Help decide the future of transport in the Greater Dublin Area (counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Wicklow). Take part in the DTOs online consultation to make sure you have your say (closing date June 30 2008)

Read More - What is the 2030 Vision?

http://www.2030vision.ie/

Get rid of all road tax in favour of a new distance tax - tax by car usage

One sustainable development group is urging scrapping of the plethora of road taxes we have now in favour of taxing use of the car by time of use and distance travelled - a much more sensible scheme it appears.

The 2030 vision site above is open for submissions until the end of June if you want to imprint your ideas onto the DTO plans. It's a token measure of participation but why do we only get a month to think about this?

Quote :

The Government has been urged to replace VRT and other motor taxes with a radical new charge which it is claimed would tackle environmental damage and reduce traffic congestion.
The appeal for the introduction of what is termed road-pricing has been made by Ireland's sustainable development council, Comhar, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey is developing a sustainable transport plan and, according to Comhar, road-pricing the key to solving the twin problems of gridlock and spiralling emissions.

Under this plan, all existing fixed transport charges - like VRT - would be replaced with distance-based fees, which would vary according to vehicle emissions, geographic location and time of travel. According to Comhar, road-pricing would encourage consumers to purchase more fuel-efficient, clean vehicles and to drive less - which in turn mean motorists could move more smoothly, safely and efficiently. It says the Netherlands has recently approved the phased introduction of road-pricing and Ireland is capable of following suit within five or six years.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0603/motor.html

http://www.comharsdc.ie/index.aspx

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=36223

I'd like to suggest that Machine Nation sends in a submission. The submission does not have to be a consensus - it can send in a range of different suggestions from members. It may be the first time an evotingmachine will have struck back at the heart of government policy making. Let's go for it.

cactus flower wrote:

I'd like to suggest that Machine Nation sends in a submission. The submission does not have to be a consensus - it can send in a range of different suggestions from members. It may be the first time an evotingmachine will have struck back at the heart of government policy making. Let's go for it.

I agree though we might need someone prepared to send it using their real email address - Johnny Keogh is our real-world spokesman! Where's his mobile phone number again.

What about this one?

How civilized is this? - Car share like they do in London


Over there you might see brand new polos, golfs etc. parked at the side of the road just like the bikes in Paris. If you are in a streetcar club which costs $100 a year according to CNN, you get a chip and pin card which allows you to unlock any of those cars for which you then pay for by hour, the first 35 miles are free it seems.

CNN

Quote :

Booking cars is simple. You either call Streetcar to check availability or look on the Web site. I have only ever booked over the web, because the site remembers your location so you can view the availability of cars as soon as you log on. Then it's simply a matter of picking a start time and a return time.

The booking information is then sent by SMS to your own phone and to the car.

Already my savings have been vast. Insurance on my BMW 7-series was around £350 ($700) per annum. In my first month, with only a couple of necessary supermarket trips, I spent less renting a Streetcar than I would normally have spent on insurance.

The £4.95 hourly charge includes fuel up to a daily limit of 35 miles, with a fuel surcharge of £0.19 [$0.38] per mile thereafter. This is charged monthly. You don't actually pay for fuel from your own pocket. Should the tank be running low, you simply pull into a gas station, fill up, and pay with the prepayment card in the Streetcar's console.

Since joining in February I have found not owning a car isn't so bad. Occasionally, the cars at my nearest location have been booked up but, to date, I've always managed to get a car when I wanted one -- even if it meant walking 20 minutes to a different location.

Streetcar tries to encourage a community spirit among its members, offering a free hour's rental to members who take the cars through a car wash (paid with the prepayment card, naturally). But the interiors can get a little grubby. That's about my only gripe.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/06/08/car.sharing/

http://www.streetcar.co.uk/

Car share seems to work excellently in the US, but it is not official - high occupancy 3 person cars have special lanes and that was enough to get everone sharing - passengers are called Slugs and drivers "Body snatchers" -

Slugging started by spontaneous eruption and runs by perpetual motion. When the area's three-person, high-occupancy vehicle lanes opened 30 years ago, some guy and then another and another picked up commuters at bus stops to get the passengers needed to use the lanes. No government agency sanctions slugging, runs it, regulates it, promotes it or thought it up. The Census Bureau, which tracks most forms of commuting, knows nothing about slugging.

In slugging, there is no supervisor, dispatcher or schedule, no ticket or fare. No think tank has analyzed it, although one slug, Lt. Col. David LeBlanc of the Army, has written a how-to book, ''Slugging,'' which he published himself, and he operates one of two local slugging Web sites. But organized oversight stops there.

There are, however, rules.

''When you get in the car, you don't converse with the driver,'' said David Howe, 41, a slug who works as a security manager for the Defense Department. ''Only the driver can initiate a conversation. You're basically a body in the car. You're not to talk on a cellphone or with other people in the car.''

