A cost-benefit analysis of cars and bicycles

... or the "but cyclists don't pay road tax!" argument

An argument is made by some drivers that their payment of the National Road Fund Licence (more commonly know as 'road tax') entitles them to use the roads, and they propose that cyclists should enjoy no such privilege unless they also pay road tax. A simple comparison of the revenue raised through the road fund licence and expenditure on road maintenance reveals the invalidity of this argument. Road taxation revenue in 2004/2005, for example, was £4.7bn (Table 7.15 in DfT 2006, 129) whilst total expenditure on road building and maintenance in England alone in the same period was £6bn (Table 7.13 in DfT 2006, 128). Clearly road maintenance is already being subsidised by other forms of taxation in addition to the road fund licence, and any driver who argues that there should be a direct link between taxation and expenditure is in effect calling for a higher level of road tax.

We must also consider the fact that almost all of the wear and tear done to roads is caused by motor vehicles (Highways Agency 1994), and that a large proportion of the remainder of current road expenditure (for example traffic controls, motorways, road widening schemes and town bypasses) is not required by bicycles, pedestrians, horse riders and other non-motorised road users. These are costs which are rightly borne by the motorist alone.

It is true that in total motorists pay more than just the road fund licence: revenue from fuel duty in 2004/05 was £23bn (Table 7.15 in DfT 2006, 129). However, the economic cost of road accidents was estimated in 2004 to be some £18bn per year (DfT 2004, 5) and the cost to the British economy of road traffic congestion was estimated to be £20bn, rising to £30bn by 2010 (Goodwin 2004, 2). In 1998 it was calculated that between 12,000 and 24,000 deaths may be may "brought forward" each year in the UK as a result of air pollution, and that between 14,000 and 24,000 hospital admissions annually result from poor air quality (COMEAP 1998), to which road transport is by far the largest single contributor (FoE 1999, 1), and although the resulting economic cost is not estimated it must be considerable. In this light, and without even factoring in the less easily established costs of damage to wildlife, noise pollution, contribution to climate change, and end-of-life disposal of motor vehicles, it is already clear that drivers do not currently pay anything like the full cost of motoring. Drivers who advance the argument that cyclists and horse riders should pay road tax risk shooting themselves in the foot: if all road users paid in proportion to the full cost of their chosen method of transport then cars and lorries would be considerably more expensive than is currently the case, and bicycles might even be subsidised.

 

References

DfT (Department for Transport). November 2006. Transport Statistics Great Britain, 2006 Edition. The Stationery Office.

Highways Agency. 1994. Design Manual for roads and Bridges. The Stationery Office.

Goodwin, Phil. May 2004. The Economic Costs of Road Traffic Congestion. ESRC Transport Studies Unit, University College London.

DfT (Department for Transport). 2004. Highways Economics Note No. 1: 2004. Department for Transport.

COMEAP (Great Britain Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants). January 1998. Holgate, S.T. And Ayres, J.G. (Eds). Quantification of the effects of air pollution on health in the United Kingdom. The Stationery Office.

FoE (Friends of the Earth). 1999. Road Transport, Air Pollution and Health. Briefing Paper.