“all these posters describing their long commute that is only possible by car - the point of such policies is to make the choices that you have been able to make, and your employers have been able to make, less feasible. your employers shouldn't be able to pay such low wages for a job they want doing that the person who does the job can't afford to live anywhere nearby - that option shouldn't be open to them. either they need to invest in affordable nearby housing or, if the business doesn't have to be located there, they could relocate the business. or they could just pay more so that their employees can afford the local cost of living.“
@YinuCeatleAyru why assume that low pay is involved? Why assume that employees would prefer to live close to their workplace if only they could afford it? I know plenty of people who prefer to live long distances from their workplaces, simply because it means living in the countryside and not the city. They earn high wages and they see living rurally as part of the reward of being successful. They look down on those of us living closer to work.
I believe some companies do invest in nearby housing, subsidised for employees. But that means lose your job, lose your home.
The only fair scheme is one based on the true currency of driving, ie the road-mile. You talk about making good choices more affordable and bad choices less affordable but money should be removed from the equation as far as possible, because high earners value driving in their posh cars so much that they’ll simply pay to be able to carry on driving as far - and as unsustainably - as they always have, while poorer drivers get priced off the roads. The trouble is, some governments would see that as a good thing, i.e. lots of tax revenues from rich drivers.
We should give all drivers an annual mileage allowance calculated by assessing their need to drive - i.e. journeys to work, healthcare and suchlike - against the availability of alternative forms of transport in their area. So someone like me, living in a London suburb with a lot of alternatives available, would be awarded a relatively low annual mileage allowance. Whereas a rural citizen with few alternative forms of transport available would get a higher allowance. We shouldn’t let rich people just buy their way out of any limits the system tries to put on them. Exceeding your allowance would be penalised by road-mile, not by money. How to keep tabs on mileage? Either by MOT test or by road sensors picking up mileage information electronically from cars as they pass by.
Having said that, the alternatives need to be viable; much of London public transport, especially train journeys to deserted stations at night, is not acceptable to women. And tube journeys at rush-hour, with your face smashed into someone else’s armpit, from which you emerge like a dump dishrag, and which cost you way more per year than driving does, don’t seem a very attractive alternative to the comfort your own car either.