At last we have found an issue that can rouse the sleeping giant of UK public opinion and prompt more than a million people to sign a record-breaking online petition.
The subject in question is pay-as-you-go road charging, and maybe the strength of negative feeling it has inspired should be no surprise. It’s Valentine’s Day today (in case you’d forgotten), but it is often said that Britain’s biggest collective love affair is with its cars.
In fact that’s untrue. What most people love is the convenience and flexibility their car brings to their daily lives, especially in the face of a public transport system that seems to take inconvenience and inflexibility as its watchwords.
This explains the strong feelings aroused by a road charging system that would, at its most ambitious, make us pay for every journey according to a set of pre-determined criteria based on time of day travelled, road used and vehicle owned.
The counter argument, of course, is that doing nothing will leave the UK as a giant floating car park within 20 years.
Let’s for a moment examine the subject not from the point of view of the rights and wrongs – privacy, fairness, freedom of choice etc – but instead think about the practicalities.
The key to making this work, as ever, is the technology. This involves ‘black boxes’ in cars, radio beacons and, above all, satellite technology of the GPS or Galileo variety.
The satellite is fast assuming the quasi-mythical status enjoyed by robots 40 years ago, when it was widely assumed that by now we would be living lives of indolence while our electro-mechanical friends catered for our every need.
In 2007 most of us are still putting out the rubbish and mowing the lawn, but the satellite – exemplified by the miracle of Satnav – is touted as the answer to all the world’s problems, from tracking known child molesters to monitoring the spread of bird flu.
Think, however, of the implications of monitoring, processing and correctly charging the untold millions of car journeys carried out every day on the UK’s roads.
Even if a technical solution could be implemented at an acceptable cost, the real devil is in the detail. The type of small-scale tests carried out so far barely scratch the surface of the reality.
You think you joined the M6 at 9.01, a minute after the off-peak toll kicked in. The system says otherwise. You have been charged full whack for a short hop down the A1 in rush hour, but your car was being driven by your elderly mother, who qualifies for a 50 per cent discount. The system didn’t know. The M2 was closed so you left it early and went through the back roads, but still got charged for a motorway journey. Sort that lot out, times by a few million.
Common sense suggest that micro-management of the UK motoring public in this way is a disaster waiting to happen. As so often, it is assumed that putting the technology in place is the end of the problem. In this case, it would just be the beginning.
Andrew Lee
Editor
The Engineer & The Engineer Online
I think that now revenue from smokers is declining, the powers that be think that motorists must be by far the largest group of suckers to steal more money off. If they spent it wisely it might not be so bad, but they just squander it. Just look at the revenue from the road fund licence as an example. I won’t be backing any electronic wizardry to help them.
We all know that the population is falling – that’s the reason we are being told that schools are being closed! Who is going to be driving all these cars in the future? I can only assume that it will be the same people that will enjoy cheap housing due to the surplus!!
I for one am getting a little bit cross at the prospect of having to pay to use something that I have already paid to use.
To help ease congestion goods transported by truck could go on the railways, to get trucks off motorways. Trucks would only be used then for transporting goods to the nearest railway station from the warehouse/docks and from the nearest railway station to its end user.
The only answer to congestion is to limit the number of vehicles able to use the roads. The question is not whether we do this, but how! Charging merely penalises the less well off – and is only a stealth tax when all is said and done!
I too agree that this is not the pandemic that politicians seem to think it is. We all have to live somewhere and work somewhere else – the two are frequently some distance apart. Our love affair with the car is out of necessity, and taxing us off the roads is not a solution – road systems better able to cope, and efficient affordable public transport are the way forward!
100% with you on this. This has absolutely nothing to do with saving the planet or reducing congestion – it is about yet more taxation and needs to be exposed for what it is!
I work in engineering, drive for a living, and most of my customers work in industrial estates. These – contrary to what the government says – are NOT serviced by buses or trains in general. Even if they were I couldn’t carry all my kit by public transport, and even if I could the so-called public transport would inevitably be over-priced and a mess!
