What is the logic of proposed per mile road use charging?

cwcw

I don't understand the point of installing expensive equipment on every car and using expensive technology and layers of bureaucracy, not to mention an invasion of privacy, just to charge road users per mile according to how many miles they do, what types of road they drive on and when.

Surely it would be infinitely more logical to load the new tax on to petrol instead? This requires no additional technology, doesn't invade privacy, doesn't require anymore bureaucracy, and would be almost 100% unavoidable - it's collected in advance not in arrears and you can't drive without it. The more miles you do, the more petrol you use. The more of a gas guzzler you drive, the more petrol you use. The more congested the time is when you drive (e.g. rush hour) the more petrol you use.

So, am I missing something?

droopsnout

Yes. With devices to track where you've been, when you went there, etc., Big Brother has less to fear. He will know where you are at all times.

In any case, the plan to charge tolls on the busiest roads will lead people to travel on the less busy roads, making them busy, too. Great.

The only way to reduce traffic on the roads is to create public transport systems that work and are comfortable. Oh, and return freight to the railways and canals.

It would require investment. But then so do wars and ID cards ...

lilac_lady

The logic is to price poorer drivers off the roads so that the rich ones can get to their destinations without inconvenience.

pompeyrich

Maybe the Government intend putting more tax on petrol, it's 80% tax already, but reckon the public wouldn't stand for it. So they announce a ridiculous pay per mile scheme and everyone suddenly wants even more tax on petrol, bingo the Government get what they want and it was all our idea !!! Brilliant.

The answer is to make public transport more reliable and affordable, it works in London, cheap travelcards, tube trains every couple of minutes etc. It just needs to be rolled out across the country

iaintwoeyes

Sorry dont understand this pay-by-the-mile at all.

Alternatives like public transport, canals, railways. OK, thats fine if you live in a city.

The BBC would have us believe that nearly everyone lives in or near London!

But what about people that live in rural england?

I can't quite see the Lake District National Park Authority agreeing to increase the railways and canals within the lake district.

So Cumbria is 900 sq miles in area. How do you think that charging per mile would work in the hills of Cumbria. Not a lot of other options available really!

I use my car everyday......to work in Cumbria.....and guess what....I dont have any other options.

NO buses, trains, barges, planes, trams, underground systems!!!

I dont even want to think about using a bike...I would be knackered!...hehe

piggeh

It's because the congestion in 2025 or whenever, will basically mean that the UK will lose billions in economic productivity. Implementing this will decrease the hours lost for the UK economy to the tune of £28bn GDP. Apparently.

TBH I think it's the wrong approach. The Govt. should be looking at behavioural changes, such as getting schoolkids on the buses rather than in their parents' cars, and more people on the trains, etc. However this is only going to happen if they invest properly in the other areas of the transport network. Also - why cant they offer extra incentive to businesses to change their working hours? If 30% of the country suddenly go to work at a different time to the rest of us, then you instantly have less people travelling at the same time.

And these road charges will just be put straight onto prices as well.

The only way I think I'd welcome it is if they reduced road taxes elsewhere, like on petrol. But they havent really said this would go ahead.

cwcw

pompeyrich wrote:

Maybe the Government intend putting more tax on petrol, it's 80% tax already, but reckon the public wouldn't stand for it. So they announce a ridiculous pay per mile scheme and everyone suddenly wants even more tax on petrol, bingo the Government get what they want and it was all our idea !!! Brilliant.

Good point, but I'd assumed (naively) a tax neutral switch, taking away road tax, and loading to petrol so that the average mileage driver in the average car is taxed the same.

I like the idea of more flexible working hours. It makes so much sense. I'd prefer to work 8 until 4 rather than 9 until 5. It would give me more spare time in the evening and take me less time to get to and from work.

Also, the "school run" - in the summer holidays I'd say my journey time reduced by around 20-30%.

reehsetin

droopsnout wrote:

In any case, the plan to charge tolls on the busiest roads will lead people to travel on the less busy roads, making them busy, too. Great

ive never understood that arguement, even when they put up the train fares at peak time
people HAVE to go to work at that time, there is no choice, no one likes going in rush hour, grr they have no choice, what do they expect people to do? leave before peak time and come back after peak?

reehsetin

piggeh wrote:

TBH I think it's the wrong approach. The Govt. should be looking at behavioural changes, such as getting schoolkids on the buses rather than in their parents' cars, and more people on the trains, etc. However this is only going to happen if they invest properly in the other areas of the transport network. Also - why cant they offer extra incentive to businesses to change their working hours? If 30% of the country suddenly go to work at a different time to the rest of us, then you instantly have less people travelling at the same time.

exactly, follows exactly what i said people have no choice to go except at that time, so make it easier for them to go at that time,
individuals dont have a choice but to go at that time, the company bosses are the ones with the power to make working time change but i very much doubt most of the execs have to worry about rush hour,
sometimes im actually greatful that id be doing the late shift like 12 till 8 instead of 9 to 5. takes me right out of rush hour!

