Re: Road pricing - have your say

In the present context, that's an unusual use of "private". A car which is private would be doctor's personal private property. Doesn't seem practical for one doctor to own a car to be shared by all the other doctors in the practice. The point being that it would not be used for commuting, only for going to see patients.

Besides, why wouldn't a taxi be suitable? If the drugs bag can go on a horse, it can go in a taxi.

Then what did you mean by replying "Not to see patients, they cannot." to "They can commute like everyone else."?

But they don't really need to carry around a cupboardful of drugs at all times. The little black bag was always enough for anything likely to be needed urgently. Anything more than the basics would involve writing out a prescription and getting the patient or a relative/friend/neighbour to get it from the chemist (or indeed getting the chemist to deliver it). Anything more serious and it's a hea^H^H^Hambulance job.

With a lockable harness. The technology has been around for centuries. Ever heard of chastity belts?

Private cars are hardly immune from being nicked or broken into. With a taxi, at least, you can get the driver to guard your bag while you were in seeing the patient. The driver would be waiting for you anyway to take you back to base or to the next patient. Come to think of it, it wouldn't need to be a taxi. It could be a surgery "company car" with a chauffeur. The docs get stressed enough with all the patients they have to see without making them do all that driving.

At 20:41:05 on 14/02/2007, Matti Lamprhey delighted uk.finance by announcing:

But is it *necessary* as opposed to just wanted?

At 20:53:43 on 14/02/2007, Ronald Raygun delighted uk.finance by announcing:

I thought that at the time, but I just couldn't be bothered writing any more :-p

Because you cannot secure the taxi or its contents whilst you're inside the patient's house.

Yes, but who's claiming it can go on a horse?

Getting fixated on the 'commuting' aspect is largely irrelevant. However, not all GPs go to the surgery before visiting a patient. Not strictly commuting, but it precludes the sharing of the cars in those circumstances.

Well I'm sure you know more about it than I do. I'm just going on what I'm told.

What's this harness made of?

Their strongboxes normally are, for all practical purposes.

No you can't. There's probably laws forbidding it. At the very least, there are GMC rules.

I'm sure you'll have no trouble getting Gordon to agree to that.

No more than it is for you to drive to work. :-)

The driver stays with it. What's the problem?

I am. In the lockable saddle bag.

Not entirely. The idea is to try to cut out, or at least down on, the use of cars for single-occupancy commuting, to achieve the benefits of less congestion, less pollution, and lower greenhouse emissions.

There may be a case for some exceptions if people will be using their cars *during* work as well. I'm just not convinved that your doctor is a good example because most GPs do most of their work at the surgery, and only visit patients for a small part of the day, which makes it in principle practical to have a shared company car for that purpose, so that it becomes unnecessary for a GP even to own a car.

Well I'm sure you know more about it than I do. I'm just going on what I'm told. :-)

Does it matter? Let's say it's made of leather with steel cables inside it, as used in motorcycle locks. I suppose if the thief was desperate enough and was having difficulty cutting through the cables, he could always chop up the horse instead.

Doesn't sound right. If it's OK to leave it unattended what can be wrong with leaving it in the care of a trusted person?

What's the problem? For what it costs to pay the doctors 40p mileage allowance, it would probably work out cheaper to share a company car plus driver among a practice of, say, 6 GPs.

I'm responding merely to your implication that the banning of hunting was capricious. To gain an answer to your question you will need (or want) to define "necessary" and "wanted".

Matti

The world managed with 'unlockable' horses for a very long time.

I was actually rather saying that the need to lock things up is a symptom of some sort of malaise in our society. I have been lucky enough to live in places where it isn't very necessary and those places are generally good places to live in many other ways as well.

At 12:13:06 on 15/02/2007, snipped-for-privacy@isbd.co.uk delighted uk.finance by announcing:

Yeah. Horses never got stolen.

Will never happen under our current political system. Political parties pretend they care for a few weeks before the election to fool enough gullible people to vote for them and then return to their normal modus operandi.

Public transport is run as a business which involves making the most money possible for their shareholders. Good service doesn't figure.

and what about other incentives? If the government are really serious about reducing congestion then reducing the need for journeys must be part of the solution. How about better cycling facilities? How about incentives for telecommuting or homeworking?

Indeed and so called "traffic calming" measures which make the situation _more_ dangerous.

Going back to the original subject ;-) I oppose road pricing because technically it can never work. The cost, IT problems, communication issues will be too much.

M

I'm a 6000 mile per year off-peak driver, about 300 yards outside Manchester boundary. I would be very pissed off if I was charged for venturing about 100 yards across the boundary to pick up my walking companion at around 09:15, when it has quietened down after the nightmare 'school run'.

Alex writes

Many people who commute could easily do so by train or bus, and even a small reduction in traffic makes a startling difference. The congestion charge works!

I am retired, and determinedly avoid driving when other people have to, and would never think of driving into or through Manchester except on Sundays. The train gets me there in 12/14 minutes, instead of sitting in 90% deadlock for about 25 minutes on a good day.

I do sympathise with commuters, remembering how bad it was even 15 years ago, but it's a darn sight worse now.

Trouble is that it can only be used to fill your tank if you add about 4 times as much 'real' fuel. (So I have been told).

At 17:16:03 on 16/02/2007, Gordon H delighted uk.finance by announcing:

And many can't. That's been done to death.

It makes surprisingly little difference, overall.

The result of the congestion charge is only possible because central London has plenty of buses and tube stations.

Good for you. I'm working, and it takes me 20 minutes to get there on a good day, or about 35 minutes on a bad day. It would take me a minimum of an hour and a half by public transport even if I could hop off one bus straight onto the next.

At 17:07:56 on 16/02/2007, Gordon H delighted uk.finance by announcing:

But then your walking companion could quite easily walk that 100 yards to your car.

Depends what you're talking about. A difference to what?

Obviously a small reduction in traffic will only lead to a small reduction in emissions, but I'm sure it doesn't take much reduction in or time-redistribution of car traffic to make a huge difference to congestion.

At 20:31:07 on 16/02/2007, Ronald Raygun delighted uk.finance by announcing:

I was talking about the environment in the bit you snipped (which I replaced).

Exactly.

Granted. However, we then get back to the point that as soon as the sceheme works (which will be evident from revenues dropping) the charging model will change to compensate. The net result will be no real change in overall congestion (just local shifting) with an overall increase in motoring costs.

Not necessarily, because as you go on to say...

One of the worst contributors to emissions is congestion. The internal combustion engine is horribly inefficient at low speeds, and cars pollute even when stationary. Within urban areas, it's a reasonable rule of thumb that emissions are related to total journey time, so if you can halve the time it takes to get from A to B then you also halve the emissions (in terms of pollution per mile, a car is at its most efficient and hence least polluting at speeds of around 20mph to

40mph, depending on the engine and gearing). So one of the most important factors in reducing urban pollution from cars is to reduce congestion so that journey times and unnecessary waiting are minimised.

(It's a different story outside urban areas, as once you go faster than around 40mph the efficiency decreases and hence cars become more polluting per mile travelled. But that's another issue).

Mark

A huge reduction in congestion will lead to a significant drop in emissions too. Cars are not very efficient travelling at 0-15 mph, with constant stop/start.

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Mark Goodge said

Actually I've graphed MPH vs average MPG, for several cars over several years, and the best MPG is achieved between 50 and 60 mph average speed. These were almost all automatics though, and ~50 mph is generally the speed at which the torque converter locks up and stops wasting energy.

It also depends on the Cd (drag coefficient).