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news
Cars on the A4 at Brentford (copyright Simon MacMichael).JPGRoad pricing “inevitable,” MPs are told as switch to electric vehicles hits tax revenues
Road pricing is “inevitable,” a House of Commons committee has been told, with tax revenues from motorists due to plummet as a result of the switch to electric vehicles.
The call to start charging motorists to use roads nationwide was made yesterday at an oral evidence session on the issue held by the House of Commons Transport Select Committee by Toby Poston, director of corporate affairs at the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA).
He urged a trial system to be developed to help meet an estimated £31 billion reduction in revenue from Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) and fuel duty as private motorists and fleet operators increasingly switch to zero emission vehicles.
“It is imperative that road pricing is considered and trialled now to ensure a smooth transition into a new system,” he said.
“Drivers and fleet operators need clarity on future taxation as they make the transition to zero-emission road transport.”
While some road pricing does exist – notably, the congestion charging zones in Durham and London, or charges to use infrastructure such as the Dartford Crossing and the M6 toll road – successive administrations have resisted introducing a nationwide road pricing system.
Such measures have however been considered in the past, and were recommended as long ago as 1964 by the Smeed Report, commissioned by then Conservative government.
In 2005, the then Labour government announced plans for a national scheme under which vehicles, equipped with satellite trackers, would incur charges ranging from 2p per mile on the least busy roads to £1.34 on the most congested roads at peak periods.
The proposals were dropped after an online petition attracted 1.8 million signatures, and while around a third of households in the UK do not have access to a motor vehicle, any move towards road pricing is likely to be unpopular among many voters who do drive.
Wider public opinion may be changing, however. A survey conducted by the Social Market Foundation shortly before the recent fuel crisis found that 38 per cent of respondents were in favour of introducing road pricing, with 26 per cent opposed.
Research director, Scott Corfe, said: “For too long politicians have thought of reforming motoring taxes as grasping the nettle, fearful that a backlash from drivers will hit them at the polls.
“In reality, the public want to see a better, fairer system of how the UK taxes drivers. Our research shows that road pricing, often perceived as politically poisonous, is seen as a preferential option compared to our existing tax regime.”
The current government, which says it is committed to promoting active travel and trying to reduce dependency on cars, particularly for shorter journeys, has already acknowledged that ways will have to be found to make up for the predicted lost revenue, an issue mentioned in HM Treasury’s Net Zero Review Interim Report, published last December.
In his appearance before the Transport Select Committee yesterday, Poston added: “Any new road pricing scheme must be easy to pay and have the simple objective of providing a revenue-neutral replacement for fuel duty and VED.
“It should be based on a simple ‘distance-driven’ model that considers vehicle weight, emissions and use case, with discounts given to shared mobility solutions – such as car clubs, rental cars, buses and taxis – to incentivise more sustainable travel choices.”
Yesterday’s session formed the second part of the committee's inquiry on Zero Emission Vehicles and Road Pricing.
From a cyclist’s perspective, one aspect of road pricing, should it be introduced across the country, is inescapable; it would give motorists who currently rail against people on bikes “not paying road tax” – even though cyclists are more likely than average to also own a car, and road tax itself was phased out in the 1930s – a figurative stick with which to beat us.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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92 comments
Tire excise taxes are probably already in place. Tires are being reduced to rubber dust and thats bad. Vehicles supported by them tires are beating the roadways pretty much on a weight basis. Tires are also rated as to durability according to wear and speed ratings. Tires are the most regulated things i can think of; Every aspect is calculated. Our bicycle tires are weighed by the gram, and we would pay tax by weight. Paying the tax would elevate us all to road tax payers and that tax would be based on tire weight or tire weight capacity.
Clever way to defeat motorists that claim cyclists use roads for free but having any form of tax applied to pedal cyclists would be a thin edge of a wedge for further taxation measures.
Ah, another tax, which will be additional to VED rather than instead of it.
Just what everyone wants, more taxes.
Maybe we should try properly taxing the insanely wealthy to raise the necessary treasury funds?
You raise an issue of fair taxation according to wealth, whereas this issue is about fair taxation according to road usage for motorised vehicles.
...Shouted some drivers loudly as they and the noise of the vehicles drowned out the dismayed sqeaks of wheelchair users trying to navigate blocked pavements, the muted coughing of the asthmatic, the soft gasps of those with COPD and heart conditions, parents' peeps of alarm as little Mary toddles towards the road and the tiny wails from those who've just been told their loved ones aren't coming home in the same shape - or at all.
