Motorists to pay £250 tax for parking at work

Here in Sheffield we have trams which cover a large majority of the city and I don't mind using those, they offer almost none of the draw-backs I just listed, and they are fine. But our buses are disgusting, when I used them at college, they were NEVER on time, and sometimes didn't even show up at all.
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not to mention bus prices are disgusting.

when i grew up it was 35p for a child or 65p for an adult from terminus > terminus which was around 18 years ago.

i was going to get the bus somewhere the other day it would have been about a 50 minute bus ride and the driver said £6.10 for a return i had a WTF are you for real look on my face, i just laughed and got off the bus.

i could get a taxi and not pay much more
 
Biohazard said:
why is every council putting so much faith into trams?
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A decent tram network is awesome. Problem is, we dont build decent tram networks in the UK we build them like self contained railway system. A tram is a crap train but a much better replacement for a bus.
 
hmmm ... I work in Nottingham and hence if this came in then the company I work for would likely be affected and would probably pass any fees on.

But, we've move offices in the last year and the number of available parking spaces has been reduced quite significantly so commuting and parking has been a hot topic of debate. Now personally I use public transport to get to work and I'm in at 07:00 most days and most of the excuses that people in the office have made about having to drive in are utter rubbish. There's people who insist that they must drive in as they cannot get a bus (or tram, whatever) from directly outside their house to directly outside the office entrance, never mind that they could actually travel in via public transport with little inconvenience or extra cost ... they have just refused to consider it without even looking at whether they could do it.

There are some people here who need to drive in, (one colleague would take ~2.5hrs to get in via public transport which would be an issue), but there are many who don't want to for no good reason.
 
Richard Hebditch, of the Campaign for Better Transport, said the levy would raise money to invest in transport improvements.
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Hmm, what about other taxes that raise money? How about not frittering that money away on say... social security?

It's not like this country's short of cash/income. It just spends it on stupid things.
 
arknor said:
not to mention bus prices are disgusting.

when i grew up it was 35p for a child or 65p for an adult from terminus > terminus which was around 18 years ago.

i was going to get the bus somewhere the other day it would have been about a 50 minute bus ride and the driver said £6.10 for a return i had a WTF are you for real look on my face, i just laughed and got off the bus.

i could get a taxi and not pay much more
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Taxi's must be well cheap where you live, here their is £3 on the meter at the start of the journey. If I was to get a can to where I live (7 miles from city centre) I would pay in the region of 13 pound. If it was on a night after a club that would be nearer £20.
 
No public transport? Get you company to do something about it! My company got together with a couple of others based nearby and now run five private staff bus routes through the city - four in the morning 30min intervals, four in the evening.

The free staff bus and the fact that I'm only 8 miles (so I often bike) from the office means I've managed to avoid driving to work.
 
[TW]Fox;14584755 said:
A decent tram network is awesome. Problem is, we dont build decent tram networks in the UK we build them like self contained railway system. A tram is a crap train but a much better replacement for a bus.
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I suspect why Biohazard is querying it is that in Edinburgh they are devoting great expense and a not inconsiderable amount of inconvenience to put a tram service back into Edinburgh 50 odd years after the previous one ceased. I'm sure it's great if you live in the straightline(ish) stretch between Leith and Ingleston which will be covered but if you don't then you're stuffed because you've still got to find an alternative means.

Why is a tram a better replacement for a bus? They are extremely expensive to implement (although I'll conceed that could be incompetence on the part of Edinburgh Council), they only travel on tramways so they don't offer the same level of flexibility as a bus, the implementation process is causing massive disruption (although that will presumably cease).

Edinburgh already has an award winning bus service, it's not perfect but all things considered it is pretty decent and the fares are generally at a reasonable level (it was a flat fee of ~£1.20 for any journey length when I last used them).

As for the article: trying to get people to use public transport is all well and good but rather than using the stick approach I think they'd be better off with the carrot of making public transport so easy and efficient that it makes no sense to avoid it - either in convenience terms or cost.
 
bloody ridiculous, they already tax drivers on a myriad of retarded things which invariably get spent elsewhere (as opposed to our transport infrastructure) and now they want more? the only people this will affect are those who are on lower incomes (who'se money is effectively completely allocated and there is no wiggle room), **** labour, this govt has to be the worst we've had as far as i can remember, in my life time or historically, in terms of screwing the poor, and this is supposed to be a 'labour' government?

how about using the money that's already levied under the broad spectrum of 'transport' to actually improve the transport infrastructure and bring down public transport costs (have any of these MPs actually had to get on a bus or train with their own money recently?) so that it becomes a viable alternative to driving to work because if they introduce this now with no alternative it will cause chaos.
 
If companies started doing this IE : Sainsburys / Tesco half of the work force wouldnt come to work!! £200 odd goes along way with our crap wages these days!!

& can't see it happening anyway Tesco would just say STFU and carry on owning everyone ... hell im suprised they havn't bought Labour yet :P
 
So you leave your house which is being taxed (council tax) get in your car and have to pay tax to drive said car (road tax) you get taxed for parking said car to go to your work which is taxed (income tax). You then go out for lunch to buy your taxed food (vat) go back to your work to be taxed again via income tax.
Then you get junkie scum who sit in their heated house with their kid chantelle and getting paid to do it via benefits.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Why is a tram a better replacement for a bus?
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I dont know, but it is. This might seem like a strange response but I've asked myself the same question. I *hate* buses. I dislike using them, find them hassle, etc. I spent a week in Melbourne last month and they have the most comprehensive tram system you could ever hope to see. Whereever you wish to go, simply hop on a tram. The trams are small - most are just two coaches - but are frequent and most of them run on, and stop, in the middle of the street rather than being seperate with stations etc. The entire CBD area is so well served by trams you can't look down a street without seeing at least two.

The whole thing just worked, it was a pleasure to use. I kept trying to work out why it felt so different to buses - but I couldnt find a reason, it 'just does'.
 
Employee parking provided by an employer is a benefit in kind, as they're providing sometimi you'd otherwise have to pay for. It is, however, specifically exempt from tax.

What irks me with this is that it looks like they will introduce new legislation to account for this scheme, further bloating the largest tax legislature in the world with another 100 sections or so, and increasing the burden of compliance, when they could just repeal the one section that exempts the benefit. Classical inefficiency.
 
vonhelmet said:
Employee parking provided by an employer is a benefit in kind, as they're providing sometimi you'd otherwise have to pay for. It is, however, specifically exempt from tax.

What irks me with this is that it looks like they will introduce new legislation to account for this scheme, further bloating the largest tax legislature in the world with another 100 sections or so, and increasing the burden of compliance, when they could just repeal the one section that exempts the benefit. Classical inefficiency.
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Classical inefficiency - classic Britain.
 
They can charge the company i work for all they want, its government funded anyway.

I do disagree with it though, it seems that no matter what they do they always try and stiff the motorists. Parking is already a nightmare for me, and by adding an additional charge it will become even worse.
 
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