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With Apologies to the Late, Great Hunter S. Thompson

Strange memories on this nervous night in England. Two years later? Three? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. England in the late twenty-teens was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the city half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the beige Rover 75 across London Bridge at 30 miles an hour, wearing a barbour and a tweed suit. booming through the Blackwall tunnel aimed at the lights of Greenwich, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at roundabout too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for first) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as old and angry as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the river, then up the west end or down the A1 to Hertfordshire or Down in Kent. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Young and Free. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our patriotism would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than three years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Hampstead and look South, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

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The Boomers’ Love of the Motor Car has Enslaved Us All. Autonomous Vehicles could free us.

The Automobile, as with all innovation is first conceived as a replacement for an existing technology. The Horseless Carriage. And at first, it did: the Motor car was the transport of the kind of people who had carriages and staff to drive them.

Then aristocratic youngsters got their hands on their parents’ cars and started to drive themselves. The Car became the aspirational badge of success.

By the 1960s anyone with a middle-class job could have a car. And by the 1980s cars were in the price range of more-or-less everyone.

The Baby-boomers dug up the 1930s cycleways as they built an environment around the motor car. Town centres were demolished, and rebuilt with inner ring-roads during the 60s and 70s. The bicycle was despised as a poor-man’s transport, or the toy of eccentrics, and so not really considered as an option. Nor were pedestrians, who were relegated to dank subterranean holes of rain-soaked concrete filled with ranting, smack-addled derelicts, begging for small change in puddles of cheap lager piss. Walking to the town centre from residential districts became unpleasant. Cycling was effectively banned. Real people who had to do things, drove cars.

Unfortunately, driving into a town or city centre was little better, however many urban expressways were built. Too many people wanted to take too many cars into too little space. So businesses moved out of the centre, to the urban edge, next to vast, windswept car-parks. The result is urban sprawl as suburbs without amenities forced people to travel beyond human distances. As car ownership expanded, the buses disappeared through lack of use, and kids lost their freedom. Town centres decayed through lack of use. Cycling became a terrifying ordeal of close-passes by tons of angry metal and walking to anything simply took too long.

The Boomers mostly do not go anywhere except by car, and cannot conceive of it being any other way, despite the fact they may have visited Copenhagen or Amsterdam. There are sufficient cars even there for these cities to not cause the Boomers cognitive dissonance.

The result of the world the boomers built is a world which will be utterly miserable for them as they decay into senescence. The boomers’ kids live a long way from them. As do their friends. There is no local shop. Once their eyesight goes and their kids take their car keys away, they will be marooned, day after day as the clock ticks away on their lives, trapped in their homes by the very world they built.

LOL @ the Boomers.

The Netherlands was going the same way in the 1970s, but thanks to a spate of children being killed by motor cars, they decided to change course and design all urban spaces around people, not cars. The result is residential neighbourhoods still have shops even coffin-dodgers can walk to, and thanks to a lifetime of practice, cloggy pensioners can do this:

It’s hard to imagine a british octogenarian mixing it with the lorries on a bicycle on the way to see his grandkids. Thankfully for the Netherlanders’ baby-boomers, unlike the UK’s, built a world that isn’t oppressively hostile to the elderly, something they are enjoying today.

The absurd british fear of the cyclist is something of a stockholm syndrome. Because it is fear. Deep-seated fear of someone who rejects all their society’s assumptions. Fear that their car, and their precious parking space will become worthless. Fear of the freedom, of the lack of regulation, and resentment of someone who is free* of the frustrations of traffic.

Hence the belief that cyclists are scofflaws, who pose a danger to pedestrians. Cyclists do pose a danger to pedestrians. But it is dwarfed by that involving cars. There were no deaths caused by cyclists in the UK between the collision between Kim Briggs and Charlie Alliston, and his conviction and imprisonment for wanton and furious cycling. Of course, had Kim Briggs stepped back into the path of a car doing 12-18 mph, and died, it wouldn’t have made local news, and there wouldn’t have been an arrest, let alone a conviction. There were dozens of incidents where a car killed a person in those 18 months, and the drivers mostly went unpunished; these are near-daily events. Cyclist hurting pedestrians happen in the UK at a perfect frequency: scarce enough to be remarkable, but frequent enough for recall. Availability heuristics reinforce a belief that cyclists are inherently reckless and dangerous.

This is why all the demands of the motoring lobby are to impose all the same frustrations endured by motorists, entirely unnecessarily, onto cyclists. Licensing, testing, taxing and compulsory insurance. Compulsory high visibility clothing, helmets and demands to follow the same, unnecessary and counterproductive rules.

