#Skoda salesman. Probably the easiest job in the world?

Interesting to hear from a colleague about his experience of visiting a Skoda dealership in a quest for a new car. Impressed by the Fabia Greenline’s long list of attributes – plenty of space, frugal nature, very reasonable price – he called a dealer to see if he could arrange a test drive. He couldn’t.

The salesman said the previous demonstrator had been sold and the next one wouldn’t be in for several weeks, after which it too would probably soon sell, such is the apparent demand for these vehicles. My colleague was therefore invited to buy ‘off-plan’ and get his order in now for delivery well into the future.

The second Skoda dealer he rang said the best he could do was let my colleague visit the showroom and sit inside the petrol version of the car, have a drive in another model fitted with the diesel version of the engine he wanted and make a judgement based on that. If on the basis of that he wanted to buy the car then he could sign on the dotted line. The salesman said the Fabia was essentially selling itself.

The popularity of Skodas was underlined in the latest Auto Express Driver Power survey which put three Skoda models in the top five (including at number one) with the Fabia at number 23.

Thus far my colleague has yet to decide on what he will buy, though he was at least thankful for one aspect of his Skoda experience: the complete absence of the hard sell. There was no need for it.

 

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@BBCWatchdog takes a bite out of private #parking industry tonight at 8pm

Tonight’s Watchdog programme on BBC1 again goes for the throat of the private parking industry, challenging the British Parking Association on why one of its member firms was found guilty in a county court of not displaying adequate signage which led to a driver not ‘paying and displaying’ and hence receiving a ticket.

For those who can’t see the programme this is the gist of the situation and the BPA’s response:

“Mr Cutts received a parking ticket for not ‘paying & displaying’ at a car park for the Peel Centre, Stockport managed by an Approved Operator Scheme (AOS) member, Excel Parking Services.
Mr Cutts refused to pay the ticket, stating that he did not consider the Excel signage present visible enough. This matter was taken all the way to the County Court where the Judge found in Mr Cutt’s favour.
Firstly, Watchdog are asking why the BPA failed to make Excel change the signs.
The core issues within our response to this are;
•       The signs used by Excel at the site comply with the AOS Code of Practice
•       There are enough of them that Mr Cutts should have noticed that parking conditions applied at the site
•       While 11900 tickets have been issued there over a 3 year period, 2.9 million motorists have complied at the site and paid to park – compliance rate of 99.63%
•       Judgement in a County Court case does not set precedent
•       For every Court case where the Judge may find in favour of the motorist, there are numerous others where they find in favour of the operator
Watchdog are then asking whether the BPA management of the Code of Practice for the management of parking on private land is robust enough.
Our responses to this question are as follows;
•       We now have a robust Sanctions Scheme where, if members are found to be in breach of the Code, sanctions points are awarded which can eventually result in expulsion. Currently, 29 members have sanction points on their record and five members have been expelled from the Scheme.
•       We have a dedicated Compliance Manager and have conducted over 2000 investigations into member behaviour last year following complaints from the public.
•       However, we believe that our Approved Operator Scheme is no substitute for legislation which regulates the sector. We have campaigned for many years for the Government to fully regulate private parking operators so that those who are currently not answerable to any authority can be held to account. A robust regulatory framework enshrined in law is the fairest and most effective way to achieve this but the Government have consistently refused to take this important step to protect motorists.”

If nothing else this case highlights the gulf that exists between many drivers and those who operate private car parks. It also shows why there is a strong case for unenforceable, voluntary regulation (of clampers, ticketers or whatever is set to follow) to be taken out of the hands of the private parking industry iteslf – whether or not you believe they are doing a good job – and given to Government.

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#Parking policy. Nothing to appeal to motorists

Your diary may or may not have included details of Parkex – Europe’s biggest parking exhibition – currently taking place in London.

But it was certainly part of transport minister Norman Baker’s agenda and it was at the Olympia venue that the RAC Foundation asked him just what provision he would be making for an appeals system for motorists wanting to challenge ‘questionable’ parking tickets issued on private land.

