Cycling UK lauds Rachel Reeves for recouping additional £100 million for cycling & walking in Autumn Budget, but “disappointed” with another fuel duty freeze

biking59boomer wrote:

I had hoped for a more environmentally friendly attitude from Labour. Sadly I was mistaken. 

This Labour government is not interested in the environment. Only a minority of them give a shit about issues such as road safety, air quality or active travel.

Putting the 5p back is the minimum they could have done; and it could be justified as reversing a temporary cut. But they have friends in high (fossil-fuelled) places and despite the thumping majority know that they will be 'held to account' by the media in a way that the Tories never were.

Or more accurately, they will be punished severely if they go against the wishes of the magnates, non-doms etc that control the media (and I fear that includes the BBC nowadays). And there are plenty of lobbyists on behalf of fossil fuel interests at work:

https://www.desmog.com/2024/07/31/new-mps-worked-for-oil-and-gas-lobbyists/

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/new-labour-mps-tak...

Problem is if we don't address the amount - or prioritisation - of private motor transport we maintain a situation where "no-one uses the buses" so it "doesn't make sense" to direct resources there.  (Same goes for cycling of course).

Because buses are a) going to be less reliable (stuck in traffic) and b) going to be stumped for custom because they're unreliable, have low coverage and low frequency (because there's not enough demand).

Of course as motor traffic increases it tends to be no quicker than using public transport - assuming there is any...

Exactly. I have some sympathy for the 'but we don't have any/many buses' commentary on the £2/3 bus fare cap, but the best way to improve, or at least maintain, bus services is for people to use them. The bus fare cap seemed to be working well in at least some parts of the country for boosting certain rural routes.

Unfortunately the cap was introduced as a temporary measure, so not much incentive for bus companies to plan for long-term increased uptake of buses. Extending in some form is clearly better than nothing, and the £3 cap is presumably still worth something for many longer, rural routes, and would constitute good value for those who can afford a £6 return. My preference would be to keep the £2 cap, and use revenue from fuel duty to support it (and much, much more), but if they felt pressure to reduce the subsidy then a £2.50 cap would mean a return wouldn't just save £1 per trip, but keeps it as no more than £5, which psychologically feels a lot cheaper than £6.

Ideally the Chancellor would have kept the £2 cap, and used some of the other monies raised from fuel duty to give to councils so they could subsidise AND ADVERTISE enhanced services in areas that are stuck with just one or two buses per day. 

Born_peddling wrote:

I've two wheelchair using neighbours and they've both stated they haven't used public transport since they started using them as there's never room and the drivers are reluctant to get out and put the ramp down.

My instinctive reaction to this was "aren't the ramps all deployed at the push of a button now?" but I guess that's quite a metrocentric view.

Taxi drivers are more likely to vote Reform than Tory. As for kowtowing to the motorists and the right wing press I totally agree wih you. Reasoned argument has failed to get the petrolheads to change their ways and embrace active travel. Unnecessary short term journeys are just as numerous, worse now schools are back and the school run has restarted. 10p on a litre would have brought the average UK price to 145.99 and made some of them think about how much they drive.

biking59boomer wrote:

....10p on a litre would have brought the average UK price to 145.99 and made some of them think about how much they drive.

I think we're far beyond that. Because *I HAD to drive*.

Why? That's the main mental tool we have for "doing things".

So that needs changed, but without different "things" (shopping, taking the kids "safely" to school, doing activities "in reach" of say 30 minutes' drive) OR some alternative transport which not only has to meet certain minimum requirements * but ALSO has to be relatively better than the car...

... then just adding cost will simply get you protests, if not riots - but certainly your time in power shortened!

* Necessary but not sufficient: feels safe, is convenient, is flexible AND reliable (unlike much public transport ATM), seems cheap per journey **, doesn't make you an "other" / lower your status like cycling does in the eyes of some, is a social activity eg. you can do it side-by-side with your family etc.

** car is costly but once the tax etc is paid (which you can't avoid - well, outside of Lancs...) the fuel per trip seems cheap compared to eg. train ticket for the journey - assuming there is a station near either end!

car is costly but once the tax etc is paid (which you can't avoid - well, outside of Lancs...)

In fact, Lancashire Constabulary is only too keen to declare that VED evasion is nothing to do with them. This is why WU59 UMH, which I have bored you with many times, is only a month short of achieving 7 years of glorious tax-free motoring despite being reported to LC and DVLA many times and often spending whole nights, New Year's Day etc. parked outside the Eagle and Child only 150 yards from Garstang Police Station. DVLA must be largely staffed by ex-LC coppers, because they're a load of useless tossers as well- their own database shows them numerous vehicles in the Garstang area alone without VED for years, but which are getting regular MOTs (don't know why, because they must know that LC regards MOTs as optional extras and simply refuse to do anything about MOT evasion either).

