Do Motorists Overpay for the Roads Which.
Page 9
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
They Use ?
From this week's issue of "The Motor."
Is it realized that the existing taxes upon motorcars and the fuel which they consume sm»etimes result in the burdening of owners with more than the total cost of the highways over which they run We think not. It is, none the less, quite true. This fact, of course, must not lead to a confusion of ideas, or to a belief that the whole maintenance cost of the whole of the roads of the country is so defrayed. Motorcars do not habitually use all trunk or all secondary roads, whilst many thousands of miles of by-roads are prattically never traversed by vehicles of this description. The assertion that the overpayment stage has been already reached. hich point of view Tim Mollie is the first to demonstrate, is readily capable of proof. Let it be granted, taking a reasonable average of all ears in use, that one gallon of petrol runs a car '20 miles, and that £6 Os. per car per annum—divisible by 10,000 miles—is the mean of the carriage tax. We then get, per car per mile of road covered, the following mileage contribution to the funds at the disposal of the Road lionrd (cost of collection, which can only be in the third place of decimals, alone omitted), or to funds which are otherwise transferable through the Exchequer to roads accounts:—
The next step in the calculation is this : to multiply the taxation levy per mile of road by the nember if cars per annum which pass. We take a series of examples, a ml extend the yield per annum, correct to tie, nearest
?J. for each of them:— •
These figures sufficiently indicate our line of argument. All that a motorist or a motoring organization requires to do, in respect of any particular road, and in order to be satisfied about the undoubted soundness of the contention, is this (1) To obtain a census of the motorcars passing thereon; (2) to ascertain the official cost of nmintenance of the road per mile per annum. The data are then fairly complete. We have had before its the checked results of traffic censuses upon country roads rusting only £25 pr' mile per annum, and upon others, in city, urban and suburban areas, for which the annual maintenance charges (exclusive of scavenging, which, it may be noted, is virtually lei/ in the country) vary from £45 to £1,600 per mile. These counts have necessarily been occasional. and not continuous over a year, but we are able to vouch. for their value as reliable guides to the general inference. Shim, however, reasons of policy dictate the putting forward only of typical cases for the present, we select three in support of this discovery, to which we invite the most-• careful attention of the Road Board The considerable incidence of motorcab and motorbiis. traffic on the Piccadilly-Knightsbridge line has necessitilted additional calculations in respect of that thoroughfare. We have adopted the basis, after consultation with the Editor of " Tile Commercial Mater," of five motorcabs to one private car, and the contribution of each rnotorcab has been taken at 0.08d. per mile run, instead of 0.3d. Averaged over the 21 hours not fewer than 3,250 motorbuses pass daily on the Piccadilly-Knightsbridgeline: their yield to the funds of the Road Board over and above that shown earlier' as being derived eselusively from motorcars (including motoreabs), is not. less than i:1,250 per mile per annum. The contribution,
basis adopted is 0.25d. per mile run. That brings up the yield per mile to approximately £2,700, and the proceeds of the petrol tax upon vans and lorries have still: to be estimated. If we put them as low as £300 per annum..
the aggregate figure is 0,000. Yet the Piccadilly– Knightsbridge carriageway is wholl y maintained at the rate of £1..600 per mile per annum. In neither the second nor third instances cited have, we taken into account the yield from commercial-motor vehicles, but it should be recalled that the eontributions of petrol yarns and lorries, owing to the lower gearing of the engines fitted to them, are generally fully as high per mile run as for any car of equal h.p. When the necessary sums are ascertained and added to the products of the petrol and carriage taxes upon motorcars of other classes, the strength of the case for the motorist, that he should forthwith have either improved highways or reduced taxes, appears to us to he incontrovertible.