Birmingham cars could be banned from driving through city centre

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Is living modestly, with occasional treats merely existing? Do we all need to live foot-to-the-floor excess all the time to feel alive?

We need to reach for the stars both technologically and spiritually, not merely be subjected to miserable existence under neofeudalist green tyranny system

This has nothing to do with genuine modesty as you will have no choice or say in it
 
Would it make more sense if it were described as industrial and monetary systems? Most countries around the world seem to have geared their industry to make more and more stuff that people have to be persauded to buy - a good example of doing this blatantly are Sonos: https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/sonos-speaker-and-devices.706194/. People buy stuff and the countries economy grows. Countries borrow money against future growth, expecting that increased tax take will enable them to cover their debts instead of having to borrow more to cover them.

Certainly people are more focussed on health and preventing death, and there's a medical industry that grows as we buy more stuff to keep us healthy for longer or prevent bad things happening. That's not a bad thing of itself, although in many ways the 'planet' would benefit if we lived shorter lives and were less populous.

How should we alter that? On a personal level, just buy what you need, don't throw things out when you get bored or if they're a little worn and repair instead of discarding, eat moderately, drive as necessary but no more.

On a national level, bringing this to an end by legislation is the end of life as we knew it - TBH I don't think it's possible because there are too many people who see personal freedom as more important than anything else, including the suffering of others.

The only necessary change I would make would extended anti monopoly and anticompetitive behaviour legislations. We need new ideas and new tech on the table as soon as they can come out. Too bad if this means the product of leading company is obsoleted. This should take care of so many problems.

Of course any obvious criminal pollution like chemicals in the water need heavy policing and harsh penalties. That's common sense.
What we hear from the fake prophets of apocalypse is in fact an exact opposite. Did any of them tell you tap water is poisoned? I guess not. They shall attack me for this yet again. This is how much they care about you, or to be precise your skyrocketing medical bills and quicker death.
 
The only necessary change I would make would extended anti monopoly and anticompetitive behaviour legislations. We need new ideas and new tech on the table as soon as they can come out. Too bad if this means the product of leading company is obsoleted. This should take care of so many problems.

Of course any obvious criminal pollution like chemicals in the water need heavy policing and harsh penalties. That's common sense.
What we hear from the fake prophets of apocalypse is in fact an exact opposite. Did any of them tell you tap water is poisoned? I guess not. They shall attack me for this yet again. This is how much they care about you, or to be precise your skyrocketing medical bills and quicker death.
Why just water? Let’s do air and ground too.

unless that’s a bit too restrictive..
 
Is living modestly, with occasional treats merely existing? Do we all need to live foot-to-the-floor excess all the time to feel alive?
Do we all live foot to the floor excess all the time though?
What do you deem to be excess?
On facebook the other day, I saw a similar discussion, one bloke seemed to think a car should only be used in an emergency. When it was pointed out to him, people require cars for work or to get to work, his reply was that those people are in the wrong job, nobody should require a car for work. I must be in the wrong job as I require a car to get there and back. Can you imagine how many people would be without jobs if they didn't have cars?
I would say I am already living a modest lifestyle, anything less is just existing.
 
Justifying car ownership/use because of having a lifestyle that is only possible through car ownership is a bit mixed up.

Yes, cars have allowed us to expand our economy, enhance our lifestyles, but they've been fuelled by a finite resource and its byproducts are poisoning the world. They aren't sustainable, and neither are their current replacements. Change is going to have to happen.
 
Justifying car ownership/use because of having a lifestyle that is only possible through car ownership is a bit mixed up.

Yes, cars have allowed us to expand our economy, enhance our lifestyles, but they've been fuelled by a finite resource and its byproducts are poisoning the world. They aren't sustainable, and neither are their current replacements. Change is going to have to happen.
No it's justifying life, not car ownership.
 
Some of us like to have fun - that would appear to be a strange concept to some on here!
Cars are a hobby for me as they are for millions. Enjoy life - if you just exist there isn't much point in living.
I've lived through so many environment crisis they are quite boring and predictable now.
99% of species that have lived on the planet are now extinct and it ain't no different today just there is mass hysteria & brainwashing taking place by the socialist left who, as usual are driven by jealousy at others making money.
 
I am happy with the idea of not throwing things away vs repairing, but how much of what we buy today is repairable & are the repairs affordable?