On the face of it his response was reassuring. He said an appeals process – free to access for motorists – was being put in place by the British Parking Association (BPA) as a result of changes to the law included in the Protection of Freedoms Bill which is nearing the end of its Parliamentary passage.

The BPA has not yet revealed the final structure of the appeals process –  it could be similar to that of the services that adjudicate appeals from motorists disputing tickets issued by local authorities on the public highway – but whatever means is decided on, the Government wants the service running by October, when the Protection of Freedoms Act will come into force.

However, the Government has not made things easy for the BPA or for motorists.  First of all, the Government refuses to make membership of the BPA, or any other similar accredited trade association (ATA), compulsory for anyone running a private car park.  The parking operators who voluntarily join a trade association are likely to be the good guys. Those who decline are the most likely to cause drivers problems.

Yet the actions of those operators remaining outside an ATA umbrella could still have been constrained if they were also required to offer access to an appeals service – perhaps by paying to use the BPA system on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately there is no such requirement.

Ministers believe ‘rogue’ operators will effectively be forced to join an ATA because this is the only way they can get electronic access to drivers’ details from the DVLA to pursue the tickets they have issued that go unpaid. This is seriously doubted since more than 30% of tickets left on windscreens are paid without the need to get drivers’ details. So what motorists seem likely to be left with is a muddle.

For decades drivers have struggled to understand a confused parking landscape. Why should a motorist need to know whether or not a parking space has been set up under a Traffic Regulation Order and whether or not it is being enforced under the Traffic Management Act 2004, or whether it is on private land and is being enforced under Contract Law? He, or she, just wants to park.

The Government fully understands how much motorists put into the Chancellor’s chest.  It is a pity it doesn’t better appreciate that no one takes a car anywhere without parking it, and that parking should be appropriately regulated – wherever it takes place.

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A sustainable road? #SMMTCO2 report shows #greencar fleet is within our grasp.

Another year passes and with it comes another significant annual drop in the CO₂ emissions of the new cars sold in the UK.

According to the 2012 Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders’ New Car CO₂ Report, “emissions fell to a new low of 138.1 g/km in 2011, down 4.2% on 2010.”

The SMMT study shows emissions are down 27% on 2000 levels. 70% of that progress has come in the past four years.

The key point is that this improvement is not the result of alternative-powered vehicles swamping the roads – sales of new cars powered by electricity and hybrid technology are still only a tiny fraction of the total – but because of huge strides in the refinement of internal combustion engines.

The real debate is about where we should be going next. According to the SMMT chief executive Paul Everitt, “Considerable progress has to be made to deliver the challenging 2020 pan-EU CO₂ target of 95g/km.”

Yet others think this obstacle is too easily hurdled and the eco-performance of the new car fleet should be rather better. In a letter last month to EU Commission President José-Manuel Barroso, Greenpeace and the Transport and Environment Group pleaded for any assistance to the European car makers to be linked to “a tightening of legislative standards for fleet average emissions to 80 gCO₂/km by 2020 and the inclusion of a new target of 60 gCO₂/km by 2025.”

The technical evidence suggests these alternative goals could be achieved. The questions are whether it is imperative they are met and if so how?

If the answer to the first question is yes, then in theory you could simply legislate to reach the required goal. If targets became legal requirements and manufacturers were punitively sanctioned for breaching CO₂ levels then the chances are things would change despite the grumbling. Equally, if consumers were nudged – indeed shoved – towards buying low carbon cars through mouth-watering incentives then change would also result.

At the moment the subsidies available from government are all focused on ultra-low carbon cars, but what if buyers of the best-performing vehicles in their class all got a nice round £1,000 from ministers? The 2007 King Review of low-carbon cars concluded this measure alone could “reduce emissions by 10-25% over time.”

