[sustran] FW: Transport Lessons from the Fuel Tax Protests of 2000

[Paul Barter]

-----Original Message-----
From: Kiron Chatterjee [mailto:K.Chatterjee at SOTON.AC.UK] 
Sent: Thursday, 18 April 2002 9:13 PM
To: UTSG at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Transport Lessons from the Fuel Tax Protests of 2000


Dear All,

This week sees the publication by Ashgate of the book 'Transport Lessons
from the Fuel Tax Protests of 2000' - a collection of articles examining the
transport implications surrounding the September 2000 fuel crisis.  The
fourteen chapters, many of which are written by UTSG members, cover a range
of transport topics including fuel taxation, transport pricing, policy
acceptability, travel behaviour and goods distribution. For those interested
to know more about the book, it is summarised below.  Also this week, the
Transportation Research Group of the University of Southampton has made
publicly available the full datasets from its fuel crisis survey of car
users.  These are now available to download from its web site at
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~trgwww/fuel/fuel.htm.

If you have any queries about the book or fuel crisis survey, please contact
me by replying to this email, or using the contact details below.

Kiron

Dr Kiron Chatterjee
Transportation Research Group
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Southampton   SO17 1BJ

Tel: 023 8059 2345
Email: K.Chatterjee at soton.ac.uk
Fuel crisis research: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~trgwww/fuel/fuel.htm

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For one week in September 2000 the pumps ran dry in filling stations across
the UK as protests against high petrol and diesel prices prevented tanker
drivers from leaving oil refineries. The events generated considerable
debate about fuel prices and taxation.  There was also shock as to how
quickly the 'crisis' took hold and the extent to which it revealed our
reliance on road transport.  Briefly transport was in the media spotlight.
For transport researchers, however, the events offered the chance to
carefully compile and study the facts, to re-examine key transport issues
and to identify the implications for future transport policy.  The book
'Transport Lessons from the Fuel Tax Protests of 2000' published by Ashgate
this week is a definitive collection of articles written by researchers
examining the transport implications of the events of September 2000.  In
the fourteen chapters of the book there are lessons on many different
aspects of transport - insights from the chapters are provided below.

For the book's University of Southampton editors, Glenn Lyons and Kiron
Chatterjee, the events were a rare, possibly one-off, opportunity to study
on a large scale how car users cope when their mobility is restricted and to
assess what this tells us about promoting alternatives to the car.
Chatterjee and Lyons describe the results of a national survey of car users
that they undertook immediately after the protests.  They found that
three-quarters of car users made a change to their car use during the fuel
crisis.  A lot of leisure, business and shopping travel was simply not
undertaken.  For commuting a third of car users changed mode or car shared.
A quarter of parents walked or cycled their children to school instead of
driving them.  One in seven grocery shopping car users shopped more locally
than usual, either going by car or walking or cycling.   Although the
researchers find that "the majority of car travel is not amenable to change
in the short term and will require sustained policy initiatives in transport
and other policy areas if it is to be reduced", they conclude that
"...alternative modes are presently viable for many people who usually use
the car for commuting and school travel..." and identify "...aspects of
these alternatives that need to be addressed to increase their use".

Many of the findings of Chatterjee and Lyons are consistent with those from
another car users' survey conducted by Thorpe et al., the results of which
are also contained in the book.  Beatty et al. examined car user behaviour
and attitudes before and after the fuel crisis using the transtheoretical
model from psychology.  They provide "suggestions as to how different groups
of drivers might be targeted" in car use reduction campaigns, identifying
'preparers' (those car users who have made some attempt to reduce their car
use in the recent past and are making plans to reduce their future car use)
as a priority group to target.

The impacts of the fuel tax protests on three of the UK's motorways were
analysed by Eves et al. They show that substantial reductions in motorway
traffic flow levels occurred during the fuel crisis with reductions in flow
generally of less magnitude in the peak periods.  The findings also support
the popular perception at the time of the crisis that people were driving
more slowly to conserve fuel.  Whiteing et al. turn to the road haulage
sector and consider the impact on freight transport operators both of high
fuel prices generally and the shortage of fuel during the fuel tax protests.
They conclude "that the trend towards fuel saving interventions is a notable
case of an industry 'running just to stand still'."

