Sometimes you really do have to wonder where academics and bureaucrats get their priorities from. Here’s a quote from a Sydney Morning Herald story, published today (14-8-9). It concerns a proposal by a couple of La Trobe University academics to introduce so-called “telematic technology”, with all vehicles fitted with tracking devices.

“The devices… would feed information to a database that would then level charges, which would vary according to vehicle type, the road being used and the time of day.

“[One of the academics] said that by charging more for busier roads and during peak hours, motorists would change their travel habits and ease congestion, which is projected to cost $20.4 billion by 2020 unless action is taken.”

Right.

What I’m hearing here is not that the roads are there for us, to get us to where we need to be when we need to be. It’s not the road network that needs to be fixed. No, it’s us, the road users, who need to be penalized until we can’t afford to even get to work or get the kids to school any more. Make no mistake about it, that’s what this means. If we’re priced off the road there’s no more congestion! Bingo!

The fact that people don’t drive or ride in peak hour for fun seems to have escaped these blokes. We don’t choose to do this, we need to drive because public transport is rubbish or overloaded already, or because there is no public transport where we live or work, and for any number of other reasons.

Let me repeat that. We need to drive or ride. Making it prohibitively expensive is going to make our lives harder, and more unpleasant.

What do you reckon, is mum going to start dropping the kids at school an hour or so early (and who will look after them?) to avoid congestion tax? Is dad going to go to work an hour late (and what will his boss think of that?) for the same reason?

No.

What they will do is scrape up the extra money, because they have no choice. It’s yet another tax, and on some of the people who can least affords to pay it.

Oh, and if you don’t like that idea, our friendly academics have an alternative ready to reduce congestion. Increase petrol excise by 10 cents a litre. The effect is the same, a tax on working people, but I guess at least we save the enormous expense of fitting those tracking devices so Big Brother knows what we’re doing.

And let me just say that I have a very simple way of answering the question I asked at the beginning of this blog. Are the roads there for us, or are we here for the roads? Well, we paid for the roads. They didn’t pay for us.

Damn these people. And the worst thing is that we pay for this mindless, heartless nonsense with our taxes.

Peter “The Bear” Thoeming