By Jo Best, 9 June 2005 16:10
NEWS Transport Secretary Alistair Darling has confirmed the government is looking at introducing a pay-as-you-drive system of road tax, with satellite tracking being Whitehall's preferred way of monitoring the motoring habits of the UK.
In a speech today to the Social Market Foundation Darling said that without such a system - which would see motorists paying between 2p and £1.34p per mile to take to the road - the UK would end up in US-style gridlock.
"One of the options is to start using positioning technology - satellites, in other words - so that we minimise the amount of infrastructure we would have to build at the roadside. We need to think about the equipment needed to calculate what a driver would pay and what information gets to the people who would issue the bills," Darling said.
GPS is also a tasty proposition, Darling added, given the UK's fondness for the cellular data technology is already in evidence. "A lot of this technology is out there being used for commercial purposes... many cars are already fitted with the technology which combines satellite positions with mobile communications," he said.
The Transport Secretary said the Department of Transport will now look at whether the "right technology is available" and if it can be harnessed affordably for the pay-as-you-drive scheme.
The scheme, which is likely to entail installing GPRS tracking equipment in all of the UK's nearly 30 million cars, is likely to present a huge IT challenge for the government, which has a mixed record on the largest of its IT projects.
"Large technology projects are always tough to get right," Darling said, while noting that the scheme will take the duration of many parliaments before the UK's road users find their movements tracked by satellite.
Darling told the Social Market Foundation the scheme will be piloted in the UK, most likely in a city. The decision on where that will happen will be taken in the next two years, with a pilot kicking off in the next five to six years. In the meantime, the department will be grilling the IT industry about what the future of tracking holds.
Darling also gave a nod to allaying privacy fears surrounding the tracking tech, saying: "We need to respect privacy."
Darling did not, however, give any details of how this would be achieved.
Comments
There are 77 comments. Join the discussion
1. Stuart Millard
What I want to know is; who is going pay for all the black boxes to be fitted to the millions of cars in the UK should this scheme go ahead? Will it be the Government? I doubt it (actually, given how much they want to charge for ID cards.....).
Also, when this goes out to trial, will the people unfortunate to live in the trial area have their road fund license and fuel excise duty reimbursed whilst paying for driving on charged roads? And what about people from outside the trial area who have cause to travel to or past that location, how are they charged during the trial...
2. anonymous
It is very strange that the party that claims to represent the ordinary man, is the party that wants to grab every penny he has and stop and ban everything that moves.
This is the 22nd century. We should be making things easier and cheaper, not more dificult.
To ungridlock the UK, start with a traffic police force - something lacking today. Ban the middle and right hand lane hogs, sent the drivers who tailgate to prison where they can kill no more. Enforce the current law and get rid of the politically correct labour council employees who prattle on about speed and who not only cost this country 62% of its income with their fat cat salaries and pensions, but have also dragged the rest of us down to their level.
Let start with Tony's darling.
3. Miles Gaynor
Congestion or Pollution - which is the issue?
It seems to me that a typically metropolitan bias has been taken with this idea. No mention has been made of differentiating charges according to engine size/type or efficiency. The only issue the government seems concerned with is congestion.
Under this scheme you will pay the same to drive in a 12mpg SUV as you would in a hybrid powered Prius - the government has it backwards. Roads will be reserved for the rich and public transport kept for the poor, which is not the way to build an effective transport policy for the future.
Instead of investment in effective public transport, and taxation of fuel ineffecient private transport, the proposed scheme is merely a revenue generating project designed to open another vein for the governement to leech out taxes.
4. Ruth
Another badly thought out knee jerk reaction by a bunch of incompetants. Could someone in government please explain exactly how this scheme is going to stop congestion? What is he expecting the current motorists to do? Walk? Use public transport - what public transport? Not bother to go to work? They're tackling the problem from the wrong end (no change there then) - first of all, they need to make sure that the infrastructure for cheap efficient public transport is in place - and performing properly - then think about some kind of congestion charge. Piss ups & breweries spring to mind - again!
5. anonymous
People who are stuggling already won't be going out for the day to the coast, popping out to see friends etc. etc. People may well have to work near home, what a miserable place Britain is becoming - Thank you Alistair Darling.
Or perhaps it is all a ploy and the government is giving us this and then will sweeten it by saying ok we won't do this but we will toll some of the roads!!
6. Stephen Scott
Never mind the technology and project complexity - the whole thing does no make sense. Chanrging per mile does not encourage efficient vehicles and tax on petrol effectively charges per mile already - and in a much simpler way. Get rid of car tax and add the equivalent to petrol and you will have reduced bureaucracy costs as well. Add MOT and driver details to insurance requirements - information passed on to governement by the insurance companies and costs are reduced again.
7. Paul Wilson
Oh dear, what a mess, another tax for the general public, whilst I agree that the state of the roads is a bit of a headache, wouldn't it be nice if rather than trying to make the population pay for the government and greedy companies cock ups, they admit they have got it wrong and cannot run anything. The way to get the traffic down on the roads and people onto public transport is to reduce the costs of the public transport, for an example, how comes to go from victoria to heathrow via the train it costs over £20, and yet the same distance in germany costs no more than £5. Even in Holland the train fare is fair (around £7.80). It is a shame that Mr Darling is going to become the Beaching of Transport for the millenium. Mr Darling and his Darlingettes should look at how to invest better in the railways, If they hike up the tax to road users, they will lose money as people will stop using their cars, then they will overload an already overloaded train system and then the country will come to a halt....
8. Ken Hall
This has nothing to do with easing congestion and everything to do with tracking the movements of free individuals. Resist it lest you desire living in a prison state.
