By Andy McCue, 15 June 2005 16:55
NEWS Almost half the UK public support a road-user charging scheme and nearly three-quarters would be happy having a 'black box' in their car to track their road usage, according to a new survey.
The findings contrast sharply with the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the government's car-tracking road charging plans last week by silicon.com readers but the MORI survey was undertaken before Transport Secretary Alistair Darling's announcement.
The MORI survey of 1,000 UK adults found 47 per cent support the idea of charging for road use to help reduce congestion at peak times providing some of the revenues raised are put back into lower road taxes.
A third said charging should be based on the size of the vehicle's engine, while 29 per cent favoured using the level of emissions and 26 per cent opted for mileage driven as the ideal metric to use.
But support for blanket and not just peak-time road user charging dropped dramatically to 24 per cent, with 64 per cent opting for improved public transport as the best option.
Almost three-quarters of respondents also said they are happy for plans to fit every vehicle in the UK with a black box that can be tracked by satellite.
Those in favour said the black boxes would help the emergency services to locate vehicles in an accident and a quarter backed ideas such as insurers discounting premiums based on data collected by the boxes.
Grant Klein, head of transport at IT consultancy Detica, which commissioned the research, said in a statement: "These findings suggest there is significant support for the idea of road user charging as long as it is targeted at the real problem times and as long as the overall tax burden remains constant."
Comments
There are 34 comments. Join the discussion
1. Carl Maycock
What ....? yeah please charge me again for using services I've already paid for so that you can still bypass the actual issue!!
Anybody that agrees with this has really lost the plot. Government should be putting money into alternative forms of transport not just pricing people off th e road. OK say they reduce conjestion etc. What on earth do they think all those people are going to do ? Stay at home and not work ? Pay 4-5 even 10 times the amount using trains ? The government as usual are simply using the road problems to generate extra revenue which in no way addresses the issue. I would love to not use my car! Unfortunately I cannot get to work without one! Literally!
Another government solution looking for a problem!
2. Donna McNicholas
A very valued survey, wow! 1000 people. Thats about the amount of cars the go passed me on my first leg of my journey to work. This just isnt going to work, but it will mean the dimise of the Labour Government, Go Tony Go.
Why cant the government just invest in better roads, secure public transport for the school run and just a little bit of common sense?
3. anonymous
I have no real objection to road charging by satellite (except a natural aversion to HMG knowing more than the bare minimum about my activities 'cos I don't trust'em)
Of course, road tax will abolished and fuel duty drastically cut so that the charges can be fixed to subsidise rural cars where public transport is non existent and penalise cars where public transport is good (there must be somewhere).
Oh by the way a whole squadron of pigs just flew by my window.
4. Paul
Drivers back road charging? My A**e!! Oh look a survey commissoned by an IT firm with a vested interested in supplying the government with part of the solution... I'll trust that.(NOT)
Also, spot on Carl. Why is the government being driven by industry rather than issues that actually affect the people? Like many others I can not realistically get to work on public transport. By car takes 30-40 mins cost about £5 in fuel, by train it takes 2 hours and costs £11.
5. anonymous
Who on earth do these people survey?
Those that are on labours payroll i suspect.....
6. anonymous
Its all about getting the poor off the roads.
I simply don't believe this poll is representative.
7. anonymous
Why are they doing this? The current means of taxing on fuel does exactly the same in a much cheaper way. Someone mentioned visitors to this country - how will they be tracked?
Fuel tax does the job - those that have bigger engines or travel further pay more - those that travel smaller distances in smaller engined cars pay less - visitors to this country will pay the same as those that live here.
They are talking about charging £1+ for some roads - thats amazing. What about those people who need to travel on those roads or those businesses which will incur massive increases in fuel costs. Businesses could go to the wall because of this.
Fuel tax could also solve the other problem of drivers without insurance. If insurance was added to the cost of fuel, all drivers would then also be insured.
These measures make sense and will cost nothing compared to what they have planned.
8. anonymous
What a load of rubbish - it will be slow to implement, increase our tax burden and we will pay double - tax on petrol and tax on roads.
PS. I wonder where that poll was taken - they have decided that Scottish roads are under-utilised so will be zero rated for road tax - guess SE England will pay tax for everybody once again -
9. Dale
What with ID cards/national database, RFID, satellite car tracking, CCTV, machine readable passports, RFID tickets on public transport and mobile phone location services, it's a good job we live in the free world. Heaven knows what it would be like otherwise.
Try this.. turn your phone off.. buy with cash.. don't use a store/loyalty card.. walk to the shop.. keep your hoody on.. You might manage an anonymous purchase!
10. anonymous
Road charging is essential. How else will they pay for teh cost over-run on the Identity Card implementation. Can't wait to see what they dream up to pay for the cost over-run on road charging.