These matters of policy are all up for debate, but today’s report should offer us some reassurance. For all the negative environmental impacts associated with road transport, it is perhaps the one sector which is best placed to respond to the challenge. Indeed, it is already doing so.

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Spending on #roads and #rail

It can be a nightmare trying to come up with a reliable and consistent number for how much money is spent by government on managing, maintaining and building roads. We were asked the question again today. Our answer – £9.4 billion – came from one of the tables in the Transport Statistics GB series (which was last updated in November 2011). Of course this does not provide the full breakdown of to whom the money is allocated and how it is spent. For that you really do need to enter the murky world of national and local government finance.

Department for Transport statistics
Modal comparisons
Table TSGB0118
Public Expenditure on Transport by function1: 2005/06-20010/11
				£ million (outturn prices)
		2008/09	2009/10	2010/11
National Roads		3,624	4,311	3,753
	Capital	1,557	2,549	2,198
	Current	2,067	1,761	1,554
Local Roads		5,572	5,776	5,696
	Capital	3,330	3,340	3,425
	Current	2,242	2,437	2,271
Local Public Transport		3,579	3,944	4,914
	Capital	589	1,080	1,880
	Current	2,990	2,864	3,034
Railways		7,018	7,626	7,606
	Capital	6,033	5,630	5,687
	Current	985	1,996	1,920
Other Transport		1,033	1,037	932
	Capital	292	249	250
	Current	741	787	682
UK total		20,827	22,693	22,901
	Capital	11,801	12,848	13,440
	Current	9,026	9,845	9,462
1. Figures taken from Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis, HMT see
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pespb_natstats_oct2011.htm
These include public spending by central and local government as well as capital spending by public corporations in the UK. There
are some slight differences between these figures and those from the downloadable HMT tables referenced in other tables due to
differences in the timing  of the data collections.

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M20 accident on Saturday. The road to nowhere but why didn’t the @highways_agency tell drivers?

Of course it would happen when we were in a rush, the children were hungry and desperate for the loo. There’s never a good time to be stuck in a stationary jam on the motorway, but some occasions are more bearable than others.

Early Saturday afternoon on the London bound carriageway of the M20 in Kent was not one of them.

We were almost at J8 when we came to a standstill, the reason for it a long way ahead and out of sight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The appearance of numerous emergency vehicles – ambulances, police cars, fire engines – overtaking us up the inside along the hard shoulder made us fear the worst, both for the unfortunate people who were inevitably involved in the accident and for our ability to get to our destination before the time came when we would have to be leaving to return home.

As it turned out, our discomfort only lasted about an hour before we were on the move again, the carriage-way being completely clear by the time we reached the point where things had gone awry. Thankfully there were only a couple of vehicles on the shoulder and neither appeared too badly damaged. According to the news on the local radio – which we heard as we sat waiting to get going – two people had been taken to hospital. Fingers crossed neither were too badly hurt.

What was disappointing was the lack of information on the Highways Agency website. As far as I could tell, from two visits to their website on my smart phone during the first 35 minutes of my enforced halt, there was no official mention of the tailbacks. Why not? It is their road. One of their vehicles was in attendance and a matrix sign warned of closed lanes (so someone back at base in front of a computer clearly knew what was going on). And the disruption was all over the local news.

If the HA desires to be a source of data for drivers wanting to make an informed decisions about when and where to travel then the info needs to be available and up to date.

I stand to be corrected, but as far as I could tell on Saturday it wasn’t.

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Is Philip Hammond counting his blessings? #HS2 downgrade embarrassment avoided for ex transport sec

Lucky old Philip Hammond. For all the obvious challenges at the Ministry of Defence he must be counting his blessings that is no longer having to manfully struggle on at the DfT in the face of worsening news about its flagship policy: the latest downgrading of the economic case for HS2.

