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Andrew English's column
Freedom to travel, associate with family and friends and seek work is one of our most basic liberties...
Harry Lime's speech made from a Viennese Ferris wheel in the 1949 film The Third Man is one of the great pieces of movie cynicism. "Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?" Yet the idea that if you get far enough away from people you can afford not to care seems to be prevalent in most transport planning.
Always looking at the macro, never the micro, picture, planners defend their policies saying they are trying to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. But what if these policies end up with callous and converse effects? The 18th century utilitarian ideas of Jeremy Bentham were never meant to single out individuals for strange and brutal treatment, yet don't some of our transport policies have exactly that effect?
I thought about it recently when I bought a train ticket. South West Trains has recently introduced huge off-peak fare increases, claiming over-crowding. This is nonsense. I used to travel on the first cheap-day train of the morning and usually had an entire Desiro-class coach to myself all the way to London. I met a woman the other day whose ticket price has increased by more than 50 per cent as a result of the Stagecoach-owned firm's actions. She is giving up her minimum-wage job in Woking, Surrey; her increased travel costs mean it just doesn't pay her to work any more.
Yet while South West Trains is greedy and arrogant, the smoking gun is in the Government's hands. It has extorted a £1.19billion, 10-year operating franchise out of the company, and these fare rises are as much to do with keeping up the payments to the Treasury as they are lining directors' pockets. So everyone gets richer and one dot stops going to Woking to do a job... or is that 101 dots, or 1,001 dots?
It's the same with road pricing. "Doing nothing is not a solution," say dithering MPs. And the costs? An estimated £1.28 a mile at peak times, £600 a pop for an in-car monitoring unit, untold billions to computer companies to set up the system and an army of inspectors to make it work. Taxpayers will foot the bill, yet this regressive tax will price some of us off the roads.
And when 1.8million people signed an anti-road pricing petition on the Downing Street website, the Government sneeringly ignored them. Can you see how this works? Get far enough away and appeals to stop this mad tax are those little dots again - and who cares if they stop moving?
Interestingly, the Government has already handed over power to introduce road pricing to the EU. Legislation that lets Brussels dictate what technology will underpin charging schemes across the 27 member states was hidden in Government papers and passed last month. Observed from Brussels, British dots are even smaller, and if a few hundred thousand stopped moving, unable to afford the outrageous cost of travelling on the road, so what?
Freedom to travel, associate with family and friends and seek work is one of our most basic liberties. From lofty eyries, these moving mortals might resemble Harry Lime's insignificant dots, but they are people going about their lawful business and they should be treated respectfully. You know that the distance between politicians, planners and the public has become too great when you hear motorists referred to as "rats".
"I am not a number, I am a free man," cries the anguished Patrick McGoohan in the Sixties television series The Prisoner In the same way, I am not a mere dot. Our traffic planners and politicians would do well to remember that it is those tiny dots that pay their wages.
Andrew English is motoring correspondent of the Daily Telegraph
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| It's Taxpayers who will foot the bill for road pricing - yet this regressive tax will price some of us off the roads | |
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Always looking at the macro, never the micro, picture, planners defend their policies saying they are trying to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. But what if these policies end up with callous and converse effects? The 18th century utilitarian ideas of Jeremy Bentham were never meant to single out individuals for strange and brutal treatment, yet don't some of our transport policies have exactly that effect?
I thought about it recently when I bought a train ticket. South West Trains has recently introduced huge off-peak fare increases, claiming over-crowding. This is nonsense. I used to travel on the first cheap-day train of the morning and usually had an entire Desiro-class coach to myself all the way to London. I met a woman the other day whose ticket price has increased by more than 50 per cent as a result of the Stagecoach-owned firm's actions. She is giving up her minimum-wage job in Woking, Surrey; her increased travel costs mean it just doesn't pay her to work any more.
Yet while South West Trains is greedy and arrogant, the smoking gun is in the Government's hands. It has extorted a £1.19billion, 10-year operating franchise out of the company, and these fare rises are as much to do with keeping up the payments to the Treasury as they are lining directors' pockets. So everyone gets richer and one dot stops going to Woking to do a job... or is that 101 dots, or 1,001 dots?
It's the same with road pricing. "Doing nothing is not a solution," say dithering MPs. And the costs? An estimated £1.28 a mile at peak times, £600 a pop for an in-car monitoring unit, untold billions to computer companies to set up the system and an army of inspectors to make it work. Taxpayers will foot the bill, yet this regressive tax will price some of us off the roads.
And when 1.8million people signed an anti-road pricing petition on the Downing Street website, the Government sneeringly ignored them. Can you see how this works? Get far enough away and appeals to stop this mad tax are those little dots again - and who cares if they stop moving?
Interestingly, the Government has already handed over power to introduce road pricing to the EU. Legislation that lets Brussels dictate what technology will underpin charging schemes across the 27 member states was hidden in Government papers and passed last month. Observed from Brussels, British dots are even smaller, and if a few hundred thousand stopped moving, unable to afford the outrageous cost of travelling on the road, so what?
Freedom to travel, associate with family and friends and seek work is one of our most basic liberties. From lofty eyries, these moving mortals might resemble Harry Lime's insignificant dots, but they are people going about their lawful business and they should be treated respectfully. You know that the distance between politicians, planners and the public has become too great when you hear motorists referred to as "rats".
"I am not a number, I am a free man," cries the anguished Patrick McGoohan in the Sixties television series The Prisoner In the same way, I am not a mere dot. Our traffic planners and politicians would do well to remember that it is those tiny dots that pay their wages.
Andrew English is motoring correspondent of the Daily Telegraph
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