Should congestion charges go up?

Question

Do you think it is fair that so called gas guzzlers should be made to pay more to protect the environment when our mayor goes all over the place in planes not obviously bothered himself by poluting the world. ?

Answer 1

Get real I live in Houston nobody rides the buses.  They never go anywhere you need to go.  A true mass transit system would be good but how to pay for it.

It is hypocritical for the mayor to go all over the place in planes and then tax more for gas guzzlers.  The true is most people around here that have SUV do not need one.  High gas prices will make them buy more fuel efficient vehicles.  I have seen some of the people who where driving hummers buying small European sports cars.  

I need to buy a truck.  I really want better fuel economy than they currently have.

I believe that the new F150's are two big.  If I needed a truck that big I would get a F250.   I have a ranger but need something bigger.

The estimated fuel economy of the 2008 F150 is



Fuel Type

Regular



MPG (city)

14



MPG (highway)

19



MPG (combined)

16

My 1988 F150 with the 5.0 L got that.  My fathers 1998 gets that gas mileage.  And his truck has 230,000 miles on it.  Come to think of it, it still gets better gas mileage.  

So maybe if there was a tax on new gas guzzlers then people would stop buying them.  Forcing car makers to build higher fuel economy models.  

The mayor should stay home and not fly all over the place. The best leaders lead by example.

Answer 2

Anyone who thinks that fuel tax / congestion charging has anything at all to do with the environment is kidding themselves on, and should stop listening to all the greenwash coming from this despicabe government and certain left-wing media people!

Answer 3

YES - the higher the congestion charge is, the more people will use public transport.

Answer 4

No. They should have more park and rides operating 24 hours day and keep all city centres free of traffic. apart from buses and taxis. ambulances police cars fire engines.

Answer 5

What does fair have to do with it?

Your mayor (whoever he is) probably also lives in a house that's a lot bigger than average and if that's his plane, he probably has a couple of other homes. Maybe he's a disgusting creature or maybe he's not -- and maybe he's a good mayor or not. It doesn't have anything to do with gas guzzler taxes.

There are people sitting around whining about the price of gas for their Hummers and there are people who have their nannies fill them up. Get over it. Life isn't fair.

But what is fair is to assess the cost to society for what that gas guzzler is doing. One thing it does, apart from burning a lot of gas, is run inefficiently so if it's not polluting the air directly, it's contributing to greenhouse gases. A mayor doesn't have much to with that law. But one effect is to discourage people who ought to know better from buying fat vehicles they don't need and the other is to encourage the makers to avoid the tax by putting in more efficient engines. It's not exactly rocket science.

I've never owned a truck that got good gas mileage. The best was about 18 on a good day and I hate to think about the way an f-250 could chew its way through two 20 gallon tanks. Gas isn't going to get a lot  cheaper in the short run a nd in the long run it's going to keep going up in price.

I drive an car with 270 hp that goes like a bat out hades and gets an average of about 19 when I stick close to home with some traffic. On the road, it's good for 27-29mpg.  I rented an American piece of c**p last week that was underpowered, drove badly, looked good and had terrible egos, including mirror. And while it got 25 mpg, it wasn't doing very much with it. No one's pushing them to build better engines exactly. They're just putting c**p engines that use less gas that c**p bigger engines.

The reason trucks have such awful mileage is that the builders don't want to give the tiny bit of profit that is the difference between a more sophisticated engine and something that's basically a 40 year old design with a few updates like electronic ignition.

But if you look at some of the big diesel rigs, while they don't get good mileage compared to a car, they've been getting better and better because fuel costs matters when you're on the road all the time. Build a low MPG semi, and you're going to be the low end of the business --and when your customer hits a diesel shortage, he's going to wish he'd bought up.

You see plenty of Bentleys and Rolls in London along with some other fuel smokers. They want to drive them and have the money, they pay through the nose for carbon tax.  What isn't fair is that gas hogs don't pay their real share of the damage they do -- and that includes running up the prices for the rest of us by hogging fuel we all need.

While you're passing gas about this, you might consider this. One flight of a military aircraft on a short sortie burns more fuel in that one trip that several cars burn in a couple of years. But then maybe you think we ought to give owners of old  inefficient ships a break on their fuel costs while the up to date shipowners are using high efficiency diesels tha that operate at a fraction of the cost of the older ships on a ton mile basis.

You pays your money and you takes your choice. You complain about your mayor, but he's pahing through the nose for those trips (and if he's not, someone ought to bust him if there's not a good reason).

This is one we've got to do together and finger pointing to justifying continuing a stupid policy that encourages waste and undermines national security is just selfish.