9. Brian Chappell
Mr Darling wants to charge £1.34 for each mile on the M25 during peak hours in an effort to alleviate congestion. How on Earth is he going to validate the mass of traffic that will simply migrate to local roads to avoid the charge?
It's a problem that cannot be dealt with by making certain roads less attractive at certain times. That will simply shift the problem to roads even less able to cope.
Will we then be charged a similar amount for the local road usage? Those who live on these local roads will become virtual prisoners during those hours unless they want to incur the charge.
London congestion charging only works because all routes into the area incur the charge. There are no other alternative road routes.
Come on Mr Darling, open your eyes, the failure of this proposal is there for all to see. It just takes a little common sense.
We already get more tax from those who drive more miles through fuel duty. If sitting in a traffic jam every morning for an hour or more doesn't force people onto public transport do they really think traffic tolls will?
10. Peter Lewis
Feet first & eyes tightly shut ...
Whilst the concept of taxing vehicle usage according to location has some merit (& plenty of drawbacks), the UK government appears to be guilty of its all-too-common insular thinking.
On the continent, a scheme like this would have to be introduced with pan-European standards, to avoid each country doing things differently. (Europe-wide standards would also be the only sensible approach for vehicle manufacturers.)
With the forthcoming 6 months of EU chairmanship, perhaps Mr Darling could see what other countries are thinking?
FWIW, my belief is that the cost overhead of such a scheme significantly outweighs its benefits. However, if it means I get cheap petrol when I come to the UK in my French-registered car, I'm all for it!
11. anonymous
So, let me get this right...
We're expected to let the government track our movements and 'they say' they'll respect our privacy. But what about the next government, will they?
With the accuraccy of GPS technology, how long will it be until this technology replaces speed cameras or who knows what else?
Nothing to hide? Are you sure you didn't drive at 32mph in a 30 zone today?
I think this could potentially be a larger civil liberties issue than ID cards. Combine the two and...
12. anonymous
So we have our biometric data tracked by the government, and now our movements.
I guess next will be microchips in babies.
This sticks of a Big Brother state. Where do I get off?
13. Nick Gray
Alistair Darling (old Black Adder joke) we already have a Pay-as-you-drive car tax?. It's called fuel duty, the more you drive the more you pay. And the best bit is you just do what successive governments have done and hike up fuel prices to pay for eduction, pensions and hospitals. A cunning plan!!!
14. anonymous
As usual this will penalise rural people. I travel 60 miles a day to get to work, it is 16 mile trip to drop my daughter at the cinema and a further 16 miles to pick her up. I have to have two cars and we do in the region of 35,000 a year for both of them ( I holiday using the car as well) My brother on the other hand live's in urban London and does 10,000 a year in one car. He mainly uses a subsidised public transport.
How can this be fair to penalise me and let the urban dweller off lightly?
15. Tony Page
The whole concept is crazy.....typical government solution, guaranteed to fail.
1. Can you imagine the "free market" in disconnecting the devices? Only the honest guys will pay and the roads will still be full.
There will be a new police reason to stop you.."GRPS check sir" "It was working yesterday officer, I don't understand"..
2. If you park in a garage or multi story the GPRS will lose you. "No charge this month because it was in the garage officer" Likely story!!!
3. A single concentrated disobedience stance by any group, as follows "On Monday, everyone disconnect your GPRS" will mean the police are looking for 20,000,000 offenders.
16. greta smalley
This scheme is so clearly designed to make the roads lovely for the rich it's nauseating. And it's not just that those with more money will be able to afford to drive further, but the costings are actually slanted in their favour.
Highly polluting vehicles such as 4x4s and people carriers will pay the same road tolls as the smallest cars. In fact owners of the most expensive, most polluting cars could actually see a sharp reduction in the cost of driving.
It's all very new labour.....
17. John Beardon
Yet another exercise in wasting time and money. Have the government not worked out that people buy fuel to power their vehicles? Have they also not noticed that every time they hike the duty on fuel that it doesn't make a jot of difference to the number of vehicles on the road?
People drive out of necessity. Instead of involving themselves in what would probably become the biggest tech farce on the planet, throw the money at a public transport service that is cheap (free?) and available to everyone. Not the antiquated, inefficient, joke of a system that we put up with at the moment.
18. Badg Champion
If the objective is to raise money, reduce congestion and help the ecology, why not just increase the tax on fuel?
This will promote the purchase of more fuel efficient vehicles while still resulting in an individuals payment being based on distance driven.
It will avoid the horrendous expense involved and the erosion of personal privacy that tracking all vehicles would require.
19. David Edisbury
Honestly have this government lost it.
We are a nanny state and will the public put up with this? I would guess that all these gov do gooders can not even drive or ever been on a M way.This problem stems from the Thatcher years when we were all told to get on our bikes and go anywhere for a job, so we did and now most of us travel many miles to work, now its all change again, really.
Get the lorries off the road and on to the rail network for a start, then spend some of the Billions from years of taxing the road user ON THE ROADS,
For the last 30 years little has been spent on roads,I would love to tackle the PM on TV before the public.
The roads were fine 30years ago but traffic has increased without road expansion,The only parts of America that are bad are the vast cities they have, we dont have vast cities!
Petrol is getting near £5 a gallon and they know its unaceptable to the public to increase tax any more, so guess what we need a different policy for roads,so we can tax it more but hidden,I am afraid people we need to stand up and say NO more,this is a POLL TAX in the making and we know what happened there,write to all MP's now, befor its all decided on make your voice heard. Best wishes
20. anonymous
Ah well, we're all going to have dig deep in our pockets to pay for the black box - but maybe it will need our £300 a shot ID card inserted so that the tracking system knows who to bill!!! It could be the only use for them.
