, it’s about 10p too high (no not explicity stated but implied from the figures he produces).
I hate this talk about how people should walk to the shops. I don’t know if it has occured to these people, but the idea of going to the shops is to do the shopping. That means you’re returning with perhaps a lot of baggage, especially if you’re a home maker trying to feed a family of four. How are they supposed to get their shopping back on foot? Run a relay race?