by teddlesruss dat who

Created on: October 28, 2008

Getting alternative transport. Today, with fuel prices slightly lower after a meteoric rise, and likely to rise again just as soon as the Big Oil companies get their controls back in place, that alternative transport seems like a Holy Grail to most people. And it can happen. It can happen if you lobby like crazy.

Giving people tax breaks to move closer to where they work won't do it. Sorry, but most people like a settled life, and in today's volatile job market, most people work at quite a few jobs in their lives, and they will not want to move each time, nor to limit themselves to local jobs only.

Giving people better mass public transport won't work either. It will work better than the tax incentives, but people also have an aversion to travelling several hours each day on public transport. And unless your public mass tranport scheme is very new and very green, it will still generate greenhouse gases.

Now imagine this scenario:

Your city council gives you an electric car. A small, cheap, and easy to replace electric car. You sign a responsibility chit for it, to replace it if it is lost stolen damaged or written off, but at the low price electrics can achieve it won't be too onerous a responsibility.

In return for this, the City will expect you to pay a fairly steep levy if you take a fossil-fuel vehicle into the posted electric vehicle areas of the city. Delivery and service vehicles get a special rate but are not exempt. The levies go to recovering the cost of electric vehicles and charging stations. Charging stations are simply outlets in the carpark buildings, and the use of electricity is coverd by the parking fee. Space, always at a premium in parking garages and buildings, can be used more effeiciently as most electric vehicles are relatively small, allowing more bays per given area.

If you bring your own electric vehicle to this scheme, then your rates are reduced. But the limit is one per household, so buying a dozen vehicles for everyone in the family doesn't mean your rates go negative. Sorry. No-one should get paid for over-consuming... However, you can use the vehicle as your shopping trolley or the school taxi or the hockey game hauler, it's not just for commuting, and therby you will save a fortune in fuel costs. And even though there's no incentive for having a second EV, there's also nothing to prevent you getting one.

The important thing is to establish zones where non-electric vehicles pay, and make the concept of EVs mainstream. To clear the air of the polluted city entre, the outlying commercial centres. To keep fast and polluting fuel vehicles separated from the electric traffic.

But just like anything else, you have to lobby, lobby, lobby, to make this happen.

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