And what about 'visiting cars' to the UK? They will benefit from tax free petrol but not be tracked. I suppose I could buy and register a car in the Eire (still right hand drive) and use it in the UK and not need a black box fitted.
Still, the whole project will never work as Government awarded IT projects always go over budget and delivery time and often never see the light of day.
But on a lighter note. As I am driven to my final resting place, I will know that the Government are taking their final cut unless, of course, I choose my time of departure to be in the 2p a mile tarrif as my final economy drive through uncongested streets.
21. Col
..and how long after implementation will the first automated speeding tickets be issued for getting from A to B quicker than you were supposed to?
22. Martyn Witt
What a totally ridiculous concept and abuse of technology. Let's see what lucrative directorships in tracking companies Mr D and his peers pick up in the years to come. Why can't the same vast intellects be applied to more socially useful solutions like preventing unlicensed and uninsured drivers and vehicles taking to the road?
23. anonymous
Hmmm RFID tags, so that in 2010 stores will be able to tell that I am have just walked into their branch in City-B wearing underwear that I bought on their store card 5-years ago from their branch in City-A...
Vehicle tracking so that the government can tell not only how I drove from A to B but also which roads I used and what speed I travelled at...
And people are worrying about being asked to carry an id card!!!
24. Crispin Driver
Terrifying!!!!!
Where will this Government's love affair with "Big Brother" ever end?? First Biometric ID Cards. Now this!
Once again, of all the potential systems they could choose, they select the MOST intrusive imaginable. And of course, as they will know EXACTLY where and when you are travelling, the natural next step will be to issue a speeding ticket EVERY time your speed creeps 1mph over the posted limit.
The net result? Assuming there are 30million cars on the roads, that the average speeding fine is £60, and it takes 4 offences to lose your license, they will have raised something like an additional £7.2 BILLION in speeding fines AND cleared the roads of all but the most myopic of pensioners!
Mind you, with this administration's history of IT projects, this is probably just another excuse for some of Tony's mates to make an OBSCENE profit at the tax payer's expense, and spend 15 years to develop a magnificent White Elephant that will never work!
Now what was that I heard about RFID implants at birth........
25. Neil Postlethwaite
This makes the ID Card proposal look sane.
They are off their rockers.
How much for the satellite tracking units. They will need a national London congestion charging camera scheme to identify people without or have switched off and also a national network to collect the data.
Big Government & Big Ill-conceived IT = Big Expensive Non-working Mess. Instead of coming up with more crazy schemes, try and fix the current mountain of existing IT failures starting with the CSA.
26. Duane S Phillips
This again is nothing to do with taxing cars or congestion. Its all about government control.
It's being able to follow your every move. Like ID cards have nothing to with terrorism and every thing to do with tax evasion.
Someone once wrote "Freedom is slavery". Well people George Orwell was out by only 20 years.
27. Richard A
Oh god, it is all going to go horribly wrong. I just know it.
Forgive my unjustifiable pessimism but I can see it all going belly up. Not only will it be an utter balls up (real time tracking and charging of tens of millions of moving vehicles???) it will end up costing a fortune to both tax payer and drivers (who are mostly the same people so they'll get you twice).
I don't even own a car thesedays but I hate this scheme already.
Will thay charge by the metre or round up to the nearest half mile? Over a year that will made quite a difference at over £1 per mile. Even a modest rural driver will pay annual road charges of £200 if they cover just 10,000 miles at 2p a mile. So that's an increase, not a saving. And urban drivers? Well you can remortgage your house if you want to use your car.
In effect we will be paying rip off prices so HM Govt can track our every move on the roads of Britain. Why don't they just GPS-enable our compusory ID cards, implant them in our flesh and be done with it?
I have an idea where ministers could implant these semi-megalomanic schemes in their own body cavities...
One more issue - should this system ever work, where will the enormous revenues go? Will they be hypothecated to subsidise ridiculously cheap public transport across the country or will the money go to export credit guarantees so we can sell more armaments to corrupt dictatorships that don't pay for them?
28. Michael Green
I cannot believe that a scheme like this will be allowed to proceed. Surely if they want to abbolish road tax why not simply put the cost onto fuel, they tax it enough already another 10p per litre (based on 12k /yr) would perform the same and greater revenue creation as the current road tax system. Why do they need to know where we are all the time? Thanks Mike
29. Brian Burkill
Why they have to go to such high tech, Big Brother tracking your every movement is beyond me.
OK, so they want motorists to pay appropriate tax for the miles they use.
Surely the easiest method of doing this is to simply scrap the car tax altogther and put 2p on the price of a litre of fuel..
That way, the more you drive, the more fuel you use, so the more you pay.
But then, implementing such a simple procedure would mean loss of government jobs, at DVLC, who no doubt will be heavily involved with the collection of revenue from the tracking. So I suppose they have to go for the tracking option.
Smacks of people looking after their own interests to me.
30. anonymous
It will still only sting the innocent motorist.. The illegal drivers will simply disable the equipment or not pay at all.
What about when a car is stolen, and driven from London to Edimburgh, incurring the owner a £50,000 Pay as your drive Bill?
And what about the uninsured, and the untaxed, and those whose cars simply do not exist, and the false plates?
And what about foreign drivers??? How do they pay??
And will tax come down on fuel, will road tax be scrapped.
Its just ANOTHER revenue gathering exercise against the law abiding motorist. The illegals will simply get away with it AGAIN.
Why does President Blair and his government not listen to common sense.
