Control of car ownership

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This is a pretty unpopular idea, but here goes.

I believe that banning private ownership of cars is necessary to improve the quality of life in the country. I originally heard the argument on Radio 4 a few years back, and I think it makes a compelling case. There are obvious benefits to less cars; pollution, traffic, easier and safer cycling and walking round cities. The usual response to this is that it removes a freedom, and would make people's life infinitely more difficult. I dispute this.

It would take several years or decades to implement, but the lack of cars would be compensated for by an vastly improved public transport network, and a state run taxi-like service. To pay for this, income tax will rise drastically, but this will offset the cost of car ownership, which runs into thousands for most people. Unlike car ownership, it would be a progressive, rather than a regressive, tax, as it would be based on income. For most people, this will result in an increase in disposable income. This would give sufficient money for free local buses, a vast expanse in national rail infrastructure and subsidised rail travel. The state run taxi services would need to be booked in advance, and serve more specific journey needs. These would cost less than taxis today, but still be expensive enough to discourage excessive usage. This would lead to a more equitable society, as well as a much pleasanter living environment.

Businesses present one problem. The likely solution to this is a permit for use of vehicles for business, whose usage is randomly monitored by the state authority. This is the weakest area of the argument, but any suggestions would be welcome!

If we don't make changes now, it'll get to the stage where the government will leave it so late, being too gutless to enforce any restrictions, that they'll simply have to take half the cars off the road. If they got their cojones out and actually made some enforcable laws, the British public would be in outcry for a while, then knuckle down and follow the rules. That's what the British do.

At the very least, I think traffic should just be banned from city centres. Park your car outside, then get a bus or train in. There should be allocated times for certain traffic, like parents on the school run - but unneccessary vehicles like 4x4s in the city should be banned entirely.

This idea could then be adopted into the biggest polluter in the world: the US.

I'm prepared for the deluge of derision.

 

Most of the benefits can be achieved without taking away private car ownership and overhauling the current transportation system. To someone who lives in a city it might be difficult to undestand but in a village of 500 people in northern Finland there are no bus routes within a 50km radious and the way to the nearest grocery store, bank, post office etc. might well be over 20km. It is just unfeasable to maintain any taxi service for such places. I would Imagine that the same would apply in Alaska and probably most of the less densly populated areas of the US.

Now in cities however it might be in order to place roadtolls which is allready done in many places. I'm not sure if it's completely necessary in all places but in order to avoid the bad traffic and pollution caused by it in bigger cities it might be a good idea. Endorsement of public transportation should follow. In general the market will fix this situation to one way or the other soon enough. If fuel prices keep on rising it might well be that only the priviledged few can actually afford private cars and traffic becomes less of a problem.

 

I'm not really sure where I stand on this. I don't think banning cars is really the way to go, but I think that if more money was put into public transport and it really improved, less people would want to own cars. Unfortunately, it seems that public transport is something of a black hole for money. We were promised better bus service where I live, and that was 4 years ago. Nothing yet.

Even attempting to ban privately owned cars would lead to riots. Banning them from large cities, however... That, I think, is a good idea. London Underground isn't the best system i've ever seen, but it works. There's no real need for a car in Central London - Top Gear proved that

 

I agree. Outside of major urban areas a plan like this wouldn't be feasible. I live in a suburb with 35K people, a very small "neighborhood bus" system and really no way to get anything or anywhere without a car. The grocery store is about a 1.5 miles away which is within walking/biking distance, but you would probably have to go every day as hauling the groceries back would be a chore.

The number of "state run" taxis would have to be enormous to service our population and we are a small to medium town.

This plan also runs into weather related problems. When it is sunny and 70 degrees out people don't mind walking and biking. I don't think I would want to have to do that in a New England January however.

The ramifications to the economy would also be a significant hurdle. If people couldn't own cars it would destroy a huge industry and all of the service industries that feed off of it.

Unfortunatly, Utopia only works in imagination.

 

I don't like the idea at all. There's a lot of areas in everyday life that you need a car. For starters, as Morogroth already pointed out, most areas do not have sufficiently developed public transportation systems for this to be practical. The only places in the US where there is good public transportation is in major cities, and there most residents don't own cars. For me, there's no practical way for me to get to work without a car.

