I notice in my comments on a previous post that I am being nagged to comment on the road charging news. Okay, okay, let me get in the door already…
This story pricked my semi-conscious mind at around 06:00 this morning. “Ah,” I thought, “here we go again”. Now, I don’t have any idealogical aversion to the principle of privately owned roads and paying tolls to use them. I use the French motorway system and excellent they are, too. However, this isn’t France, this is the land of Blair and his robber barons, so skepticism is the order of the day:
Motorists should be asked to pay to drive on the nation’s road network, a report commissioned by the government has recommended.
Former British Airways chief Sir Rod Eddington has examined options for modernising the UK transport network.
He has reported that road tolls could benefit the economy to the tune of £28bn a year.
Here is my first baulking point. A road charging scheme – even if designed to encourage driving at quieter times – should surely be cost neutral. Raising £28bn sounds like a stealth tax to me. Stealth, that is, in the form of a burly highwayman complete with tricorn hat, black charger and two loaded pistols aimed straight at your wallet. That’s not encouraging the motorist to rethink journey logistics, that’s highway robbery, plain and simple. And, a thought occurs to me. The BBC news this morning constantly banged on about drivers using quiet times to drive in order to reduce their costs. Yes, but if everyone did that, the quiet times wouldn’t be quiet, would they? Or am I missing something blindingly obvious here?
If such a scheme involved the complete removal of all duty on fuel and the iniquitous road fund licence, I might just start to listen favourably:
If road charging was introduced, the government would be able to examine the option of whether it could raise enough revenue to replace fuel duty and the car tax disc.
“Would be able to examine” is not the same as “remove”. Also, while they are “examining” it, they will be raking in the extra revenue. By the time they have “examined” it, they will have become used to that revenue stream and a reduction would just not be an option – wouldn’t be green, doncha know?
Road charges could cut congestion by half, Sir Rod said in the report commissioned by Chancellor Gordon Brown.
Really? This is speculative and the only way to be sure is to try it and see. Even if the outcome is not as expected, the monster, once loose, will remain so. Early indicators from the London charge showed a fall in traffic. I don’t know what the current situation is, though, and have had difficulty finding any definitive answers. The problem, though, is that for many, the motor car is the only option – public transport is fine for the conurbations, but people living in rural areas rely on their own private transport. So sir Rod’s comment:
The UK has a greater proportion of its population connected to the strategic road and rail networks than European competitors
Is a tad disingenuous. Fine for London and Birmingham, but what about Exmoor or the Highlands of Scotland? Still, what else does Sir Rod have to say?
“Road pricing on this scale is new and at this stage has unknown implementation costs,” Sir Rod said in the report.
“There are very significant risks and uncertainties involved in delivering a pricing policy, particularly around the technology needed for its delivery.”
Ah, yes, the technology needed for delivery. In plain English for those of you dozing off at the back, spying on motorists and stinging them in the wallet for the privilege.
The prospect of road pricing was given a cool welcome by some.
I wonder why? If it was cost neutral, fair and equitable, and people felt that the implementation was reasonable – i.e. the state was not spying on their every move – then the welcome might be a little less cool… However, give a control freak a fix and he will simply want more. This is just the latest fix.
Update: Unity explores the technology angle.
I’ve not read the report so I may well be wrong, but I took references in press reports to ‘benefiting the economy’ by however much as referring to savings to business accruing from reduced journey times and the like rather than to the benefits accruing to the Treasury from pocketing the changes.
Unless other forms of taxation are removed at the start of the scheme, then it will be a net tax increase. And according to this report the extra revenue raised would be used to finance public transport infrastructure. The reasoning follows the usual form, does it not?
But, you could be right, certainly the wording is open to conjecture.
Like your fine self I don’t trust this idea one little bit. Politicians love surveillance. Also like you, I’m not opposed to road pricing per se. When it involves surveillance of innocent British citizens I will implacably oppose. It’s the only sensible way to proceed if you aren’t a contractor or a member of the Government.
I’m sorry, there’s been a careful avoidance of definition here. What do ‘Benefits’ and ‘The Economy’ actually mean?
By any analysis, a scheme which seems to lead to a net cost to the ‘motoring’ public of £28bn is actually a tax. After all, whose money is this that’s being ‘harvested’?
Anyone remember Prescott’s proud boasts about transportation? What’s happened to all that, then?
No, this is just yet another moneymaking wheeze. If you really are serious about reducing traffic congestion just provide alternative means that actually work, and are as reliable – or better. Whenever I travel in Switzerland I always use the public tranport system. It’s cheap, punctual and clean. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
Why can’t we do it here? Because we can’t be arsed to actually solve the problem, we’d sooner tax the public back to the Stone Age. Absolutely typical of this punitive Government.
G Brown Standard Move No.1: Tax It.
G Brown Standard Move No.2: Er, there isn’t one.
“Motorists should be asked to pay to drive on the nation’s road network, a report commissioned by the government has recommended.”
I must say that cornflakes splattered the wall of the dining room at the Select Society as I heard this.
“What”, I bellowed at the radiogram, “exactly the blazes is the blue disk in my windscreen for then?”