Wasnt Darling in Black Adder? Captain I believe.. He was a buffoon too.
31. Charles Wood
That is almost a stupid question. Governments ALWAYS make you pay for it. In the UK and the USA it is done by subtle tax increases, or introducing "changes" to the system, but you get no actual say or veto on the matter.
If there was referendum on road tax or speed cameras would it ever get through to be law?
In Africa, at least they are honest and open, and shoot you if you don't tow the line...and give the leaders your money.
32. Charles Wood
Congestion or polution? Well niether! If you want to sort out congestion, sort out LOW COST trains. If you want to sort out polution: TAX the MANUFACTURERS at source, forcing a design change.
If you want to stop planes being hijacked have independant pilot cabins. What is engineering about, politics or real working solutions?
The ISSUE is the freedom of travel we all enjoy and take for granted. Go and talk to a Russian or a Cuban about how much this is worth, then you might appreciate just how nasty these travel taxes will become.
Government restrictions on YOUR movement...by any other name.
33. Bob Brennan
We're already paying per mile for using the roads - it's called "petrol tax" It's low tech, it works, it's way more than people can afford, and it does bugger all to relieve congestion.
34. Graham Coles
Terrific idea darling - but what about security?
Looks like another ill thought out tracking system by the government.
Not only do we have ID cards that they say will 'prevent terrorism' (which they won't) but now we are going to have people tracking that will be a massive boon to terrorists and kidnappers.
Picture a terrorist wanting to abduct someone; now all thay have to do is find out what car they will be driving, hack the system on a laptop and get an immediate readout of not only where their victim is headed, but an accurate placement of how far along any road the vehicle is at any time (Anyone care to design a GPS smart mine that explodes when a targetted car reaches a particular co-ordinate?)
In a world where the goverment is cashing in on an exaggerated fear of terrorist attacks (largely hyped by themselves) we seem to be making ourselves more vulnerable with each new stupid idea.
I can see the list of exemptions growing already: government ministers, military personel, business executives ...
35. anonymous
Great idea!
We need to become less reliant on outmoded forms of transport. I hope the income this generates will go into providing a public transport infrastructure that works, with a gradually phased scheme to minimise inconvenience to the public.
36. Roger Huffadine
45 Kilometer errors won't cause problems then?
On 1st January 2004 a clock error on one GPS satellite resulted in a 45Km error in the UK.
It is well known that low level local interference disrupts the positioning algorithms of GPS.
There will also be a very interesting market for 'spoof' boxes [that send RF signals pretending to be satellites] telling the onboard system that you are traveling down a dirt track road in Wales charged at 1p per mile when you are actually on a high cost route in a city centre charged at £1 per mile.
If we all keep reasonably quiet about the technology then it will take the government 5 years to realise that 'spoofing' works and for them to bring in a law making it illegal, mind you if we had "joined up government" then the MOD would be telling Mr Darling that relying on GPS is foolish - the MOD already use spoofing and disruption as battlefield weapons.
37. Anne Daniels
I hope that if they go ahead with this scheme it does not force cars to use ill prepared roads and in turn increase accidents. The victims would be the young and the elderly.
In my view this scheme should be kept simple and not too hi-tech. Somebody once said to err is humans to make a right mess you need a computer.
38. anonymous
Yet another ill-thought and expensive idea. First for a few years, Government has been spending enormous amount of our money on so called traffic calmming measures and has managed to bring traffic in many places to a standstill. Now to counter that they want to spent even more money to let the traffic flow. Sorry but you can not have both at the same time.
39. Warren Swaine
A brilliant idea. I can't see why people are so against it. What the Government are promising is tax free motoring for anyone with the intelligence to find the GPS fuse in their fusebox.
And it will save all that wasted effort tracking down people who don't pay road tax on abandoned vehicles, after all if they're not moving, they can be breaking the law.
And so what if it can theoretically send out automatically speeding fines - if you've nothing to hide you have nothing to fear ;0)
40. anonymous
I did not vote for the corupt bunch of money grabbing idiots that unfortunately won the recent general election.
This scheme will never work, a large sheet of lead will ensure that I am not tracked.
Hope all the readers that have posted did not vote for the dictatorship in which we now live in.
I feel the need to start thinking about emigrating, need to have a look at what country to go to.
41. anonymous
Surely the simplest and most efficient way of imposing a pay as you drive tax is via petrol consumption, as currently? What is the point of investing billions in a high technology solution, and the legions of civil servants necessary to administer and enforce it, when we already have something that works? And how long until somebody invents some kind of cloaking device that avoids journeys being tracked by the GPRS system? At least you can't avoid paying fuel tax which, although not popular, is ubiquitous and equitable.
42. anonymous
Two points.
1) So this scheme will 'replace' fuel tax will it? On rural roads it will raise 2 pence a mile... whereas the government gets 8 pence per mile in fuel tax (assuming a reasonable fuel consumption). Okay, it might make £1.34 a mile on high-charge roads, but what's the average cost going to be? I can see the rates rise or it be an extra tax!
2) If your journey up the M6 costs £1.74 a mile in road use tax, why not drive a 9mpg gas guzzler instead of a 60 mpg hybrid? After all, tax free fuel is proportionately cheap! So it reduces the incentive to improved car efficiency.
Another well thought out plan.
43. anonymous
They'll never be able to resist using this to enforce all sorts of other things too, what's the betting that if you ever go over the speed limit at any point you'll get a fine through the post?
Hire companies and fleets already use this technology, it's nothing new so the only reason not to do it sooner is they know that everyone will fight it.
Of course criminals and others will soon work out how to remove the boxes and get away scot-free without any kind of payment while the law-abiding general motorist will pay through the nose.
