Parking a car is not a public good. If you want to run a car, that is a decision you have made. You choose to live somewhere without appropriate car storage, that's your problem. It is akin to buying a 1 bedroom house and then complaining you're overcrowded because you have 5 kids.booshank wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 23:46Once you go down the "Why should x be used to subsidise y?" road things get rather tricky. I could equally say why should we subsidise street lighting - people should either stay at home after dark or provide their own light source from a torch etc. Why should I subsidise education, when I don't have children etc etc.Bryn666 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 21:57Why should the public electricity supply be used to subsidise driving? Are you going to pay a surcharge for using the council's network, assuming the streetlights are the council's network and not fed through DNO apparatus?lotrjw wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 20:44
There should be the ability for specialists to swap batteries out when they wear out, but I agree its totally not practical to charge them indoors in people's homes! With lampposts you have hit on the source of the electric supply for EV charging, there may need to be double the charge points to lampposts though.
Why should the public highway be obstructed by wires strewn from private vehicles? How is this compliant with the Equalities Act towards visually impaired pedestrians, or those with mobility issues that can't step over a wire? How are you going to protect these assets from vandalism? How are you going to ensure that the supply is used for charging EVs only?
It is not as simple as plugging a wire into a lamppost. You would need to rewire the entire circuit due to all the power being drawn from chargers, so this will cost millions. And you expect people without EVs, like myself, to subsidise this do you?
The fact is we do these things because they're recognised as a public good. Most people need or at least expect to be able to drive to get to work, to visit people and places etc. You can argue that they shouldn't but the fact is they do. Even authoritarian governments don't usually do highly unpopular things unnecessarily, if they want to stay in power. So it's highly unlikely that the majority of people are going to stop driving. Yes, public transport can and should be improved but private transport isn't just going to go away.
So if people are going to keep driving, the question is how to reduce the health and environmental cost ie a public good. Hence the widely recognised need for the electrification of road transport.
Street lighting in urban areas has proven societal benefits.
Parked cars do not.