Road pricing - pay per mile

[TrevA]

I’ve seen quite a bit of comment about the possible introduction of Road Pricing for motor vehicles, including BEV’s. With the switch to Electric cars, the Govt are losing out on revenue from Fuel Duty and (currently) Vehicle Excise Duty. So they are going to have to make up the shortfall somehow and one suggestion is Pay per Mile, using ANPR cameras.

If this only applies to main roads, will it push more traffic onto side roads and country lanes? Or could it be a good thing and actually result in a reduction in car use, and perhaps an increase in cycle usage for shorter journeys?

[Jdsk]

It's getting on a bit now, but the best review that I know is from the IFS:

"A road map for motoring taxation":
https://ifs.org.uk/books/road-map-motoring-taxation

Jonathan

[rjb]

In home car chargers have a facility to charge ved if it's mandated. These are the bigger chargers not the 13 amp domestic 3 pin plug.

[Jdsk]

Ah... it looks as if this was triggered by a comment from the Chair of the National Infrastructure Commission:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -shortfall

Jonathan

[Carlton green]

I’ve seen quite a bit of comment about the possible introduction of Road Pricing for motor vehicles, including BEV’s. With the switch to Electric cars, the Govt are losing out on revenue from Fuel Duty and (currently) Vehicle Excise Duty. So they are going to have to make up the shortfall somehow and one suggestion is Pay per Mile, using ANPR cameras.

If this only applies to main roads, will it push more traffic onto side roads and country lanes? Or could it be a good thing and actually result in a reduction in car use, and perhaps an increase in cycle usage for shorter journeys?

To my mind it’s a no-brainer to charge VED on electric vehicles and to use forms of smart metering to charge additional taxes on electricity delivered for vehicle use. That system would replicate what we currently have and could be refined over time. It’d be hard and likely not possible to charge extra for power used via ‘granny chargers’, I think that that would be tolerable. V2X exchanges might be impacted, that’s something to work around.

[simonhill]

Why not work it out from the MoT (or a check for the newer vehicles).

Using APNRs would be a disaster. I've seen plenty of traffic on parallel roads to avoid motorway tolls in the EU to know that many would go out of their way to avoid it.

Charging charging also difficult. My friend has solar panels and a battery. Can charge from that or via a slow 13 amp charger. Lower use users no problem to top up from household plugs a bit each day.

In NZ (or was) they don't have red diesel, it's all cheap. Vehicles are charged on their mileage read during MOT equivalent.

There could be a pay per month, adjusted annually

[Nearholmer]

The problem I can see with an MOT-mileage based system is that it would be retrospective, and therefore pose collection problems. Oh, and it wouldn’t work at all for MOT exempt vehicles, so antiques and ones less than three years old!

[Carlton green]

The problem I can see with an MOT-mileage based system is that it would be retrospective, and therefore pose collection problems. Oh, and it wouldn’t work at all for MOT exempt vehicles, so antiques and ones less than three years old!

I think that old vehicles are exempt from VED too, so no change there. There might be some odometer fraud but it can be managed (what do they do elsewhere?) . Newer vehicles could have an obligation to declared mileage annually and payment in advance is possible.

[Pete Owens]

Tis basic market economics. If you want to allocate a resource efficiently then use the price mechanism to match supply and demand. The alternative is to ration resources by queue. We organise pretty much everything else by charging users, so it seems absurd to apply socialism to motorists.

[Pete Owens]

Using APNRs would be a disaster. I've seen plenty of traffic on parallel roads to avoid motorway tolls in the EU to know that many would go out of their way to avoid it.

Simple - if you prefer drivers to use the main road then make the charge for the parallel roads higher.
Similarly people can be discouraged from using the roads at busy times by varying the charge over time.

[Nearholmer]

I tend to think that it can only work well to manage congestion, and to incentivise the use of other modes, if applied as a per mile charge, varied quite closely by time and place, with exemptions/reliefs for, for instance, disabled people who would genuinely struggle to use alternative means of transport.

The “tech” is now probably at a point where it could manage that if designed carefully.

The amount of opposition would be enormous, and some of it would tip over into wacko stuff, followed by violence, because thats the way everything goes these days …….. there are probably people out there who think that their domestic gas meter is a spy on behalf of the state/bill gates/the illuminati.

One option to eliminate the over-gathering of data might be a stored-value system, where one could load credits onto a card to be inserted in the car-borne device before setting-off, and the “meter would run down” as one drove along. Although even that would probably gather locational data in the background, simply because systems always record devices logged onto cells.

In practice, people seem to trade ease of use for data gathering. If you look at TfL revenue collection, that has gone through multiple iterations, with the present system involving electronic post-event drawdown from the user’s bank account, rather than stored-value, and people find it very convenient - it led to an increase in bus and tube trips when introduced because of the way that “capping” was implemented.

[al_yrpal]

Cancel VED and just up the tax on petrol and diesel....simple.

Gas guzzlers will pay the most and it will make electric cars more attractive

Al

[Nearholmer]

Which wouldn’t raise the funds to make up for the shortfall, and would be a hugely regressive tax, favouring the well-off at the expense of the rural skint.

[pjclinch]

Cancel VED and just up the tax on petrol and diesel....simple.

Gas guzzlers will pay the most and it will make electric cars more attractive

So since that particular line of reasoning ends with everyone using EVs and nobody paying tax, where are you going to make up the revenue shortfall?

Also...


Electric cars are mainly about saving car culture, anything else is a bit of a side effect.

Pete.

[rareposter]

The amount of opposition would be enormous, and some of it would tip over into wacko stuff, followed by violence, because thats the way everything goes these days ……..

Which is why successive governments of both colours have kicked the issue down the road for so long and why we're now in a situation of "we need to do something fairly quickly" and that's rarely a recipe for getting it right or getting the requisite buy-in.

Many countries have toll roads - most of the motorways in France are paege , much of the expressway roads in various urban centres in Australia and even over here many people are used to it - the M6 Toll, the Dartford Bridge and so on.

The data and tracking is irrelevant. The country is already covered by ANPR, you'll routinely use your bank card, and the Government already knows where you work, what you do and how much you earn! I'm not really sure that it'll matter much if they know you drove 3 junctions up the M1 on Thursday...