Slugs must not smoke, eat, fiddle with the radio, windows or air-conditioning or, if they are invited to talk, say anything at all about religion or politics, Mr. Howe said.

About 10,000 commuters in Northern Virginia -- no one keeps an exact count -- go to and from work this way. In a study four years ago, the Virginia Department of Transportation spotted slugs aboard one in four cars traveling the H.O.V. lanes during the 6-to-9 a.m., three-rider restricted period. Since then the number of sites for them to park and line up off I-95 and in Washington, especially along 14th Street, where slugs stand to go home, has grown.

LINK TO SLUG REPORT

What is all this nonsense about tracking vehicles for the purposes of collecting road tax.

Seriously, the people proposing this should be embarassed for themselves.

The Oyster card in London is a great innovation that means that you can get cheap and regular public transport without all the receipts that can build up from using Dublin Bus.

You buy the card at the airport(the usual place you'd be in first if going to London), load it up with a certain amount of pounds(15-20 usually) and then use away and, if it's near empty, you just go to another office at any Tube station and you top up!

As well as that, if you scan into and out of the Tube using the Oyster card, it gets you the cheapest fare, sometimes as little as 30p!

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

What is all this nonsense about tracking vehicles for the purposes of collecting road tax.

Seriously, the people proposing this should be embarassed for themselves.

It would surely be the best option to put all road related tax onto petrol ? There is no incentive on anyone to cut back on car use at the moment when it costs so much to keep a car on the road.

Putting all the tax on petrol would certainly be the better way of taxing "per mile" rather than a sham of installing millions of microchips at enormous expense. It would also reward people for buying cars with greater fuel efficiency as they would get more miles for their buck.

It would of course punish us who have petrol powered lawnmowers .

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

The Oyster card in London is a great innovation that means that you can get cheap and regular public transport without all the receipts that can build up from using Dublin Bus.

You buy the card at the airport(the usual place you'd be in first if going to London), load it up with a certain amount of pounds(15-20 usually) and then use away and, if it's near empty, you just go to another office at any Tube station and you top up!

As well as that, if you scan into and out of the Tube using the Oyster card, it gets you the cheapest fare, sometimes as little as 30p!

Agree entirely. Oyster Card is a fantastic innovation and the way that the Greater London Transport Authority has marketed it has led to its success. That is, they doubled the fares for people who don't use the Oyster Card and made them cheaper for those who do. This led to virtually everyone having one and therefore greater efficiency in the transport system in terms of queuing etc as well as more people using it. I also love the way it will charge you for an individual journey, but once you go on enough individual trips in one day to constitute buying a day travelcard it won't charge you anything more.

We're meant to be getting something similar with the integrated ticketing system here. But of course, we spent millions on a system that doesn't work. I don't know why we didnt just buy in the Oyster system from whoever supplies it over there. I have noticed that alot of the Dublin Buses are now equipped with the plate that you swipe such cards on though, so hopefully there will be progress soon.

This is the same mentality that brought us Evoting and PPARS and a host
of other shite where a technology solution was never required.

Of all technology, modern technology is the most unreliable.

Putting the tax on petrol at the forecourt is idiot proof.

• 
  Requires no extra technology
  
• 
  No capital cost
  
• 
  Provides a simple method of taxing usage proportional to engine size and mileage
  
• A pay as you go system
  
• Taxes carbon emissions at the same time also in proportion
  
• Provides a real motivation for people to not use their car.
  
• I'm sure I can think of more...
  

I'm also sure someone has a good argument against fuel based road tax, but I have yet to hear it.

I accept that commercial/HGV/Taxis etc may require an altered taxation model.

johnfás wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

The Oyster card in London is a great innovation that means that you can get cheap and regular public transport without all the receipts that can build up from using Dublin Bus.

You buy the card at the airport(the usual place you'd be in first if going to London), load it up with a certain amount of pounds(15-20 usually) and then use away and, if it's near empty, you just go to another office at any Tube station and you top up!

As well as that, if you scan into and out of the Tube using the Oyster card, it gets you the cheapest fare, sometimes as little as 30p!

Agree entirely. Oyster Card is a fantastic innovation and the way that the Greater London Transport Authority has marketed it has led to its success.

I'd like to see us have an Oyster Card-like system that works for Dublin Bus, Luas and the Dart. It'd be a powerful boost to public transport in the city.

johnfás wrote:

Putting all the tax on petrol would certainly be the better way of taxing "per mile" rather than a sham of installing millions of microchips at enormous expense. It would also reward people for buying cars with greater fuel efficiency as they would get more miles for their buck.

It would of course punish us who have petrol powered lawnmowers .