Why is it possible to use a bus in San Francisco pretty much anywhere downtown for $2 when in this country the same journey would have cost £5 or whatever? Why are there clean and efficient electric trams in most of the European cities and yet we have to breath in diesel fumes from overcrowded buses? Because we have privatised everything, the Fat Cat directors are only interested in profits and paying dividends to their shareholders. They will not operate on routes or at times of the day that are not deemed the most profitable.
As a country we never invest with the long-term in mind. And when I do want to drive a less polluting car for my job there is no legislation to make my employer provide one and there are very few manufacturers that appear to offer, for example, LPG as a factory-fitted option. If we were to have a vehicle converted to take LPG it would invalidate the warranty!! This government doesn’t give a stuff about the environment – it simply wants to raise more money to waste on illegal wars, and to give to the EU to fund our competitors.
Hear! Hear!
With RoHS, the industry I work in hit major barriers – it was a case of legislation leading technology and not the other way round.
Plus, has anyone spared a thought for those of us who don’t own an up to the minute car that could actually fit one of these black boxes. I for one own a 1959 Austin Healey Sprite. This has a battery cut-off switch that disconnects the battery circuit rendering everything electrical dead, so that when I’ve parked there’s less chance of some hoodlum pinching it.
So now I’ve got to have a blackbox in this car? That draws from the battery? 24-7? Tell me – will the DVLA also pay for the increase in my insurance policy and a new battery every six months when mine gets drained?
Let the technology exist and be shown to work in ALL situations, not just those that suit the members of this week’s government think tank.
The negative points that you have raised are only the beginning. To start this process, a concerted effort needs to be made to improving public transport. This will provide an alternative to car travel. Until this is done the car will remain the preferred method of transport.
Building more roads seems to be a waste of what limited space is available. So what are the alternatives? Even higher taxes on fuel? Part of the answer might be to make public transport both more flexible and more efficient. That helps to take care of those who do not have the ability to pay. Maybe the idea of walking should be revived. It’s healthy as well! And work where you live, not 100 miles away. We have a style of life cultivated with the car that is basically unsustainable anyway. I am, I admit, not an engineer but a historian. I can se the problem, but it is the engineers who need to come up with solutions.
It strikes me that a lot of congestion on motorways and dual carriageways is down to the idiots who will not move back over once an overtaking manoeuvre has been carried out so education of the existing drivers may go a long way to easing congestion.
As a contractor covering 100 miles a day, I could not afford the road pricing so would have to become unemployed as it would price me out of my livelihood, house and car. Thanks a lot!
We currently get poor value for money from our road tax as about only 25-30% is spent on the roads. If you use fuel in your car to cover the mileage you do, you are again paying duty, tax, and VAT to use the roads. This scenario suggests we already have road pricing. Introducing another level of payment for a second rate service that is already paid for is not the answer for today’s hard hit motoring public – let’s spend the money taken in road tax on the roads.
With our current political system, no government wants to make any REAL long-term commitment to solving our transport problems. We are a small island with a large population, ideal for initiating a nationwide transport system to overcome this “disaster waiting to happen”.
The British have long been among the leaders in engineering innovation; and, given the brief and resources to come up with a solution, would, I am certain, come up with the ‘goods’. An elevated ‘mag-lev’ system supported on suitable columns, (which may even be sited on motorway central reservations) would be a distinct possibility. The investment would be huge, but the long-term payback on easing passenger movement and CO2 emissions alone would be worth it!
The transport system is particularly a problem at peak times on over-used roads, hence the introduction of inner Londons’ road charging. This, as reported in the press, has been suggested to follow in many other urban regions.
If the PUBLIC TRANSPORT system that remains was improved, using the collected taxes from all relevant transport sources, and suitably organised in the manner many other world leading citys manage, the over-used and time-consuming “convienience” of the personal car would be superseded by the more convenient PUBLIC TRANSPORT system in those congested regions.
