{"id":6203,"date":"2023-02-09T21:46:27","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T21:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6203"},"modified":"2023-02-09T21:46:29","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T21:46:29","slug":"do-motorists-pay-for-the-roads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6203","title":{"rendered":"Do Motorists Pay For The Roads?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is something that certain entitled motorists keep banging on about &#8211; &#8220;road tax&#8221;. There hasn&#8217;t been a road tax since 1937; it&#8217;s currently called <em>vehicle excise duty<\/em> and the income (\u00a38 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 <em>isn&#8217;t<\/em> reserved for spending on roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And local roads are mostly paid for out of council tax &#8211; in other words the roads that cyclists and pedestrians actually use are paid for out of local taxes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which has an interesting side effect &#8211; a motorist on a local road is <em>likely<\/em> to be a local road user, but a significant proportion will be visitors. Meaning that they <em>haven&#8217;t<\/em> paid for the road. Whereas a cyclist or a pedestrian is more likely to be a local.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meaning that on any road that isn&#8217;t a motorway, the cyclists and pedestrians pay <em>more <\/em>for that road than the motorist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"695\" height=\"927\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020-04-26-into-the-water-stillness-and-motion.jpeg?resize=695%2C927&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Posts leading out to the sea.\" class=\"wp-image-5749\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020-04-26-into-the-water-stillness-and-motion.jpeg?resize=768%2C1025&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020-04-26-into-the-water-stillness-and-motion.jpeg?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020-04-26-into-the-water-stillness-and-motion.jpeg?resize=1151%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1151w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020-04-26-into-the-water-stillness-and-motion.jpeg?resize=1535%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 1535w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020-04-26-into-the-water-stillness-and-motion.jpeg?w=1550&amp;ssl=1 1550w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020-04-26-into-the-water-stillness-and-motion.jpeg?w=1390&amp;ssl=1 1390w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Into The Water; Stillness and Motion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No. There is something that certain entitled motorists keep banging on about &#8211; &#8220;road tax&#8221;. There hasn&#8217;t been a road tax since 1937; it&#8217;s currently called vehicle excise duty and the income (\u00a38 billion) goes into the general taxation fund. It sounds like a lot, but is just a drop in the overall public spending <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6203' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[2136,2137,2056],"class_list":["post-6203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-politics","tag-road-tax-2","tag-ved","tag-vehicle-excise-duty","category-7-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mstdn.social\/@grumpygrimnir\/109836972064578926","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1C3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6203"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6236,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6203\/revisions\/6236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}