pay-as-you-go roads

bbc

The government is pushing ahead with plans to introduce road pricing schemes in England and Wales despite a huge public campaign against them.
It has published a draft Bill updating the rules for local authorities who want to set up charging trials.

It insists there are no plans yet for a national scheme but critics say it is not being open about its intentions.

A petition against road pricing on the Downing Street website received nearly two million online signatories.

is this a joke?
isnt road tax suppose to pay for the roads and our use of them?
now they want to push ahead with a scheme which makes it so people have to pay just to go a certain distance.

more ways for the goverment to take money

areas effected

Greater Bristol area
Cambridge area
Durham
Greater Manchester
Shropshire for Shrewsbury
Tyne & Wear
West Midlands
Reading
Norwich area
Nottingham, Leicester and Derby and the surrounding counties

similar topic
www.abovepolitics.com...

mod edit: reduced external quote to the maximum size permitted (three paragraphs)

[edit on 22-5-2007 by UK Wizard]

The problem with all these claims that 'it's just about making us pay more money' is that the roads are growing ever more congested and not one critic seems prepared to advocate a solution that is effective.

Everybody imagines that their need is so important that they ought to be be 'in' and preferably without any increased charges.
It might be natural enough but some hope.

The environmental impact of roads and driving is not going to go away, whether it be in terms of atmospheric pollution (and I'm sorry but claims that we are poisoning the air a lot less than before is not much of a convincing point to me)
or the time congestion is costing us all with out goods etc etc
or the noise of traffic to the safety of our communities and the impact cars and roads have upon them
to the safe and clean disposal to driving by-products
(like old oils, tyres, brake fluids, scrap cars etc etc).
Buying the car or the new tyre almost never takes account of these 'total costs' and society in general is looking at them and (quit rightly IMO) saying why the hell should we either subsidise these hidden costs or just put up with this?

But it's also true (if you read the actual proposal and not the media version of it) that some kind of reductions are planned in other taxation to help offset the impact or road pricing.

......and despite the name Bodrul, in the UK we do not have hypothecated taxes.
So no, even tho it is called 'road tax' or 'fuel duty' or whatever it does not 'pay' for that specifically.

It just goes into the general taxation 'take' to be spent as the Gov we elect sees fit in accordance with the program/manifesto they stood on and were elected upon.

Don't get me wrong Bodrul I drive myself but I am of an age now where I can recognise cars for the very very double-edged benefit/bl**dy nuissance that they are.

We need to wean ourselves away from them and to better cleaner and safer modes of transport, IMO.
Sadly pricing is the most effective way.

ok i see the point your making

they want us to use alternitibe methods of transport?
the transport system is over crowded and has so many delays its not even worth taking (maybe the Lodon underground and bus service is good, beats ours in st albans)

they should first improve that

insted of bringing in new charges they should just work on the current ones
charge those that have cars that produce more polution then those that produce less,

we pay enough in the UK

Tax in this country just gives me a headache (cant make heads or tails of it)

Bod I'm afraid this it yet another money making scam, every year billions are raised from road taxation with very little of it being spent on the roads or public transport.

Rather than improving public transport first which is what should be done its lets tax road users to pay for it.

Such a policy guarantees proffits for private investors and the Goverment, there would be very little improvement to the transport system, I may add that we once had a great system but that was allowed to be ruined by succesive Goverments.

This tax will be applied with no concern about the ability to pay it, it will cause many families to cut back as for many people there is no alternative transport available. Dont get me wrong I dont agree with families having 2, 3, 4 or 5 cars but to impose this unfair tax is wrong, there are many ways in which congestion could be reduced effectively but they are not money making ones so the Goverment is not interested.

They want it both ways, they want people to keep their cars but also to use public transport, more money for the Goverment and private investors.

Here's some suggestions;

limit the nos of cars a family can have.

increase the age of licence holders.

Allow businesses to have different starting times.

provide clean, efficient and cheap alternative transport to all areas.

Most of our roads are Victorian and have never been improved, all city town roads should be improved to allow efficient movement of traffic.

Remove all heavy goods off the roads onto the railways.

Car sharing where possible.

Introduce the use of small eletric vehicles in cities.

Just a few idea's but I,m affraid most of this wont happen because its all about making money. The lion's share of road charging will go to the Goverment and the private investors, its abit like the lottery, we the people may get some of the money but the real winners are the Goverment and the Lottery owners.

Just an example.
Last year, for the first time in 30 years I decided to use the train to go from Somerset to London.
Firstly there was nowhere to park the car, the car park was full and there is no public transport from where I live, Due to 'Permit Holders Only' on the roads near the station I had to park nearly a mile away (hard luck if you are disabled mate) The Ticket price was unbelieveable and the train was almost full when we boarded, 2 stations further on and it was full.
It was stuffy, smelly and by the time we got to London the rubbish on the train was appalling.
I will NEVER, EVER use public transport again.