A document just published shows that because of a revision over the point at which passenger growth for HS2 should be capped (i.e. regarded as having saturated) the already low BCR values need to be cut even further:

“Adjusting the cap year in this way would reduce the BCRs for both HS2 and the alternatives to HS2, including a new conventional speed line and enhancements to existing routes. For HS2, this modelling change would lead to a reduction in the BCR (excluding wider economic impacts) for the London to the West Midlands scheme of approximately 0.2. The impact on the BCR for the full Y high speed rail network (excluding wider economic impacts) is estimated to be a reduction of between roughly 0.3 and 0.4.”

That means the BCR of phase one of the scheme now becomes an officially ‘low’ 1.2 and, at worst, the BCR for the full network also tumbles to 1.2.

All of which means that Mr Hammond must be glad he doesn’t now have to act on the words he previously uttered in front of the Transport Select Committee when talking about the original benefits of HS2:

“As rail projects go, a benefit-cost ratio of 2.6 is quite reasonable. If it were to fall much below 1.5, I would certainly be putting it under some very close scrutiny.”

Oh dear.

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#Cars by numbers

The latest vehicle licensing stats have been released by the DVLA and as usual they make for interesting reading for both the pub quiz trivia question setter and the transport expert.

Here is some of what has been revealed:

• At the end of 2011 there were 34.2 million vehicles licensed in Britain
• 28.5 million of these were cars (up from 21.2 million in 1994)
• Year on year the total number of vehicles rose by 0.3%
• During 2011 2.38 million vehicles were registered for the first time (down 36,000 on the previous year)
• At the end of 2011, the most common car in Great Britain was the Ford Focus (1.4 million) followed by the Ford Fiesta (1.3 million)
• In total Ford accounts for 15% of all cars on the roads
• The Ford Fiesta was the most popular new car registered during 2011
• The proportion of new diesel cars registered has risen above 50% for the first time
• Average emissions from all cars registered from 2001 onwards stands at 163gCO2/km down 1.5% on 2010
• The average new car emission rate was 138 gCO2/km
• Since 2001 average new car emissions have fallen by 21%

Most worryingly for the Treasury is the marked percentage increase in registrations of greener cars. In 2011 65% of cars fell into VED bands A to E (up to 140 gCO2/km). This is up from 55% in 2010, thus threatening the flow of money into the Exchequer’s coffers. No wonder the Chancellor made this announcement in the Budget:

“The Government will consider whether to reform VED over the medium term, to ensure that all motorists continue to make a fair contribution to the sustainability of the public finances, and to reflect continuing improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency.”

Mr Osborne also said he would be looking to introduce a monthly direct debit payment option for VED – clearly he is looking at ways to spread the pain which will inevitably follow.

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Reasons for #MOT failure

Ever wondered what causes cars to fail their MOTs? Well here are all the answers, at least as far as the initial fails are concerned, courtesy of VOSA:

	Class 3 & 4: Cars and light vans up to 3,000kg
	Defect category		2010/11
			% of     tests	% of defects
	Body and structure		1.4%	1.9%
	Brakes		10.7%	17.9%
	Driver’s view of the road		7.7%	9.4%
	Driving controls		0.0%	0.0%
	Fuel and exhaust		5.5%	7.2%
	Lighting and signalling		18.6%	28.6%
	Motor tricycles and quadricycles		0.0%	0.0%
	Reg plates and VIN		1.2%	1.3%
	Road wheels		0.4%	0.5%
	Seat belts		1.7%	2.1%
	Steering		3.2%	3.4%
	Suspension		11.9%	16.9%
	Towbars		0.1%	0.1%
	Tyres		8.0%	10.0%
	Overall Initial Failure Rate		39.8%	-
	Defects per Initial Test Failure		-	3.13

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You think #petrol prices are high here? Fuel price shock awaits holiday drivers heading to the Continent

Despite soaring fuel prices at home, UK drivers are in for an even bigger shock as they head to the Continent over the Easter break.

Several European countries have higher petrol prices than here even though many are in the midst of a severe economic downturn.