These frustrations do not occur to citizens of Northern Europe, where cycling is natural, comfortable and universal. It’s not the weather: the Netherlands is every bit as dank, windy and wet as the UK. It’s not hills: Germany and Scandinavia are not any less hilly than the UK. It’s that the pedestrian, bicycle and motorcar are considered as different, but equal in the design of roads and urban spaces. Road engineers design out the conflicts and frustrations to both cyclists and motorists by keeping the two parties apart where possible. The netherlands isn’t anti-car, but it is pro-cyclist. I’ve driven in Sweden. It’s far, far more pleasant than doing so in the UK. Why? Because anyone who wants to cycle their journey, can. As a result, there’s less congestion, and parking is easy. Cycling and driving in Northern Europe is, of course vastly more pleasant than it is in the UK. It isn’t a zero-sum game.

Thankfully, there’s a solution: driverless cars, as you can tell by the name, are conceived as a replacement for the car, except you can read a book while being driven by a robot chauffeur, exactly analogous to the attitude of the early car owners to their horseless carriages. But they will not be a pari-passu replacement. People won’t have their driverless car sitting outside their houses, the passenger footwell full of empty twix wrappers, because autonomous vehicles will, at least initially, be very expensive. Instead of spending 95% of their time stationary, they will be collectively owned. Smartphone technology will allow people to summon a taxi appropriate to any journey from a pool of vehicles. Uber treats its drivers so dismissively because they are openly planning for the day they can dismiss all their drivers. Because people hiring such a vehicle will pay the full, rather than the marginal cost, at the time of the journey, of each journey, the incentive to not call the taxi, and walk or cycle will be greater. Because the cost of such a journey will be lower because you’re not paying a driver, there may be more such journeys. Fewer incompetent drivers will reduce both the subjective and objective risk of cycling. Time becomes less important, as people can work or read or relax, so commutes may become longer. How these competing pressures resolve themselves will be fascinating to watch.

Autonomous technology could therefore result in the car becoming the servant of humanity, rather than its master. Transport should be about facilitating people coming together, allowing people to move at the human scale, where possible, not privileging one form of transport over all the others, as now. The driverless car could allow the bicycle, the car and the pedestrian to get on, as multiple clubs in a golf-bag full of ways to get about, as they do rather well in the Netherlands, rather than competing angrily as they do here.

In the meantime, let’s just build some cycle roads and safe urban infrastructure for people on foot, and on bicycles. Everyone will benefit. Especially the boomers whose mistakes have caused us all so much misery.

*Almost all cyclists in the UK also own a car. It’s just we choose to not use it sometimes.

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Autonomous Vehicles Being Trialled in Britain

The UK is aiming to become a hub for driverless car technology, and has sought to iron out the obvious legal and regulatory issues prior to the technology becoming widespread.

I am going to use the word “moron” a lot. This is not a pejorative. Everyone is a moron behind the wheel. Humans are not evolved to process information fast enough, for long enough, to drive safely. We have significant blind spots and cannot see anything at all during saccades, the brain instead approximates, which explains why people often fail to see oncoming cyclists or motorcyclists and even cars, and pull out in front of them at junctions, often fatally. They genuinely, honestly didn’t see. We evolved to over-react to surprising movement in peripheral vision, such as a cyclists passing quite safely on the drivers’ side in a queue of stationary traffic, which triggers an involuntary endocrine response of cortisol and adrenaline, which cause stress and make drivers angry and aggressive towards cyclists. This in turn makes them drive faster and less carefully, because these hormones affect risk-perception. Driving is boring, dangerous and stressful; a significant contributor through that cortisol and adrenaline not subsequently ‘burned off’ through exercise, to obesity. It’s enormously fatiguing on the brain, reducing productivity during the day.

Even if you think you are a “good” driver, this is only relative. You’re not. Consider this: Racing drivers are people who do have better car control, and more practised reactions behind the wheel. They are not considered good insurance risks. Attitude is more important than risk. You want to enjoy the thrill of speed, driving a vehicle. As soon as they are available, the insurance industry will quickly price human driving off the road, effectively forcing driving enthusiasts to get their fix on a race-track. After all, why should other road users who’re just trying to get to work bear unnecessary extra risk for what will be soon after cars can drive themselves, a hobby? This requires remarkably little legislation; just a bit of thought now, and the market and technology to do the rest.

People are suspicious of new technology, and over-rate (often grossly) their own competence behind the wheel, and feeling in control is not the same as being in control, morons don’t realise this. Insurance companies, who rely on statistics rather than rules of thumb which evolved to help bands of hunter-gatherers on the African Savannah, are comfortable with underwriting risk, once driverless cars are seen as more competent than morons. The liability in the event of a crash, the single obstacle cited most often by morons objecting to this technology, has already pretty much been solved. The driver will carry liability, for the car he’s travelling in, as now. Perhaps there will be some shared liability with the manufacturers in the event of software failure, another risk massively over-stated by morons, as they don’t notice the software currently keeping them on the road in their car, right now. But it matters little because the insurance industry has indicated it is happy to wear the risk, because they assess it will be less expensive to have fallible robots controlling 1.5 tons of metal at 70mph, than human morons.

