We don't dent, we die.

wrote:
On 4 Sep, 17:09, Matt B wrote:
Adrian Godwin wrote:
But I'm not so stupid that I want to fix it with more tarmac - that's
been tried for years,
In the century, or so, since the motor vehicle has come to prominence
how much dedicated network have we built to support it - about 2000
miles! The same as the Romans managed 2000 years ago! One-tenth of
that that the railway engineers managed!

Route miles, or "lane" miles? Taking London to Birmingham to be 100
miles (it's a bit more actually), a single track road provides 100
route miles and 100 lane miles. Single carriageway - one lane in each
direction - is 200 lane miles. Were Roman roads wide enough for
passing? Think so, but I'm not sure, but assuming yes, this would be
200 lane miles for them. London to Birmingham can be done on the M1/M6
or M40 which are both a minimum of 6 lanes (3 in each direction), so
this route has a minimum of 1200 lane miles, 6 times what the Romans
had.

All sound points, and I accept your logic, but...

Apply this to our motorway network and I think you'll get rather more
than 2000 miles, and it's a much better measure of capacity.

.... all the lanes are going between the same places and on the same
route though. Even a minor incident on one of the lanes causes havoc
for _all_ of the lanes. With this "backbone" type stategy, the bcakbone
is the bottleneck. Better to have two two-lane (each way) motorways,
than one four-lane one, even if their routes are parallel. Better still
to have two two-lane motorways taking complementary routes.

Add to
that long stretches of 70 mph dual carriageway such as the A9 in
Scotland which while not technically dedicated was built solely for
motorised transport and is barely used by anything else and you'll get
a bigger number still.

They tend to be compromised though, with at-grade roundabouts and
junctions, and the odd tractor, combine harvester or even bicycle race
or time trial.

it doesn't work and never will.
We have never tried it. We provide networks to solve other
communication problems, so why not for motor vehicles?

It's been tried in LA, a city that came in to existence with the motor
car. Look at a map and you'll see masses of freeways, but they still
clog up, and they were (I believe) one of the first with multi-
occupancy lanes (i.e. min. number of people in the car). Motoring
taxes are lower, petrol is cheap, and they still have road rage.

One city, yes. I'm talking about a inter, rather than intra, city, a
national network, to improve times, and journey consistency, between
towns and cities, and to take heavy, long-distance traffic off of our
historic public road network, to allow it to be used once again by the
communities it was build by, and for.

I want motor traffic to be able to travel from Ipswich to London,
Birmingham, or Hull, or from Southampton to Dover, Birmingham, or
Cardiff, or from Holyhead to Birmingham, Dover, or Cardiff, from Stoke
to Sheffield or Nottingham, from King's Lynn to Nottingham or
Northampton, without leaving the motorway. I want the M25 to be used as
originally envisaged, to circle London to the required entrance route,
not as the only available route for _all_ routes between anywhere on the
M1, M40, M4, M3, M23, M26, M2, M11, and somewhere else on another one of
those - it's crazy. What about motorways serving anywhere west of
Exeter, or anywhere east of Cambridge, or practically anywhere in Wales
or off the Glasgow-Edinburgh-Perth axis in Scotland, or the major towns
in the triangle between Birmingham, London, and Bristol. We need to
have a choice of motorway routes, especially between major centres,
similar to that provided by the M6 and M6T, to allow diversions in case
of accidents, etc., without the classic several-hour hold-ups we often
suffer due to a relatively minor incident.

Take a look at the motorway map of Belgium and the Netherlands, or large
parts of Germany to see progress in this respect.

--
Matt B

Matt B" wrote

The root is often their bitterness at being required to pay such a heavy
tax burden to use the road - especially compared to non-motorised road
users.

It's a non-argument. Attitudes wouldn't change if there was tax parity -
they would find a different cause to whine about.

Marc Brett wrote:
Great idea! Confine motorists to bridleways and psychlepaths and give
over the tarmac to human- and animal-powered vehicles on, say, days
evenly divisible by 11.


DB1 x map { $_ / 11 } ("Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday",
"Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday" )
0 0
1 0
2 0
3 0
4 0
5 0
6 0

Cool. Where do I sign up?


-dan

Matt B wrote:
So there we have about £41 billion worth of tax raised purely from
motorists to allow them to use the road. That doesn't include the
^^^^^^^^^^^^

YM "store or operate motor vehicles on the road" HTH. Motorists are
exactly as free to use the road as anyone else, provided that they wish
to walk, cycle, pogo, ride horses, swim, or skate along it. It's only
the additional privilege of using it for motor vehicle purposes that
attracts the extra charges you list.

It's not a tax on the user, it's a tax on the use. Failing to keep
this distinction in mind leads people into entirely bogus "unfair
discrimination" arguments.


-dan

wrote:
Were Roman roads wide enough for passing?