Did I miss anyone? I'm a bit deaf nowadays what with all that congestion.
I'm not sure that economic efficiency is the aim.
The aim is simply to replace the takings from VED and Fuel Duty, neither of which are specifically designed to increase economic efficiency.
Cost of Congestion - £7.9 Billion per year (ref)
Cost of Road Accidents - £15.1 Billion per year, possibly as much as £34.3 Billion (ref)
Cost of Air Pollution From Roads - £10.3 Billion per year for London (ref)
If I were to run you over in my car and kill you, there would be no costs (other than the real cost of repairing my car) associated with that? Your life is worthless?
well there might be a £50 fine for causing death by careless driving.
The value of human life should not be equated with money.
Tom's helpfully supplied statistics (we note you supply none) come from a) INRIX ("INRIX analysed 500 Terabytes of data from 300 million different sources covering over 5 million miles of road. The data used in the 2018 Global Scorecard is the congested or uncongested status of every segment of road for every minute of the day"); b) Department for Transport official report; c) Guardian report on EPHA study using Eurostat data. But because they don't agree with your somewhat confused points, they are "fake Guardian costs." Fortunately you have no credibility left to lose round these parts anyway, but still...
In fact page 18 shows, and only shows, "Deriving rail diversion factors". Did they not teach you how to read page numbers on your course?
I'm sure Boo will explain his mistake in page numbers away and not just run away when shown up again........Oh
He is so sad, he has had to change his username again.
How pathetic is that.
Firstly, a degree don't mean nuffink. Anyone can get hold of one of those, and it doesn't mean you can interpret the figures better than a journalist, a vicar or a refuse collector.
Secondly, there is truth in the statement that statistics can be made to say what you want them to say.
And thirdly, you spout so much ridiculous trolling bollocks on here that your reputation is that of being combative, baiting dickhead. If you're genuinely clever and can construct a reasonable case then why do you resort to that behaviour which results in virtually none of us taking you seriously?
I have absolutely no idea why that would be the case.
The last sentence spoilt what appeared to be a constructive factual contribution.
It's not "spoon-feeding", it's sharing information you have found that the rest of us are likely not privy to. If you don't want to share it then that seems counterproductive. Even if I did go searching I'd not be confident we both found the same data and may still not be learned enough to interpret it.
Nigel doesn't like The Guardian, which makes him a good bloke in my book..
Oh, the deep irony of YOU talking about real facts and fake facts...
Oh dear, Nigel. They aren't "Guardian" costs. The Guardian is merely reporting the results of research done by the mobility analytics organisation INRIX Inc. Of course, you know better than they do, right ?
I expect driverless cars to be quite common by 2030 (when new ICE vehicles are banned).
Given most will likely operate like taxis it will be fairly simple to add a per mile tax to the fee.
And extra costs per crash? per killing? Especially as non driverless vehicles would also be around. (and bikes, scooters, pedsestrians,).
Although I suppose 10 years of "Are you human" Captcha tech has been mass group teaching the AI involved, how many times have you clicked on the wrong picture because it is all American types normally?
Do driverless cars have a higher rate of crashes or killings than cars driven by humans?
I don't think there's been a single fatality in a level 4 car so far. Just one in a level 3. Add up all the miles driven by all the companies and it's probably already safer per mile than a human.
By 2030 it'll be no contest.
I'm actually quite hopeful for a future of driverless cars. At least most of the cars on the road will then be more 'predicatable' for the rest of us on bikes!
Me too, I think it will be absolutely transformative for urban living.
Depends what you mean by transformative. In most senses I don't think that makes much difference. Cars with electricity without a drivers seat replacing cars with petrol and a drivers seat? Might be a bit quieter at low speed but it's still a car, driving round an urban environment.
What I do think is transformative is when you barely have any motor vehicles in an urban environment. The first thing is - listen! You can hear people, wind, birds etc. There's a great article about someone's first impressions when experiencing something like that.
I've just found that "low car" is the case in the centre of Cardiff too. (Not been so would welcome comments about that!) In fact there is a very old example of this- I give you Venice. More recently there are Catalonia's "superblocks" Utrecht's pedestrian zone [1] [2] and Merwede district.
Slight aside but there's an interesting Wikipedia list of car free places - that's mostly "islands and villages where there are no cars" though.