I think manufacturers design their products to last just longer than their warranties & pitch their spare parts pricing/availability & repair costs at a level which encourages people to replace rather than repair.

My daughter has a Hotpoint washing machine, less than 2 years old & subject to the latest Hotpoint recall. Hotpoint's solution to their machine defect is to replace it rather than repair it.

Last year we ended up buying a new washing machine ourselves to replace the previous one which was just over 3 years old because the drum bearings had gone; the previous one had been replaced at a similar age (under 6 year warranty) by the manufacturer because guess what, the drum bearings had gone. The cost of repair in both cases was significantly more than the cost of a new machine as the bearings were an integral part of the drum which would need replacing.

The pile of white goods & consumer electronics discarded at our local 'tip' is huge.......
 
For many people, the private car is a necessity, whether it is their only means of transport in a rural area poorly served by public transport, or as a 'tool' to enable them to do their job.

When I worked for a major computer manufacturer I was expected to travel to wherever I was needed, which often meant being up in the early hours to reach a client site by 9am & arriving home after 10pm having left the client at 6pm. None of this would have been possible without my company car.

When I retired from that job I got bored & decided to go back to work, the nearest job I could find was 15 miles away, a road journey of 25-30 minutes or a bus journey of 3 hours, so I continued to travel by car.

Now that I am fully retired, my local town bus service is every hour & it would be impossible to do our weekly grocery 'run' carrying loads of shopping on the bus so I am still using a car.

Public transport has never been good enough for me to use exclusively.
 
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Public transport works best when people and destinations are on routes. This is what used to happen, people chose to live and work near transport routes.

Private transport undid that by creating drunk spiders webs of individual journeys, which can not easily be served by Public transport.
 
Public transport works best when people and destinations are on routes. This is what used to happen, people chose to live and work near transport routes.

Private transport undid that by creating drunk spiders webs of individual journeys, which can not easily be served by Public transport.
Where I work is right next to a 96yr old major arterial road out of London, I live in a town also right next to the same road, historical records have the town dated back to 1062, it could easily be older, there is no public transport that goes on that road or anywhere near it.
When I started working for the company over 40 years ago, I worked at another location on another major London arterial road that ran partly in parallel with the other road. No direct public transport from where i lived, i would have to catch a bus that would take me a mile and a half in the opposite direction than a direct route to work, then catch a train to the town my place of work is then another bus for more than a mile. Of a morning, the journey to work by public transport would be an hour minimum, the return journey could be double that.
By car, less than half an hour each way.

Private transport makes everywhere more easily accessible and in a much quicker time.
 
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Your post simply reinforces what I said.
 
Your post simply reinforces what I said.
No it doesn't, it says the opposite. You said people chose to live and work on transport routes, yet I have provided two examples with a minimum of 100yrs history that says the complete opposite. My original place of work employed around 45k people at one point, fairly hard for all those employees and their families to live nearby within easy public transport routes with all the other businesses in the region also employing people as well.
 
Justifying car ownership/use because of having a lifestyle that is only possible through car ownership is a bit mixed up.

Yes, cars have allowed us to expand our economy, enhance our lifestyles, but they've been fuelled by a finite resource and its byproducts are poisoning the world. They aren't sustainable, and neither are their current replacements. Change is going to have to happen.

Reading your comments I wonder if you have a lifestyle that can be car free? I think you must have.

There are people who simply can not rely on public transport and I'll give you just two examples.

I've never had a job I could have done using public transport. That's worth clarifying, my work wouldn't just have been more difficult it would have simply been impossible.

I'm now a full time carer and I've seen the issues a lack of mobility lead to. If cars are on the way out that'll mean large numbers of people will become housebound with dramatic and drastic impacts on their lives. And then there's the effects on their helpers and carers. It's difficult enough now but if cars become no more I can't see any way to manage. In other parts of the world you just don't see elderly or disabled people out and about because they're at home as it's impossible to move them about and I'd hate to see the UK go the same way.

IMO being car free in the UK only really works for a tiny minority of people and people living, working and travelling to specific places and for many more people being car free will be a disaster and will radically affect their quality of life and even life expectancy.

I know there are those who want us to return to the days when no one travelled beyond the village they were born in but at least see, recognise and accept the effect these policies will have on others who rely on private transport.