Also, if the sort of prices being suggested are real, then petrol will need to drop to US levels and the 'car tax' be scrapped completely, otherwise it will double or triple the cost of a car which will badly hit rural areas and families.
44. anonymous
So we are now tracking cars by GPS.Is this really for congestion or are the Government using it to stop speeding. Image going down a road from a to b and the software working out you speeded. Speeding ticket without the camera. Hey, do I get commssion for coming up with a new tax for the Government?
45. Chris Withall
Well.
23 million cars will need fitting with GPS black boxes at, I would guess say £400 per unit (mass production prices - - they will have to be made tamper proof)
Now it take appox 1 hour to fit my car radio and cost +£100 so if we said £500 per car and 1 hours fitting @ £100 to keep the math easily like 9yr old's understanding, of the benefit of the MP's
That’s £11.5 Billion and 23 million hours. Assuming 1000 fitting centres countrywide and a 35 hour week that’s 12.6 yrs.
Ignoring failed installs, faulty units, and subsequent broken or faulty units. So the backlog would be phenomenal, with approx 5 million changing their cars every 3/4 years. each unit would need to be reprogrammed,. and guarantee that they would lock the road fund tax into the units as well to catch the tax dodgers every unit would need to be updated annually -they could use smart cards but, how ? ( without creating a new criminal practice of card cloning).
now allowing for gov's natural inefficiency and bureaucratic practices and compliance checking I think you could easily add a few hundred on to the bill for each unit. so we could make a guess at say £20 billon and 35 million hours just to kit out the cars..
Plus the road side receivers at every mile or so network cabling say £500 per mile and computer centres (how many billions would that be I wonder.. -- hmm I feel a computer weekly audit coming on here, + the people to run it and a new court system to uphold the law -cos our current system just couldn’t handle that much workload and the appeals.
To raise what £9 billion per year? But everyone would stop driving so much if the plan successes (that’s the plan) so if we said 2/3 reduction in traffic, that would only bring in £3 billion a year.
Its new labours 3rd term ! The first time in history !! So it back to old loony labour again... anyone want to employ me to count lampposts ??
46. Brian Catt
Only acceptable on a tax basis if they remove fuel tax and Vehicle licencing and apply all such taxes to actual transport infrastructure creation in future - not privatisation, goverment commitess, unnecessary wars, another new home for regional assemblies, equal rights support or whatever is current way to waste taxpayers money.
Otherwise its just another regressive tax, BTW already way beyond the money spent on supporting the motoring infrastructure as well as being a direct imposition on civil liberties - which the politicians we have now will certainly abuse whenever it suits them on any trumped up excuse to make life as hard for anyone who opposes them as they did for our weapons inspector.
47. anonymous
According to the Financial Times (7th June) Norwich Union have already done a remarkably similar 5,000 user trial in the UK, in conjunction with Orange and IBM and using a GPRS "black box" in the car. They are considering introducing this to provide pay as you go car insurance. A side benefit was recovery of several stolen vehicles and arrest of the thieves who parked them outside their homes. I'm suprised Silicon have not picked up on this, sounds like the technology is already there.
48. anonymous
Easier and cheaper way to stop people using their cars?
Make public transport cheaper than driving!
Simple response to a simple problem!
49. anonymous
Don't worry, the powerful oil and motor industries will quickly kill this foolish scheme, and no doubt this government too.
The IT industry may have its backers but they are nothing compared to the god of oil.
50. anonymous
The great thing about fuel duty, well from the government's point of view at least, is that it is a "hidden" tax. A direct tax on usage, such as Darling is proposing, will make it obvious to the motorist exactly how much tax they are paying. A bill falling through the letter box each month will itemise tax down to the last penny.
Should the scheme work it will be a disaster not just for motorists but for the government as tax revenue will, I think be drastically reduced.
The present arrangement serves the government well as tax is levied relatively painlessly from the motorist. They would be mad to change it.
51. anonymous
The UK it seems to me is a test site for new technologies and social engineering. Why do we embark on so many grand schemes when the basic infrastructure such as public transport, education and the health service are so poor? The only reason I can suggest is that we are a test case and have largely been written off by the global organisations that more and more rule our world. Simple projects avoiding the latest technolgy that use tried and tested methods would surely suit us better.
52. Neil
I think just about everyone is missing the point .. government needs to spend (and hence obtain) vast amounts of money to keep the economy afloat as there is no longer raw materials or manufacturing to export to keep it going.
What we get is the spin behind money making ventures and the bigger the better:
Terrorists = £multi billion ID cards
Fat Cat Companies = Pension Siphoning
Gridlock = multi billion Car tracking
Poor management = recruit more public sector staff
ID Theft = ID Cards again
and I am sure you can think of many more
This is not about Congestion or Big Brother it is simply another way of keeping UK PLC solvent and hence hopefully ensuring another 8 years of Labour.
53. Dave Leslie
Much more sensible than the ID cards proposal - real benefits, and a much better chance of successful implementation.
And for the correspondent who wanted commission for a new 'tax' on speeding, no it's not a new idea. But if you want a bit of project creep, how about identifying stopping on double yellow lines, jumping traffic lights, and illegal u-turns?
54. Chris Withall
Well.
23 million cars will need fitting with GPS black boxes at, I would guess say £400 per unit (mass production prices - - they will have to be made tamper proof)
Now it take appox 1 hour to fit my car radio and cost +£100 so if we said £500 per car and 1 hours fitting @ £100 to keep the math easily like 9yr old's understanding, of the benefit of the MP's
That’s £11.5 Billion and 23 million hours. Assuming 1000 fitting centres countrywide and a 35 hour week that’s 12.6 yrs.