AMO

cwcw wrote:

I don't understand the point of installing expensive equipment on every car and using expensive technology and layers of bureaucracy, not to mention an invasion of privacy, just to charge road users per mile according to how many miles they do, what types of road they drive on and when.

Surely it would be infinitely more logical to load the new tax on to petrol instead? This requires no additional technology, doesn't invade privacy, doesn't require anymore bureaucracy, and would be almost 100% unavoidable - it's collected in advance not in arrears and you can't drive without it. The more miles you do, the more petrol you use. The more of a gas guzzler you drive, the more petrol you use. The more congested the time is when you drive (e.g. rush hour) the more petrol you use.

So, am I missing something?

Yes, unfortunately its not that simple. Whilst its expensive to put a machine into every vehicle and along the roads to charge based on where you go, it actually works very well in many countries.

But the biggest reason that I would support this is fairness. The problem we have in this country is that if the charge was put on vehicle tax or petrol, we are at a huge disadvantage when European lorry drivers come over to the U.K. and use our roads for free. They fill up before coming over and then are gone. They don't pay to keep our roads healthy.

We could increase the tax on foreign vehicles, but that would have economical and fairness of tax issues.

Overall, people are simply afraid that a tax on the roads would mean overall more tax. It probably will be the case for most people but over time it would mean that people would think more about where they go to apply for jobs etc and take into consideration road congestion and the environment.

It's not really a bad thing and in all fairness it does work and its better than looking forward to gridlock and road rage!

AMO

droopsnout

AMO wrote:

It's not really a bad thing and in all fairness it does work and its better than looking forward to gridlock and road rage!

That's one of the most disappointingly naive things I've read for a long time.

So long as the voting public display attitudes like this, the police state is well on the way.

Do the British not cherish their freedom any more? Or is this the inevitable consequence of living on an island inhabited by far too many people?

Are the only available alternatives really just national road tolls or "gridlock and road rage"? I don't believe it!

Electronic toll systems do indeed work well. It makes passing through French toll barriers, for instance, at least five seconds faster. (Or you could pay cash to a human in the barrier cabins, or a bank card in an automatic barrier). So what?

In the UK you can't move in urban areas without being filmed. There are police cameras everywhere on the roads in any residential area. GPS and SatNav mean that it is easy to track people's movements everywhere. DNA banks will mean that anyone can be identified from the minutest evidence left anywhere. Now it's possible that we can be tracked as our cars move around the country.

Add to this the likelihood of ID cards, which will contain all sorts of personal information; our bank cards; our loyalty cards; NHS computerised health records; etc., etc.

Although you may think that the present government may not be totalitarian enough to make the relatively simple move towards obtaining all of this data in their own system, who is to say that some future government would not do so, particularly if there is a shift towards right-wing politics (or indeed, to the extreme left)?

Freedom for the ordinary citizen was won at great cost hundreds of years ago in the UK, and defended at horrific cost in the 20th century. Are we about to throw it all away in the 21st?

Yes, the stifling of the economy through traffic congestion, and, even more importantly, the asphyxiation of the entire planet, do have to be tackled. But I would suggest that we do not allow these crises to favour government intrusion into our privacy and freedoms.

I'm presently fascinated by the talk of building new nuclear power stations as one means of reducing fossil-fuel emissions. Surely the money these cost would be better invested in supplying each and every home in the country with a decent solar panel and a wind generator. The immediate effect of large-scale production would lower the price dramatically and found a new sector of industry in the UK, exporting clean energy generators to the rest of the world.

A rolling programme of investment into renewable energies for domestic and industrial use, plus increased research into hydrogen fuels for vehicles would surely be a more positive use of public money than nuclear power stations, ID cards or middle-eastern wars.

As for the argument above about Lake District transport, I am not a local resident and cannot comment in detail. But the problem of congestion does not arise in that area, does it? If it does, then it should be for local government to decide how best to tackle it. In some instances, it may be environmentally less damaging to widen a road and put in a roundabout than to build new railways or canals.

But what's wrong with freight being carried long-distance by rail or canal to freight terminals, where loads are transferred to carbon-free delivery vehicles for local delivery?

I'm not a scientist or an environmentalist. I'm just an ordinary bod who doesn't understand why certain things happen when there appear - to my simple cerebellum, at least - to be better solutions that don't require genius to see.