Then there's daily activities. My wife took my infant son grocery shopping yesterday. How the heck is she supposed to carry bags of groceries and the baby using public transportation, and then carry them back to the house? It's much easier to push the cart to the car, load the baby in the back seat, the groceries in the trunk and drive home.

My issue is this: How are we supposed to transport anything too big or too cumbersome for one person to carry if we are restricted to using public transporation? Are businesses prevented from using trucks and the like for deliveries? I'd have a difficult time getting the groceries home from the store, but I'd have a much harder time if the grocery store was empty.

 

I don't like the idea either, the first objection is a principal objection. I believe that this is theft of property and freedom, which is something that I'm not allowing the state, nor the "majority of the population" to do.

Second fact is that no state-controlled or subsidized field is going to deliver good or even cheap service. This has been shown thousands of times in the last few decades. Any time the state nationalized a service, the quality of service dropped into an endless pit and the prices skyrocketed. Perhaps it's not obvious in England, but here in the Netherlands, which has to be one of the most goverment controlled nations in Western Europe, deficits, high costs and bad service are standard in every field controlled or subsidized by the goverment. Healthcare, public transportation, education, housing, you name and it sucks.

 

I know that it will never happen, hypothesising, that's all. Although I do think the reasons why it would never happen are interesting, and indicative of problems with both democracy and attitudes.

The point about public transport I don't think is valid. The rationale behind the whole plan was to improve the public transport system to a completely different level. It'll present investment on an unprecedented scale.

The problem here is, everyone is looking at it through the eyes of the present. Of course, if we got rid of cars today, then public transport would be disastrous. The point is, everyone in the country would be taxed several thousand pounds more per annum, in order to make the public transport network incredible. This would be less than the cost of running a car, so wouldn't dramatically impact on people's disposable income. What's more, is that it would benefit those worst off in our society, as it would base such a tax on income.

 

I would LOVE to have a car-free life! Philadelphia now has two car-sharing services, whereby urbanites who don't regularly need a car can make arrangements to have one as needed without the hassles or limitations of a rental service. I think it's a grand idea, and I really hope it takes off. The major commuter highway in the area was recently closed for several days for an emergency repair - I hope at least a few people got a wake-up call that public transportation isn't as bad as they think. That said...

As much as I want to see the world go car-free, I don't think people are ready to do it - especially people who don't live in densely-populated areas. There's a undeniable degree of freedom and convenience that comes with a car. For example, take my plans for the evening: I'll get off my commuter train at ~1650, pick up my son from daycare, stop at the grocery store before going home, and go to a meeting at 1930. There's no bus or cab service here that would let me accomplish all of those tasks in time; I suppose I could take my bike with the kid-trailer, but I'd hate to lug a week's-worth of groceries home that way, and again the timing would be tight.

Something has to happen to make people realize that they don't really need a private car as much as they think before BA's idea could really work.

 

True, but it would take several years to set up a system (and that's in England - never mind the US that has much more remote areas where it would likely take decades to reach some particularly remote areas), and during those years people would be paying thousands of dollars more per year in taxes, AND have to pay for vehicle upkeep.

I don't see a way around that problem. You couldn't ban cars without already having the public transportation network setup, and you can't set up a public works project of that magnitude without public funding. How do you propose a solution for people who can't afford to be taxed thousands of dollars more while still maintaining a car? Heck I consider myself to be middle-class, and I couldn't afford thousands of dollars more taken out of my paycheck every year. There's a lot of other people a lot worse off than I am who certainly would have an even more difficult time than I would.

EDIT: One last issue: What about eldery people who would have a tough time even walking a few blocks for public transport? Taking away their vehicles would severely limit their mobility.

 

While it is a good idea, it would be impossible to implement. Public transportation systems take a long time to implement and get running properly. I lived in Vienna, which has one of the finest public transportation systems in the world. It takes about 45 minutes to get from anywhere in the city to anywhere else. Interestingly, this holds no matter where the start and end points are, as the further you are going the faster the mode of transport and the less time spent waiting are.

However, Vienna has tram lines, railroads, and subways that have been in service for decades. It is also a relatively densely built city which expanded with public transportation in mind. Building a public transportation like that from scratch in a mid-sized American city (like the one where I live now) would probably cost billions of dollars and years of construction work. Many American cities were built with cars in mind, and are not laid out in ways that are compatible with public transportation.

