[pjbiju]

Going by such logic, almost every invention has contributed towards destroying the world.

• Industrialization has led to pollution and destruction of natural resources like forest cover, water etc.
• Progress in medical science has led to population explosion by increasing the average life of people, by reducing the death rate of new born babies, by not allowing people to die from various diseases etc.

The ideal world should have been then that we should have continued to live like nomads, living off whatever is offered by nature, letting things be governed by nature.

There is a social cost to almost everything that we use.

Coming back to this article:
Almost 40% of the vehicle cost is tax
Almost 30% of the fuel cost is tax

What government should instead do is

• Improve infrastructure
• Have a great public transport system that is reliable, frequent, clean and cheap in all the cities. You will see a lot of people switch to such a public transport system.
• Have synchronized and intelligent traffic signals that will sense the traffic density on each road and operate accordingly.
• Provide multi-level parking malls of 10-11 stories in cities. As of now we waste a huge amount of vertical space. This will free up road and will ease the traffic jams.
• Remove the millions of small cubicle-like shops dotting the footpaths of every city in India

There is so much more that our politicians can do, but doing the right things would obviously stop the flow of cash into their pockets.

[sgmuser]

"...Public transport has an important place in cities..."

Ask this Iyer to take the corp bus, 29C in Chennai at 8'o clock on a Monday morning which flies between Besant Nagar and some other corner in Chennai, for continuously one week!

Then ask him to read his own article! He will do this :

With one of the best public transport system, almost double the Car prices, high fuel prices, lots of driving restrictions like ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) to enter certain areas for Cars in peak hours, even Singapore has thousands of cars getting registered every year.

Very amateur article!

[hvkumar]

Indian Public Transport - inefficient, highly subsidised and a den of corruption. Does he expect us to ride buses so that the subsidy bill and losses can increase? Or do we find alternative means of transport so that public transport can be used by the people who need it the most? Just because it is cheap and maybe the best solution (for pollution, etc), should the whole world travel in public transport? Time has come to move away from government-sponsored public transport to effieicnt private sector-financed/operated systems where tariffs are fixed based on real costs and operational efficiencies. My observation from State slike TN and Kerala is that private transport makes good money despite that the rates are the same, except that they operate efficiently.

Looks like Mr Iyer stands for the old socialist society that Nehru built - which was maybe relevant for the 50s.

[sreenivass]

Originally Posted by msdivy

Source:The hidden social cost of vehicles by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar

This article gets in to the category of most ignorant and ridiculous claims made by any one.

[Jaggu]

whatever we users are paying/paid if put to good and proper use itself will negate the problems to a great extent.

karnataka road tax are going up, am not complaining and ready to pay up and hope, pray that this will go into roads and not the road contractors and babus pocket!!

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Jaggu

karnataka road tax are going up, am not complaining and ready to pay up and hope, pray that this will go into roads and not the road contractors and babus pocket!!

I have heard this from reliable sources. On the average, the road contractors only get 50% money, rest goes to politicians and government officials who will award the contract. Therefore the contractors have to build the road and make their profit within that 50%. That's quite a challenge.

[v1p3r]

FREE? IS THIS IDIOT DRUNK?! Does he understand the concept of taxes? What a jackass.

[esteem_lover]

Even drunks would know that you have to pay to pee.

[spadival]

Let him first advise the govt on fixing the road tax rules in the country !! He is an economist after all. Each state has different road tax rates and rules.. Only God can save the motorist who wants to move his vehicle from one state to another... they end up paying road tax in two states with very little chance of getting the refund from the corrupt RTO.

Does this chap have an email id? I would like to have a word or two with him for rubbing salt over our collective wounds.

[typeOnegative]

One question. How does Mr Iyer commute to where ever he types this crap?

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by typeOnegative

One question. How does Mr Iyer commute to where ever he types this crap?

To quote myself :

The so-called author probably doesnt own a vehicle, or else feeds off someone else, which makes the person ignorant to facts.

Now we know why he thinks everyone else is commiting a crime.

[tsk1979]

Great, he has lived up to its expectations. His column in the Times is more of a joke. He is known to rant and rave about issues he hardly has any knowledge about.

[typeOnegative]

Originally Posted by benbsb29

Now we know why he thinks everyone else is commiting a crime.

Quite logical. Or maybe he is just like the PETA activists who eat chicken sandwiches and wear leather shoes. A complete hypocrite.

[ntomer]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I have heard this from reliable sources. On the average, the road contractors only get 50% money, rest goes to politicians and government officials who will award the contract. Therefore the contractors have to build the road and make their profit within that 50%. That's quite a challenge.

My father-in-law is a retired Chief Engineer of PWD and now a road consultant with NHAI.
He says that everybody from CM, to PWD secretaries, to Engineer-in Cheif, to Engineers, to peons, to local politicians/goons get their cut before a contract is awarded. And in rare cases even 50% is actually used. It is more in the range of 25-30%.

\N

[msdivy]

The points put out by Aiyar in this article is baseless. But imagine the impact of this article on general public who don't own/drive cars and believe cars are waste of money & space, under-utilization of resource, etc. Its going to cause resentment against car owners.