Road Pricing

[Angus]

This has been much in the news recently and was discussed on Radio 4's Any Questions. The follow up program raised 2 points that I thought interesting, so I'm passing them on for discussion/comment/ideas.

The first was an answer to country dwellers where public transport is not a viable option, and involved a fuel payment card that would charge/adjust payment depending on your postcode, so an urban address would pay more than a remote rural address.

The second was a tarrif based on the engine size and mileage between MOT tests.

Now I can see shortcomings with both of these, but I think they both contain the basis of viable ideas if road pricing is going to happen

Angus

[7db]

Put it on the fuel. It tracks emissions, use and everything else. It is easy to collect. It is fair. Requires no network of GPS cards.

[Nigel]

Don't do it all.....the cost to everyone is enormous.......and the cow pooh surrounding global warming is tedious at best.

Its just another excuse to scew money out of us.

[martine]

Put it on the fuel. It tracks emissions, use and everything else. It is easy to collect. It is fair. Requires no network of GPS cards.

Yes road tax should definitely be on fuel - this could be done quickly and should actually save money in collection costs.

Road pricing on the other hand is designed to encourage drivers to modify their journey patterns to ease congestion.

The debate needs to consider if road pricing is desirable in principle without getting hung up about the actual charges at this stage. As the RAC foundation chap said, if road pricing were combined with elimination or road tax and was 'tax neutral' it could gain much more support.

Personally I'd think it makes sense (in principle).

[waremark]

As a rural dwelling early retiree whose children are at boarding school I think it would be great to move taxation from fuel (where it costs me a fortune because I drive long distances in gas guzzling cars) to variable road pricing with higher prices for rush hour and congested areas. But there is no chance of this happening, and if it did it would penalise those who have no alternatives.

What we will get is higher taxation, reduced mobility, and an adverse effect on the economy. And whatever Britain does will be lost in the roundings of global warming. Britain should look after itself with more investment in both roads and public transport to support a healthy economy.

I hope none of this is at all controbversial??

[7db]

There does seem to be real confusion between "laudable" aims :- reducing congestion, decreasing pollution, making a few people very wealthy and screwing the motorist. It would help if the "roads pricing" were clear in what was being priced in...

[PeteG]

Fuel tax is the fairest way to do it - makes no account for where you drive with it, in this free country, and if you use more, you pay more. Simple.

[Nigel]

Wakey wakey people....your all going to pay more if you do the driving or not.

Just about everything you buy is delivered by road.

[MGF]

The second was a tarrif based on the engine size and mileage between MOT tests.

Surely fuel tax is a tariff largely based on engine size and mileage.

The only difficulty with fuel tax is it doesn't influence where we drive or at what time.

Tolls on the road can do this as the time and place can be chosen and it isn't too expensive to implement.

Question is what will the treasury do with all this extra money, however it is raised?

[Nigel]

Well, they can drop a few more bombs on the far east...increase the tax again...then send them money to rebuild.

Seems to work so far !

Most driving isn't recreational, its because people need to be somewhere at a certain time.

I for one am not happy at paying any more motoring charges, let this stupid government be honest for a change, and increase basic tax to raise money, and stop all these stupid stealth taxes.

[7db]

The only difficulty with fuel tax is it doesn't influence where we drive or at what time.

But having lots of congestion does as it puts a non-monetary cost on road use. Ideal.

[ScoobyChris]

One (revolutionary!) way to fight congestion is to offer better alternatives to cars. How about sticking a few extra carriages on a train so everyone can have a seat?! How about pricing it more competitively? How about making it clean and comfortable?

Our company is sited in the sticks so unless you can make the one bus in the morning, or the one bus in the evening, a car is the only real solution. Car sharing is being encouraged but that doesn't work too well if you don't live near anyone you work with, or you have to work late or leave early, etc. So, unfortunately I don't really have an alternative (aside from working from home which isn't really encouraged), so I have to go on spending my hard earned on polluting the planet......

Chris

[nuster100]

When the government provides a bus that I can carry my tools, computers and software on, which will go to a customers site on demand - I will stop usuing my car.

Until then, can they STOP ripping off some of the people that can afford it the least.

Jay

[Gromit37]

We could all say the same thing as nuster... and the problem is, we all DO. Few people want to use public transport, as it's generally inconvenient, but we complain that we have to pay for the freedom a car provides. I used PT for a good few years, and before that I cycled a lot, but now I wouldn't get rid of my car unless the situation were dire. We have an infrastructure that was never designed for the volumes of traffic we see today, and the money has to come from somewhere to pay for everything. Until car manufacturers pull their fingers out and decide to give us affordable electric cars and the government gets us green energy to charge them... we're stuffed.

I suspect that the biggest obstacles to our dependence on petrol are the car companies. It is not in their interest to kill off the internal combustion engine over a short period. It will take a decade or three before they change, simply because of the costs involved

At the moment, I take the view that the benefits far outweigh the costs of driving my car, so I don't complain. Much

[jont]

There's another issue with the whole PT vs car debate. PT is great at getting people from a central hub, to a central hub (eg trains from city to city), or over a short distance within a populous area (buses from suburbia to a town centre). When cars were expensive, you had to live near where you worked (or on a PT route). For the last few decades, cars have been cheap, and the housing development model has encouraged people to live a distance from where they work - or away from PT hubs.

When I was working in Cambridge, it would have been great to have been able to afford a house in the city, but for most people that is unrealistic. Therefore I had to live further out and commute in. Fortunately I worked flexitime so it was never too bad a time of day. However higher commuting costs would make a catch 22 situation - I can't afford to live near, so commute. Because my commute costs are high it's even less likely I'll be able to afford to live near.

Additionally now the low stamp duty thresholds (compared to house prices) are another disincentive for people to move around and encourage commuting, and a lot of business park developments have been built out of town to facilitate commuting by car - and making it unworkable by PT.

just my 2ps worth.

Jon