The mini-taxi is another good idea, it is only now becoming feasible thanks to GPS, wireless connections, and cheep electronics. Where I am living, there is a private company that operates time-shared cars. You sign up for it and get access to the cars. You can then reserve them online and/or using a mobile phone. Handling the logistics involved in such an operation would have been impossible (Or at least prohibitively expensive expensive and labour intensive) until recently.

Of course, public transport quality is always relative. I city in the USA I am in right now is considered to have some of the best public transport in the country, but is woefully inadequate compared Vienna. While people I knew in Vienna found that pathetic compared to Singapore.

 

I think Morgoroth summed it up at the start. No public transport system, public or private, can ever really be feasible outside large cities. Public transport relies on large groups of people wanting to travel at the same time from the same origin to the same destination (or at least along the same route). In large cities this is obviously common place, in remote areas it will never occur. In smaller cities/larger towns it will be limited but cannot replace private transport. I used to get the bus from my commuter town to college because large groups of people moved between the two locations, making the journey quick and cheap. Since I started work I'm now travelling to an area of the city where much fewer are journeying to and so the door to door journey time would be at least 2 hours minimum each day compared to 50 minutes by car. Plus I'm frequently out of the office anyway, needing to bring several cases to a client that could be situated in the countryside. So public transport isn't really an option.

I would say the the most important thing for the future is to ensure that, like Vienna, cities are built and expanded with public transport in mind. Dublin in my country is used by the EU as an example to the new member states as to happens if you do not do this. As it expanded it sprawled widely into commuter towns for miles, without providing public transport for these areas. The result is traffic gridlock far in excess of what one would expect for a city that size. Putting in transport afterwards is also more difficult and costly as you're now forced to build over or around what's just been built.

I don't think that people are, in general, opposed to taking public transport. They must, however, regard it as a superior alternative. It should be fast, clean, safe and reliable. My college bus used to occasionally not show up for no discernable reason but missing a lecture or two wasn't that big a deal. Most employers, however, would not look kindly on employees regularly showing up an hour or two late for work.

I suppose one of the most important points of planning is to ensure that cities are built densely in the first place. Not necessarily putting in skyscrapers but just ensuring that they don't sprawl outwards for miles. That would immediately make public transport and other services more feasible to provide, even very costly schemes.

 

That would only save money if I have a car now. I don't have a car. I always travel by bike or using public transportation because it is cheaper. If you're going to take my money anyway, then why should I be taxed the same amount as someone who used a car all his life for no good reason?
You could create a whole new bureau that will determine who will be taxed and how much taxes they will pay, but then you would also need to take more from everyone to pay for this bureau.

The reason why less-polluting cars are coming in so slowly is because they are more expensive than polluting cars and I still would have to pay ridiculous taxes for using the damned road. I think that if they would give huge discounts on car-taxes and gas-taxes, then people would be more inclined to buy a green car.
Money is the motor of the world. If there would be more demand for cleaner cars, then a lot of car companies would produce them. At this moment, only car companies with a lot of money to burn can afford to do research in less polluting cars. You can create this demand by making cleaner cars so much cheaper than polluting cars. They got the whole thing backwards here in the Netherlands, if they want you to stop doing bad stuff, they enfore more taxes instead of reducing or removing taxes on good stuff. In any case, I'm paying more.

 

Fine in cities, which is where Ken is coming from with the congestion charge. However, in rural life it simply won't work - I travel 17 miles every day down small back lanes to get to work. As it happens, there is actually an existing public transport route, by Train, Bus (Cross Country), then Train again. However it takes 2 Hours each way (30min drive) and adding 3 -hours to an already long day isn't acceptable - I'd have no home-life what-so-ever. Realistically there is no chance public transport would take a more direct route as it won't be financially (or environmentally) viable route as it's a connection between two small towns - so very few people take the same route.

The idea of a Taxi system to do the same journey is pointless. I'd still be doing the same journey every day, but the Taxi driver would probably have to return to my home-town to get another suitable fare so doubling the overall mileage.

The alternatives are "move job", "move house", or get the business to move it's location. First I don't want to do (and their'd be hell to pay if you told the nation they had to move job to fit in with a public transportation system), second I can't afford the area, and third - people drive from all points of the compass so others would have to do 1 or 2. It's just not happening dude.