By Andy McCue, 7 August 2006 15:50
NEWS
The government is proposing to fit cars with 'black boxes' to track motorists for a national pay-per-mile road charging scheme in cities and on major trunk roads.
Transport secretary Douglas Alexander revealed details of a new road transport bill proposals in a letter to other cabinet ministers, according to a report in The Sunday Times.
Alexander wants new powers to ensure any local road-pricing initiatives are interoperable and consistent with a national framework. This would mean trunk roads as well as cities would be subject to pay-as-you-drive charges.
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The letter said: "Current legislation offers very limited powers for pricing on the trunk-road network outside of the area of a local scheme. We are considering pilots on the trunk-road network as an important stage towards national road pricing."
As part of any national scheme, cars would be fitted with black boxes that would track the mileage and roads used and automatically work out the charges for each journey, with motorists potentially facing charges of up to £1.30 per mile.
The government has already set up a £10m fund to help IT suppliers develop the technologies for a national road-use charging scheme.
Comments
There are 49 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Yet another ill thought out government idea.
Whilst congestion charging works for a discrete area like central London. It will not work for individual roads, as people will find an alternative. One only has to look at the way haulage companies avoid the Severn bridge.
Any trials the government carries out will appear to be a great success as the volume of traffic on the trial roads will reduce, but instead of reducing traffic, the trial will have forced vehicles onto road less suitable for the volume.
Road price has to be all or nothing, and has to be designed to put vehicles on the most suitable routes. Also charging people just for using a congested route is also not necessarily the right solution.
What is needed is a charging algorithm which takes into account the whole journey not just particular roads used at particular times. For example if I drove from London to Edinburgh using A and B roads it should cost me more than using Mortorways and A roads. Conversely if I used the A1(M) to go from Stevenge South to Stevenage North it should cost me more than using local roads.
Additionally the charge needs to take into account the availability of public transport on a particular route. For example, for the most part I only use my car on a Friday because that is when I do the weekly shop. I have to use the car because the majority of Supermarkets are out of town and the bus routes between where I live and the supermarkets are non-existant. Thus I should pay less for the journey than the equivalent journey for someone who has ready access to public transport for their journey.
2. Tim Jackson
Black market in black boxes! This sounds like a ready-made opportunity for the criminal fraternity to supply "clocked" black boxes.
How on earth do you make this system secure? Presumaby you have a sealed box with a readout that gets recorded by the MOT inspector. But how do you ensure it is still the same box as last year? And how do you maintain the power supply betwen inspections if the user chooses to disconnect it? Roadside spot checks to ensure it is running?
This seems to me as ill-thought-out a use of technology as ID cards.
3. anonymous
why don't they just electronically tag us all and be done with it?
4. Ian Paterson
Knee-jerk taxes rule!
It seems a little pointless to create all these new taxes (where will all this extra cash go by the way? Into public transport? Yeah right!) when the worlds largest polluters are allowed to pull out of the Kyoto agreement that was drawn up to cut down world CO2 emissions.
There are better options than more tax. I live near central London and use a shared car scheme Street Car. For a membership fee I get a smart membership card and the ability to book a car for an hour, a day or weekend or longer. It is an environmentally friendly way to share a car with other people. They have cars dotted all over London that can be booked online or over the phone. City Car Club have the same scheme but have cars in cities all over the country. Worth looking into if you would only use a car at weekends or an evening a week to do shopping.
5. Ian Paterson
Knee-jerk taxes rule!
It seems a little pointless to create all these new taxes (where will all this extra cash go by the way? Into public transport? Yeah right!) when the worlds largest polluters are allowed to pull out of the Kyoto agreement that was drawn up to cut down world CO2 emissions.
There are better options than more tax. I live near central London and use a shared car scheme Street Car. For a membership fee I get a smart membership card and the ability to book a car for an hour, a day or weekend or longer. It is an environmentally friendly way to share a car with other people. They have cars dotted all over London that can be booked online or over the phone. City Car Club have the same scheme but have cars in cities all over the country. Worth looking into if you would only use a car at weekends or an evening a week to do shopping.
6. Martin Mace
What with ID cards, a DNA database, and the possibility of tracking us where ever we drive, why don't that just tatoo a bar code on our foreheads.