Surveys that say half of people would feel unsafe driving with autonomous cars on the road, and a quarter would never get in one are unsurprising. People are morons because they use inaccurate heuristics to calculate risk. Heuristics which worked for our ancestors, but which are inadequate for the modern world. I, reasonably feel unsafe around morons driving, and welcome technology which will take my life out of morons’ hands and also their lives out of mine for I am too a moron behind the wheel. The views of morons who’ve never considered the issue can be ignored. Once they see autonomous vehicles work, and realise they can read a book, masturbate, or watch telly on the way to work or sleep rather than struggling to stay awake on a long motorway drive, they will quickly accept it.

Google’s driverless car, which cannot yet tell a scrunched up paper from rock, or recognise temporary signs, has had two crashes in the 700,000 autonomous miles (as at mid 2014) driven, but were being driven manually both times. In Google’s words, the car is already driving better than a tired or drunk human. And by 2017, they aim to make it better than the best driver in the world.

Coventry and Milton Keynes are testing the Lutz driverless pods which will initially run on separate paths before being integrated onto the roads. Finally Greenwich will trial passenger shuttles which look like big golf buggys. Not all driverless cars will make you look a wanker, though. Bristol’s Venturer consortium is testing a BAE Systems wildcat, which is probably the hairiest-chested vehicle on the roads, and these are looking at congestion reduction and interactions with other road users.

The implications of driverless cars will be enormous. Some implications are obvious. It will first be employed to replace commercial vehicles, reducing cost of transporting goods and facilitating just in time delivery. Bulk freight may well be moved by long trains of autonomous lorries, saving fuel which can break up nearer destinations.  Car ownership may well be reduced, as urban journeys in one’s own car are replaced by commuting in pods which pick you up as needed. The space not needed for on-street parking may well yield more road space to cyclists and pedestrians. Equally, the prospect of having a car drop the children at school, swing by the shops to have pre-ordered deliveries loaded into the boot, and return might yield more, not fewer vehicles on the roads.

It is likely autonomous vehicles will encourage urban sprawl and long commutes as the commute becomes productive, or relaxing rather than stressful. This may change the design of cities in ways we cannot predict. Just as horses and cyclists’ mass lobbies gave way to the motor car, autonomous vehicles will almost certainly kill the driving lobby and accelerate the move back to “liveable cities” perhaps cities will become like fried eggs with a “liveable” urban core, surrounded by autonomous-vehicle friendly suburban sprawl. Maybe bigger cities will be amoeba with several urban cores, with a cytoplasm of sprawling suburbs. Who knows. What is certain, when I’m cycling, I’d rather share my road with a robot, designed specifically to see me, than with the kind of arsehole who thinks buying a BMW is in any way acceptable behaviour.

I yearn for this technology. Because most of my driving is long-distance, and frankly I’d rather be reading a book than stare at the back of a Vauxall Zafira at 70mph for 90 minutes. And who, really, honestly enjoys a long slog up the motorway?

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What Free Parking Tells Us About UKIP

In UKIP’s “policies for people”, I find two mentions of Free Parking. The first under “The National Health Service”,

“…UKIP will commit to spending £200m of the £2bn saving to end hospital car parking charges in England” 

The “saving” they’re talking about comes from not treating migrants, so the free parking at the hospital is paid for by dead foreigners. It’s a fantasy this money exists, that charging migrants would raise anything like £2bn, and in order to do so, you’d have to set up a payment collection bureaucracy, which cannot be had for £2bn. Do you really think the NHS, whose hospitals are often near town centres should be in the business of providing free parking? Now, there’s a case for providing free parking to some patients, but clearly not visitors, who’ll also “pop to the shops” after seeing granny. And this is why free parking doesn’t work. It’s abused.

The second is under “Employment and small business” where

“UKIP will Encourage councils to provide more free parking for the high street” 

There is no doubt this is popular. It’s a common complaint that parking charges discourage people from visiting the high street in favour of out-of-town stores because of the availability of parking. Parking fines make people angry. Some people feel  It’s all part of a “war on the motorist”. Free parking is a simple policy, easily sold. And massively, demonstrably counter productive. If you allow free parking, it will accelerate the decline of the High Street as a shopping venue.

UKIP is entitled to its own opinion, but not it’s own facts. And this policy, like so may others is based on beliefs that are to put it simply, false. Most business owners on any given street over-estimate the percentage of people arriving by car, often significantly. Retailers think car drivers are richer, and therefore more valuable as customers. They aren’t.  Business owners think people drive, park in front of their shop, get back in their car and leave. They don’t. People tend to park, mooch about, visit a number of shops, have a coffee, before heading home. Retail is a leisure activity on the high street. Retail in an out of town store is much more focussed. because who wants to go to the wind-swept car-park outside PC world and DFS unless you want a laptop or a sofa? Out of town retail is not a substitute for high-street shopping.

