A significant raising of the fuel duty would fix that, with an appropriate reduction in the VED for the few vehicles that 'need' to be diesel, e.g. some emergency vehicles, certain military vehicles and freight vehicles where electric operation isn't viable - yet!
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Could a pay-per-use road charging scheme powered by vehicle data reporting be viable?
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Probably easier to tax them all the same and then claim the tax back though tax bills or provide a payment card to the emergency services which the government just deducts the relevent tax amount off of the reseller's duty bill.
Returning to the privacy debate it is interesting to note a story in the press today that both Apple and Google (ironically!) are pushing back with longer term privacy concerns about how a personal movement tracing app might practically operate in the context of the current Covid-19 situation.
www.theguardian.com
The gist of the article is that whilst there are immediate benefits in being able to trace individiuals who have been in proximity with other individuals subsequently displaying symptoms, there are also wider concerns about the extent to which the data would enable a longer term picture to be built up about people's movements. At the moment the technology companies are taking the public position of not wanting "to provide functionality in their operating systems to allow for surveillance efforts that could be abused." Specifically Apple are reported to be saying at the moment that the proposed NHS app will only work if it is maintained in the foreground with the screen unlocked.
Does the OP's original suggestion envisage a single national database of vehicle movements, or would a rather more federated and decentralised collection of local systems with specific safeguards to prevent data aggregation be an acceptable way of meeting the policy aims of reducing unnecessary personal vehicular transport?
NHS in standoff with Apple and Google over coronavirus tracing
Tech firms place limitations on how tracing apps may work in effort to protect users’ privacy
The gist of the article is that whilst there are immediate benefits in being able to trace individiuals who have been in proximity with other individuals subsequently displaying symptoms, there are also wider concerns about the extent to which the data would enable a longer term picture to be built up about people's movements. At the moment the technology companies are taking the public position of not wanting "to provide functionality in their operating systems to allow for surveillance efforts that could be abused." Specifically Apple are reported to be saying at the moment that the proposed NHS app will only work if it is maintained in the foreground with the screen unlocked.
Does the OP's original suggestion envisage a single national database of vehicle movements, or would a rather more federated and decentralised collection of local systems with specific safeguards to prevent data aggregation be an acceptable way of meeting the policy aims of reducing unnecessary personal vehicular transport?
I realise this forum has been quiet for a while but in the news today it is reported that Sheffield City Council’s ANPR database supporting its low emission zone wasn’t properly secured meaning it could be accessed over the internet and any vehicle’s movements tracked to the nearest minute. The article linked below includes screenshots showing the detail of what was exposed.
www.theregister.co.uk
Nine million logs of Brits' road journeys spill onto the internet from password-less number-plate camera dashboard
Democratising mass surveillance, one snafu at a time
I realise this forum has been quiet for a while but in the news today it is reported that Sheffield City Council’s ANPR database supporting its low emission zone wasn’t properly secured meaning it could be accessed over the internet and any vehicle’s movements tracked to the nearest minute. The article linked below includes screenshots showing the detail of what was exposed.
Nine million logs of Brits' road journeys spill onto the internet from password-less number-plate camera dashboard
Democratising mass surveillance, one snafu at a time
Clearly a security issue, but does rather support the point that this data is routinely collected, not anonymised, and could easily be used for road charging.
Not sure what your point is there.
A further erosion of privacy, which was made without real debate about the privacy impact, has proved the authorities can’t be trusted with any more data than is absolutely essential.
The point being that whilst there will be those who object to vehicle tracking as a privacy issue that they have kind of missed the boat in that it's already happened.
That said if they engaged in the process of developing the system then they could ensure that the system had failsafes built in to anonymise the data.
For instance having a database of where vehicles travel which looks up a numberplate on a second database and stores the vehicles ID tag (which is different to the numberplate, but doesn't store the numberplate), which then integrates third database which identifies the payment class of the roads. This is then output to a fourth database which then calculates the value to charge the owner of a vehicle and outputs this value. Then and only then is this output then fed into the database as to who owes what.
In doing so, as long as each database is secured separately and with different access systems then if any one database is comprised then it's hard to identify who is where and when.
For instance you may get vehicle identifiers and location or location and value or value and vehicle identifiers or vehicle identifiers and person or person and value.
However to have anything of use you would likely need to have 2 or more databases. To make it harder to link up you could even add in another database which issues for storage 1 of 1,000 ID tags for each vehicle, therefore in doing so you've got to search for a lot of different tags within the database.
This would mean that you could over the course of a year the vehicle is only identified as one tag for up to 9 hours. In reality the tag time would be much smaller as few vehicles are used 24/7. Chances are that, for a car doing 20,000 miles a year averaging 30mph that there would be a tag time of 40 minutes each year.