Ignoring failed installs, faulty units, and subsequent broken or faulty units. So the backlog would be phenomenal, with approx 5 million changing their cars every 3/4 years. each unit would need to be reprogrammed,. and guarantee that they would lock the road fund tax into the units as well to catch the tax dodgers every unit would need to be updated annually -they could use smart cards but, how ? ( without creating a new criminal practice of card cloning).
now allowing for gov's natural inefficiency and bureaucratic practices and compliance checking I think you could easily add a few hundred on to the bill for each unit. so we could make a guess at say £20 billon and 35 million hours just to kit out the cars..
Plus the road side receivers at every mile or so network cabling say £500 per mile and computer centres (how many billions would that be I wonder.. -- hmm I feel a computer weekly audit coming on here, + the people to run it and a new court system to uphold the law -cos our current system just couldn’t handle that much workload and the appeals.
To raise what £9 billion per year? But everyone would stop driving so much if the plan successes (that’s the plan) so if we said 2/3 reduction in traffic, that would only bring in £3 billion a year.
Its new labours 3rd term ! The first time in history !! So it back to old loony labour again... anyone want to employ me to count lampposts ??
55. Ruth
If there is such a groundswell of repulsion against this misbegotten idea there is always a solution. Refuse to have a black box fitted in your car - can they jail 23 million of us?
Incidentally, I hope anyone who voted Labour is now realising what a 3rd term of Labour rule actually means - ruining England in any way possible, eroding civil liberties through ID cards & car tracking - with house arrest & CCTV everywhere - Uncle Josef (Stalin) would be proud.
56. Dudley Lewis
An invitation to enhance congestion on minor (cheaper)roads!
57. cant say
surely british people are going to,at some time say enough is enough,maybe a revolution?be careful goverment!people dont be fooled and believe this cover up as we all know we already pay tax, from petrol consumption etc.this is 100% intrusion plan, forget speed cameras,and private life as we know it,i am informed they will be chiping us before long and finger prints or retena scanners as money,passport etc, if this tracking tax comes in theirs no turnin back as it will cost so much,were all doomed maybe emegrate?why did all our relatives fight the war and die for this appauling mess,we would be better off not being british i wonder what its like to be proud of your country?????????????
58. anonymous
Well, who is really to blame for giving these amateurs another term in "government"?
YOU voted them in. Not once, but 3 TIMES. So now they KNOW they can do anything they damn well like!
One thing they should add to the Math lessons at school is the simple formula:
Labour = Tax
where Tax >= any existing tax, and which can come into existance at any time, without warning (other than the warning "Labour Wins!" following the election)
The idea is a joke. Its the old good cop/bad cop ploy. Scare the hell out of the voters, then when Labour finally 'relent' and decide that increased fuel tax 'really is the simplest solution', everyone will breath a huge sigh of relief and say "thank god fuel only went up 20 a litre".
...you got exactly what you voted for ;)
59. Kimi
Mobile Poll Tax: One, this idea is a civil liberties nightmare! To tax your car correctly and to be able to come after you if you don't pay up, they're going to put YOU in a very large and personal database. Hey, this is better than the Poll Tax, not only do they get to collect your money and data on where you live, BUT THEY CAN TRACK YOU IN REAL TIME (if you're driving). A nightmare! I expect the following three very bad scenarios:
(a) Tie the CCTV network data and this new data stream together. The UK is the most CCTV'd nation on Earth; the cameras are going digital, and the whole camera network is being networked. Which of our control freaks in uniform or office is going to resist this one?
(b) As per the Norwich Union trial (with 5000 black-boxed car owners in a insure-them-as-they-drive trial) the data will be shared with law enforcement. That means ALL of law enforcement, so now, if you're suspected of something (terrorism related) or have committed (allegedly) some act (non-payment of congestion tax?), a patrol car can be alerted that YOU (your car) are in the immediate neighbourhood for apprehension. It won't happen right? It already has (see FT: Norwich Union GPS trials)!
(c) This one's a joke, maybe. You know those sharp 'one-way' spikes that are installed in some parking lots so you can't revere out of the entrance without paying? They're embedded in roadways or entrances to (i.e. slow and very slow places) to catch the really HOT ones - or some idea like that. Unreasonable huh? Mmmm.
Here's what I don't get: A public that get's taxed on buying a car, that get's taxed on using a car (road tax); that get's taxed on actually driving the car (increasing congestion charges); that has already PAID 9via taxes) for every black mile in the country so it's already OURS (we pay for this stuff and we elect the government to represent US, right??! Sure?); is a public that appears to be about to roll over and go back to sleep when their elected representatives state quite clearly that, insanely and unfairly (in priniple and practice) WE'RE GOING TO CHARGE YOU FOR EVERY BLOODY MILE YOU DRIVE! There goes curiosity (can't afford it); there goes indiscreet affairs you have to drive to (some smart lawyer's going to sue for access to records to prove their clients innocence/ opponent's guilt).
Go figure! The outrage, even in all the comments in silicon.com isn't nearly loud enough.
60. anonymous
A sensible government would'nt be wasting our tax in a fairy tail scheme like this. Abolish road fund licenses and put a penny on petrol? The result - loads of unemployed in Swansea.
ah...best not then. Lets go for a fairy tail idea - based on the govs idea of technology - a bit like ID cards and assume everybody wants to pay for a half-assed idea.
Lots of jobs for civil serpents....oh joy!