The key to making parking a part of a successful high street is turnover. A high street might contain parking for twenty or thirty cars. If those cars are there all day, the thousands who will be needed to keep those shops open will, if they are coming by car, find somewhere else to leave it, and in circulating to find a spot, will cause congestion. Parking charges are about valuing that scarce space, so that people come, for thirty minutes, or an hour or two, do their shopping and leave, freeing space for someone else to do the same. (This is also the logic behind encouraging cycling – twelve bicycles can be parked in the space occupied by one car) The first 30 minutes of most parking is nominal. The second hour might cost a lot more than the first. That is certainly the case with the town centre car-park where I live. And there is a vibrant high street here.

The key is to see what people do. If it is routinely “impossible to find a space” then the parking charges are too low or more parking needs to be provided (but who pays for this…?). If you can find a space easily, then they are too high and can be reduced. The other consideration for retailers is the leisure component of high-street shopping. The reason pedestrianisation works is because it encourages people to come to an area to spend time and money. Cars make an area hostile to people and leisure. Remove the cars, foot traffic increases, and business benefit. Of course people need to park, but most towns have multi-story car parks, which are out of sight. On-street parking impedes the flow of people. Remove the on-street parking (usually insignificant in towns with multi-story options) and it makes the area more attractive.

Why do people think free, on-street parking is so much more important than it actually is? The answer is the availability heuristic. Cars dominate our urban space. Most town centre streets are lined with them. Other people’s car journeys are more noticeable to us through noise, and time spent crossing roads (externalities) than are journeys by foot or bicycle. Everyone can recall the feelings of frustration in circulating to find a space. We do not recall the visits to the multi-story car park, where space is near limitless (how often have you parked on a roof?). Thus the importance of on-street shop-front parking is over-estimated, next to the paid, limitless off-street option. Count the cars parked down one high street. Twenty? Thirty? Then go to the multi-story behind the shops and look at the spare capacity. On-street parking isn’t necessary or even desirable for a vibrant high street, especially when it’s free.

The answer to high-streets is to provide the right amount of parking, in the right place, at the right price. This does not always mean less, or more expensive parking, but it does require thought about what has been tried, and what has worked elsewhere. Suggesting parking charges are part of a conspiracy to deny the people the use of their car is either dishonest, or stupid. And this is exactly what UKIP are doing. Their simplistic policies are clearly by people who have no interest in public policy beyond their own unexamined prejudices. ‘Free parking’ is a soundbite, designed to buy a vote from someone who’s never thought about the issue in detail, spoken by someone who isn’t interested in public policy and lacks the wit to find out. It might just be ‘Free parking’, but it demonstrates exactly why UKIP shouldn’t ever be allowed to get control of anything.

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Pugeout 3008

Regular readers will know I don’t own a car, I hire one when I need one. Most of the time, I get a newish mid-range Ford or Vauxhall, and I think “this is an excellent piece of design and engineering which does the job of ferrying me about, efficiently and unobtrusively“. Occasionally, I get upgraded. Sometimes it’s a Bigger car, like the VW Passat, which was excellent. So good, I remember nothing about it except I’d have one over a Mercedes, so relaxing and comfortable was it to drive.

My most recent “upgrade” on my hire car however was another in the ‘Crossover’ class; this time a Pugeout 3008. I am not a fan of these cars, being neither fart nor shit. They’re supposed to look like a 4×4, but are rubbish off road. But with an elevated driving position, they aren’t as safe-handling as a hatchback or coupe, but give a feeling of safety to the people driving them nonetheless. This means you’re more likely to drive like an idiot, but less likely to be able to get out of it.

They’re marketed at mums for the school run because they feel safe, but they scream “my husband isn’t doing QUITE as well as he promised when I married him… I want a Range-Rover like that Bitch, Sandra. I bet her husband doesn’t have trouble keeping it up. The slut…“. Unlike the Qashqai, which grew on me, the 3008 was a piece of shit from the off, and did nothing to change my opinion. The radio didn’t scan properly and seemed to be set to the Local commercial station as a default, the AirConditioning wasn’t up to keeping the car cool, even in this anaemic summer, it was so bad, it made a little girl cry. 
The seating position seemed designed around the let’s-see-how-close-I-can-get-to-the-windscreen position occupied by the absolutely terrifying occasional female driver. The seat wouldn’t go back far enough, and the pedals were too close to the seat for my 6’3″ frame.
There was no hand-brake. Instead there was some silly fart-arsing button behind the gearstick, which wouldn’t release unless you had a foot on the brake, rendering a hill start nigh on impossible, unless you can heel-and-toe. I know terrifying occasional female drivers can’t do hill starts anyway, let alone heel-and-toe, but even if a man is driving, don’t get close behind one at the lights on a hill, unless you want a dented bumper. 
The seats were uncomfortable, the visibility to the side was poor, as my vision was blocked by the pillar. The cup-holders got in the way of the gear stick. The arm-rest was un-adjustible, and not very comfortable. The ride was mushy, the engine gutless at low revs but had a horrible step in the power delivery. You didn’t know whether it was going to lurch forward or wheeze astmatically when you put your foot down. I had NO inclination to take it off piste, onto the twisties. 
What’s more, it looks worse than the QashQai, as its wheels are too small. So it’s not even cool; quite what ‘what car’ were smoking, when they awarded it ‘Car of the Year‘ in 2010, is unclear as it’s a hateful, horrid, badly designed little car. About the only thing that was any good was a very easy to use Bluetooth hands-free system. This car only makes sense for blind people who don’t drive, but who like to use a steering-wheel to answer the phone. It’s a car for the dead inside and their hateful snotty infants. If you still care, they’re available from £15,000, though the one I drove was worth over £19,000. If you’re spending that on a car, and you think “This is the best car for me for that money”, I really pity your horizons and you should be euthanised before you add more piss to the shallow end of the gene-pool. 
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When the Law’s an Ass, Try a Nudge.