To further break up the data you could have the storage for different areas being stored separately to each other. This would likely be geographic and by road type (i.e. storing the data for the West Country strategic road network separately from county roads, all of which is stored separately from that of another region. This would mean that whilst you might be able to see what any given vehicle is doing those 40 minutes of tag data could be split across 30 different databases. As such you may not ever have the same tag turn up more than twice in any 12 month period.
Therefore you would need to have access to the tag database as well as the location databases to be able to identify where any vehicle was.
Yes the state could still access all that data, however no one person would be able to use their privilege to their personal advantage.
There's likely to be additional steps which could be added to make things even harder.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
Well.... If the data is to be at all usable by the charging system then it follows it will be usable by other parties. The easiest way to avoid access issues it to not have the data on a normal network. But no-one is going to pay for their own network these days - they all take the cheap route which is to share the world wide web. That is nice and accessible which meant it is accessible.
Whilst that's true, you can make it harder by splitting the data around with different sections of data being accessed through different systems. Therefore if someone hacked one section then they would only have part of the picture.
That isn't the case currently, as the data sets are too small to justify doing so. As such if you get a breach you have the full picture.
An interesting article, a proposal from the President of the AA to bring in trial pricing:
amp.theguardian.com
AA president backs road miles scheme | Motoring | The Guardian
Edmund King says radical thinking needed to encourage more people to walk and cycle
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It's going to happen in some form, simply because the Government won't (be able to) foresake all the revenue they presently get from fuel as everyone switches to electric, and if it went on income tax it would be a very significant hike which would lose elections.
I similarly thought that it would happen anyway owing to the changing nature of energy provision for road vehicles. The minutiae of exactly how the costs are allocated will also eventually be tailored to make road users pay a more representative proportion of the cost. Whatever the government does there is some dissent, but I suspect that once the hot air has dissipated, a fair charging system will be put in place.
It's significant that the champions of motorists' causes are seeing that as desirable instead of the usual 'business as usual' claiming that the poor drivers should be protected by suspending the fuel cost regulator forever. Maybe it is the realisation that the roads have been reclaimed by pedestrians and cyclists without protests, but out of necessity, and there won't be a return to the environmental and health race to the bottom that was the assumption until three months ago.
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Peter Sarf
Established Member
I suspect that once the weather turns towards winter car usage will rise again.
telstarbox
Established Member
I like the idea of a "personal allowance" of miles, so a rural driver commuting to the nearest town wouldn't be hit as hard as a sales rep doing 20,000 miles (and where the business would pay for most of that).
I prefer if actual road use is charged depending on the cost to the nation and society of each journey. That includes unnecessary drives through towns and cities, rat runs through residential areas and all charged at rates dependant on the times of day and day of the week.
cactustwirly
Established Member
Maybe we should do the same with train journeys, charge more for journeys in rural areas with heavily polluting DMUs?
Charge more for enthusiasts and leisure journeys as they are unnecessary, and thus have a bigger cost to "society"?
Thought not, the best way of getting cars off the road is to make public transport actually usable and convenient option for people. Atm it falls way short of cars, especially buses.
gg1
Established Member
Whilst I'm wary of road pricing due to the privacy concerns already discussed, IF it is introduced I'd like to see a smart system which varies the charges based on whether or not there is a suitable public transport option.
For example, if 4 different people all commute 10 miles each way every day:
For example, if 4 different people all commute 10 miles each way every day:
- person A there is a frequent train service available - travel time is roughly the same
- person B there is a frequent, direct bus route between the start and end point which takes roughly 50% longer
- person C the same journey by public transport requires 2 buses plus a 1 mile walk, total journey time more than double the driving option
- person D no public transport option available at all
Not only that, but the journey's context needs to be taken into account as well. (in normal circumstances!) It's quite feasible for me to get from Nottingham to London using only public transport, with a fairly cheap and fairly frequent service throughout. However, there's a marked difference between me making that journey by myself, and me making that journey with a car full of luggage
In principle yes but the examples that you have chosen above are quite inappropriate:
whether the train is diesel hauled is not within the control of the passenger, (except in cases like cramming onto an EMR Meridian instead of catching the more environmentally friendly Thameslink train
charging more for leisure journeys than (presumably 'essential') journeys. The majority of non-leisure journeys would include peak-hour trains which are far more expensive to provide than seats on off-peak trains*
* to provide capacity for commuters, there are trains that are only in revenue earning service for less than 4 hours per day, there are tracks and platforms (plus all the assocoated S&T infrastructure) that is only there because of peak hour requirements, and the staff requirements are also exacerbated by peak hour demand. Given the subsidy that the railway takes from public funds, that is a cost to society. Leisure travel is normally satisfied by capacity that would otherwise be unused, hence the pricing of off-peak tickets.
gg1
Established Member
Ideally it should but the problem is there's no way or verifying that, it's entirely dependant on the honesty of the traveller.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
That wouldn't work. What would happen in your scenario is that, because person D pays only a nominal charge for driving, people along his/her commuter route have no incentive to start using public transport. Therefore they will continue to drive, and good public transport will never become viable there - so you'll have created a vicious circle for D (and to be fair, a virtual circle for A).