Yes that makes more sense. Another way could be to pay your tax with your NCT where they log your mileage - or get a refund for miles not used. No matter, the cheapest, lowest-tech way of taxing use would be an enlightened direction in my view. Perhaps phase in a GPS-based system using existing GPS units in cars and give a subsidy or discount to buyers who use GPS units from Motorola of some MNC based here or just give any incentive for people to update their cars with the technology. I'm sure the sat nav wouldn't be complex over and above what's there already but it'd be a bit big-brotherish.

Pedestrianising more of Dublin city centre too - there's a plan to do it around College Green, Dame Street, Dawson Street, Westmoreland, D'Olier St. around there and I'd love to see bigger public space like that in Dublin. More widely between the canals - restrict cars there.

What about more QBCs?

I've a feeling that Oyster Cards and other such systems (like the ones above) would need substantial back-office program support which may be way out of their budgets - why else don't they do it?

Dublin is crying out for a pedetrian and cycle plan.
Thousands of people pour in every morning on foot - footpaths need to be wider and roads made safe for bikes - cycle lanes don't work retrofitted as they run into impossible junctions. The exception is that one way systems are impossible for cyclists - there should always be a separate contra flow for cyclists.

I wish the Gardaí would enforce the law against people who park in cycle lanes - you see it every bloody day.

Anyone got any suggestions about what to do with all the unwanted central multi-storey car parking spaces when the cars have stopped coming into the centre?

cactus flower wrote:

Anyone got any suggestions about what to do with all the unwanted central multi-storey car parking spaces when the cars have stopped coming into the centre?

Re-zone them for 100 sq foot one bedroom apartments with paper thin walls? We have an expertise in this area, we might as well use it....

cactus flower wrote:

Anyone got any suggestions about what to do with all the unwanted central multi-storey car parking spaces when the cars have stopped coming into the centre?

I saw a newspaper article recently - 40% of city centre cars (or was it 60%?) are from the Civil Service... therefore continue on with decentralisation I say and use the car-parking spaces as assets to be sold or used at high cost to rent or exclusively for cars in the rent-a-car system above.

Shouldn't those high-rises be moved out to areas outside the city centre now and let people commute or walk or cycle in from the outskirts (the Canals for example)?

Buses capable of carrying bikes would be nice too. Everywhere in the country. We must get ready for it.

They might fall foul of the GP's new apartment standards that nobody can afford to build.
Is there a happy medium somewhere?

Floor to ceiling heights in the car parks are a bit of a problem. Something for small people or children ?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Yes that makes more sense. Another way could be to pay your tax with your NCT where they log your mileage - or get a refund for miles not used. No matter, the cheapest, lowest-tech way of taxing use would be an enlightened direction in my view. Perhaps phase in a GPS-based system using existing GPS units in cars and give a subsidy or discount to buyers who use GPS units from Motorola of some MNC based here or just give any incentive for people to update their cars with the technology. I'm sure the sat nav wouldn't be complex over and above what's there already but it'd be a bit big-brotherish....

The simplest, most reliable and cost ecceftive way of measuring how much a person uses their car is to measure how much petrol they put into it. Right or wrong ?

So why would you want to go putting GPS into 2.2 Million ? cars to achieve the same thing, while also introducing unreliability, cost, and potential corruption.

Petrol tax it is then EVM - Auditor will have to think up another way of getting us to buy those pesky GPS thingys that lead you straight into rivers.

cactus flower wrote:

They might fall foul of the GP's new apartment standards that nobody can afford to build.
Is there a happy medium somewhere?

Floor to ceiling heights in the car parks are a bit of a problem. Something for small people or children ?

Jo Momma won't be happy witchu.

Use them only for smart or electric cars and eco vehicles... Phase them out ulitmately and get lazy mofos to walk around some more instead.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

The simplest, most reliable and cost ecceftive way of measuring how much a person uses their car is to measure how much petrol they put into it. Right or wrong ?

So why would you want to go putting GPS into 2.2 Million ? cars to achieve the same thing, while also introducing unreliability, cost, and potential corruption.

Yes it's the simplest. I like the flexibility of using GPS too if a rush-hour penalty was deemed useful... I don't know though.

The Sat Nav units are in a lot of cars already and it would be phased in where you'd get a rebate on tax or something like that if you used the electronic system. I believe that haulier trucks on the continent are already using this.

You're dead right - it's open to corruption though so the simplest thing to do is tax the petrol. Worth exposing the other systems to a bit of mental football though.

What about the Slug system (eeuuh!) from the US, where cars with 3 or more passengers get priority so everyone fills their cars up with random strangers? It seems to work really well as a kind of park and drive.

Is this in operation in Belfast too? It's a good system if it could be co-ordinated at all well. Are Dublin's streets too narrow though? There's room for buses and taxis and tough on the rest really?

Maybe they should let full cars into taxi lanes.