The motorway speed limit of 70mph is probably the most widely ignored law in the UK. Even when there’s a police car, they do 68mph, you pass them at a stately 72 or so before putting your foot down again. Almost everyone drives on a clear motorway between 70-90mph. This is because cars have got safer and faster. Brakes and Tyres are better.

However average speeds have been dropping recently (and this has led to a reduction in fatalities). The reason has nothing to do with policing, which has been reduced, and certainly nothing to do with enforcement as the Motorway network does not have fixed speed cameras. It is a combination of high fuel prices and the fact modern cars tell you how much fuel you’re using as you’re going along.
Does anyone else try to keep the MPG above 40 on a motorway cruise? If you realise that you double your miles per gallon by dropping from 85 to 70 mph, you’re more likely to set the cruise control at the lower speed and relax. The best thing about this is there’s no government campaign. Private business has given people a data point they’d previously only considered in abstract, and customers respond. The speed limit should be 80mph or higher and enforced strictly.
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Nissan QashQai

One of the benefits of car-free living is that because I hire a car every couple of weeks for the small number of journeys which can’t be achieved by rail or bicycle. I drive lots of new, mid-priced saloons. This means A Very British Dude is an excellent place to read a car review, by someone who hates driving, yet has plenty of experience of driving lots of different cars. What’s the point of reading a review by a driving enthusiast, if you’re not?


LinkI was disapointed when the guy at Luton Airport Hertz handed over the keys to a car advertised like a training shoe, in the “crossover” category. Basically this means it’s a Hatchback, designed to look like a 4×4 to give suburban mums a feeling of superiority from an elevated driving position, and the completely misguided feeling of safety and invincibility this brings. In short, exactly the kind of car I loathe, driven by tosspots I detest. A Nissan QashQai. Specifically a 1.6 litre, 5 door ntec+ version. However. For a country road shlepp on a wet bank holiday weekend, with toddlers and a bicycle, the car made sense.

It would take my canoe, if needed. (My standard measure of “big enough”). The seats folded flat very simply. The interior was well thought out, without stupid cubby holes, but instead well thought out stowage. Nowhere to put a mobile phone though which seems odd for a car so well set up. The rear visibility was dreadful with small windows leaving enormous blind-spots. This was only partially offset by a rear reversing camera, a toy I can’t see myself trusting.

So, what was my toss-pot wagon like to drive? There was no obvious hostility from other road-users compared to the BMW I hired recently (but don’t like to talk about). There were no rattles and shakes, and the whole car had a feeling of being well put together, justifying Sunderland’s reputation as an efficient car-plant. The road-holding was excellent, the ride was comfortable, the stereo was easy to use, and gave good quality sound. Radio 3 was playing music written before 1800 (no dischordant modernist nonsense) so when the M1 traffic slowed, I took the next junction and went cross country. Off the motorway, I found myself actually enjoying driving the bloody thing, pootling back across Bedfordshire, I saw the point of built in sat-nav, having never used a car so equipped before. So having already left the motorway, instead of taking the quicker A road route, I took the shorter, but slower twisty route through the villages.

The car cruises down a motorway or along an A-road pretty smoothly, but in the country, the engine was strangely gutless, and the gear-box was sloppy. But despite this, I liked the car. If you gave it enough revs, it was nippy enough. The elevated driving postition had surprisingly little effect on handling in the corners and I found myself chucking it into the bends with a bit of abandon. I may even have turned the traction control off.

I averaged 36.8 miles per Gallon, without driving like a pensioner. Funnily enough, this was absolutely identical to the milage I got for the same journey with a Fiat Stilo 1.2, which makes a mockery of the Government’s CO2 emissions banding for VED. £16 Grand will buy you a bottom of the range model QashQai, however I would go for a 2-litre engine and leather seats of the Tenka Trim, which will take the price well over £22,000.

This is a lot of money for a car which makes you look like a tosspot whose husband can’t afford the BMW X5 you really wanted, for which you’re having an affair with the Golf-pro. Which is a shame, because it’s actually a pretty decent little car.