I guess Louise Haigh is still on the naughty step with Keir Starmer over calling P&O a rogue operator just before his prestigious investment conference, not really how a minister should act just before a budget when they want extra departmental funding.

Read that and thought "that's active travel in the bin..." TBF I suspect that big change in that direction from "we're the party of the driver too!" Labour was unlikely anyway.

I'm equally underhwelmed by the money for active travel and the reaction from Cycling UK and Sustrans, but agree the response is most likely to be a pragmatic one with the calculated hope that staying positive will reap more rewards in future budgets. Building a healthy working relationship and having the ear of those in power is important at this stage of the electoral cycle.

What would have been/will be good is if there is a reassurance that investment will be ramped up in the future, and this year's money is more seed funding to get things moving in the right direction with more to come down the line.

On the other hand, there's no defence for the continued freeze on fuel duty while increasing the cap on bus fares by 50% And I'm sick of well off people insisting the fuel duty freeze is required to protect poor people.

FionaJJ wrote:

I'm sick of well off people insisting the fuel duty freeze is required to protect poor people.

It's like the argument against pedestrianising town centre streets, when drivers protest about how will disabled people get to the shops? But they didn't give a flying f**k about disabled (or any other) people beforehand, especially ones that don't drive or are using the bus, which is stuck in a queue of traffic. It's solely about their own convenience.

And I'm bored of drivers complaining about the cost of fuel while not even beginning to consider how they could reduce their mileage or get better MPG (I see lots of inefficient drivers who seem to have a heavy right foot).

Yeah, its amazing how many drivers care deeply about the disabled when something they don't want to happen is being proposed. They don't care about not blocking pavements by parking on them. They don't care about parking over dropped pavements that allow wheelchairs etc to cross the road. But suggest that somewhere should be an LTN or anything else that inconveniences them and magically the disabled are something they worry about. Not themselves obvious. No no no. 

A little bit of tarring all drivers with the same brush going on there. Not all drivers block pavements, not all drivers park on dropped kerbs and not all drivers complain about the installation of LTN's.
I, for one, drive for a living, don't park on dropped kerbs nor park on footpaths. What I do find irksome is where a local authority installs an LTN without notifying any of the mapping authorities as to where the navigable routes are. What we couriers face is simply a road blocked by a multi-tonne planter or a set of impassable bollards and are left to figure a way around them. Now I know there is a way around them because the authorities tell us so. However that frequently means extra mileage in, usually, densely populated areas; so no CO2 or NO2 savings to be had there then. Oh, and your parcels are liable to be later than you expect.
So, in short, bring on the LTN's: just advertise the bloody things!
A liitle bit more consideration for the pro drivers, if you please. And, by the way, all rat runners (especially wankpanzer drivers) should have their vehicles confiscated and crushed.

The freezing of fuel duty to help poor people is a ridiculous argument considering that they have increased costs for people who rely on buses due to not being able to afford a car. I can't even see any improvements to access to public transport. The more I think about it the worse I feel.

The freezing of fuel duty doesn't help poor people: genuinely poor people cannot afford to run a vehicle, so the freezeing of fuel duty is no argument on their behalf at all. It (the fuel duty freeze) allows your suppliers to keep delivery costs as low as they can (get away with). Every time the cost of fuel goes up, delivery costs go up. Trouble is that once they have gone up they never come down again. (Look at what happened after the invasion of Ukraine - delivery costs went up like a rocket {with the fuel costs} and have yet to recover).
In the short term it's the owner drivers who bear the cost, straight  off thier bottom line and months, sometime years before delivery rates (to the OD's) goes up to compensate. The delivery companies, however have no compunction in raising their rates straight away.

Wisley Interchange is £300m, but remember it isn't a cost it's an investment 😉

£300m today, so the actual  final cost..... who the F knows.   All so as drivers we can sit stationary in more lanes than before. Sweet.

There is absolutely no chance of managing ourselves out of the environmental polycrisis; at least booze is cheaper.

Not while we've got a spinless govenment like this. Any claim they make to being environmentally friendly is now completly discredited. Already written to my MP. The more of us that do the same the more they'll realise that action is needed.

biking59boomer wrote:

Not while we've got a spinless govenment like this...

I know it's a typo but a spinless government sounds marvellous. Not that the last few have been any good at spin.