The technology won't work, they're having enough trouble with the ID cards already, what are the chances of them managing this any better ?
7. anonymous
This is great... no more road tax, then you can put a lump of lead around the box to stop transmitting your mileage... all good.
8. Ken Hall
Add this to the ID cards and you have a Government hell bent on chipping and tracking your every move.
THIS IS SOOOOOOOO BAD!!!!
9. anonymous
I thought we already had this - for Black Box read Petrol tank.
The extortionate amount we pay for petrol because of the tax placed on it is a per mile tax.
10. anonymous
Ill thought out & very complicated to get right!
We already pay a form of "pay as you go", called fuel duty, the more you drive or the bigger, less efficient vehicle you drive, the more you pay! This isn't perfect, but it's in place already, surely we can tweak this, with the addition of some charging on the busiest of routes and in City Centres?
The government have set aside £10m, from past experience, this means the actual spend will be many times more than this; why?
I keep hearing "tax neutral", what is this whenever this is mentioned, I seem to end up paying more, or is this another spin for "re-distribution of wealth"!
I can see why any Government would be keen on this "black box technology", imagine "Big Brother" knowing exactly where you are, all the time, current & average speeds, possibly even being able to trace "suspect" vehicles????
Must be becoming a "Grumpy old man"!
11. Tim Haines
There's already a perfectly good road Pricing system in place which also takes into account the fuel consumption and emissions of the vehicle using the road, involves no new expensive technology, cannot be avoided and requires no enforcement - it's called FUEL TAX.
12. Richard Davies
More rubbish ideas from people who just want to squeeze more money out of the public...I would guess that we won't get anything in return and nothing will change other than we are even more worse of as always.
I worked it out using rough figures provided; my cost to get to work and back would be £26 per day or £780 per month and if they think I would pay it they can think again.
These politians should just give it up because they are all really bad at what they do!
13. anonymous
So now all the side roads will be clogged as drivers avoid the roads with charges. Traffic jams will get worse and pollution increase as a result.
And obviously we have a fully integrated and highly efficient public transport system that will take all the extra passengers that decide driving is too expensive .... I don't think so ....
14. anonymous
This will be an absolute nightmare, there will be massive fraud, and the beleaguered honest motorists will brunt the cost. As usual this was conceived by someone who lives in a city with a regular bus service at the end of his street, and thinks this is the same for everyone else. (I live in the east Midlands countryside, where a bus is a rare sight indeed, and what is a railway?)
WHY should we be penalised for going to work?
Why haven’t we the road Network we deserve in this country? (Has anyone driven in France lately to see how a countries road network should be managed?)
Why does every motorist hang his head in shame every time he gets into the car? Is it because he actually listens (like our silly government) to idiot campaigners who have an anti-corporate agenda but little or no scientific evidence?
How long will we allow this silly government to keep brewing yet more schemes to rob the middle class of well earned money to pay for yet more madcap useless schemes?
What is the (so-called) opposition’s view on this?
15. Valentin Danner
With petrol prices already at a record high, this is outrageous! £1.30 per mile, I travel 30 miles a day to go to work, it would cost me £40 per day, and about £9000 per year, just to go to work. Take another half for personal use and 3/4 of my salary would go on paying road taxes???? What's left for my mortage, bills, holidays, going out, BUYING A NEW CAR.... I think I'll go an live in another country....
16. Martin Mace
What with ID cards, a DNA database, and the possibility of tracking us where ever we drive, why don't that just tatoo a bar code on our foreheads.
The technology won't work, they're having enough trouble with the ID cards already, what are the chances of them managing this any better ?
17. Steve Watkins
What is fuel tax except a 'pay-as-you-drive' tax? the more you drive the more you pay. simple. a rip-off but simple. And will fuel tax be reduced to take into account this extra tax? Did fuel tax go down because of the London Congestion Tax?
This is yet another another scheme dreamt up by civil service jobsworths to finance their own inflated and undeserved index linked pensions and make life more difficult and unpleasant for real people who do a real job providing a real service in the real world.