11. Lee Mayhew
Utter tosh!
It'll cost me hundreds, if not thousands, more a year to drive the same journeys as I do now!
So how does that work - or rather there won;t be an incentive to go to work so I might as well claim benefits and get my housing etc paid for - thus costing the "caring" Labour government even more.
Or maybe just improve and extend public transport so there is a viable alternative. I would love to be driven to work on a bus or train instead of a 75min slog each way on my own.
12. Nick Wnekowski
Exactly the same as ID cards - and answer that "sounds good" (thanks DA) based on blind faith in technology that doesn't exist, wouldn't work well enough if it did, and is irrelevant anyway. Investing in lo-tech solutions - car pooling, enforcement of bus lanes - would be a much better use of the money.
13. Ken
What a totally pointless and expensive exercise.
Scrap car road tax and divide it out onto the charge for fuel, bingo, Pay As You Go!
14. Jerrold Baldwin
I think this figure appears to be similar to the one that claimed 80% of people supported ID cards.
What questions were asked?
15. Rick Fuggle
Of course we all believe the survey. Obviously the same one that talked about weapons of mass destruction.
Do the public really beleive that if road pricing came in the cost of petrol will fall. If so the British are more stupid than I can imagine.
There again maybe they are they voted for this bunch of robbers.
Come the revolution can I be the mad axeman that cuts off their heads?
16. Lee Mayhew
An Ulterior Motive.
Maybe Darling is using road-charging to make people think how expensive it will be should it materialise, and then hit us with another hairbrained scheme that will rake in cash but be slightly more beneficial to the driving public, and so we will choose the new scheme rather than the more expensive charging one.
We "come off slightly better than we would have been" but Labour still get their increase in taxation which was their plan all along.
17. Gary Thompson
I'm sure it's already been said but we already have a road charging system - it's called fuel tax ( which currently runs at about 50 pence a litre / £2.25 per gallon or an equivalent of about 6.4 pence per mile for a car that does 35 MPG...) - the more miles you drive, the more tax you pay... And, as rightly pointed out elswhere, why use public transport when it costs twice as much as using a car, and still isn't reliable ? Simple, the government don't actually want us to use Public transport, as they'd lose too much in fuel tax revenue...
18. Jane
To Paul:
It may cost you about £5 in fuel to make your journey but what about the other costs involved with running a car? Road tax, insurance, MOT, servicing, not to mention repair work and cleaning costs. My entire travel bill for a month is just over £90 using public transport; my partner's is more than £250 using a car. Do the math!!!
19. Ken Hall
The road charging is not about congestion. Government policies cause congestion. They put road bumps and padestrian zones to filter more and more traffic into overcrowded longer routes. They have traffic lights on red longer to create more congestion. Then they cry, oh my god something must be done! We then roll over and accept the pre-determined solution. it's problem, rection, solution and all murderous dictators have used that strategy throught history to come to power.
We are already charged very high tax per mile, and those in gas guzzling cars pay most. it's called fuel tax. we don't need another version that will go wrong.
This pay-as-you-drive tax is more about fleecing the tax payer and tracking your location at all times than beating congestion.
It IS a big brother on steroids solution to a government created problem.
20. Karen Challinor
So with this, the ID card with its associated database, the ban on hoody's in areas covered by security cameras and RFID tags in all purchases the government will know ...
What time you get up, where you go, what route you take, how fast you go at any stage of the journey, when you go, what you do when you get there, when you go to a public lavatory and probably whether it was number 1 or a number 2, whether you wear a hoody as you are tracked by camera when you leave your car,what you buy for lunch and what time you go to bed.
Why is the government insisting on the introduction of covert surveillance technology dressed up as something else ?
21. Frank Kelly
Can you imagine the size of the IT system and Bureaucracy needed to send an itemised invoice to each driver each month. (Constant challenges by thousands of motorists saying I wasn't there at that time. Also no doubt the largest credit control department in the world). This will be an even bigger potential mess than the ID card system
22. Frank Kelly
I wonder how soon Identity Theft for GPS devices will take to become mainstream... A handy little switchable Faraday cage to fit around your black box to stop it sending or recieving. The new essential accessory along with electric windows and CD player. This will be a farce
23. anonymous
So the Government proposes to charge us for using the roads. No bad idea providing that the charges genuinely penalise those motorists who use the busiest roads at the busiest times and make due allowance for people motoring in rural areas where there is no real alternative to the car. BUT WHAT WILL FOLLOW?
