As well as obvious purchase costs, and registration and insurance costs, regulators are constantly adding fees for using your car.
Parking Fees
(London Times 11 June 2015)
Motorists are being charged up to £750 a year to park outside their own front door, figures show, increasing concerns that some car owners are being treated as cash cows.
Research published today showed that residential parking permits imposed by local authorities in the UK can cost as much as £14.40 a week.
Parking has traditionally been most expensive in London, but the study found that people living in some areas of central Manchester and Birmingham paid the highest charges. Parts of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Solihull and Sevenoaks in Kent also featured among the ten most expensive areas.
The study, by Churchill Car Insurance, also found large numbers of extra charges imposed by councils. These include higher fees to park gas guzzlers or more than one vehicle per household and charges to replace lost permits. Next week Islington council in north London will become the first to impose a surcharge on diesel cars.
Charges vary significantly across the country. In 38 per cent of council areas there were no residential parking charges. The average charge for all 433 councils surveyed was £59.17 a year — but one, South Ayrshire, imposed costs for some residents of only 50p a year.
Steve Barrett, head of the insurance company that conducted the study, said parking controls played a “huge part in keeping roads safe and clear, as well as ensuring residents have priority over spaces surrounding their property”.
Researchers found that Birmingham and Manchester city councils had the top charge of £750 a year, but Birmingham’s lowest charge was only £16 for zones outside the city centre. The third highest charge was made by Islington at a top rate of £434 a year. It was followed by Mole Valley in Surrey (£350), Edinburgh (£280) and Solihull in the West Midlands (£275).
Emissions tariffs were considered by some councils. Islington allows electric vehicles to park free but charges £434 for those with engines of 2751cc or more.
A spokesman for the Local Government Association said: “Councils set parking policies for the benefit of the local community to manage traffic, consulting communities before setting up controlled parking zones so people can park outside their homes.”
Congestion Fees
The application on urban roads is currently limited to a few cities, including London, Stockholm, Singapore, and Milan, as well as a few smaller towns. Four general types of systems are in use; a cordon area around a city center, with charges for passing the cordon line; area wide congestion pricing, which charges for being inside an area; a city center toll ring, with toll collection surrounding the city; and corridor or single facility congestion pricing, where access to a lane or a facility is priced.
Road Pricing is one way to manage traffic growth. In Singapore the system was first implemented in 1975 in the form of an Area license System (ALS) that charged drivers a flat rate for unlimited entries into Singapore's central area. The ALS system led to an almost immediate 45% reduction in traffic and a 25% decline in vehicle crashes. Average travel speeds increased from 11 mph to 21 mph. Initially there was an exempt for carpools, taxis, motorcycles, buses and commercial vehicles, which were license free. In 1990, they extended the Area Licensing System from covering only Singapore's business centre to also including expressways leading into the city.
With a national population half that of London, Norway seems an unlikely place for congestion charging. But its two largest cities, Oslo and Bergen, introduced tolls for ring roads in the 1980s, explicitly as a money-raising exercise. Public opposition gave way to grudging acceptance, with the development of an automated system and low operating costs and a political commitment that revenue was entirely devoted to roadbuilding and improvements.
The city of Stockholm applies many economic incentives to its transport. On the one hand, it permanently introduced a congestion charging zone in 2007. Journeys in the city area are subject to a fee varying between €1 and €2. The Stockholm inner city zone is active on weekdays from 6.30 AM to 6.29PM. Also, all on-street parking lots in the city are managed and rates vary between €2 and €4 per hour. Other parking spaces in the city are subject to time limits. The city is pursuing a strategy aiming to shift from on-street parking to private off-street car parks. There are also incentives for cleaner vehicles. For example, in order to incentivise electric vehicles, the city exempts them from both the congestion charge and parking fees.
The London congestion charge is a fee charged on most motor vehicles operating within the Congestion Charge Zone (CCZ)[1] in Central London between 07:00 and 18:00 Mondays to Fridays. The standard charge is £11.50 for each day, for each non-exempt vehicle that travels within the zone, with a penalty of between £65 and £195 levied for non-payment. Enforcement is primarily based on automatic number plate recognition.
During the first ten years since the introduction of the scheme, gross revenue reached about £2.6 billion through December 2013. From 2003 to 2013, about £1.2 billion (46%) of net revenue has been invested in public transport, road and bridge improvement and walking and cycling schemes. Of these, a total of £960 million was invested on improvements to the bus network.
As an investment, the car is a massive waste of opportunity—“the world’s most underutilized asset,” the investment firm Morgan Stanley calls it. That’s because the average car sits idle 92 percent of the time. Accounting for all costs, from fuel to insurance to depreciation, the average car owner in the U.S. pays $12,544 a year for a car that puts in a mere 14-hour workweek. Drive an SUV? Tack on another $1,908.14