Blair- get a grip on your transport - make it unnecessary to travel! local communities, local jobs, local entertainment....holidays might be worthwhile in the UK if every village didn't have the same shops, houses, and armdahl centre....
REMOVE THE NEED TO TRAVEL - and avoid the penalising rural communities, improve local communities, create more local jobs, and possibly get even more tax!
61. anonymous
Soooo...when I sneak out with a small faraday cage over my black box (some kitchen foil to you) I'm going to get freeeee travel!
Thank you government for being so ready to waste my tax on half assed ideas!
62. anonymous
Alistair, Darling.....
such incompetence wouldn't be put up with in the real world - why arn't you unemployed? NOW!
Oh wait -an idea - lets tag/GPRS/RFID all members of parliament, so we can see what they are actually doing.
Apparently no thinking, for a start.
63. anonymous
Bunkum
People in traffic jams already pay more due to the awful fuel consumption they get....
Far better to incentivise flexible working hours and free up traffic....
Which..oh by the way...is what this enormously exepnesive scheme would result in.....
So cut out the scheme...it's politcal bunkum designed to scupper a future government...not this current one
64. Had enough of this country
Well, I personally have give up blaming the government and big business for ruining this country!
The reason this country is in such a state is because of the moronic british public. Who the hell voted Labour back into power with their track history of rewarding the rich and powerful, destroying british industry and taxing the country so much that no normal soul can afford a decent lifestyle without taking on large amounts of consumer debt.
Considering the cost of living these days, if your not earning at least £40K then give up the game and don't work or emigrate or run up loads of debt, be stressed, annoyed, frustrated etc.
This bullshit wouldn't happen in France, they stick together. Britain is a very divided society, so its easy to treat the electorat any which way the government choses to. They are going to shaft us and bleed us dry for the rest of our lives because the people will not stand together.
The game is over for at least 70% of the population and there is nothing they can do about it. The government and big business have created a nation of morons so that they can be manipulated and exploited, the people capable of independent thought don't have a voice because there numbers as so small.
Game over...
65. Sue
I am a nurse and my journey to and from work is a 56 mile round trip, half of it on the motorway. As we are being charged and taxed out of existence, maybe we should all just jack in work and live off benefits. This government is hell-bent on squeezing the pips until they squeak, how much more of this back door taxation do we have to meekly accept before we are stirred into defiance? Of course I bet MPs and Ministers will be exempted from these charges, as their "official duties" are always deemed to be more worthy than the poor plebs who pay them in their office, ie US.
66. anonymous
What a good idea! The country will be able to sell the thousands of miles of motorway for housing etc, or perhaps a much needed runway space for our overcrowded airports, after all at those prices there won't be any cars on them will there, we're all going to be snarling up the country lanes!!!!! lol
67. anonymous
How soon will it be before your mileage bill will include speeding fines and penalty points, it won't be difficult to include in the system time and distance recording which can detect when you are exceeding the speed limit. BIG BROTHER.....
68. anonymous
We already have a pay as you drive tax. It's the petrol tax. What are they think of?
69. Jane
Reading through the reader comments on this debate, I can't believe people can be so selfish! Surely it is obvious that with 30 million vehicles on the UK's roads – an ever increasing figure – this is simply too many vehicles to be sustainable.
Moreover, if there were fewer vehicles on the roads, the roads would be more pleasant (and less dangerous) for cyclists and pedestrians to use (so less cars would be required). Where is the sustainable thinking on this debate?
Here's a thought: what happens when ever person in China and India demands a car? 2,330,100,000 cars anyone? Let's not even begin to worry about how the emissions pumped out by so many billions of cars will accelerate global warming...
So PLEASE - let's all stop being so selfish!
70. anonymous
Fuel Tax will do this now with just minor changes, at little expense with all the infrastructure in place and known costs. It already lets the government set the rate, collect the money and reward people for using small economical vehicles or penalise for using gas guzzlers. Oh, and no runaway development or unforeseen operating costs.
71. Mike
It's worth a pilot study which can be voluntary, with road tax and fuel duty (as a per zone mile rebate) refunded for those that take part.
The proposal includes looking at very low rural road charging because fuel tax hits rural areas disproportionately; charges varying according to the pollution effect of vehicles.
Sought after changes in behaviour are not only a shift to public transport, but also: Companies not setting up in cities, changes in working hours, more home working, choosing more eco friendly vehicles, more car sharing etc.
Yes you could use it to monitor speed, which would mean we had to keep the limits; these could also be varied according to time of day and weather conditions, and possibly INCREASED, because they are being observed, saving pollution accidents and congestion.
Let's try it out and then make a decision on facts, not knee jerk reactions.
72. Adrian Jenkyn
I have lived in several countries of the world where different forms of taxation is applied to motorists.
In Japan for example quite sizeable road taxes are applied to certain journeys. None of that appears to help prevent traffic jams from accumulating. I now live in the USA where fuel is relatively cheap and very few toll roads exist. There can still be traffic jams, particularly on national holidy weekends, otherwise it's not too bad on the open road.
When people talk about gridlock they usually mean city centres. There are big traffic problems in all cities worldwide. This is simple traffic analysis arithmetic, fours into two don't go. Taxing the problem differently is not a long term solution. Many have said - and I totally agree - 1)motorists are already taxed by usage (via fuel tax) with easily collectable low tech methods (pay at the pump = pay as you go (or pay as you are stationary in a traffic jam for that matter) and 2) Solve the root problem by enhancing public transport, particulary mass transit for commuters.
Adrian Jenkyn, 200 miles south of a choked Chicago.
