The Government Will Pay Drivers £3000 Every Year To Ditch Their Cars
The massive push towards electric cars is all well any good, but emissions aren’t the only consequence of mass car usage the government wants to fix. Congestion will remain an issue long after the UK’s proposed ban on new internal combustion-engined vehicles comes into force in 2030 unless a significant number of drivers are weaned off cars.
The solution mooted is to simply pay people to give up cars, The Times reports. This year, a government-funded trial in Coventry will see a group of drivers given up to £3000 in travel credits on either a card or a smartphone app, so long as they switch from driving their private vehicle to using public transport.
The scheme doesn’t force users to go completely cold turkey on cars, since the credits can be used to hire electric cars along with paying for public transport costs like bus fares. The thinking behind all this is too see how much money would be necessary to permanently change the travel behaviour of car users.
Initially, only 100 people will be involved, with a focus on those owning pre-2006 petrol cars and diesels made before 2016. It’ll start in Coventry this spring before expanding to the wider West Midlands Combined Authority. The two-year endeavour could be offered elsewhere, potentially nationwide in time if deemed successful. Hampshire County Council, for instance, is mulling over a ‘Mobility Credit Scheme’.
Lobbing thousands of pounds at a huge number of drivers across the country wouldn’t be terribly sustainable, so funding for schemes like this will only raid the government’s coffers in their early stages. Eventually, funding would be sought from private firms like car-sharing clubs and public transport operators.
Boss of walking and cycling charity Sustrans, Xavier Bruce, welcomed the programme. He noted that “Better, more affordable, public transport is critical to combating air pollution and climate change”.
In contrast, AA president King branded the timing of the plans “bizarre” given how attitudes to using public transport have shifted amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. “Coventry was right at the heart of the historic revolution of the British motor industry and known to many as the UK’s motor city or ‘British Detroit’…How ironic that a local authority in Coventry is now trying to pay people to ditch their wheels,” he added.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
This is all well and good if you have a reliable public transport system. I live about 10 miles from 3 different cities. If I drive it takes me about 15 to 30 minutes to get to the cities and park up. If I take public transport if the busses turn up on time it will take me over an hour and if i take a train i have to change train half way a long the journey which has 24 minute wait, if trains are running on time. I also cannot physically get to and from work by public transport so again at less they actually invest in the public transport and the road systems this won’t work.
Same deal with me. If I have work somewhere in Newcastle I can catch the Tyne and Wear Metro and it’ll drop me directly into the city centre. The problem is that I need to drive to my nearest Metro station to begin with. Can I take a bus to that station? Nope. Not unless I want to be an hour late. Can I catch a bus to Sunderland city centre? Yes, and I’ll be there in less than twenty minutes and then I can catch the Metro from Sunderland, but then I’d have to pay for TWO tickets, since the Metro is publicly owned and the Bus is a private business. There’s no integration of the transport network like there is in London with TFL.
Due to the lack of investment in the Metro, and the Conservatives selling publicly owned buses around the country to private enterprise in 1984/85, you end up with a disjointed array of bus routes and a rapid transit systems that have little overlap.
Bring buses back under public ownership, expand the Metro lines, integrate the two systems and maybe, instead of paying each punter three-grand, increase council tax by a two quid a month and make the transport system free at point of use. That’s a far more sensible idea than handing out “transport credits” for a non-functioning system.
And this is why people complain about governments wasting tax money
Buy a pre 2006, 500 pound car. “Ditch it” and get 3000 in credit. ;)
500? Dude, you can get one for, like, 100 that runs and drives. Why waste that much money?
No.
Wait they think the private companies will eventually pay customers to use their services? what sort of nonsense idea is this