Yes we need to look at the impact travelling has but maybe we should put more effort into doing this well rather than knee jerk ill thought out policies which will lead to misery and even deaths which could have been avoided.
 
Reading your comments I wonder if you have a lifestyle that can be car free? I think you must have.

There are people who simply can not rely on public transport and I'll give you just two examples.

I've never had a job I could have done using public transport. That's worth clarifying, my work wouldn't just have been more difficult it would have simply been impossible.

I'm now a full time carer and I've seen the issues a lack of mobility lead to. If cars are on the way out that'll mean large numbers of people will become housebound with dramatic and drastic impacts on their lives. And then there's the effects on their helpers and carers. It's difficult enough now but if cars become no more I can't see any way to manage. In other parts of the world you just don't see elderly or disabled people out and about because they're at home as it's impossible to move them about and I'd hate to see the UK go the same way.

IMO being car free in the UK only really works for a tiny minority of people and people living, working and travelling to specific places and for many more people being car free will be a disaster and will radically affect their quality of life and even life expectancy.

I know there are those who want us to return to the days when no one travelled beyond the village they were born in but at least see, recognise and accept the effect these policies will have on others who rely on private transport.

Yes we need to look at the impact travelling has but maybe we should put more effort into doing this well rather than knee jerk ill thought out policies which will lead to misery and even deaths which could have been avoided.

Unfortunately Alan our policies are already causing the deaths of thousands of people world wide!

In Africa there are fossil fuels in abundance but the developed world refuses to assist in mining these fuels so that local communities would have electricity for their homes and hospitals to look after the young and sick. We stand by whilst they burn wood and create carcinogens in their own homes to cook on.

The hospital gets given aid for some horrendously expensive solar panel that can only provide electricity for a couple of hours a day,

All because some eco warriors think they have found a very tenuous link between C02 and global warming.
 
Unfortunately Alan our policies are already causing the deaths of thousands of people world wide!

In Africa there are fossil fuels in abundance but the developed world refuses to assist in mining these fuels so that local communities would have electricity for their homes and hospitals to look after the young and sick. We stand by whilst they burn wood and create carcinogens in their own homes to cook on.

The hospital gets given aid for some horrendously expensive solar panel that can only provide electricity for a couple of hours a day,

All because some eco warriors think they have found a very tenuous link between C02 and global warming.

I can imagine the headlines if a UK or Gosh forbid an American company started large scale mining in Africa, they'd be accused of colonialism, profiteering and exploitation. Of course the Chinese can do what they want in Africa and no VS Rupert or Henrietta in Surrey will give a flying or march anywhere.

I think there's a problem with the doom predictors in that they don't think about the consequences of the well meaning measures they want. The most obvious to me being a lack of mobility and independence leading to greater poverty and a drastic reduction in both the quality and quantity of life. Do everything that some say is required and the economy will collapse along with life expectancy and we'll be almost back in the dark ages with few people outside of the social elite seeing 60.

I'm all for saving the planet but please lets do it intelligently and humanely and not consign millions outside of Islington and the like to misery and a premature death.
 
Why not all return to this thread in ten years and see...
 
Why not all return to this thread in ten years and see...
See what exactly. Cars are getting cleaner even without ev's and life expectancy is improving not getting worse.
 
See what exactly. Cars are getting cleaner even without ev's and life expectancy is improving not getting worse.

Well, I'll come back in 10 years and see. Surely you are happy to back your words on here up with a look in the future?

As to your last point - debatable.
 
Well, I'll come back in 10 years and see. Surely you are happy to back your words on here up with a look in the future?

As to your last point - debatable.

You are one of the 'doomsters' referred to in this article:


Blog Post
18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970, expect more this year
AEIdeas
CARPE DIEM