73. Simon
It would be easy to just shrug and say "it'll never work", but really I don't see it working - not the way our incompetents see it working. Incidentally, someone said it's our fault for voting them back in, err well actually we didn't - IIRC 3/4 of us didn't vote them back in ! If we had a fair election system then we wouldn't see the disproportionate representation of the big parties and certainly not the huge majority that allows them to force through such measures.
Anyway, reasons it won't work as the politicians think :
1) GPS alone is not accurate enough. To accurately position the vehicle in a real world environment with trees, tall buildings, 'canyon effect' due to reflections off buildings, and so on requires input from the vehicle wheels (turn counter so the unit knows how far you've travelled), steering (or angular accellerometer so it knows when you are turning), and an accurate and up-to-date electronic road atlas. Putting all these together allows a unit to work out accurately where the car is, and is the technique used by 'high end' sat nav systems.
Needless to say, this isn't going to be cheap to retrofit - certainly not the £500 speculated by one poster, my guess would be not less than a grand, OUCH.
Add to that is the problem of fitting GPS in some cars (particularly those with electrically heated screens) which will require an external antenna - "I just need to drill a hole in your £50,000 car sir" !
Then how, and at what cost will the electronic road atlas be kept up to date ?
2) GPS is easily rendered innaccurate or inoperable - as others have pointed out. So realistically, the system will have to have anti-fraud measures such as disabling the vehicle in the permanent absence of GPS and/or comms signal. The problems here are of course that when abroad there will be no comms signal all the time - so just imagine the number of british holidaymakers stranded (say) 10 miles from the ferry terminal ! And would all british cars cut out in the <whatever it's called> tunnel through the Alps due to no GPS for 40 miles ?
Technically it would be impossible to immobilise most older vehicles, and even new ones unless the system is integrated into the manufacturers systems. On ALL my vehicles it would be trivial to bypass any such immobilisation !
3) There would be HUGE costs to administer all the queries and appeals ! Just think, 23 million bills going out a month, if just 1% query or appeal the bill then that's nearly a quarter of a million queries a month - so that's a few million people to handle those. The government could avoid this by not allowing appeals, but how long before they lost in court on a legal challenge ?
4) The system will be open to fraud. Lets face it, the Kengestion charge in London has already resulted in a huge rise in false number plates - and the inconvenience that causes to people getting the penalty notices. These black boxes WILL be hacked, they will be hard to spot, and it will take a lot of effort to catch the culprits. A few more million staff !
5) The comms infrastructure will be 'quite a challenge', as will the data processing and storage. Each vehicle will have to report it's logged data regularly - what about someone who doesn't happen to pass a roadside beacon very often (such as the oft quoted granny who only uses the car once a week to go to the shop ?)
No-one has said what granularity the system will need to have, but suppose for arguments sake that the average logging interval is one mile (in some places it would have to be as little as 100yds or less). Lets just say that the whole vehicle fleet averages say 5000 miles/year - well thats 23 million times 5000 records per year or 115 billion records per year. Each record could run to 20 bytes, so now we're to 2.3 terabytes of storage (plus overheads etc). Nearly all of this data will have to be downloaded, error free, from the mobile units - so that's an average rate of 4mbyte/minute, not huge by to
74. anonymous
Drivers already pay-per-mile by virtue of the obscenely high petrol tax they pay. Tracking cars in this way won't improve anything - it will just complicate matters needlessly at enormous expense. The impression this gives is that the Government wants yet another way to create vast revenue at the taxpayer's cost while snooping on everyone's day-to-day existence. Combining this with the ID card bill, and I for one can't believe that anyone could possibly mistake this party as Liberal. Orwellian and dictatorial, maybe.
75. mark Langdown
Would investment in Public Transport not be better?
It appears that we are trapped in a cycle of trying to stop people do what they want to, rather than trying to assist - A point made regarding WiFi by the esteemed Peter Cochran.
I would rather public money be spent improving services, not hampering them.
76. K.S. Doctorate in Human Rights
Doing this, i.e. makng us pay to travel could be OK. This money is going to the Government; the Government spends the money on This Country and This Countrys People. Its also going to save a lot of road accidents because this money is going to make the roads safer and as less people will be encouraged to use the roads, less people to make the accident. Paying 2p could save your life.
Also, paying a small sum of money is going to put loads of people off using the roads. therefore, the government making us pay 2p - £1.34 could help, drastic as it may sound, save the world!
Judy Moody's ot of a job. (The popular childrens character.)
77. anonymous
Do we not already pay per mile? - it is called fuel.
This is supposed to cut peak travel - is this not congestion charging, already in force in some areas?
Use alternatives... sounds like politicians not in the real world again - try working out of London. The village I used to live in had a bus service - it was on Tuesday. Before we moved into town we did 30k miles/year now we do about 15k.
There is some other motive here, not sure what.. Perhaps it is because when fuel prices go over certain boundaries (£4/gallon) then protests occur.
I aggree with getting rid of the tax disc as this would also get rid of the tax disc evation (£100m/year) and a lot of pen pushers. If the average car gets 30mpg, travels 10K miles/year and has £150 car tax then adding 10 pence/litre would cover this. The government would be better of by the amount that is evaded (£100m) plus the admin savings.
Those who travel high mileages or have gas guzzlers would not be happy but this is paying per mile and rewarding those that travel less or have economical vehicles.
The current proposals do nothing to encourage people to get economical vehicles - those with guzzlers will be better off if the tax on fuel is dropped or reduced, so who will pay for this? - the rest of us.
This country is going mad. We vote the politicians in, then they do what they want (unless an election is looming) - this is the 21st Century - we should be looking at alternatives to these slick wastes of money. Bring back the monarchy, oh crap no - Charles and his horse! ;-)