Would I buy one? Probably not. But if you want one, you can spec it here but if I was in the market for a £22,000 skate shoe Nissan would have lost a sale for their shitty flash, which twice crashed my computer.

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Road Pricing by Fuel Duty Rebate.

I’ve long argued the roads are mis-priced. For much of a 24 hour period, roads are underused, and therefore probably overpriced. For 4 hours a day there’s gridlock in every town, and for most of the period 9:15am to 16:00, the roads are full, but flowing and therefore the price is about right. The Government’s main means of pricing the roads is Fuel Duty.

I’ve also opposed GPS-based road-pricing systems for privacy reasons. But I believe people should pay a market rate for services used, especially scarce ones like urban road space.

Given that most of the noise about fuel taxes are coming from Hauliers, whose vans lorries are responsible for much congestion, especially when unloading in town centres, there is an opportunity to make the roads run more efficiently by getting hauliers to move stuff at night.

Hauliers operating vehicles of more than 3.5 tonnes must already log driver’s hours. There’s no reason why the same tachograph systems couldn’t be used to log fuel used as well, in order to secure a rebate (say 50% for the sake of argument) on fuel used at night.

If successful, Why not extend this? Everyone, not just professional hauliers could have the option to drive at night or get to the office extra-early, and save money by doing so. The Government would not be intruding, but by demonstrating which bits of your driving were at “off peak hours” the Government should refund some of its overcharge as a rebate. Let’s see if people take it, and we can then see the true price of people’s driving preferences.

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Sin Taxes, Incentives & the “War on the Motorist”.

For 50 years, the roads have been designed exclusively for the car, to the exclusion of almost all other means of transport. Branch lines were axed on the rail-network and the rest fell into unionised disrepair, motorways were built, tramlines ripped up and buses (outside of London) were neglected as the choice of the underclass. Little thought was given to the bus, cycle or pedestrian in the design of roads, or if they were, it was about controlling the pedestrian with cages and detours, in order to keep the motorised traffic flowing. Town centres were wrapped in urban dual carriageway circulatory systems leading into and out of multi-storey car parks. Unfortunately, the experience of road-building is that any increase in capacity is rapidly filled, and despite the investment, the experience of the driver in most of the UK is pretty miserable.

As a result, any removal of road-space from the private motor car, for bus lanes, cycle lanes or other forms of public transport is enormously controversial, and seen as part of a “the war on the motorist”, who feels over-taxed, and generally put-upon. Because racism is no-longer allowed, the most vituperative comments on Local papers’ ‘sPeAK YoU’RE bRaneS’ boards are reserved for cyclists who are all red-light jumping, suicidal, pavement-riding, road-hogging Lycra Nazis who are in the way. Angry yet smug, they are the cause of all that is wrong on the roads.

Of course driving can be fun. The open road (ha!) or a race-track. And we’ve all experienced the joy of giving it the beans when given the opportunity. This is what people think driving SHOULD be like. It isn’t.

Driving is NEVER like this…

Driving is uniquely stressful, especially in stop-start traffic. This is why cyclists are so hated. The unexpected flash past the window merely adds to the stress of the motorist in the urban queue who immagines actions to be far more dangerous than they actually are. The disconnect between how driving is, and how it should be, combined with the envy of the cyclist, as he makes progress, ignoring the red light (when safe, I do so to get out of your way…) and nipping in and out of the traffic, leads to these feelings of hate and rage. Of course, if you’re sitting in traffic, you’re part of the problem, not me…

Now my principal interest, as an occasional motorist myself, is to have smooth traffic flow and as stress-free a journey as possible. The problem comes at pinch points which set the capacity for an entire system. For example, the M4 (of Jeremy Clarkson’s bus-lane fame) into London from Heathrow has its capacity set principally by the Hogarth Lane roundabout in Chiswick and a 2-lane overpass between junction 2 & 3. There’s no point having a 3 lane black-top if it just pours vehicles over a bridge which will be backed up for 6 hours a day as a result. The thinking behind the bus-lane is that a significant chunk of that traffic will be doing one route: Heathrow to West London. A bus will take cars off the road, freeing capacity, for people who want to use a car, and presenting another option for those who haven’t a car parked at Heathrow, and for whom the train or tube is inconvenient. It takes excess capacity off the road, leading to the pinch-point, meaning at peak hours, the traffic flows slower into the junction, leading to fewer tail-backs. Thanks to Clarkson, the bus lane is no more, and there are more delays as a result.

This is also the thinking behind variable speed limits when the road is clear – for example to ease the congestion at Junction 6 (spaghetti junction) of the M6 whose capacity is exceeded almost every day, you often see 50mph limits on the overhead gantries for 20 miles leading up to it. Of course everyone ignores variable speed limits and Junction 6 stops moving every day (Advice: the M6 Toll road between junction 4 & 11 is well worth £5. If this blog can teach you anything, never, unless you absolutely have to approach junction 6 of the M6. You will be there for hours…).