There are some UK-focussed ideas for managing the urban traffic environment too.
Cardiff is pretty easy to get around by bike, the infrastructure has improved massively in the last 5 years too (Kudos to Cardiff Council). Some decent stretches of genuinely high class segregated paths now and good plans to link them up. That being said there are still cars everywhere!
With driverless cars I think private car ownership will fall and most will use them like taxis. Given your average car is idle 95% of the time if driverless cars can be utilised only 50% of the time that means each driverless car could replace 10 regular cars. If occupancy rates of driverless cars were higher than those of regular cars that number could go even higher.
Imagine your town/city with the number of parked cars reduced by 90%. That's what I mean by transformative.
Where are all these driverless taxis when not being used?, if they are only being used 50% of the time are they endlessly driving around waiting to be needed or parked somewhere waiting to be needed?. Another problem with the driverless taxi replacing private cars idea is utilisation. Yes it may be true that a car is idle 95% of the time but I suspect it's also true that it's the same 95% for lots of people i.e. people use their cars to get to work where it sits in a work car park for say 8 hours and then they drive it home where it sits outside their house overnight. That means that during rush hours many more driverless taxis would be required to take people to/from work at the same times. Then they would be idle for the rest of the working day as there's probably not going to be enough other business to keep them fully utilised. Then you're back to the where do they go in the meantime question, do they park up or just drive around.
I would suggest some on street parking, perhaps 10% of what we have now so that cars are available instantly for most people, the rest would be parked in existing off road car parks.
As there would be no need for people to access them whilst parked they could park far more efficiently in terms of cars per m2.
You're right that a lot of car utilisation takes place at the same time but that is an opportunity to reduce the number of cars even further.
The current car occupancy rate for commuters is 1.1 so even with just 2 people per car you could reduce rush hour commuter traffic by nearly 50%.
With specifically designed cars you could easily get occupancy higher than that with commensurate reductions in traffic.
If you take the busiest time of the day for traffic currently then that should be the maximum number of cars you'll ever need on a standard day. Any cars currently parked at rush hour would be surplus to requirements. That alone would see a huge reduction in the overall number of cars. Increase commuter occupancy and the reduction would be even greater.
The new normal of work from home for many office jobs shows that commuting to work is last century. The minority who feel the need to meet in person are probably the current customers of hackney cabs so will continue to travel and meet. Given the tools to tell who is active remotely, I doubt many businesses will want to pay the cost of empty offices. Flexible working should work with demand based pricing to deal with the rush hour. Mobile network improvement required for working on appropriate modes of transport, regardless of location. So 5G & GSMR will do that...
Sounds hopeful - the linking up is as important as the segregated bit (I'm extremely lucky in living at the end of a car free mini-network which can get me to many of my destinations.) I'll have to have a look sometime.
Indeed there is huge scope to reduce the acreage / hectarage taken up by static motor vehicles and that would be a good thing. I'm not sure that simply having autonomous vehicles will change the ownership pattern though. After all, taxis exist right now and are already used by drivers who own cars. In urban areas specifically there are generally multiple alternatives to the private car albeit of varying "attractiveness".
Much private vehicle use occurs at the same time. So the "automonous taxi" system - if it coped with those peaks - would not reduce the number of vehicles in motion. Unless you're really saying "we need more carshare and people back on buses" e.g. travelling together to work, school etc.? Carshare is of course used now, and buses to locations were and are a solution. Again the "autonomous" factor doesn't change anything here.
There's also the "I'll just nip to out to x now" factor with the car. I appreciate this is self-fulfilling but when I talk to people they rate this convenience highly. So any replacement would have to address that.
I think it would take a combination of a) "culture" / "fashion" changing (never underestimate...) b) regulation restricting private vehicle use (not just the type of vehicle) and / or a substantial cost increase to owning and using one and c) the barriers to using other modes of transport being lowered.
Bikes are individually owned and operated "door to door" vehicles within the budget of most people. They can be operated by a wider range of people than cars currently. As such they are a good substitute for many of the functions of a car especially in urban environments. Ways we could change the current situation would be (b) and (c) e.g. the push / pull balance of reducing convenience for cars (difficult!) and increasing convenience for non-motorised transport (cheaper than most other transport interventions).
I'm no futurologist so what we get may well be d) everyone gives up travelling and mostly meets virtually.
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