I have now answered my own question - here it is in case anyone is
interested.
Source: "The Road from Inequity: Fairer Ways of Paying the True Costs
of Road Transport", by Peter Mumford, pub. Adam Smith Institute, 2000.
ISBN 1-902737-17-12. Downloadable from www.adamsmith.org.uk (Hope I
have remembered that correctly).
Finds that rural motorists pay up to seven times their "social costs"
in excess motoring taxes - that's excess over what's consumed by road
building. While for urban motorists, social costs are from two to
eight times the level of excess taxation. For road users as a whole,
though, social costs roughly balance excess taxation. (He admits to
his social costs being conservative - ex-post rather than ex-ante.)
The presentation is "intellectually vigorous" rather than
"academically rigorous" - but it looks like a good first approximation
to me. It is making the case for lower blanket taxes together with
urban road pricing, with excess taxes devoted to public transport etc.
Mind you, I personally/professionally can see some problems in making
travelling in rural areas cheaper than in towns - PPG13 reversed!
If anyone has comments on the validity of Mr Mumford's findings, I
would be interested to hear them.
On Wed, 13 Sep 2000 21:38:32 +0300, Alan P Howes
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I recently read "somewhere" reports of a research project which showed
>that tax payed by urban UK motorists = x * [Cost to Community of that
>use] while for rural motorists the figure was y.
>
>x<1 while y>1.
>
>Can anyone tell me the vales of x and y, and give me a reference for
>the research?
--
Alan Howes, Special Advisor (Operations)
Saudi Public Transport Company, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
[log in to unmask]
PLEASE DO NOT SEND LARGE MESSAGES (>100kB) WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE
Also [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|