Bus-Taxi-carshare lanes are an easy start , but CONVENIENT PUBLIC TRANSPORT is the sensible long-term way forward.
It should be noted that PUBLIC TRANSPORT, using OVERALL clean power, should be used – electrical motors in vehicle with power supply from suitably produced ecological means. These are being investigated – but that is another topic that will probably link to this theme.
It is rather interesting that 35 years ago the council run Bournemouth “Yellow Buses” used to be electrically powered. They were swift, clean and quiet for all who used the Bournemouth roads and nearby areas. These were however, supplied by tram-like overhead cables, which did cause some operational dificulties. Technology has progressed lead by Tanfield a world leading UK company, supplying numerous companies world-wide with electrically powered vehicles. Perhaps some of our UK transport companies could follow the lead from these foreign trend setting organisations.
If a more convienient, efficient, clean, reliable and regular public transport system was provided it should gradually replace the “queue” of stationary cars using the roads at peak times.
Right on the button!
The trouble is that these ideas come from politicians and/or their poodles – people with scant knowledge of the real world and the technologies involved. Just look at every major computer project the government has instigated, including the latest for the NHS – almost all of them went disastrously over-budget and still have not meet their requirements. Not only that, but they now want to add satellite tracing to millions of vehicles in real time. Some hope! It’s a disaster waiting to happen, and that’s even before you take into account the practical day to day variances suggested in the lead article. Throw in the human errors inherent in large systems and that should just about finish any hopes of a reliable techno fix.
Only when public transport can provide the flexibility that a car does will you see drivers leaving their cars. The genie of personal transportation is out of the bottle and won’t return again!
We are already heavily taxed to use the roads. We pay just to have a car on the road, and we pay again via the fuel we burn.
Actually, we pay tax on tax on tax on the fuel – pump price has little to do with the cost of a barrel of crude, and everything to do with the taxes on fuels. Since there is a direct correlation between road miles/congestion and fuel, the government is already achieving it’s claimed ‘road pricing’ via existing taxation. Which begs the question – what’s their real game? I suspect that it has more to do with having to be seen to be doing something, rather than meeting any real need. Unless, of course, they just want to invent more ‘jobs for the boys’.
The technology will cost more than the revenue and, since politicians are involved in the specifying, it won’t work! If we are really concerned to minimise greenhouse gas emissions, and this is now political not scientific logic, then just put the cost of fuel up to £2 per litre. Gas guzzlers pay – electric buggies do not. As ever, employ the engineering creed: KISS (keep it simple stupid!) Trouble is, the idiot politicians attempting to run (down) the country are too stupid to understand.
The problem I see is that there is no viable alternative to private motor transport. Public transport needs to be developed to make it more attractive so people prefer to use it – Rather than forcing them to use a substandard public transportation system by excessive taxation.
Gloucester recently introduced free bus transport for OAPs. I suggest this should be extended to all citizens, and paid for from a separately itemised part of one’s rates. Greater usage would lead to better coverage by bus routes and greater frequency of busses. Less traffic on the roads would reduce bus journey times, reduce road maintenance and reduce requirements for increasing road capacity. Of course the available transport routing and timing will not suit everyone, but they still have to option of using their private vehicle if they wish to. Rebates of the public transport contribution should not be offered as too many people will try to have their cake and eat it too. Some will say this is unfair, but nothing is equally fair to everyone. No one can argue that allowing increasing use of private transport is sustainable.
Management of the provision of this service is an issue. I think it should be separated from other council duties and the management operatives should include engineers and similar people who have an understanding of practicalities rather than those solely “qualified” in management theory.
This idea has as much merit as Ken Livingstone’s congestion charging ever had BUT it does not require installation of systems to recognise number plates and bill users and penalise non payers, which results in most of the congestion charge being gobbled up by administration costs, and hence the people paying more than they need to for the benefit they receive.
There is more flesh to put on the bones of this idea, and not enough space or time to discuss here.
The only objections can be political or selfish.