Denmark has the highest petrol price (£1.59 per litre) followed by the Netherlands and Italy (both £1.58), Greece (£1.56) and Sweden (£1.51). Portugal, Belgium, France, Finland, Germany and Ireland also have higher prices than the UK which is at number 12 in the list.

The cheapest petrol in Europe is to be found in Romania at £1.12 per litre.

Country	Unleaded	£	Diesel	£
	Consumer price		Consumer price
	inc tax/duty Euros		inc tax/duty Euros
Denmark	€                     1.86	£   1.59	€                      1.64	£   1.40
The Netherlands	€                     1.85	£   1.58	€                      1.51	£   1.29
Italy	€                     1.85	£   1.58	€                      1.74	£   1.49
Greece	€                     1.83	£   1.56	€                      1.59	£   1.36
Sweden	€                     1.77	£   1.51	€                      1.71	£   1.46
Portugal	€                     1.75	£   1.50	€                      1.55	£   1.32
Belgium	€                     1.75	£   1.49	€                      1.55	£   1.33
France	€                     1.73	£   1.48	€                      1.55	£   1.33
Finland	€                     1.70	£   1.45	€                      1.56	£   1.34
Germany	€                     1.70	£   1.45	€                      1.53	£   1.31
Ireland	€                     1.65	£   1.41	€                      1.58	£   1.35
UK	€                     1.65	£   1.41	€                      1.73	£   1.48
Slovakia	€                     1.57	£   1.34	€                      1.48	£   1.26
Hungary	€                     1.52	£   1.30	€                      1.52	£   1.30
Czech Republic	€                     1.50	£   1.28	€                      1.50	£   1.28
Spain	€                     1.50	£   1.28	€                      1.39	£   1.19
Slovenia	€                     1.49	£   1.28	€                      1.37	£   1.17
Austria	€                     1.48	£   1.26	€                      1.42	£   1.21
Malta	€                     1.45	£   1.24	€                      1.36	£   1.16
Latvia	€                     1.44	£   1.23	€                      1.39	£   1.19
Luxembourg	€                     1.44	£   1.23	€                      1.29	£   1.11
Lithuania	€                     1.43	£   1.23	€                      1.35	£   1.15
Estonia	€                     1.40	£   1.19	€                      1.41	£   1.20
Poland	€                     1.39	£   1.19	€                      1.39	£   1.18
Cyprus	€                     1.38	£   1.18	€                      1.39	£   1.19
Bulgaria	€                     1.38	£   1.18	€                      1.37	£   1.17
Romania	€                     1.31	£   1.12	€                      1.34	£   1.15
EU Average	€                     1.58		€                      1.49

Note: the table above is ordered by highest to lowest petrol prices in pounds. The data for European prices comes from www.energy.eu where everything is quoted in euros. These have been converted to pounds using today’s tourist exchange rate of £1=€1.17

Drivers heading for the Continent should not be under any illusion that they will find cheaper fuel in many of the popular holiday destinations. Even if you allow for the hike in prices seen here over the last few days caused by the tanker drivers’ dispute, petrol prices will be eye-wateringly high in several countries. While petrol might be easier to find across the Channel, motorists are still going to need deep pockets to buy it.

However the picture is different when it comes to diesel with UK pump prices second only to Italy, with cheaper diesel to be found in the remaining 25 countries of the 27-member European Union (EU).

Compared with the other 26 countries in the EU, the UK is the only one to have the same level of duty for both diesel and petrol. Everywhere else the rate of duty for diesel is less than that for petrol and this is reflected in the price of diesel which is almost universally cheaper across the Channel. With about 30% of the UK’s car fleet now diesel-powered this will be good news for many of the hundreds of thousands of drivers travelling abroad this summer.

UK fuel prices were taken from the Department of Energy and Climate Change website:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/publications/basket.aspx?filepath=statistics%2fsource%2fprices%2fweeklyfuel.xls&filetype=4&minwidth=true
 

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