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

Murphy_The_Cat

With quite a few posters on here suggesting getting freight off the roads and onto the railways, I'm surprised that noone has referred to this excellant new arrangement that has been made between Eddie Stobarts (Well known Cumbrian company) & Tescos.

a real win/win situation for absolutely everyone.

MTC

droopsnout

I ain't no expert, but that seems really good news to me, as summarised at the bottom of that web page. Thanks for posting that, Murphy.

anewman

Quickly skimmed through the thread. However, there is one thing I have not seen mentioned. If you can track all cars via GPS it isn't too difficult to tell if people are speeding (simple physics distance/time = speed). This means you could get done for speeding anywhere. Also, if this was to be implemented, why not simply use a system like this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/590387.stm It could be an all in one system, improving road safety as well. (By the way such technology exists even today - I study at Leeds Uni and there is a car sometimes parked outside institute for transport studies with a sticker stating something like "I stick to the speed limit.")

The government will probably introduce the technology under the guise of charging per mile, then add on speeding fines etc later to take the p**s. When they could have easily made a system that *STOPS* cars speeding. It's all about money making - and improving the economy so they can sing their own praises later.

And as an early post points out, it prices people out of driving. And of course dynamic pricing of roads = people using sat nav and hitting avoid motorways, taking the hit on length of time it takes and making other roads congested.

I am only just learning to drive. I hope they do not introduce this. I am guessing if they do there'll be a *big* black market in tampering with these boxes and adjusting mileages in cars. All you have to do is stop the thing registering movement (gps and any other way) - and keep the mileage on your car the same. (A recent BBC program showed this was not difficult).

But then I guess the fight back at that is a detector in all police cars using ANP showing the car in front is in fact not moving.

AMO

anewman wrote:

I am only just learning to drive. I hope they do not introduce this. I am guessing if they do there'll be a *big* black market in tampering with these boxes and adjusting mileages in cars. All you have to do is stop the thing registering movement (gps and any other way) - and keep the mileage on your car the same. (A recent BBC program showed this was not difficult).

It doesn't work like that. The black box simply has an id and authentication code so that when you pass certain points, your position can be tracked. It saves the driver stopping manually at a toll booth.

It's not like an odometer, more like a credit card, i.e. the card only holds the number.

AMO

anewman

AMO wrote:

It doesn't work like that. The black box simply has an id and authentication code so that when you pass certain points, your position can be tracked. It saves the driver stopping manually at a toll booth.

It's not like an odometer, more like a credit card, i.e. the card only holds the number.

My thought was it would use GPS to monitor movement. However some reading of news stories suggests ANP camera technology. But this one does mention in-vehicle GPS tracking http://www.channel4.com/4car/news/news-story.jsp?news_id=15470 Which would probably just be a dumb terminal that registers movement and somehow uploads this to the government where a bill is produced. i.e. drive around your estate for a mile, be charged for a mile.

michaels

magyar wrote:

Me neither. In fact the Americans' attitude to the letter of the law is staggering; they don't have that 'common sense' gene which I pride the British in so much. (Actually I think there's a few more genes, and a chromosome or two, that our American friends are missing, but that's another matter....)

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you - once individuals start deciding which laws apply to them things move slowly towards anarchy - for example many people ignore the no right turn in to my road 'it dosen't do any harm' and then maybe I see that rule not being enforced and decide to ignore the 30mph limit outside their houses as the odds of a child running into the road are pretty remote after all and so on...

michaels

Don't know if you are still on the thread Albatross but you would particualry like a new scheme a local council has cooked up with the Home Office - the cctv camera operators have loud speakers and when they see someone commting a heinous crime such as dropping litter they can use the speakers to announce to the individual and all around 'You there in the brown jacket, dropping litter is an offence, please pick it up' - I am old enough to have read 1984 - and obviosuly others in the Home Office also are and did not draw the same conculsions as I did...(smiley of screaming person)

redux

For users GPS is a receiving system, not transponding. So the car knows where it is, but the satellite does not. Instead, if such a scheme were mooted, it probably send info over data links to ground stations, hence my apparently obtuse remark about mobile phone company shares.

