By Andy McCue, 13 February 2007 17:05
NEWS
The Downing Street website crashed this week under the strain of anti-road-charging protestors rushing to sign an online petition.
The e-petition, which urges people to oppose the controversial pay-per-mile road-charging plans announced by the government last year, has now passed the 1.3 million signature mark with a week left to go. The volume of people trying to sign up on Monday evening briefly brought down Number 10's website.
Downing Street launched the online petition facility on its website last November, allowing anyone to start a petition as long as it is not offensive. Peter Roberts, author of the road-charging petition, is calling for the government to scrap the plan saying the idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is "sinister and wrong".
But Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander has accused the people behind the protest of spreading myths about the plans.
Photos: Germany's road-charging tech
See shots of the road-charging tech used on Germany's autobahns here.
The government's proposed road-charging scheme could see drivers charged up to £1.30 per mile using GPS 'black box' technology to track and record their journeys.
As of this week there were almost 3,000 active petitions on the website but the anti-road-charging petition has proved so popular that one unnamed minister has been reported as calling the person in government who came up with the e-petition idea "a prat".
Among the obvious petitions on the Downing Street website about healthcare and education are less serious ones calling for any teenager caught "vandalising or upsetting" to be locked up, and all the roofs in the UK to be painted white.
The plans for a 'pay-as-you-drive' scheme, which a government-backed report claims would tackle congestion and raise £28bn, have been labelled "highway robbery" by silicon.com readers.
Comments
There are 21 comments. Join the discussion
1. Valentin Danner
If you want to see a massive exodus of population out of the UK, put this into practice, I can garantee that instead of having 600K migrants coming in per year, there will be millions out... and the economy will suffer more than the expected 28billion that the government hope to get in their pockets with this rape tax....
2. anonymous
I'm not surprised by this - once more people learn of the existence of the protest petition it will continue to grow. Much like road charging will grow to cover 24hrs a day all routes. The main road rush-hour charging is only the thin edge of the wedge; a licence to print money and bring motorists and the economy to its knees once the additional transport costs are added to food, clothing and other items the weekly budget and inflation will soar.
3. anonymous
The best is yet to come - when this Government bequeaths its plans to use the technology to bring London's traffic to a halt twice a day in 2012 to allow the fleets of limousines carrying the "Olympic Family" from their West End hotels across the City to the "Olympic Village".
Might not the idea of paralysing the worlds greatest finanial services centre to create Stalinist reserved lanes, while shovelling billions at Franco-German high suppliers on the way, be the subject of David Davis next warning letter to suppliers that the Conservatives would review any plans in this area - before they allow Labour to do unto them with Olympics as they did to Labour with the Dome.
4. anonymous
well apart from thinking that the motorists concerned are being a tad self centred I question the need for GPS
you do not need GPS to tell how far a vehicle has travelled, you could link to the odometer to the same end or even more simply increase the price of the fuel as more distance = more fuel
so having disposed of distance travelled as a useful function of GPS we are left with location and speed
or function creep as in we get distance travelled but we also know exactly where and how fast the vehicle is travelling but we just won't mention the last two
the only purpose of having a GPS box is to tell if you are breaking the speed limit for the road you are on
which is fine I've got no problem with that, I just resent being lied to and being told GPS is for something else
I'd just like to know which of the politicians has been offered a seat on the board of a company making the GPS boxes
5. Charles Smith
Now if each of those 1.3 Million people wrote to their own MP the impact would be noticeable. That would be 2000 letters per MP on average.
6. anonymous
We already have a 'pay per mile' scheme...
... it's called Fuel Duty, and is collected by HMRC (Customs & Excise, as was).
We need to look at "what else" satellite-tracking would give the government/police.... like average journey speed, for example... That would do away with the GBRC's (Gordon Brown Revenue Cameras) which litter our roadsides now...
And what it would give the MPs with share in the tech....
7. Karen Challinor
'one unnamed minister has been reported as calling the person in government who came up with the e-petition idea "a prat"'
yes well ministers may actually have to listen to the wishes of the electorate or, shock horror, worse they may have to "act" on the wishes of the electorate
then where would we be ... oh that would be in a democracy wouldn't it, silly me
8. Sarah
I don't suppose for a second that the 1.3m people that have signed the road pricing petition will have any effect on government policy. In fact, knowing how wonderful they are at spin, they will see it as a an endorsement that ONLY 1.3m people signed the petition compared with all the people that drive in the UK.
9. Nick Cole
Hardly surprising that such a patently unpopular measure as this tax, despite its superficialy attractive concept should be condemned once more details of it are produced. And of course giving people the opportunity to express their displeasure.
Politicians (and many chief executives) seem to exist in a rosy tinted view of the world believing that they are always right!
While this is a technology news forum, clearly the lesssons should be that when designing a system anticipated usage has to be assessed. A national system is bound to have national user appeal at some time or other.
