Road Pricing?

Backgound

Road pricing is a means of paying differently for how we use our roads in order to tackle growing congestion in the future. Yes it is a radical shift from where we are today but surelty it is at least worth trying to look at alternatives.

Whilst the petition on the Number 10 Website 'opposing roadpricing' is significant it is only part of the debate. The petition itself is full of innacurate suggestions and whilst it is important to listen to people who have genuine objections - they must be specific and debated and viable alternatives suggested. Hopefully these facts will help at least shape a proper informed debate.

It should reduce congestion by around 40% and give people and better choice as to when and how they travel.

There are various possible technologies and means of implementing such a scheme. It would mean charging different amounts for road use depending on time of day, distance travelled and how busy the road is. And there are important issues we will need to resolve to demonstrate that it can be successfully introduced in a way that benefits motorists and society overall.

The key principle is that it could play a substantial role in cutting congestion: the prize is more reliable journey times and avoiding future grid-lock.

Today, congestion is a problem on some of our roads some of the time. But all indicators – of more wealth, more cars, more and longer journeys – point to congestion becoming a serious and growing problem in the future if nothing is done.

Congestion is a frustration to the individual and a cost on businesses and the economy overall. And it is a complex problem because roads are not congested all the time; the level of demand for road space varies from place to place and with the time of day. It’s not something that can be targeted with existing policy levers such as fuel duties.

It’s clear that no government will ever be able to just build its way out of road congestion – the environmental, societal and financial costs are just too high. With a growing economy, people are travelling more and owning more cars. There are things we are doing now to address congestion:

• investing in new roads where they are most needed and outweigh other costs – we are increasing capacity on key arteries like the M1, M6 and M25, as well as a 100 small improvements or by-passes

• managing our roads better to get more out of them through the introduction of traffic management officers, preparing to pilot new systems of traffic management and car-pooling lanes, for example.

• improving public transport alternatives – which we’ve done by doubling transport spending since 1997 and putting more investment into rail, buses and other modes.

However, congestion will continue to rise, albeit most slowly than if these measures were not in place. Projections of traffic growth suggest Britain will face serious wide-spread congestion in the next 15-20 years if no radical action is taken. We believe that a national system of road pricing should be considered as a key part of the solution to avoiding this outcome.

A national scheme will not be possible for ten years and will require a wide public consensus. We intend for the Government to be in a position to decide whether this scheme is viable – politically, technologically etc. – during this Parliament.

Key issues:

• The right road pricing scheme could halve congestion, provide substantial environmental benefits and make savings of some £12 billion to the economy overall.

• Congestion is a growing problem and we can’t build our way out of it.

• If we do nothing, congestion will increase year on year, leading to greater traffic jams and LA-style grid-lock on many of our roads.

• Road pricing may be part of the solution. We intend to investigate whether it will be feasible and publicly acceptable.

• It would likely be ten years before it is feasible to introduce such a national scheme for all 25+ million cars in the UK.

• As we made clear in the manifesto, what we are talking about is exploring moving away from the current system of motoring taxation towards a system of road pricing. It is not a so-called ‘stealth tax’ on the motorist.

• There are issues that need to be carefully considered before knowing whether national road pricing is a feasible solution, and we are committed to doing this.

• If we adopt such a new system we will need to demonstrate real benefits to motorists and society.

On the basis of the above arguments it would seem to me inconceivable of we did not investigate the feaibility of such a scheme. Only a fool would bury their head in thesand and wish all these challenges away or think we could build ourway out of the problem oe even provide public transport ina decade to the level to remove these challenges.

There are numerous ways that the specific objections people have can be addressed - like using a technology that does not monitor the car, like ensuring transparency on using money to improve public transport, like transparency over transfer from Fuel Duty to Road prcing taxation to make it revenue neutral etc etc. With these caveats to be tested in a pilot study I personally think we would not be doing our duty of we did not test this system.