On the basis that all roads lead to Rome, we can assume they were
one-way and therefore need to pass never arose.

We had to wait nearly two thousand years for the invention of the
bicycle before anyone could try going up them in the other direction.



-dan

Daniel Barlow wrote in news:1188953017.18352.0
@proxy02.news.clara.net:

Matt B wrote:
So there we have about £41 billion worth of tax raised purely from
motorists to allow them to use the road. That doesn't include the
^^^^^^^^^^^^

YM "store or operate motor vehicles on the road" HTH. Motorists are
exactly as free to use the road as anyone else, provided that they wish
to walk, cycle, pogo, ride horses, swim, or skate along it. It's only
the additional privilege of using it for motor vehicle purposes that
attracts the extra charges you list.

It's not a tax on the user, it's a tax on the use. Failing to keep
this distinction in mind leads people into entirely bogus "unfair
discrimination" arguments.



In my case it costs me £15 a year more VED for my car than my bicycle. If
I got a more fuel efficient car there would be no difference.


--
Tony

" I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."
Bertrand Russell

Daniel Barlow wrote:
Matt B wrote:
So there we have about £41 billion worth of tax raised purely from
motorists to allow them to use the road. That doesn't include the
^^^^^^^^^^^^

YM "store or operate motor vehicles on the road" HTH.

I mean to _use_ the road with one of the specified types of motor
vehicle (see the rest of my posts). That use can be for travel or for
storage - it makes no difference.

Motorists are
exactly as free to use the road as anyone else, provided that they wish
to walk, cycle, pogo, ride horses, swim, or skate along it.

For which use they wouldn't be motorists, they would be pedestrians,
cyclists, pogoists, equestrians, swimmers, or skaters - neither of which
modes are subject to special taxes to legitimately use the public road -
that imposition is reserved for the mode that most motorists use (as
motorists).

It's only
the additional privilege of using it for motor vehicle purposes that
attracts the extra charges you list.

Which is what I was writing about - remember?

It's not a tax on the user, it's a tax on the use.

Tax, yes. As I said (you even quote it above) "to allow them to use the
road".

Failing to keep
this distinction in mind leads people into entirely bogus "unfair
discrimination" arguments.

Who's arguing about the distinction?

Several are ducking and diving, and deploying all manner of tautology,
in an attempt to obfuscate the issue, but it remains plain:- tax has to
be paid for public road use - but only if that use is with certain
(most) types of motor vehicle - hence the tax only applies to _motorists_.

--
Matt B

Tony Raven wrote:
Daniel Barlow wrote in news:1188953017.18352.0
@proxy02.news.clara.net:

Matt B wrote:
So there we have about £41 billion worth of tax raised purely from
motorists to allow them to use the road. That doesn't include the
^^^^^^^^^^^^

YM "store or operate motor vehicles on the road" HTH. Motorists are
exactly as free to use the road as anyone else, provided that they wish
to walk, cycle, pogo, ride horses, swim, or skate along it. It's only
the additional privilege of using it for motor vehicle purposes that
attracts the extra charges you list.

It's not a tax on the user, it's a tax on the use. Failing to keep
this distinction in mind leads people into entirely bogus "unfair
discrimination" arguments.


In my case it costs me £15 a year more VED for my car than my bicycle.

£15 to allow your car to use the road, even if it never moves. Many,
who have chosen a car with a smaller CO2 footprint than yours, have to
pay £180 to allow it to use the road, even if it never moves. I think
our road use taxes lack rhyme or reason - would you agree?

--
Matt B

On Sep 5, 9:28 am, Matt B wrote:
Daniel Barlow wrote:
Matt B wrote:
So there we have about £41 billion worth of tax raised purely from
motorists to allow them to use the road. That doesn't include the
^^^^^^^^^^^^

YM "store or operate motor vehicles on the road" HTH.

I mean to _use_ the road with one of the specified types of motor
vehicle (see the rest of my posts). That use can be for travel or for
storage - it makes no difference.

It does make a difference. You have no legal right to store a vehicle
on the highway. The highway is for passing and repassing. Not for
stabling. So you still haven't answered the question:

Why should I (as a tax payer including the various duties on vehicle
use) pay for road surface to be maintained so you can store your
vehicle?
If we reduced highway width to what is needed for passing and
repassing, and required people to bear the cost of maintaining parking
spaces then I'm sure we would see a difference in attitude.

It would certainly make suburbia a more pleasant place.

...d

On 4 Sep, 20:34, Tony Raven wrote:

geek

After the Winchester 30-30 rifle because it was originally spec'd for two
30MB spindles

/geek


Actually 30-30 is the name Marlin Firearms gave to the .30WCF
(Winchester Centre Fire) cartridge so their rival's name wouldn't be
associated with their rifles.