home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: uk.transport
- Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!warwick!nott-cs!lut.ac.uk!entim
- From: T.I.Morley@lut.ac.uk
- Subject: Re: Bus vs Car Costs (Was: Re: City Traffic)
- Message-ID: <1993Jan22.150050.8972@lut.ac.uk>
- Reply-To: T.I.Morley@lut.ac.uk (TI Morley)
- Organization: Loughborough University, UK.
- References: <935820125829@ibm3090.bham.ac.uk> <1993Jan20.133858@cs.bham.ac.uk> <1993Jan22.122213.6563@its.bt.co.uk>
- Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 15:00:50 GMT
- Lines: 25
-
- In article <1993Jan22.122213.6563@its.bt.co.uk> tjo@its.bt.co.uk (Tim Oldham) writes:
- >In article <1993Jan20.133858@cs.bham.ac.uk> roj@cs.bham.ac.uk (Robert O Jackson) writes:
- >>Its a shame that the cost of catching the bus from point A (or rather the
- >>nearest bus stop) to point B (or some point near it) costs as much as if
- >>not more than driving from point A to point B.
- >
- >While the marginal cost of driving is certainly lower, the actual cost
- >of driving is usually a good deal higher than catching the bus. I could
- >buy a year's bus-pass with just my insurance premiums and still have
- >enough left over for a newspaper to read on the bus every day; to say
- >nothing about depreciation. The money it takes to run a car buys a lot
- >of public transport.
- >
- Trouble is of course that once you've got a car it is the marginal cost
- that matters. I'm in favour of public transport, but I don't intend to
- give up my car.
-
- One way of evening things up is to try to decrease the fixed cost of
- having a car and increase the marginal cost. The most obvious way of
- doing this is to reduce or abolish road tax and increase the tax (duty?)
- on fuel to compensate. Can anyone think of anything else that can be
- done on these lines?
-
- Tim Morley (T.I.Morley@lut.ac.uk)
-
-