The technology that will make this possible is not dissimilar to in-car Satelite Navigation systems and amongst other benefits these systems give a totally accurate calculation of the vehicle's speed. Road charging is therefore only a short step away from recording the motorist's actual position and actual speed throughout every inch of every journey - the system could send you a monthly account of your fines and penalty points without a Police officer ever having to be involved!! How much would the motoring public approve of THAT!!??
24. Radical Meldrew
Another opportunity for 'Tony's Phoney Cronies' to wheedle extra cash out of the general public. I suspect that this survey was conducted as fairly and honestly as most of their recent policies concerning transport were!
25. Edward T Head
Does anyone know how bikes will be affected - currently you pay less tax on a bike - will bikes be charged less per mile?
Additionally how do you fit a black box to a bike - let's face it with the addition of underseat pipes and the remaining space being taken up with imobilisers alarms and tool kits their aint much space left !!!!
26. anonymous
1000 carefully picked people by the sounds of things!
This is very unpopular, noone I've talked to backs the idea.
I'm choosing to ignore the constant lies and misinformation handed out by our current nannying/tax-it or ban-it government!
27. anonymous
We all know in our heart of hearts that this will just give the government another revenue stream and any driver who goes more than 50 miles a year will be worse off. Lowering fuel prices to compensate will mean less efficient cars will not burden so much of a cost to run and therefore kill off the ozone layer even more quickly, not to mention use up all of the already depleting stocks of oil... There are many flaws in this plan all of which will need to be addressed to ensure the driving public are treated fairly.
There are two other issues that come to mind - foreign vehicles: do they have to have abox fitted as soon as they land in Dover and must pay the bill before they leave? Sounds practical (not) and - GPS tracking - how long before we dont have speed cameras anymore - just automatic tickets sent out on your monthly useage bill after you have gone 1mph over the speed limit (1984's Big Brother here we go...)
28. martin
ok guys you seem to be forgetting the joined up government bit...no need to bill you monthly..cut out the middle man...go straight to your new style tax (return) bill/coding..they can and always will get you in the end (pun intended) that way its 'merely' one computer to another.
29. anonymous
How do you catch speeding motorists?
Easy, put a black box in every car.
"I see you've travelled 80 miles in 60 minutes sir. That'll be 3 points and a hefty fine. Oh, and we're charging you for the 80 miles as well."
I wonder how many motorists will be in favour of that.
The government should be encouraging businesses to use technology (home working, video conferencing etc.) to avoid unnecessary journeys.
You don't have to halve the number of cars on the road to halve the journey time.
Of course, these measures don't generate revenue...
30. Paul Tansom
I forsee a new feature on Multimap adding to the Shortest Route and Quickest Route we will have Cheapest Route. This will calculate the cost over the various routes in terms of road charges and work out the cheapest one. It will likely need frequent updating as the charges fluctuate to compensate for the fact that traffic very quickly moves to the cheaper routes - which then get price rises!
On the usage side of things, I travel to get to my customers and using anything other than a car is totally impractical. Unless car tax and fuel tax are reduced accordingly the cost of running my business will rise - perhaps I could adjust my costs to give discounts to those customers that live on cheap roads.
Could this new form of taxation lead businesses to move off the industrial estates (which no doubt will be accessed through high tax roads) and into cheaper access locations? What will happen to house prices on high cost roads, will they drop as people don't want to live on a road that costs them a quid every time they come home?
31. Mike
Could help people with different cars.
At present, if you have a nice small car for daily use and an old station wagon for lugging stuff about, it costs you up to £170 for tax and say £350 for insurance, even if both are insured owner only.
With a black box, the second vehicle would be much cheaper. But we need a mechanism that it is kept off-road when not in use.
32. Fred Whitefield
Yawn - here we go again. Hundreds of diatribes when someone actually raises themself to do something about travel in the UK. Of course, I should have realised it's ok for the bloke next door to pay extortionate fees or use a bus or train but as long as the roads are empty for ME then hey! that's a result!
33. anonymous
If the black box would include SatNav and online traffic information functionality, I bet there would be more takers for this.
IMO crucial is though that extended public transport is provided *before* such a scheme is introduced, otherwise there is no alternative than to use your own car.
34. Steve Watkins
The real reason for this proposal has nothing to do with congestion or road safety; it is all about control.
IF the government REALLY wished to do somethng about road congestion, a simple redesign of roads would acheive the job. The A14 has TWO major roundabouts within two miles each of which cause extreme congestion. Also Junctions 14, 15, 15a and so forth of the M1. And so on.
The Government will NOT design roads properly because the Jobsworths in the Department of Transport are incapable, incompetent, grossly overpaid and totally useless.
Also the money raised from fines, road charging (what is the tax on petrol for??) is used to finance the inflated and undeserved index-linked pensions of Jobsworth Civil Service layabouts and hyprocritical and corrupt politicians.
And this will always be so.