Sunday 29 November 2009

Lovely Rita? The case for metered motoring

Over the next three posts I’ll explore the future of road transport in the UK.

A parallel interest of mine is ways of overhauling the British tax system – so in this first part I’ll combine both by looking at how motorists should be taxed in future.

Jeremy Clarkson has a point when he moans about the motorist being bled by the taxman. A quick look at these excellent graphics of government revenue and spending makes it clear that motorists pay out much more than it costs to keep up the roads.

The main incomes are fuel tax and road tax, which together pull in £30bn+ a year. Let’s not even count VAT on new cars. After all, that’s a tax we pay on most stuff we buy and I don’t see any reason why cars should be an exception.

And that £30bn is before you tot up those pesky congestion charges, parking meters and fines – for speeding, parking (in the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the wrong time), using a mobile and much, much more.

The entire transport budget, roads, rail and air included, meanwhile stood at £21bn in 2007-8.

The wider story is the need reconnect the British taxpayer with the money being spent on his or her behalf. Right now our taxes disappear into a bottomless black pit at the Treasury and the result is that none of us are happy coughing up. So for roads, here’s what I propose…

Announce that from 2013 it is mandatory for all cars to be fitted with GPS and a “road tax” meter. This would look somewhat like a taxi meter. And it would function a bit like one too. Whenever you’re behind the wheel, it displays a price band and a total in £.

Let’s say there are ten price bands. Your journey would be charged by the mile, with the band you’re in being determined by the time of day and type of road you’re on.

So if you are driving down a B-road in Scotland in the dead of night you’d be on the lowest rate (Band 1, let's say) which costs little-to-nothing. But venture into central London at rush hour and the meter is ticking alarmingly fast on Band 10.


Every car has a protected chip that tots up the total charge, day in, day out. Once a year the chip (on a smartcard) is removed and ‘zeroed’ when you pay the bill.

Furthermore, you are told that the money collected will fund all UK transport. Special fuel tax is abolished. Road Tax, as we currently know it, is abolished. Congestion charge schemes are scrapped.

In short, road pricing is in. What you pay is closely connected to your use of the service (namely roads). And at least we know where the money is going, even if it is to subsidise rail fares.


ADDITIONAL NOTE

There are spin-off benefits. Clearly the GPS receivers can also be used to power the satellite navigation systems which car manufactures are currently prone to selling at a vast mark-up. I really can’t see why I can walk into PC World and buy a TomTom for £100 to £200, while I have to spend a grand or two for the same thing in a new car.

There is also potentially a mountain of useful data to be mined here: every journey of every car in the land. The Ministry of Transport could see how much time we really spend in traffic jams. Where the worst snarl-ups are. Even what percentage of our time we spend looking for parking places.

But isn’t this just some gigantic Orwellian nightmare? Not necessarily. Chips can be manufactured that simply don’t record anything to do with the vehicle itself. They remember the price and record journeys and, errrm, that’s it. If the data is truly anonymous – and if this can be openly demonstrated to the public – then why not?