The Scoop

"The war on the motorist is over", say London councils. "We won."

Adam Bienkov | Tuesday 1 February, 2011 15:04

“The War on the Motorist” is over claimed the government last month as drivers across London considered re-mortgaging their houses in order to fill their petrol tanks up.

“From now on, councils and communities will be free to set parking policies that are right for their areas” added the minister, as cash-strapped councils published plans to hike their parking charges even higher.

Meanwhile, just two and a half years after promising never to do so, the Mayor Boris Johnson celebrated the end of the war on motorists by increasing London’s congestion charge by 25%.

For the newly liberated, the end of The War on the Motorist must have looked remarkably like the beginning, and yet in reality the war never really existed in the first place.

The cost of fuel is high yes, but overall the cost of motoring has actually declined significantly in the past 13 years. And while motorists are feeling the pinch now, it is the cost of public transport that is really going to surge in the coming years.

So while Boris has increased the congestion charge after many years of a freeze, he has also halved the area that it covers. Transport for London estimate the cost of this at £55 million a year, which is £5 million less than the extra revenue he gains from just one year’s bus fare rise.

And while the few people who drive into central London will pay more this year, bus passengers right across the capital have seen a 44% increase in the cost of single journeys since Boris came to power.

So while the government declares that we are “all in it together” they remain determined that motorists should be less in it together than the rest of us.

To push this point home the Tories, backed by The Sun newspaper, have proposed a “fair fuel stabiliser” whereby taxes on petrol decrease as fuel prices increase. This is based on the idea that the government gets a windfall from higher oil prices so can simply pass this on to war-torn motorists.

And yet as the government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility report shows, the idea that governments benefit from high oil prices is a myth. As oil prices rise, the government’s overall tax revenue actually falls. And so in order to finance a “fair fuel stabiliser” the government will need to raise taxes, charges or fares elsewhere.

The result is that in London, the cost of public transport is set to shift ever further onto the fare box, with passengers due to pay £1.60 for every £1 paid by government over the next few years.

This shift from government subsidies paid for by progressive taxation to higher fares paid for by rich and poor alike is deeply regressive. And while it is being done in the name of the motorist, in the long-term it will simply force more people back on to the misery of London’s already overcrowded roads.

Sustainable means of transport are to be discouraged through the fare box locally, whilst unsustainable forms of transport are to be subsidised by the government nationally. The result will be the worst of all worlds with more congested and polluted streets accompanied by a far more expensive public transport service as the only alternative.

So while the government have declared the end of The War on the Motorist, the war on all transport users has only just begun.

Alain Bachellier photo

---