Oil refinery blockades in France were the catalyst for the UK fuel tax
protests.  Salini finds that the French blockades were precipitated by
European integration and regulatory reforms that have forced the French
haulage industry to massively improve its productivity, set against rising
road transport prices.  There were four previous occasions during the 20th
century when shortages in petrol have had a significant impact on the UK and
other countries.   Harman draws together the details of events and
circumstances on these occasions, which enables some interesting parallels
and distinctions to be drawn when compared with the events of 2000.

Rosen looks at how political pressure and activist groups have influenced
the direction of transport policy in the years leading up to and including
the fuel crisis.  He notes "the fuel tax crisis seems to have hardened
motorists away from environmental considerations..." but "...the fragility
of support for the protesters after the initial action had ended raises
questions about the extent to which it is feasible to regard ... motorists
as a distinct interest group".

Goodwin considers two different sensitivities to fuel prices.  He finds that
"politically, we have experienced an upheaval serious enough to constrain
policy discussion, due, in part, to underestimating the 'sensitivity' of
fuel price as a political issue" and that "analytically, we have a
forecasting problem, affecting the way in which the transport policy and
projects are evaluated, which may be due, in part, to underestimating the
'sensitivity' of demand to fuel price". He concludes that "rethinking our
assumptions on this should usefully contribute to political and professional
intuition, neither of which seems to have led us in quite the right
direction".

Fuel taxation policy is the subject of two of the book chapters.  Marsden
finds that environmental reasons have been prominent in Government
justification of the fuel tax escalator after its introduction in 1993 but
were conspicuous by their absence in the Government's defence of fuel tax
levels during the fuel crisis. Marsden shows that congestion costs dominate
the total external costs of road transport and that it is impossible to
reflect environmental or congestion externalities in a tax based on the
consumption of fuel.  Parkhurst looks at the implications of the fuel tax
protests for future motoring taxation policy.   As a result of ongoing
increases in fuel efficiency coupled with the hypothesis that a ceiling of
acceptability for duty rates has been reached, he suggests that "government
can no longer depend on tax revenues from motoring continuing to increase
... they are likely to peak and decline in the next decade".  He concludes
that "road pricing, already promoted by many policy actors for traffic
restraint purposes, may emerge as the 'natural' solution for restoring lost
tax revenues".

As an unplanned event there was no coordinated effort to study the
consequences of the fuel tax protests.   Marsden and Beecroft present
information obtained from a range of sources in order to draw further
observations and lessons to complement those provided elsewhere in the book.
  They identify those who were winners and losers in retail, business,
leisure, telecommunications, media and transport.

Bonsall finishes the book by assessing the value of research carried out
during crisis events like those of September 2000.  He notes "the resources
and influence required to provide full observation and experimental control
are inconceivable in normal circumstances.   The experimenter would never be
allowed to interrupt fuel supplies or otherwise severely restrict peoples'
lifestyles without their consent".  He concludes that "the fuel crisis of
September 2000 stimulated an investment of intellectual effort and resources
which has yielded a very useful body of data and some very valuable
analyses.   It served to concentrate attention and resources on important
issues and to take forward our thinking in these areas further and faster
than would otherwise have been the case".

In September 2000 the UK found out just how much it depends on having an
adequate supply of fuel.  The fear of disruption to fuel supplies, for
whatever reason, hangs heavily over our present-day economies and
lifestyles.   This book contributes new understandings of this dependency
and identifies possible ways of tackling it.

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The book contents are listed at
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~trgwww/fuel/fuel_book.htm.

To order the book contact:

Ashgate Publishing Direct Sales
Bookpoint Limited
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Abingdon
Oxon
OX14 4SB

Tel: +44 (0) 1235 827730
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