PAYG road scheme

[azekeil]

I've made a post about the potential benefits for bikers, but for the majority of users I think this is just going to mean pain. In its current form, as slowfox outlines, if you do 10,000 miles in a Ka per year only on quiet rural roads out of peak hours you might make a small saving on current taxes. So your average person commuting is going to feel the pinch, quite badly.

Additionally with the loss of duty on fuel we lose the heavier taxation for the less economical vehicles.

What this means in the wider scheme of things, everything else remaining the same, is that it will become even more imperative to live close to where you work. Less number of skilled employees to choose from (or those that are and live far away will command a higher fee), businesses may even choose to relocate to high population density areas to get the skills they need..

I just think it's going to be a huge downer on the economy and force the cost of living up yet again. It may improve quality of life for those who can still afford to run vehicles on the roads as there may well be less congestion.. but mainly due to lost jobs.

My advice? Get a bike and hope that they don't impose it on bikes ;)

Comments

[tefkas.livejournal.com]

Or hope that if they do impose it on bikes, that they charge us at a lower rate (the precedent has been set, after all, with toll roads/bridges, all of which differentiate between two wheels and four in terms of pricing).

NO doubt about it, this is really going to hit commuters, and push property prices in London, for example, up again, because the financial savings on travel will make the places still more desirable. This cannot be sustainable.

OTOH, if they're not raising enough revenue to fund the road system, then what's the fairer method of getting the readies? The current 'one-size-fits-all' system, or something that takes into account people's usage of the infrastructure as it stands.

As you mentioned earlier, I think you're right in suspecting that this will end up alongside petrol duty, rather than replacing it, too: can you imagine seeing the price at the pump drop 50p?? 34.9p/litre???

Oh, and since I have kittycat1000 and ev1ldonut friended, and keep on reading about you via those two, I've friended you as well.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

*grin* I've returned the favour :)

I am not completely against the proposed system; the basic idea is right, but we all know the implementation is going to be atrocious and it's going to work for all the wrong reasons, things will be left out that really need to be kept in (eg. fuel duty), things are going to be put in that really should be left out (eg. big brother).

What a mess.

And ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... if the main roads are more expensive, it will drive traffic onto smaller roads, not designed for heavy traffic loads.

Drivers will take the shorter distance routes, even if they end up sitting in traffic for longer, putting out more pollution and getting lower economy figures, because they are paying by the mile, not by the gallon.

It could be cheaper to drive straight across London than around it on the M25, depending on the road charges ...

... and is there anything in the proposals to take away London Congestion Charging when this comes in? I doubt it.

And I agree with the other comments about how this penalises more efficient cars (or at least doesn't penalise less efficient cars and doesn't reward fuel cell/hybrids etc.)

Of course this is just the start of consultation so I don't see why there couldn't be an annual multiplier (as there was for company car tax) based on economy/pollutants. So that, for example, you could multiply the mileage cost by the litre size of the engine (3.5litre cars would pay over twice as much as 1600cc) or by the CO2 emissions (as for company car tax now). And there could be a discount if you ran a car that was LPG or fuel cell or electric.

And the current proposals would see it coming into effect no sooner than 10 years from now, so there's time to get this knocked into something a little more sensible ...

... Japan (I believe) does something vaguely similar by having a heck of a lot of Toll Booths (the chap I was talking to in Tokyo said that to drive from the north of the island to the south could cost up to 2000 dollars in tolls! They *really* want people to take the bullet trains!!)