Do UK motorists get a raw deal?

Within the contents of this assignment I intend to outline the problems of which UK motorists are going through and a few possible solutions to their problems.

I will begin by mentioning the obvious; there are far to many people out there who are driving cars. This of course has lead to an even bigger issue, road congestion. More and more people are purchasing cars as living conditions are getting better and as peoples income is rising. People now have much more spending power and therefore want to put a mark out into society for themselves. They do this by buying expensive cars to show their status, which in turn also boosts up their self-esteem. Younger people are also very keen on the idea of possessing a car.

Governments have tried very hard to try and keep as many people of the roads as possible by forcing out high petrol prices, high insurance, and high road tax. But these measures are simply not good enough in the long term. They have also provided people with an alternative means of transport, public transport, which consists of trains and buses. This also has had a knock-off effect, as people would rather get into their own cars to make a journey.

Public transport has been around for a very long tome but it still lacks the ability to attract people. This could be for numerous reasons:

People feel a lot safer in their cars.
It is much more convenient for people to get into their cars to travel as they do not have to stop somewhere and change over to another route.
On the whole it is cheaper for people to use their cars than get on public transport.
It is also a whole lot quicker for the majority to make a journey by car than it is by using ...

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Public transport has been around for a very long tome but it still lacks the ability to attract people. This could be for numerous reasons:

People feel a lot safer in their cars.
It is much more convenient for people to get into their cars to travel as they do not have to stop somewhere and change over to another route.
On the whole it is cheaper for people to use their cars than get on public transport.
It is also a whole lot quicker for the majority to make a journey by car than it is by using public transport.

As you can see public transport just is not up to scratch and at this rate it will just keep on deteriorating. By increasing petrol prices the fares for running the busses and trains would have to increase to ensure that they are capable of running and still making profit. As people have more spending power they are still able to afford to pay the high road tax and insurance.

The government should also look at other countries in Europe to see why congestion is not a big issue there as it is in Britain. People can say that they have more cars in Britain than they do abroad this is obviously not the case as there are only five other countries in Europe that have less cars than Britain. People in other European countries also tend to use public transport and bicycle much more often than we do in Britain. You may think that all of this is a bit weird but in fact people own more cars in other European countries on average than in Britain, they drive their cars relatively more than we do in Britain, and we still tend to do more mileage on our cars than they do abroad. This obviously indicates that there is a lot of congestion on our roads.

The government are really in a bit of a no win situation as they have dug themselves into a very deep whole which is virtually impossible to get out of the way they got in. What I am trying to say is that they simply cannot do one thing to stop congestion; they have to make numerous changes in our transport system. This will also take a lot of time, as people are already at the point of which they seem abundantly clear of the fact that our transport system just cannot get better.

The government have to increase petrol prices and road taxes. This would be one of the obvious ways to reduce people of the roads but this in turn has a set back as companies would have to force prices up and this will cause inflation and unemployment. What they can do is try to spend more money on public transport to make more reliable. So that there are more trains and buses running so that people feel comfortable instead of being squashed up in a small space. They can also reduce fares slightly so that people would now be more perceptive towards travelling on trains and buses. They can also increase security so that people will feel a lot safer travelling by using public transport.

On the whole the government have a lot to do and I have mentioned a few strategies, it will take quite a bit of time but if they do not start to impose a few changes they will just make matters a whole lot worse.