So here’s the rub. Traffic engineers can look at a system and suggest that IF everyone does X, we can have capacity Y. But motorists don’t like being told what to do, and rarely believe it’s for their own good. The legacy of the hated Gatso camera (which I want to see removed), speed bumps (cyclists hate these at least as much as motorists), one-way systems, all designed to make traffic flow better, but end up making drivers even more stressed. And a stressed driver is an aggressive driver. And that makes no-one happy least of all, me on my bike.

From a recent twitter thread: “£8bn in spending on roads, but motorists pay £30bn in taxes.” or variations thereof is an oft heard refrain. So let’s look at this in more detail. Vehicle Excise Duty (a tax I’ve long argued should be abolished) raised £5.4bn and fuel duty raised £24bn. Fair enough. But this isn’t a hypothecated fund for road building. It’s more akin a usage fee for a scarce resource, in this case road space. It is also designed to cover the externalities of CO2 emissions (whatever you think of this, I’m not interested right now), noise, pollution, and congestion.

England (see comments) is the world’s 3rd most densely populated country (ignoring micro-states) after Japan and the Netherlands. The greater south-east is the most densely populated area in the world. There just isn’t the room for everyone to use their cars at the same time. So bear that thought in mind when reading the next few paragraphs. What this enormous £30bn tax bill represents is a colossal mis-pricing of an asset. Roads are far too expensive for 12 hours a day (9pm-6am). They are far, far too cheap between 7:30 and 9:30am or between 4:30 and 6:30pm. They’re probably about right (given that they’re full, but running smoothly) during the rest of the day.

So. You’ve a problem for 4 hours a day, across much of the south-east as everyone tries to get to the same places at the same time, by the same means of transport. You’ve got 3 options.

  1. Build capacity. The problem is that if you build enough capacity, you get Milton Keynes or in it’s extreme form, Los Angeles. Free Parking in LA has been a curse. A 2 bed semi in Milton Keynes costs £315k compared to £500k in ‘war on the motorist’ central, Cambridge. This differential despite the fact that Milton Keynes has better connections, and is an easier commute into London (the strongest correlator with house prices). People don’t choose to live in a car-paradise, because cars though lovely to be in, impose enormous externalities on everyone around them – noise, pollution, danger – when they move faster than 20mph. The market has spoken. People like their car. They don’t like other people’s, and they will put up with restrictions on its use for quality of life.
  2. Encourage alternatives, which means laying on buses, trains, trams and designing the roads so they aren’t savagely hostile to all but the most aggressive and confident cyclist. The fact I am not in a car, is one less car in the queue up the hill to the roundabout. Motorists should recognise this and welcome it. The problem is cycling is uncomfortable to the weak (yes I do feel utter contempt for fatsos in boxes…), and buses are just nasty. So that in itself is not enough.
  3. Discourage motorists at peak hours. This is the argument behind the congestion charge. I don’t like road pricing mainly because of the surveillance aspect of it. I don’t like ‘the man’ being able to track my movements. Instead I prefer the widespread use of parking charges as a proxy for road pricing. This isn’t a “nudge“, but an application of the principles of the market to road congestion. Councils encourage short-term parking for shopping, with nominal short-term ticket charges, rising sharply should you wish to park all day (which is often not possible at all in a council car park). Further more, councils charge an annual tax on office parking spaces -£600 in the last example, to discourage commuting and encourage the use of alternatives. Clever use of technology will allow motorists to pay when they leave for what they’ve used, rather than using penalties and traffic wardens, which just creates more stress.

On top of the externalities motorists impose on themselves, like congestion, cars impose externalities on everyone else when they move. (Don’t even try to deny this. Would YOU want to live next to a main road…?) especially when they move faster than 20-30mph: These externalities which reduce the qualitiy of life for those around them are principally Noise, pollution and danger, which are reduced to almost nothing when the speed drops. This is the reason most residential streets are being closed off at one end to prevent “rat-running”. The campaign for 20mph zones in urban areas isn’t a war on the motorist, but an attempt to help people who live there, live with cars safely and without stress. Intelligent road design can achieve this without further stressing the motorist. The point is, where the road design is intelligent, the average motorist doesn’t notice it. I do, because I am a road design bore.

So, motoring & parking charges are seen as “sin taxes” on what most people regard as a necessity. They aren’t. Nor are speed limits below what you think “safe and reasonable” or traffic calming measures a politically motivated restriction on your freedom. They’re mostly about demand management and safety. This is why the Tax Payers’ alliance is wrong on ‘Sin Taxes‘ which according to them “either work, or raise revenue. They can’t do both”. They can, of course, it’s just a question of where any particular tax is on its laffer curve, something the TPA is fond of pointing out in other contexts. If a 5% rise in tax leads to a 2% drop in use, you have raised money AND had an effect. In any other context, a market-pricing system for use of a scarce resource would be lauded by the TPA, but not, it seems when applied to the motorist, which is bizarre. Because the TPA are firmly of the (correct) belief that market price-setting anywhere and always leads to more efficient use of a resource, and therefore greater wealth for all.

