Readers Comments - Article
More carrots than sticks…
Silvia Vousden wrote into us with the following:
There should be more carrots than sticks.
I have often wondered why commuting has always been considered a personal cost. What about ‘contract carriage’ of employees on public transport, where employers could enter into a contract with public transport operators, community transport schemes and taxis or minicabs to ferry their staff to work.
What about running minibuses? 15 people in a company minibus is 15 less single occupancy cars and 15 less parking spaces when they get to work. Why can’t employers give out train or bus passes to their employees? Anything an employer does to encourage their employees to use public transport should be tax deductable.
The corporate tax system has so much unutilsed potential. Unfortunately, most people will not be interested in using alternative methods of transport until the effects of a declining oil supply results in a huge increase in the price of petrol, otherwise known as Peak Oil. The world’s supply of oil will probably reach it’s maximum sometime later this year or the next, and the effects of the irreversable decline in the supply of oil will bite in 2010, when anything made from oil will increase in price, and that price will fluctuate, but will always increase in the end.
Market forces dictate that when something becomes rarer it’s price goes up. 95% of all our current transportation is based on oil, an incredibly rich source of energy, and even if we turned over every inch of agricultural land over to growing crops for making biodesiel, we still couldn’t supply enough to keep half the cars we already have on the road.
Do you feed people or cars? Everything is going to have to change, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing if we develop local communities, and have shopping, working and leisure facilities close to home. The only thing that worries me is that no-one in power seems to be planning for this eventuality.
Why don’t you have your say? Contact us by clicking here and let us know what you think, we will then publish your points on our site for comment.
Technorati Tags: oil, biodeisel, cheaperbycar, contract carraige, cheaperbycar
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