I suggest that abolishing road tax and making people pay for the miles they travel is the only fair way, other than abolishing road tax and putting petrol prices up to reflect any increased usage.

You drive more, you pay more.

How about turning the whole Labour 'tax sponge' around on itself and rewarding people instead of punishing them? Instead of taxing the population for driving too much, tax breaks would be a fairer system. I've said this about energy usage in another post on another forum too.

If the dictatorshi... oops... government insists on metering drivers, then those who use less should get a tax rebate on the current road tax rather than bring in a tax which is wholly unnecessary.

Cloaking the issue as being beneficial for the environment just doesn't wash unless we see tax rebates as a reward. Why not give tax breaks to those who can reduce their annual energy bills too? Wouldn't that be a far greater incentive to 'turn off' than taxing those who can't be bothered?

Or how about a reduction in coucil tax for thoses who put less tonnage into a landfill? Wouldn't that encourage you to recycle more than compulsory tax increases to cover increasing landfill costs? Then the chips in the bins would be accepted rather than deemed sinister.

There's plenty of alternatives to tax increases for the noble cause of environmentalism.

If things go wrong then there is the possibility that a Gov might attempt to exploit this kind of situation and use this sort of taxation in a 'bad' way.

Of course that's a possibility.

You might even find some of the very people stating the case for environmental improvement are not exactly the finest example, personally speaking.

It is, of course, a fair point to look to try and mould 'the system' to incentivise first rather than punish.

......but none of this negates the fact that there is a major problem and one way or another it must be tackled.

Whether it be about exhausting landfill space, proper, safe and clean disposal of our various wastes or choked roads doing nothing is just not an option.

No matter how much people might like to pay less taxes and prefer to expect a fully functional first class public transport system up and running for a neat and smooth transition away from the car it's extremely unlikely to the point of 'it's not going to happen' like that
(and never could no matter who was in Gov).

'They' will do what 'they' can to improve matters but it'll take time and effort - especially after a long and sustained period of a UK Gov which systematically reduced & destroyed large parts of this countries' transport infrastructure.
In the meantime (given exploding car numbers) part of what 'they' will be doing is to try & dissuade people from driving at particular times of the day along with trying to reduce further car ownership.

......and trying to paint these future possibilities as a party-political issue is, tbh, a serious case of putting on the political blinkers.
All the British political parties are looking at this long and hard and you can bet that they will all be following fairly similar policies because fundamentally the problems and solutions remain much the same no matter what ones' politics.

Smink your not agreeing with something I said are you, omg I will have to have a little rest, maybe a stiff drink even.

*shush mm, I know, it's happened at least once before, best keep it to yourself*

Have a drink on me by all means tho......but make sure you only drink responsibly & that you dispose of the bottle correctly and that you do not drive whilst under the influence.

Has no one grasped the fact that the old school tie despots that impose their ideas on an overtaxed public have a long term interest in milking more revenue out of us and diverting the money to support other undemocratic projects that are probabley choking a parlimentry pipeline of other revenue grabbing schemes in the near future.
If these nanny state politicians had morals they would scrap the road fund tax and integrate it into the price of petrol and diesel.
The more you use the road the more you pay..... or is this to simple!
It's about time these ministers realised that many working people in this nation are tired of their undemocratic imposition of new ways to screw yet more taxes from the public.
Where is Guy Faukes now we need him?

Originally posted by anglosaxon
If these nanny state politicians had morals they would scrap the road fund tax and integrate it into the price of petrol and diesel.
The more you use the road the more you pay..... or is this to simple!

- ......and just how far would you go with that kind of fuel tax, hmmmmm?

How high would it have to go to actually 'work'>

£5, £10 or £20 a litre?

The whole point of these road pricing proposals are that they work with other elements.

The Gov have not said, for instance, that all existing taxes will remain and the new charges will simply heap up on top.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey

Originally posted by anglosaxon
If these nanny state politicians had morals they would scrap the road fund tax and integrate it into the price of petrol and diesel.
The more you use the road the more you pay..... or is this to simple!

- ......and just how far would you go with that kind of fuel tax, hmmmmm?

How high would it have to go to actually 'work'>

£5, £10 or £20 a litre?

The whole point of these road pricing proposals are that they work with other elements.

The Gov have not said, for instance, that all existing taxes will remain and the new charges will simply heap up on top.

We have to realstic here concerning fuel tax increases and your random £5/£10/£20 litre statement is obviously an off the cuff guess.
We are a small island and our transport links are heading fast towards a state of constant gridlock in all but the most remote areas of mainland Britain. P.A.Y.G. roads are yet another route for parliment to explore to increase revenue to support the 'black hole' that exists in its financial affairs.

I don't see how you can on the one hand say the country is becoming grid-locked and on the other merely dismiss road-pricing as a Gov plot to 'soak' everyone possible.

(.....and the idea that the gov's finances are currently 'in a black hole' is just not accurate.
UK Gov borrowing, as a % of our national income, is really not particularly high at all.)