After rates of growth of 40% a year for a while a few years back, the mobile phone companies are suffering diminishing returns due to competition and would love to get payback for the hurt caused to them by the auction of 3g licences they all overpaid for (effectively another shift of taxation to users).

There could be huge infrastructure costs in setting up such schemes, so any perceived need or hint of policy to shift taxation in this direction is probably being very actively canvassed by large companies that hope to sign perhaps uncompetitive and thus lucrative government contracts for facilities that we don't actually need. Just wait until we hear how good the scheme is bound to be because it is backed by Companies A to Z.

So a new scheme to shift taxation from fuel to road charges might ultimately deliver only about 30% to 50% of revenues to the government, meaning that user charges would have to double or treble overall.

Continued taxation of fuel is relatively easy to administer without the extra capital and running costs as above. At current fuel prices, an economical car doing 45 mpg is paying around 2 pence a mile for fuel and 7 pence duty and tax.

Do we want to pay 15 or 25 pence a mile average, for the replacement of one consumption-based charge with another that is so similar in function but simply has more overheads?

If it does work out like this, it would double the cost of motoring for those of us that can run cars in the median area of 15 to 30 pence a mile.

There is very little logic behind it overall if applied universally, which was certainly an idea mooted a year or so back , but I haven't seen a summary of the latest proposals ...

judderman62

saintjanet wrote:

As far as i am concerned this is simply a money making exercise by the government.

If some of the figures are to be believed,£1.30 per mile, has been mentioned at peak times,it would cost me over £50 per day to go to work!!!There is no public transport that i could use short of spending about five hours a day travelling,and even so it is not reliable.

I dont know if figures like this are anywhere near being correct but i suspect that very few people will be better off if this system is introduced.

Amen to that - I was begining to think I was the only person who:

a) had spotted this issue

b) Would be hit in this way.

I too have heard simialr figures mentioned and also my fuel bill would go from approx £110 a month (already hardly a drop in the ocean) to soemthing ludicrous per day (around £40-50) so multiplied by very approx 22 working days a month = £880 - £1100 per month - the upper figure being more than my monthly salary So by the time I pay my rent, council tax, insurane not mentioning luxuries liek food and water I would be minus sevral hundred punds per month.

So basically I would have to give up my job and go on the dole.
I imagine there would be huge amounts of people in similar situations.

it scares me rigid that there are actually people who run this country and/or are consulted by people who run the country ( I saw a professor on TV the other day who was advocating this move) who actually genuinely cannot see that this is utter and complete madness - these people should be in nice padded rooms somewhere - they should not be out in society , let alone impacting on our lives.


Also as others have mentioned - the reason we have rush hours from say 0700/0730 - 0900 then again from 1700-1800/1830 is beacuase the majority of jobs in the UK tend to be 0900-1700/1730 - give or take 30-60 minutes. So me driving to work at 0400 would be abit pointless and I couldn't exactly drive home at 1400 as my employee requires me to be at my desk until 1730.

It really, really annoys me :mad: that there almost seems to be the suggestion that many of us make all these journeys that we don't need to - hey it's how we pay our bills.

judderman62

albertross wrote:

What you see in enemy of the state, truman, and now minority report is no longer far fetched, it is becoming a reality. Has crime stopped? Do cars still get stolen? Do millions still drive without tax and insurance? Do kids still get booze under 18? Is every crime solved? Is every crime investigated? Are the prisons empty?

Alarmist, far fetched post this ..

Sadly also pretty accurate - scary, unbelieveable and far fetched as it sounds I heard a news report on the radio last week about a police force somewhere in the Uk that has created a dept that does indeed try and catch people who are perceived as being pre disposed to commiting a crime before they do so - you wouldn't believe it but it genuinely is minority report come true :eek:

This country is well and truly FUBAR