There’s been a careful avoidance of definition here. What do ‘Benefits’ and ‘The Economy’ actually mean?
I’ve only just started reading the report, but the very first sentence of the Executive Summary includes the assertion that ‘a 5 per cent reduction in travel time for all business and freight travel on the roads could generate around £2.5 billion of cost savings’. I don’t yet know how he’s arrived at that figure, but that’s what he seems to be talking about.
The Eddington report makes no mention of the privacy implications of hundreds of thousands of road toll beacons or satellite / mobile phone tracking devices or Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems which this surveillance mad Government cannot be trusted not to inflict upon us.
Transport for London have recently officially admitted, what has been suspected all along, that they do not stop their Congestion Charge enforcement cameras from continuing to snoop on vehicle movements outside of the the charging period, i.e. at night and at weekends and in bank holidays.
See Heather Brooke’s FOIA request
“Congestion Charge cameras operating 24/7
The traffic congestion in London has not decreased overall as a result of the scheme, and neither have the air pollution levels, as was claimed. The scheme does not provide £60 million a year “profit” to be ploughed bacj into public transport as was promised, instead it all seems to go to Capita plc instead, who seem to have TfL and Ken Livingstone over a barrel.
All very true Mark, and I agree about the French autoroutes. You can even get a good meal at a service area, and it never crosses my mind that I should not pay to use them.
So he does. However, he also says:
The question in my mind being; what about the other £13bn? Also, if there is to be economic benefit, then how will the motorist benefit financially? I can still see a net increase in tax here…
And, of course, the privacy issue. Even a cost neutral scheme is something I would resist vigorously if it means my privacy is to be invaded as a consequence. Stopping at a toll booth (as in France) is fine, having every journey mapped and charted is not.
The full report is on the Treasury Website in 4 volumes. I’ve only skimmed parts of it, and I’ve no intention of reading the whole thing! However, he goes into the GDP benefits in Volume One, section 1.2 (page 25 and following). As far as I can make out, the other £13 billion are from the indirect benefits; the benefits in lower freight costs, increased productivity, the ability to locate your businesses more efficiently and so forth themselves generate economic activity not directly attributable to lower journey times; you spend the extra money you’re making as a result of the direct benefits in ways that themselves benefit general prosperity.
I think, if I may say so, you’re at the study in a very narrow way; you ask ‘how will the motorist benefit financially?’. Well, the motorist is a lot of other things, too; he runs a company or he’s an employee, whose salary depends on his employer’s profits, and he buys things, the price of which is partly dependent on distribution costs, and he owns shares in companies either directly or through his pension fund…
I agree with you about the privacy implications; they worry me, too. But I’m not completely sure that doing nothing is an option; eventually, presumably, things pretty much grind to a halt if we do that. Off the top of my head, I think the privacy concerns might be addressed by some sort of pre-paid card system, which then has units knocked off by transmitters in the particular road that charge varying rates during the course of the day. That wouldn’t need to record anyone’s details. I dunno.
I don’t particularly like the idea of paying to use the roads, but I don’t particularly like being stuck in mega traffic jams on the motorway, either. Nor, having seen the costs to business as he lays them out in the report, do I like what the traffic jams are costing.
Like you, I’ve no plans to wade through the lot. I don’t believe my angle on this is narrow, merely different. I have no objection in principle to the concept of charging to use the roads. Nor do I have an objection to the concept of adjusting the charge according to demand. What I object to is the increase in net taxation. There is no commitment here to remove the existing taxation and replace it with this. If they did, for some, this would mean a net decrease in taxation as their usage is minimal. This would be entirely fair. Yes, I’m aware that motorists have wider existences than their motor vehicles, but it is their usage of the roads that is in debate here. The wider benefits are nebulous and assumed. Sir Rod is making a great deal of assumption here. As WTWU points out, TfL has not demonstrated the benefits being claimed for traffic reduction.
If we are going to be serious about reducing congestion, then the alternative – an efficient, reliable and affordable public transport network – must be in place first. People will not just stop travelling otherwise. They will pay up and carry on.
The type of payment plan you mention is pretty much what TfL use in their Oyster scheme. Even when “anonymous”, it poses privacy issues. I simply don’t trust government to come up with a truly anonymous system – it goes against their grain too much. I would resist it on those grounds alone.
Doing nothing is not an option, I agree. Road charging is a logical and pragmatic approach to road usage providing the scheme is cost neutral to the average user – and, better still – a cost reduction for the low user and is entirely anonymous as far as the authorities are concerned.
I would also like to see less local political squabbling and more activity on light rail systems. The Bristol one, which would have made getting into the city centre a doddle some ten years ago is still a matter of discussion rather than reality. :dry:
Commuter traffic is limited by journey times, not distance – and maybe not cost either. Eddington’s guess is that there’s a certain financial resilience and most people will simply pay up.
But there’s still no clarity as to what ‘benefits’ accrue to us all. What is his definition of the The Economy, anyway? Probably this increase in revenues will be blown by this feckless Government on yet more ‘consultants’ (i.e. the Cronies). Or is there already a grandiose scheme to spend the extra cash on – like the London Olympic black hole?