1. 

   SharpSharp wrote 4 months ago

   The Fuel Protesters are back on the roads in the UK and there asking for a cut in fuel duty to make driving cheaper.
   Has driving got prohibitively expensive or are buses and trains still more costly for most people?

2. 

   brejep replied 4 months ago

   The protests were from the haulage industry and so it was very much about the huge amount of tax that dents their profits.

   However, the more prices rise the more they affect those who can barely afford to run a car. Unfortunately cars aren't so much a luxury as a necessity for a lot of people. As a regular commuter, I use the trains daily and they are both expensive, overcrowded and often inconvenient. Public transport simply isn't good enough in the UK and I suspect the same is true in most other countries. I think the only place I've ever been where you could get everywhere by public transport was Singapore - which is a small, wealthy island.

   But long term questions have to be asked about our reliance on the petrol pump, even if there was a huge cut in fuel tax, the price of petrol is going to rise because the amount of oil is limited. At some point there simply has to be a non-petrol solution to transport needs.

3. 

   clagnut replied 4 months ago

   Protests recently were not just from the haulage industry, but from motorcycle groups too.

   Driving is becoming more and more expensive, but trains and buses are still wildy overpriced, particularly once you have more than one person in a car. And of course if you are commuting into London then the trains are already packed to capacity, beyond levels allowed for the transportation of cattle.

   In my home town of Brighton, it's roughly the same price by taxi as by bus, for two of us to get from the town centre back home.

   Worse still, if I wanted to travel from London to Manchester it's almost certainly going to be cheaper for me to fly.

   If the government is truly committed to people using public transport rather than cars or planes then prices need to come down and quality needs to go up. Hitting people with a tax stick isn't going to do the job, particular if that tax isn't being effectively reinvested into public transport.

4. 

   SharpSharp replied 4 months ago

   It's interesting that buses are so expensive in Brighton as it's one of 4 provincial cities in england where bus travel is growing. I live in York (another one of those 4) and buses are pricey but still a lot cheaper than taxi's.

   In 2000 a bus cost me £1.18 single into the city, it now cost £1.80 that's a 50% increase. The last fuel protests were in 2000 and they were complaining about 90p a litre, it's now £1.20 a litre which is a 33% increase.

   The government is no longer committed to people using public transport (John Prescott was the only member of the government bold enough to claim that) the department for transport are officially "modal neutral" which means they are not interested in having policies that shift people form one mode of transport to another. It is up to us to make our own choices!

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