Mark J. Perry
@Mark_J_Perry
April 21, 2019

Tomorrow (Monday, April 22) is Earth Day 2019 and time for my annual Earth Day post on spectacularly wrong predictions around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970…..
In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now: The planet’s future has never looked better. Here’s why” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article. Well, it’s now the 49th anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 19 years ago: How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey. Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”
15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
MP: Let’s keep those spectacularly wrong predictions from the first Earth Day 1970 in mind when we’re bombarded in the next few days with media hype, and claims like this from the Earth Day website:
Global sea levels are rising at an alarmingly fast rate — 6.7 inches in the last century alone and going higher. Surface temperatures are setting new heat records about each year. The ice sheets continue to decline, glaciers are in retreat globally, and our oceans are more acidic than ever. We could go on…which is a whole other problem.​
The majority of scientists are in agreement that human contributions to the greenhouse effect are the root cause. Essentially, gases in the atmosphere – such as methane and CO2 – trap heat and block it from escaping our planet.​
So what happens next? More droughts and heat waves, which can have devastating effects on the poorest countries and communities. Hurricanes will intensify and occur more frequently. Sea levels could rise up to four feet by 2100 – and that’s a conservative estimate among experts.​
Climate preacher/scientist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez predicted recently that “We’re like… the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” You can add that to the spectacularly wrong predictions made this year around the time of Earth Day 2019.
Finally, think about this question, posed by Ronald Bailey in 2000: What will Earth look like when Earth Day 60 rolls around in 2030? Bailey predicts a much cleaner, and much richer future world, with less hunger and malnutrition, less poverty, and longer life expectancy, and with lower mineral and metal prices. But he makes one final prediction about Earth Day 2030: “There will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future–and the present–never looked so bleak.” In other words, the hype, hysteria and spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions will continue, promoted by the virtue signalling “environmental grievance hustlers” like AOC.
 
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It's just happening slower than they predicted.
 
Doesn't address my points, just regurgitates climate change denier stuff.

I wonder if DK knows that Hans Rosling was an advocate of reducing CO2 emissions. More cherry picking of evidence...
 
I can imagine the headlines if a UK or Gosh forbid an American company started large scale mining in Africa, they'd be accused of colonialism, profiteering and exploitation. Of course the Chinese can do what they want in Africa and no VS Rupert or Henrietta in Surrey will give a flying or march anywhere.

I think there's a problem with the doom predictors in that they don't think about the consequences of the well meaning measures they want. The most obvious to me being a lack of mobility and independence leading to greater poverty and a drastic reduction in both the quality and quantity of life. Do everything that some say is required and the economy will collapse along with life expectancy and we'll be almost back in the dark ages with few people outside of the social elite seeing 60.

I'm all for saving the planet but please lets do it intelligently and humanely and not consign millions outside of Islington and the like to misery and a premature death.

??
Pretty much all of the diamond mining is UK controlled (De Beers), Shell has massive operations in Nigeria, Randgold (a Jersey company pretty much no-one has heard of) has 10's of billions of gold in its mines across Africa. Glencore - another anonymous UK company - has mining operations across most of Africa. It is also a larger company than amazon, microsoft, ibm, procter and gamble..
 
Well, I'll come back in 10 years and see. Surely you are happy to back your words on here up with a look in the future?

As to your last point - debatable.
Average UK life expectancy in 2000 was 77.74yrs.
Average UK life expectancy in 2019 is around 81yrs. Car exhaust emissions have fallen drastically during that time period.
 
Average UK life expectancy in 2000 was 77.74yrs.
Average UK life expectancy in 2019 is around 81yrs. Car exhaust emissions have fallen drastically during that time period.

Remember not that long ago the morons used to put organo-lead compounds in petrol. These are super toxic. Now it is very clean in comparison. It's not perfect but certainly getting there without all the green tyranny. Now the toxins go straight to your water and food, but meanwhile you could all go back to buses and bikes.
 
Average UK life expectancy in 2000 was 77.74yrs.
Average UK life expectancy in 2019 is around 81yrs. Car exhaust emissions have fallen drastically during that time period.

In 2000 the Country ground to a halt over the taxes we were paying on fuel - 20 years later the Government can put whatever tax they want on fuel after the brainwashing that has taken place that fossil fuels are destroying the environment.

There is only one organisation getting rich out of fossil fuel sales and that's the governments of the western world with taxes on the product in the UK running at circa 65%.

(tax revenue from fuel sales has gone up by £5 billion since 2000!)
 
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If the Government didn't levy so much tax on fuel, where would you like the taxes to be levied? Given that the Government needs the tax revenue to function, would you rather all food was taxed, or see income tax rates increased? Basic rate Income tax rate in 2000 was 23% vs 20% today......

At least with fuel duty & VAT on fuel, 'we' users have a choice about paying it.... If we use energy efficient appliances and fuel efficient vehicles we pay less tax......
 
