The Daily Telegraph is reporting that plans for a national road charging scheme are being quietly buried or 'back burnered' in an expression that does damage to the English language. I gave two speeches on the subject last week to conferences and I am in no doubt that this is correct. Ruth Kelly, the still relatively new transport secretary, has barely mentioned the subject since arriving at Great Minster House, allowing the opposition to build up even more momentum.
The Telegraph uses the calculation that road pricing would cost £1 30 per mile, the same figure that was used on the infamous Downing Street website petition which attracted a staggering 1.8m signatures. In fact, this was a complete fiction. No such detailed work had ever been carried out and there was never any clear idea of how much driving would cost when the scheme was introduced.
This is all incredibly depressing for several reasons. First, it shows that reasoned debate can so easily be hijacked by uninformed campaigners with a vested interest who will do anything, including tell fibs, to derail a policy initiative. Secondly, it is clear that road pricing or some version of it is essential as a way of reducing the insatiable demand for road space, the only 'good' in our society still allocated by the Soviet method of queueing. Thirdly, no alternative is being offered as a way of tackling climate change, the biggest problem facing the world today.
The government has tried to export the risk of implementing a national scheme by persuading local authorities, with big dollops of money through the Transport Innovation Fund, to introduce local charging projects, but they have all run into trouble, not least because there has been no national champion to help create the sort of climate in which it would be possible to persuade local people to support a scheme.
If the Telegraph is right - and I suspect it is - much of the blame must go to Alistair Darling, who, for no good reason, ditched a lorry road user charging scheme that was popular with the road haulage industry because it would have resulted in a level playing field between British and foreign trucks, who currently often arrive with full tanks and pay no tax. Darling, the ultimate 'play safe' politician, got it completely wrong and essentially stopped what would have been a major test of the technology and a way of softening up public opinion. As I have mentioned in a previous post, it's not surprising that his inadequacies are gradually being exposed in No 11. Just look at the furore he has created with his capital gains tax plan.
End of the road for national pricing?
Monday, 15 October 2007
posted by Christian Wolmar at 00:12
4 Comments:
Yes, it is really depressing. Essential measures to combat global warming, (as you say the biggest problem facing the world today) like road pricing, will never happen until there is cross party consensus that the need to do something transcends party interest, as happened with Northern Ireland.
At the moment the parties are vying for the "green" vote, as if the policies could compete in their attractiveness. But the truth is that no one will vote for a party that espouses, e.g. road pricing, or aircraft tax, except the tiny minority who understand the global crisis looming.
The question of whether to go ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations is presented to the public as our essential contribution to reducing CO2 emissions. But really, it is the only policy the Government has, the least unpalatable measure to give the impression of meaning business in the fight against global warming.
The issue of road pricing shows where we really are at. As your comments about driving to Porthmadog say, the train is far too expensive especially when travelling with a companion, still more as a family. Savers are the best thing going but why all the absurd rules about the outgoing journey (no break of journey, only valid that day)? So much could be done to make train travel more practical and affordable.
Any move to bring in road pricing must be balanced with the needs of rural communities where public transport links are very poor - very often no railway lines exist (thanks Dr. Beeching!) and bus services are sparse yet these areas are further shafted by punitive petrol prices when there is no alternative but to drive. And there is no way under the current system that a business case for reinstating many of these rural lines can be made - look at the rocky time the rebuilding of the Waverley route in the Scottish Borders is having at the moment.
Any moves to bring in road pricing must be directed towards the areas where congestion and pollution are at their highest, where there is plenty of potential for moving people to rail, and there already is plenty of potential to profitably grow and expand rail/bus services so that the additional inward investment can be attracted.
I am both a motorist but also a staunch supporter of the railways - and I for one will not warm to measures such as a blanket imposition of road pricing across the entire country, or the continuous rises in fuel duty that we've seen. Both measures are only going to cause nothing but voter apathy - and the government knows it - hence Darling is playing it safe; and with the resurgence of the Conservatives in recent months I doubt very much if we'll see any headway In the case of fuel duty - it wouldn't make a difference if petrol cost £1.50 a litre - people would still use their cars instead of being forced onto an overpriced and overcrowded railway.
I guess it all goes back to what Christian has been saying for years - the railways are costing us too much both in terms of fares and subsidy, and before it can be developed into an attactive alternative it's cost base has to be reduced. Whether fragmentation, privatisation or poor management is the cause is still hotly debated but it was time someone woke up to the reality.
Of course in the case of rural areas where lines still exist a little bit the routes are neither over priced OR overcrowded (cheap fares in Lincs for example, trains pretty darn empty)....
How many people who live in the country side do so because they have to due to their work etc - lets be honest, some but not many - a great many simply live there because they like it and can afford to do so (costs of road pricing in rural areas will be drop inthe ocean of rural house prices, be honest!).
Road pricing, unlike petrol taxes, could actually address this by having much cheaper user charges in rural areas - it is one of the few cohernet ways of taxing road use that could be varied by society to achive a range of policy ends. It is a pity the 'road lobby' seem to be too dim to realise this!
Dan
Dan,
That is a valid point, but I based my comment on the possibility that road pricing and petrol duty in its current form will co-exist. I certainly hope not. If we scrapped fuel duty in favour of road pricing then that would indeed give us a level playing field for both rural and heavily populated - so no objections there.
I come into this argument being an ex city-boy who now lives in the country, but has to commute to work in the nearest city (Dundee in my case). Here the rail lines between many of the outlying towns were stripped out 30 years ago by the Beeching cuts. As a Glaswegian who is used to 24-hour bus services and a dense urban rail network where my car never left the driveway during the week it's been a bit of a culture shock moving into the sticks and I can now see where a lot of the concerns of rural residents are coming from that road pricing is implemented sensibly.