Don't forget that road congestion is entirely caused becuase of incompetent road design, NOT because there is too much traffic. The jobsworths in the Deprtment of Transport are completely incapable of recognising this simple fact.
18. Eric the Disillusioned
If I ignored my boss, told him he was an idiot when he questioned my activities, wasted millions of his money and said it was all for his own good I'd have a dirty great scuff mark on my arse caused by being forcibly ejected from the building.
What is so different about civil servants and politicians then? I understand that my skills and knowledge of how UK business works are worth a lot in other countries where tey dont want to control your every move.
Of course it's all to do with congestion and safety.... How many people are now starting to work more from home? How many more people are there that dont have a car and will go out and buy one? How many more people are there to put on the roads?
Government allowed more and more haulage firms to operate on the motorways and then ignored them when they started using sat-nav to use back roads and block up the system.
I got news for you all - the rail system cannot take many more people. It's not a question of more trains, it's a question of more platforms - no space you see. Trains are already running at near capacity for the platform space. And buses are the biggest traffic-jam maker of all of them since they stop in the middle of the road every hundred yards. And the underground is already heaving...
This is nothing to do with congestion... thats everywhere , caused by a transition in society towards a service economy which means we all travel more cos the customer expects it. This is everything to do with tax and control.
I'm fed up with paying people to undermine my freedom and happiness. It's time we showed them the door.
19. anonymous
Is there anyone who feels comfortable about the government being aware of their every move?
Number plate cameras, blackboxes CCTV whatever happened to privacy in this country??
No I don't have anything to hide, but that's not the point!
20. Is it just me?
Tax or tracking?
I get paid. I pay income tax. I buy a car. I pay VAT tax. A car tax disc every year. Highly taxed fuel every week.
If I drive a bigger car, on congested roads, for longer, I buy more fuel ..... and pay more tax.
Fuel tax. Simple. Direct. Unavoidable. Drive more - at whatever time, on whatever road - pay more.
But then fuel tax can't track my location can it?
21. Graham Coles
Who voted for these idiots.
At one time we had a government, now we just have a nanny state with a growing ministry of silly ideas.
I wonder when they will try and cover up the notion that they just want to track people with ID cards, street cameras and now bugging peoples cars by suggesting that this will reduce crime, take care of illegal immigration and combat terrorism.
And knowing this governments over-zealous attitude toward taxation, this will probably be in addition to road tax, not in place of. Now you get to pay road tax for the government to spend on anything but the roads, then charge you again for what you've already paid for.
I'd like to propose a vote of no confidence ....
22. anonymous
Easy Solution...
Instead of trying to track cars and calculate the mileage, which will be defeated in a number of ways (discussed above), why not charge the mileage fee in the fuel price?
That way people who travel further, or who drive uneconomically, pay the most.
Oh, I know why not. It's because that method doesn't track our movements...
23. Radical Meldrew
How convenient for the government; t the new European funded Galileo satellite positioning system is now fully active.
I suspect that vehicle tracking for the purpose of taxing motorists was its main intended function all along.
PS: I bet any thing you like that the UK will have the highest road charges throughout the whole of Europe. They are driving me mad !!
24. Dick Wall
Cars represent a great individual convenience but a great community cost in terms of noise, danger and especially CO2 polution. We need to do something that addresses the increasing use of cars so I would support some changes, however there are many other issues such as
- planning regulations and the last 20 years of infrastructure building have assumed easy access to cars
- The unfairness of sudden huge increases in taxation for commuters unable to change behaviours
- The alternatives to cars, not just public transport but the ability for distributed working or changing models for office accomodation
I would not be surprised if we see a climb down on this to the governments "real" goal of technology to allow easy road pricing on motorways and city centres.
Finally I would feel very, very unhappy about the issues of privacy in any such scheme. Bureacrats have near infinite resources to keep pushing the limits on any issues in this area. It suits their tidy mein and there is no paid champion of privacy.
25. Chris Goodman
As this seems to be the next stage of dictatorial rule, a plan that seems to be aimed at gradually removing the private car from the road, I am now searching locally for a field where I can erect a stable to put the horse that I shall need.
It is a governmental failure by both politicians and the well paid public servants employed to manage our road systems that they have not anticipated and prepared for the growth in car use.