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I am pretty sure that if you work out the taxes paid by motorists vs highways maintenance and improvement, the motorist is getting subsidised by other tax payers...
 
I am pretty sure that if you work out the taxes paid by motorists vs highways maintenance and improvement, the motorist is getting subsidised by other tax payers...
Money spent on uk roads 2018/19 - £4.8bn
2019 Tax revenue from VED - £6.5bn
2019 Tax revenue from petrol and diesel - £27.9bn
Looks like the motorist is subsidising everyone else to me.
 
Money spent on uk roads 2018/19 - £4.8bn
2019 Tax revenue from VED - £6.5bn
2019 Tax revenue from petrol and diesel - £27.9bn
Looks like the motorist is subsidising everyone else to me.

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.
 
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.
How so? Those are the figures for UK road expenditure for 2018/19 and the two tax sources from UK motorists. There is no complications. It's quite easy and simple maths.
 
Money spent on uk roads 2018/19 - £4.8bn
2019 Tax revenue from VED - £6.5bn
2019 Tax revenue from petrol and diesel - £27.9bn
Looks like the motorist is subsidising everyone else to me.

You dont happen to working in the car industry do you?!

You seem to have conveniently forgotten:-
Environmental costs?
Health impacts?
Costs of premature deaths associated with pollution?
Cost of the land used for roads?
Cost of accidents?
Impacts of noise pollution?

A conclusion from a previous government report below. Note the last paragraph
"So it would appear that the overall costs imposed on society by motoring outweigh the revenues obtained from motorists, probably very substantially."

It is often argued that it is unfair that motorists pay far more to Government in taxes and charges than is spent on roads. The 2009 Transport Select Committee report, Taxes and Charges on Road Users calculated the total taxes and charges on UK road users as £48 billion per annum. The report quoted the typical annual expenditure on roads as about £8-9 billion.

In the same report, the Department for Transport estimated that the average marginal external cost of driving a car
an additional kilometre is 15.5 pence allowing for the congestion (estimated at 13.1 pence per kilometre), infrastructure, accidents, local air quality, noise and greenhouse gases. This compares to 3.6 pence per kilometre paid in fuel duty and VAT.

However there are other costs to society as a result of our existing car-dependent transport patterns. In late 2009 a Cabinet Office Strategy Unit report on urban transport attempted to quantify the costs of our existing urban transport patterns. Working with the Department for Transport, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), they arrived at the costs shown in Figure 4.

The figures are based on the best available evidence sources, adjusted to 2009 prices. Where there is uncertainty or disagreement, they have stated the likely range as shown in lighter shading in the bars. The conclusions changed policy makers’ understanding of the situation. Previously, congestion had been thought to represent the majority of transport’s external costs to society. Now the combined costs of accidents, air quality, physical inactivity,greenhouse gas emissions and noise at £27-38 billion per annum represent 71-78 per cent of the total.

The total cost for the English urban areas is estimated at £38-49 billion. Given that the Cabinet Office’s report states that this covers 81 per cent of the population, scaling up the appropriate impacts gives an estimate of £43-£56 billion for the whole of the UK.
It is important to note that the report makes no attempt to quantify the external costs of negative social impacts, despite referring to reduced social cohesion and interaction as a result of traffic. Yet research in Norway estimated that the cost of community severance (the ‘barrier effect’ due to transport infrastructure such as busy roads) is greater than the estimated cost of noise and almost equal to the cost of air pollution.

The Cabinet Office report also excludes the impacts of noise pollution on health, productivity and the ecosystem and does not attempt to quantify ‘quality of life’ impacts of the built environment. However it acknowledges that all these areas could represent significant additional costs, mentioning for instance an additional £4-5 billion for noise impacts on health and productivity alone.

Alternatively, estimates of the marginal costs of road transport provided in a report commissioned by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions23 result in a higher total cost figure of £71-95 billion (in 2006 prices).24 This excludes the costs of physical inactivity and other as yet un-monetised costs such as severance effects and loss of tranquillity.

So it would appear that the overall costs imposed on society by motoring outweigh the revenues obtained from motorists, probably very substantially.
 
Also,
cost of emergency services
cost of highways monitoring and the technology needed (cameras, computing, networks)
gritting of the roads
 
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