So. All this stuff I’ve been writing about these last few days isn’t about a “war on the motorist”, nor is it particularly about cycling. It’s about a fair crack of the whip for all means of transport, which all have their place in a sophisticated, decentralised, efficient means of getting people to the right place at the right time. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The UK is too car-centric, and needs to invest in alternatives, mainly to make the car itself work better. A benefit of fewer cars in our town centres MIGHT be a more pleasant and relaxing environment for us all.

I mentioned three countries more densely populated than the UK – The Netherlands, Belgium and Japan. All have embraced the bicycle as a means of urban transport, and both invest heavily in public transport. They do this because in parts of the world where lots of people live together, there just isn’t room for everyone to drive. Motorists know this, deep down, and fear the loss of their privileged position in the hierarchy on the road. That is why any comment which involves addressing the necessity to control traffic is dealt with in such an angry way. Humans are irrationally loss-averse, and blind to opportunities. Just as benefits recipients fear the changes to the benefits system more than is reasonable, the motorist fears any alternative to the car more than is reasonable.

Note, I am not suggesting YOU can’t use YOUR car, merely suggesting that government has a role in providing safe alternatives, even if you’re a libertarian. If you’re a libertarian, you should be in favour of market pricing mechanisms. This isn’t government promoting anything, nor is it isn’t a war on the motorist. Can we really go on sitting in traffic for hours (when I say “we”, I mean “you”. I’m long-gone)? Wouldn’t it be better if, on a sunny day, you weren’t put off taking a bike to work for a change because of a perceived danger? It’s about giving the options, not taking them away. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an incentive for your employer to allow you to work at home? Do we really ALL need to make the journey to work at the same time? Without a pricing mechanism which captures at least some of the externalites, you will not have the most efficient use of resources, and we’re all poorer for it.

Finally, and much more broadly, we have the wrong basis for taxation. Why do we tax jobs, leading to fewer jobs; why tax profits, we want more; why not tax externalities instead? Pigovian taxes make more sense than income taxes because the tax can create a positive outcome in more efficient useage of resources. Wouldn’t that make sense?

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An Occasional Motoring Column

As long-standing readers may or may not know, I don’t own a car. I simply Hire one as and when I need one (roughly 2-3 times a month). This gives me a unique opportunity to test-drive a number of cars, and tell you what I think. Most of the time they’re bog-standard golfs, vectras and occasionally a Mercedes A -Class, which leave me thinking that driving completely sucks arse.

However the firm I use (the very reasonable EasiDrive) occasionally run out of such mundane vehicles and I get upgraded. I learned to drive in a Porshe, and my last car was an Alfa Romeo, so I have some understanding of what a good drivers’ car is & Everyone knows hire cars are the fastest things on the road. However regular readers will know that I hate driving (on the road) so who better to review cars? I am naturally sceptical.

This weekend, I was given a new Citroen DS3, A special edition 5-speed manual with the HDi90 engine and sports trim, with just 3,000 miles on the clock, and I have to say it is the best little car I have ever driven. Lively, responsive, stable, quick off the mark, comfortable, surprisingly spacious swallowing 2 adults, a 2-year old, luggage for same and a folding bicycle with ease. It’s economical – the day’s driving cost less than £10 in (yes, really) diesel and when you consider that hiring the thing cost £28, why would anyone who doesn’t need a car daily, own one?

I drove the twisty A600 from Shefford to Bedford and it just loved the roundabouts. Being small, it was easy to find room to widen the corners and when Mr. The Cat decided to leap out in front of me, it stopped extremely quickly. All this potential fun, though merely reminded me why most drivers are so frustrated. The roads are not race-tracks, but this car was able to accelerate quickly enough and corner fast enough to make overtaking safe. The Mitsubishi Evo (VI, I think) with who’s driver I was playing silly-buggers, had selected the wrong gear coming off the roundabout on the A428 at Warrington and I was able to overtake with a cheery wave. This was the highlight of the drive. Obviously he was able to blast past later, but I had rubbed his nose in driving incompetence. Wrong gear? – pah! The Citroen’s engine had such a wide torque band, it accelerated acceptably from a standstill in third.

Channelling my inner Clarkson, if this car was a dog, it would be a well-mannered but mischievous spaniel with a wagging tail who wants to play. With my beige trousers on, it ticks all the boxes, reliable, efficient, spacious, safe etc. But when you want to put your cap on at a silly angle, it’s fun when necessary and surprisingly quick. I did not perform a crash test, nor did I (honestly, officer) test the top speed, which isn’t published but may or may not be 115mph.

If you absolutely must own one, you could do a lot worse than this little car.

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