Congestion is no more than the result of badly designed and inadequate roads and junctions. I find that a major cause of tailbacks is the roundabout and, in urban areas, the bus.
The planners have failed by sticking to the dogma taught on their professional courses rather than obvious common sense. A recent huge and expensive improvement involving many traffic lights at Portsmouth was made by a local public servant who does not drive. Needless to say it is no improvement and now has tailbacks onto the nearby motorway. One flyover would have solved the problem.
26. anonymous
Are this government totally crazy or is it just more of the same - big brother is watching you!!! We already pay per mile when we fill up with fuel so why the need to fit expensive trackers to our vehicles?
27. David
Charging drivers for road usage is not such a great idea. Although there does need to be some more incentives for people to use cars less, which would mean much better public transport in some areas.
If charging for distance does come into effect, it would be better to do it per kilometre though.
28. Alan D Hudson
In 1965, the Ministry of Transport appointed two working parties to find solutions to road congestion. One led to Sir Colin Buchanan's report Traffic in Towns which for the first time counted the environmental cost of the use of cars. The second, much less known, was Dr. Reuben Smeed's report, Road Pricing: the economic and technical
possibilities.
It is interesting to note that despite revisiting this topic on a number of occasions - always eventually rejected by the government of the day - the same suggestion is now being considered some 41 years later.
Maybe, this time the governmant will elect to do something about road pricing, rather than spending money to announce eventually that once again it is not going to do anything!
29. Sean Swales
Sounds like a marvelous opotunity for someone to make money with a black box jammer!!!!
More power to them, I for one am sick to the back teeth of 'greens' trying to tell me that I am immoral having a car.
I drive a Toyota Previa, a big car, but I have 4 children. How can I drive legally otherwise? I pay extra money in the tax on petrol, AND for road tax, (hardly none of which is actually spent on roads).
The ONLY time I ever hit a cyclist, he road into me, from a side street because his breaks were faulty, and damaged my car. HE of course did not have insurance.
So, give bikes MOTs, tax them, and insure them. Other wise leave car divers alone!!!!
30. Bill Citrine
As technology produces environmentally friendly vehicles (biofuels / electric / gas) the argument for emissions and higher tax for gas guzzlers will cease. The government will not be able to u-turn over their policy of less tax for environmentally friendly private transport. They need to retain the massive revenue they currently take from motorists. As we don't really know how we'll be fuelling our vehicles in 30 years time - road charging is how they'll do it.
31. Robert
Perhaps the real motive is being missed here. The $$$ kickbacks to the politicians from the industry that would build this system, even it is never implemented.
32. Chris Wood
The ever-increasing cost of fuel will be far more effective in keeping drivers off the road.
33. Anon
Stop any driver and 99% will say their journey is important to them and that they are not just DRIVING AROUND FOR FUN.
The governments agenda is to track the movements of you and me. They are just using global warming and congestion to get trackers in our cars. BIG BROTHER IS HERE.
The people of this country should look long and hard at the people they vote for, the arteries of england are being squashed by road and parking restrictions. Taxes collected via the motorist are used to fund anything but the roads.
34. Yeah Right
Stupid Bast***S
What a wast ot £10 million of taxpayers money.
People please watch who you vote for or we are all shafted.
35. p Bryant
I suppose this is all going to work on GPS or the equivalent pay through the nose Euro system. Knowing how sensitive these gadgets are to trees and tunnels I expect a well placed piece of foil will foil the system.
36. Nick Cole
Another grand scheme to fix an inner city problem that must be imposed on the whole country regardless of impact.
Why do politicians put the feet in their mouths without having the slightest idea of the effects of what they propose?
37. Concerned driver
This will be even worse, 5am empty 3 lane motorway, 83mph instantly triggers automatic speeding fine and penalty points.
38. Sceptic
Hmm
THe reason why the govournment (or useless cretins to give a better description) come up with these pointless idea's
1. Company aproach Civil servant and suggest idea (with a back hander)
2. Civil servant suggests it to whichever useless gulible politition he works for (with a smaller backhander or threat of going to press about affair)
3. Politition approves it (to prevent bad press story)
4. Civil servant gets another backhander which will make sure he doesn't need to work again.
Simple solution - get rid of civil (or not so civil) servants.
