Feb 092023
 

No.

There is something that certain entitled motorists keep banging on about – “road tax”. There hasn’t been a road tax since 1937; it’s currently called vehicle excise duty and the income (£8 billion) goes into the general taxation fund. It sounds like a lot, but is just a drop in the overall public spending budget. And it isn’t reserved for spending on roads.

And local roads are mostly paid for out of council tax – in other words the roads that cyclists and pedestrians actually use are paid for out of local taxes.

Which has an interesting side effect – a motorist on a local road is likely to be a local road user, but a significant proportion will be visitors. Meaning that they haven’t paid for the road. Whereas a cyclist or a pedestrian is more likely to be a local.

Meaning that on any road that isn’t a motorway, the cyclists and pedestrians pay more for that road than the motorist.

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