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The weakness here lies with politicians, as is so often the case. The EU claims to be promoting sustainability targets, and raising fuel duties helps with this, because so many car journeys are made without thought for the environment.
Governments need to advertise facts about how fuel is wasted, eg that doing 80mph on motorways uses at least 10% more fuel than doing 70mph. But those who drive at 80mph would soon complain if fuel was increased by 10%.
There are many examples of fuel waste, if only Govts would be strong enough to educate their electorates.
Anecdotal admittedly, but it certainly feels as if speeds on motorways have dropped over the years. Whether that's down to congestion, a greater number of speed cameras, or a desire to save fuel is anyone's guess- I suspect it's a little bit of everything.
Anecdotal admittedly, but it certainly feels as if speeds on motorways have dropped over the years. Whether that's down to congestion, a greater number of speed cameras, or a desire to save fuel is anyone's guess- I suspect it's a little bit of everything.
Anecdotal admittedly, but it certainly feels as if speeds on motorways have dropped over the years. Whether that's down to congestion, a greater number of speed cameras, or a desire to save fuel is anyone's guess- I suspect it's a little bit of everything.
The busiest motorways including most of the M25 now have variable speed limits to deal with congestion so the combination of this and congestion itself have greatly reduced speeds and increased journey times. Twenty years ago it was a reasonable expectation to drive on a motorway route at 70mph all the way but more recently the average speed can be 50mph or even lower. This has made travel by train more attractive for journeys which can be done by train.
How much does treating pollution related health issues and dealing with the aftermath of the tens of thousands of deaths and serious injuries on the roads each year cost?
Pollution from the railway kills people too, of course. Whilst road freight does use more diesel per tonne-km, they tend to burn it in newer diesel engines that are fitted with things like Selective Catalytic Reduction etc. The railway, especially the freight railway, tends to burn its diesel in two stroke engines (EMD 710 on the Class 66) fundamentally designed in the early 1980s and which are 20+ years old at this point.
If we are comparing road freight with rail freight, apparently only 139 other road users were killed in accidents involving HGVs last year, in additional 17 HGV occupants were killed. This is something around 10% of the total.
This value appears to have fallen precipitously over the last decade, probably due to things like underrun guards.
I don't have a good figure for total serious injuries but its probably going to be a similar percentage of the total.
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Your calculations demonstrate that HGVs barely cover the cost of provision of the strategic road network, let alone pollution, accidents etc.
The NERA report from around 2000 calculated that even then, HGVs did not cover their costs by some margin. Since then HGV taxation has virtually stagnated, but the cost of road provision has escalated with inflation and improved safety provision.
Pollution impacts from HGVs have fallen precipitously over the last 25 years, due to the introduction of SCR, gasbag filters and the like.
And improved safety of HGVs has strongly reduced the social costs of operating them.
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