Result - drasticaly reduced tax bill for all.
39. Mike Hart
If I'm not breaking the law, or suspected of doing so, am I not entitled to a little privacy?
We already have a pay-as-you-drive tax - the fuel tax (plus VAT, of course)! This is nothing to do with road pricing and all about the governments anally-retentive determination to keep track of all UK citizens.
40. anonymous
Who wants this - Vote them out at the next election, it's time we had a change anyway
41. anonymous
Bureaucrats making more work for themselves.
Another overly complicated system requiring more resources, why not just recover the money from the taxes on fuel. If you are going to drive you must buy fuel.
To my mind this is another example of the Orwellian times that we are moving into, 'they' need you to be profiled and tracked.
42. anonymous
Bureaucrats making more work for themselves.
Another overly complicated system requiring more resources, why not just recover the money from the taxes on fuel. If you are going to drive you must buy fuel.
To my mind this is another example of the Orwellian times that we are moving into, 'they' need you to be profiled and tracked.
43. Norman Marks
This is yet another lunacy from a government which passes legislation simply because it can. It is a felony further compounded because it believes (apart from consultant theory from people who are only good for making money for themselves) that passing laws in itself solves problems. It's also another scandalous "puff" from IT consultants who glibly say they can do anything just to get in on the bandwagon. Along with ID cards, NHS systems, etc. it would be good if these money-grubbing incompetents had a shred of honesty or moral principle.
Why haven't we got even a handful of people with some kind of wit to do a bit of lateral thinking before the gormless Labour government commits millions to IT companies to think about it. They're not going to do much thinking when there's a bigger carrot they can suck in and screw up.
44. anonymous
What's the point in having a car, no-one would use it. Sunday afternoon, we take a trip, sorry I can't afford it. Go by plane it's cheaper. Young people have a bad enough time trying to live and get on the housing market with out paying every time they drive to work etc. Motorist get hit in the pocket every single time. Drive down to London from Edinburgh to visit friends....you would need about an extra £1000.00 by the time you finish paying for 1.30 per mile. Where are ordinary people meant to find all this extra money to support the government's purse.
45. Mike
Congestion on Motorways is due to accidents (Or rather the Police closing the Motorway for hours to investigate the accident, which had been cleared in about half an hour) and unnecessary lane restrictions due to road works that go on for ever. Let's not look for high tech solutions, when we can't sort out simple things!
Serious accidents are usually caused by lorries. Instead of widening existing 2 & 3 lane motorways to 4 or 5 lane roads, we should build separate lorryways to separate cars and lorries. This would reduce accidents and congestion.
Road works are made worse by miles of cones, reduced lanes and 50mph speed limits, for possibly only 100yards of roadwork. Just coning off the problem area and enforced "One for One lane merging" would reduce congestion and accidents.
46. Marat
If only fuel tax and road tax will be abolished instead, then this "pay-as-you-drive" scheme may fly. But ... what stops some people to simply not installing, sabotaging or disconnecting the "black box" from power source and avoid being tracked?
47. Brian Rees
Whilst I agree with the comments posted so far there is a point that all motorists should bear in mind. The answer to any Tax & Spend Government rests with the consumer.
If motorists were to stick together they could bring this Government down. Imagine a situation whereby motorists decided in certain key locations that they would forsake their car for two weeks and rely solely on our creaking public transportation system.
The result would be absolute chaos due to all workers in all forms of employment arriving late or not at all due to mayhem at bus-stops or the local railway station.
The current bunch of inept Labour incumbents rely on people having a short memory span whilst they dream up useless schemes. This is all with the intention of diverting our attention from their other failed policies.
A Leopard never changes its spots; Labour was always known as 'The Tax and Spend Party'. Great Britain is going down the tubes at an alarming rate.
48. very depressed of Watford
All of the above - Just who to vote for if we ever get given chance again
49. anonymous
Black box on my car? Unacceptable! It is an invasion of personal privacy to allow the gov't to track my travel history and habits. Also, at least in the states, the Federal Income Tax I pay (already an exorbitant amount) is supposed to pay for the infrastructure required to get about. This is just nuts!