Car users pay twice as much in taxes as governments spend on roads

The public transport debate in these pages risks becoming dominated by crank policy prescriptions that override any sense of choice by transport users.  John Cox's clinical analysis of the trends in transport use in cities and the likely continuing decline in public transport use has provoked a chorus of dissent from John Stanley (Bus Users Group), Kerryn Wilmot (Public Transport Users Association) and public affairs consultant Brian Buckley.

These parties want to shift people into using public transport.  People are resisting this, even though its use is subsidised to the tune of 80 per cent of costs.  By contrast, car users pay twice as much in taxes as governments spend on roads.

People find cars liberate them.  Those choosing to live in outer suburbs are not mentally retarded.  They are more capable of trading off their preferences for space and privacy than those who would prefer them to live in inner suburbs and bicycle and tram it around the city.  Those wanting to force us to live in dense inner suburbs exhibit a blind romanticism of what lifestyles should really be like and are keen to impose this on their fellow citizens.

The real tragedy is the planning laws that cause high land prices and increase the costs of goods and services.  Planning schemes such as Melbourne 2030 restrict retail competition to areas where our bureaucrats determine it is needed -- imagine what that would have done to the variety and costs of cars, computers or beer had these matters been in their hands.  More importantly, the restrictions on land use boost house-land packages by more than $100,000 on the edge of Melbourne -- abandon this and the one-car family could run a small Mercedes as a second car and still have change.

ADVERTISEMENT