Returning to petition itself, people (politicians and their tame advisors) forget that there is actually a simple low tech solution. We already pay per mile, through fuel duties. The more fuel a vehicle uses the more tax that is paid! Why not apply a differential fuel duty depending on postcode of the filling station and its proximity to areas of high congestion and ample public transport? The notion that people should be taxed more for using a road expressely (no pun intended) built, ie an A road, to bypass areas where congestion is a problem is nonsensical.
Obviously measures and proposals such as these are nothing more than a means of generating more tax income for the government to waste, as they do nothing to remove the ultimate causes of congestion, which are that public transport doesn't work and people still all need to get to and from work at similar times.
Penalise those who can do least about the problem and get more tax into the bargain!
10. John Ray
Scrap ID Cards petition has a paltry 26,000 signatures. Its deadline is tomorrow, 15 Feb. 2007.
Sign it now to avert a hugely expensive and disastrous IT project.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/IDCards
11. Rob
Out of all the people that will have to work on this project how many of them do you think will drive a car and be in favour of this project their company has won a contract to build?
sabotage² x still extracting tax money for the project ?chnology + government = failure
12. Andrew Meredith
From talking to people and reading forums like this I get a sense of why people oppose this project and also that the people that are in favour have misunderstood a large section of those who oppose it.
A big chunk are opposed simply because it will cost them more. No thought that this might actually be valid if they sit with the crowd on a busy commuter route. While I appreciate that, short term, they have little or no choice if they want to keep their jobs and that little in the way of viable public transport exists; I have to say I have little sympathy as this is exactly the sort of clumping pattern that needs to be broken up.
Another bunch of protesters, amongst whom I number myself, are opposed to this project because we think that road tax is simply a thinly covered excuse for more surveilance and more population control; alongside the fact that it is a government sponsored "Big IT" project that is almost bound to fail very badly and cost us a massive amount of money.
I also agree with those that say raising the fuel tax is not a good solution. It does not target the people causing the conjestion and hits those on low income and in rural areas way too hard.
Why don't we turn our attention away from arguing with each other on which is the best stick to use and look at a few carot solutions for a change. The two biggest causes of congestion and by extension ongoing CO2 and polution emission, are the school run and daily commute. Much has been said about solutions to the school run, including reinstating the school bus services and encouraging more parents to let their kids cycle or walk to school.
The commute is more difficult one. We we all supposed to be working from home and using big screen holographic video links by now according to tomorrows world in the 80s. While home working is going up, it is by no means the majority, or even particularly popular.
My belief is that the massed ranks of middle managers feel that if they let their minions work from home their own jobs are in jeopardy. They like to get that sense of worth and power from having bums on seats outside their office doors.
So how are we going to fix THAT one. No amount of fuel duty will make the Pointy Haired Boss any less pointy haried!
13. anonymous
Road tax most unfair as public transport is practically non-existant in rural areas
14. anonymous
is it because of the loss in revenue from cigarettes that we now have a proposed new tax, what the hell will the last person shut the door its time to go
15. john mills
yet another way to tax the drivers by the back door it is take take take and giving driving to the rich and hammering the poor so you r making a class split
16. john r w mills
more back door taxes driving for the rich
17. paul andrew samuel dodson
this will seriously effect people like myself, disabled and on a fixed income determined by government.
what next will we have to pay for?
18. john lomax
Dear Tony.
" Whoever pays the money calls the tune" You should listen to your employers & take notice". We thought you might have learned by now.
19. anonymous
Congestion can be greatly reduced by the following measures, Freight can and should be carried by the Railnetwork instead of the deliberate act of government of the day taking freight off the rail and putting it all on the roads.
Public transport total network positevly and greatly enhanced to enable children to go to school, workers to reach their places of employment and not leasty of all daily usage for shopping and other social activities.
Firms centralising their operations, schools being merged, hospitals being dealt with in the same manner, has all resulted in the same result, people have no alternative but to travel, without the necessary mode of public transport what alternative is there but the use of the motor car.
I totally oppose any additional charge to use the road system, more than enough is already paid by the motoring fraternatity.
20. anonymous
Congestion can be greatly reduced by the following measures, Freight can and should be carried by the Railnetwork instead of the deliberate act of government of the day taking freight off the rail and putting it all on the roads.
Public transport total network positevly and greatly enhanced to enable children to go to school, workers to reach their places of employment and not leasty of all daily usage for shopping and other social activities.
Firms centralising their operations, schools being merged, hospitals being dealt with in the same manner, has all resulted in the same result, people have no alternative but to travel, without the necessary mode of public transport what alternative is there but the use of the motor car.
I totally oppose any additional charge to use the road system, more than enough is already paid by the motoring fraternatity.
21. Radical Meldrew
Incompetence, Incompetence, Incompetence! Sorry Tony, my mistake, I could've sworn that's what you'd asked for.