Date published: 2007/08/04
The Cambridge Evening News says:
Cycling campaigners reckon Cambridge residents would be missing a golden opportunity if they threw a spoke in the county council's pay-as-you-drive scheme.
Cambridge Cycling Campaign says that refusing a package combining millions of pounds of Government money for transport with a weekday morning-only congestion charge would be "a huge lost opportunity".
The proposed charge is part of a £500 million package for boosting public transport, including bus, train, cycling and walking schemes, plus new and expanded park and rides sites.
The campaign's co-ordinator, Martin Lucas-Smith, said: "Do Cambridgeshire residents really want to throw away £500 million of funding, which would give them genuine, high-quality alternatives to being stuck in traffic queues? This level of funding would totally dwarf current levels of investment. It would be free money on the table from the Government, assuming a bid would be accepted, as seems likely."
The group's liaison officer, Jim Chisholm, added: "Many motorists, particularly those coming in from outside Cambridge, would ironically be the biggest winners of this scheme. The improved public transport would get many city-dwellers out of their cars. Public transport users would see huge benefits and the current level of around 25 per cent of commuter journeys by bike would rise."
The Cambridge Cycling Campaign (CCC) is a typical special interest pressure group, trying to promote their interests above the interests of society as a whole. So anything they say about drivers or driving has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It is not very surprising that they support the congestion charge, since it is anti-car. But their arguments are poor. (And notice they don't even mention the cost of implementation of the scheme, which is probably going to be the biggest argument against it.)
Firstly, this £500 million is not "free money". Someone has to pay for it, and it is the UK taxpayer. Up and down the UK, there are similarly economically illiterate people making the same claim, that if only the local government would cave into national government pressure to introduce congestion charging, they would be given bucket loads of "free money". Instead of celebrating this dreadful bribery (which ultimately we all will indeed pay for), the CCC should be denouncing it. It is poor governance.
Secondly, drivers are not "the biggest winners of this scheme". Many drivers, in particular poorer drivers, would be forced out of their optimal transport choice (i.e. their car) into a sub-optimal transport choice (i.e. the bus). Of course those drivers rich enough to pay the charge would be better off, all other things being equal, but you can guarantee that local government will reduce the capacity of Cambridge roads further (as they have done over and over the last few years) so that even rich drivers would end up no better off.
Unfortunately, the CCC has far too big an influence in Cambridge, because there is no counterweight from either a drivers' lobby or a pedestrians' lobby, and the local government is run by people with the same academic middle class mentality as the CCC (in particular the Cambridge ruling elite hate cars, except for those they themselves use). The only way these kinds of proposals ever get shut down is if the commercial lobby manages to threaten local government sufficiently. Otherwise, Cambridge would already be a completely car free zone (except for the ruling elite, who of course need to get around).
And if the CCC has this much influence with their (claimed) 25% of work journeys being done by cycling, imagine how obnoxious they would become if that percentage ever climbs close to half or more.
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