Pity the poor U.K. motorist. On top of new "gas guzzler" showroom taxes, higher sky-high taxes on gas and diesel, 17.5 percent VAT on everything car-related (soon to include car insurance), increased CO2-based London congestion charging, the introduction of CO2-based parking space taxes and the ongoing prospect of road pricing (and all the other taxes), Heathrow Airport is considering imposing a £20 "drop off" fee for passengers arriving by car. Oh, and a £3 congestion charge for trucks using roads around the airport– including the M4. According to The Evening Standard, The British Airports Authority's (BAA) new taxes charges would raise £137m a year, which they'd use to pay for the costs of administering the scheme. Just kidding (kind of). BAA would use the money to pay for the airport's expansion and meet the Government's stipulation that Heathrow's growth should not result in an increase in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels. Meanwhile, environmentalists are giving British Airways shit [at the bottom of the same article] for flying three jets into LHR without a single passenger on board. Oy.
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Karl Marx would be proud.
And the Brits wonder why we had that Tea Party years ago…
Would that apply to passengers arriving by taxi, or private vehicle only?
I’m not sure that anyone sane takes a private car anywhere near Heathrow, so that isn’t a big deal. But if it applies to taxis as well…
Wasn’t it this sort of anti-car mentatility that killed off Providence, RI downtown, as well as a couple of California downtowns (make everything pedestrian/masstran friendly, make it all but unpossible to use a car)?
Seriously, unless you’re incredibly wealthy or incredibly poor, why would anyone live in London (unless that’s the plan from the get go)?
HOLY CRAP $50 just to get dropped off at the airport in a car. Have any of those moron legislators tried traveling to the airport with 2 or 3 bags using public transportation, especially if you are going on a long vacation. The airlines don’t allow much luggage but it’s still a huge hastle.
There has to be a breaking point for the taxes in the UK, it happened with all the colonies.
According to UK-Airport-News.info, some 60k vehicles travel through the central terminal per day. As BAA claims they'd raise £127m per year, that works out to 6.35m vehicles per year at £20 a piece, or 17,397 per day. So… roughly a third of LHR's vehicular traffic would have to pay. That said, I'm not sure if they're basing their projected revenues on current or projected traffic levels (i.e. once the new terminal is built).
Who wants to use Heathrow anyway?
I would make a trip to Heathrow my last and never come back.
I’m sure the $50 goes towards the cost of losing your luggage which Heathrow is still doing at the rate of 10,000 bags per month. That’s what happens when you have a monopoly running the airport.
@morbo:
Wasn’t it this sort of anti-car mentatility that killed off Providence, RI downtown
Living in Providence, I can tell you that the downtown area is thriving. If you’re speaking of the downtown of twenty years ago, I believe that had more to do with the decline of manufacturing in New England and the flight to the suburbs.
That said, they sure tax the hell out of those Brits, but we tax the hell out of cigarettes in the USA as a means to change people’s behavior, so it’s not like we’re immune to taxing-as-behavior-modification here.
To all the commentators making disparaging comments about the UK, may I point out that BAA is owned by Ferrovial which is a SPANISH company.
Please retain the possibility that maybe BAA’s spanish owners might be trying to push this one through…..
Also to the commentator who mentioned tax on cigarettes, we’ve got you beat there! A pack of 20 would cost about $11!
Bingo! – and there’s the truth of it. Forget whining about Socialists and Environmentalists and the Nanny State. BAA is a PRIVATELY OWNED company. Heathrow Airport is private land.
The real story is just that BAA is proposing to screw a bit more profit out of its customers. The money is going straight into BAA’s pockets.
BuckD :
Living in Providence, I can tell you that the downtown area is thriving.
Living in Providence, I can tell you that downtown is a dump, centered around an enormous outdoor bus station, and a ghost town at night.
And yes, pedestrianization– at the time when the suburban malls were just rearing their ugly heads– KILLED the city center.
The car is the lifeblood of any modern city. Anyone who thinks otherwise (hello Ken Livingstone) is seriously, dangerously deluded.
I gotta side with Johnny Canada, and Morbo on this one. Especially the anti-car thing.
It is possible to do the pedestrian thing, without unduly penalizing the car. The idea is to realize that people like pedestrian areas, but the use of them has to be just as convenient as if it were accessible by car.
Have places to park cars around the area with little congestion. Have it truly mass transit friendly, not just car penalized.
Trying the opposite almost always fails. If the choice is to put up with hassles and fees to get somewhere pedestrian friendly rather than to simply drive to somewhere else that is car friendly, people will choose the latter.
Well, here’s to being seriously, dangerously deluded — that’s me.
Robert,
I respectfully disagree with your opinion of downtown Providence. I go down there at night to bars and clubs (Local 121, Tazza, Lupo’s, The Red Fez, AS220 to name a few places) and find it’s pretty lively. I also did a lot of my Christmas shopping downtown (NOT at Providence Place Mall) and it was pretty damn bustling down there the entire holiday. Maybe you need to get away from the computer and get out more.
Back to the airport thing though.
What they are doing is only possible because they first destroyed private aviation in the UK and Europe. If there were more airports, there would be less congestion. Also, they would not be able to charge these fees.
The government allowed this all to happen by creating a shortage of capacity and by picking the transportation winners (airlines) on behalf of the public.
You can still get to most destinations under 1000 miles cheaper and faster by private aircraft in the US, but this will soon end. It’s a shame because the technology is developing towards a revolution that will no longer be possible if we don’t fight the dirty alliance between the airlines, the FAA, and the city governments to destroy general aviation.
OK, back to the airport thing.
Europe has a substantial rail system. I think population density and cities built several hundred years or so before the car have more to do with traffic congestion than a lack of airports.
Why don’t they just skip to the end and outlaw cars for all but “essential personel”, aka members of the government and their relatives.
BuckD,
We are only talking about congestion AT THE AIRPORT. My point is that the governments in Europe, by penalizing General Aviation to death and managing airport rationing, have created the congestion at Heathrow and their other mega airports. Even with their train system, they have a larger demand for air travel than they can handle given their management. We are going down the same path in the US, only WE DON’T HAVE THE TRAIN SYSTEM!
Next time your city tries to rip up an airport, do something about it. While you are at it, if you get the ear of a legislator, tell him to stop the slaughter against GA. It’s your life you are wasting at the airport, and it will be your money when the price goes up.
So, really, what it’s coming down to is this: everything we do, most especially those thing that the industrial revolution wrought, are bad (mmm k). But, we won’t do anything drastic like, you know, stop doing these things. We will just tax everyone that relies on these things for their day to day existence. That way the rich can get richer (thank god) and the poor will be thankful they can still do it/use it while feeling guilty.
A means to controlling ones behavior. Yeah, that’s why cigarette taxes are so high.
I’m going back to reading Yertle the Turtle.
Holy crap its getting INSANE in Britain.
What are they thinking? Wait until their economy tanks because of this.