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
People will choose not to drive if the congestion is awful, too. It's quite possible that with some thought I could do a day trip, out and back in the peak, to London for less by car than I could by train, particularly if my destination had a private car park. However, I'm not that stupid, and the train will take me there in 45 minutes or so, whereas the car journey would likely take well over 2 hours each way.
However, if the car was lots cheaper, people will choose it because they can't justify the heavy additional price for the train. Hence the need for some form of taxation.
cactustwirly
Established Member
People would genuinely choose public transport if it was a viable option.
But 99% of the time it isn't, it's either too expensive, finishes early/starts too late or doesn't go where you want.
gg1
Established Member
The nominal charge would only apply where there is no viable public transport alternative, if the local authority decided to subsidise a decent public transport service which was of use to my hypothetical commuter, this would result in an increase to the road use charge, so creating an incentive to switch. The charges levied to people who happen to live along person Ds daily commute would be completely separate and based on their own individual circumstances.
If some form of reliable, secure vehicle tracking was introduced nationwide, linking it to a central database of all bus and rail services should definitely be possible.
Many would, but there are a minority who still wouldn't switch even if there was one. This is my thinking behind this, punitive charges for those journeys where there is a regular, fast and reliable public transport option they can use, a lesser charge for those journeys where public transport is possible but less convenient, and a negligible charge for journeys where they is no viable alternative option.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
I
Your post got me thinking. Might not be perfect but its a starting point. For my journey it is two buses although I used to regularly give up and walk the second bus. It used to take me 40-45 minutes and had reliability issues. Since I broke my leg I started driving and continue to do so - it takes less than 15 minutes.
For me I cannot see the point hanging around in the cold for a bus that may have run early. My car made in 1994 is more reliable.
You prompt a thought which I think is a fundamental. Look at it this way - people will drive (maybe walk) if at all possible. They will only use public transport as a last resort if unavoidable.
I have considered my commutes over the years as a pro public transport person. This was mainly commuting to London suburbs from Kent. I used to end up turning to my car. I had to drive to the station anyway. Of course there will always be problems with any mode. But what used to drive me away from trains was the repeated same problem - cancellation, last minute platform change and very consistent delay (almost 100%). I can accept some occasional failings. There will always be occasional delays/cancellations but to then seldom provide information left me in contempt. That is something that public transport operators need to get right.
The point I am making is that realistically people will use their car if they possibly can. For central London there is no alternative to public transport.
This leads back to road charging, before I forget. You can pick up money from anyone who can avoid public transport and might well continue to do so.
For me. I now work fairly near where I live in Croydon. The job was attractive because it was near and I could drive. I don't have to consider central London travel options anymore.
I think the answer is less commuting. Longer but fewer days. Working from home.
Why did this thread start ?. It is because road tax is too simple and has been abandoned for "ecological" cars. We could tax fuel but many want a more sophisticated system. Those who can will pay whatever is required. Those who cannot will use public transport, move jobs or retire early.
For many the use of a car is tantamount to a basic human right. So be careful how we restrict/ration them. We should have been controlling this in the 1950s. A parallel is the "Chelsea Chariot" or four wheel drive large car. The government did not start discouraging them until they had really caught on.
As intimated up thread. Public transport has to be cheaper. But it also has to be more attractive. With too much demand (and social distancing) I feel public transport needs IMPROVING.
Your post got me thinking. Might not be perfect but its a starting point. For my journey it is two buses although I used to regularly give up and walk the second bus. It used to take me 40-45 minutes and had reliability issues. Since I broke my leg I started driving and continue to do so - it takes less than 15 minutes.
For me I cannot see the point hanging around in the cold for a bus that may have run early. My car made in 1994 is more reliable.
You prompt a thought which I think is a fundamental. Look at it this way - people will drive (maybe walk) if at all possible. They will only use public transport as a last resort if unavoidable.
I have considered my commutes over the years as a pro public transport person. This was mainly commuting to London suburbs from Kent. I used to end up turning to my car. I had to drive to the station anyway. Of course there will always be problems with any mode. But what used to drive me away from trains was the repeated same problem - cancellation, last minute platform change and very consistent delay (almost 100%). I can accept some occasional failings. There will always be occasional delays/cancellations but to then seldom provide information left me in contempt. That is something that public transport operators need to get right.
The point I am making is that realistically people will use their car if they possibly can. For central London there is no alternative to public transport.
This leads back to road charging, before I forget. You can pick up money from anyone who can avoid public transport and might well continue to do so.
For me. I now work fairly near where I live in Croydon. The job was attractive because it was near and I could drive. I don't have to consider central London travel options anymore.
I think the answer is less commuting. Longer but fewer days. Working from home.
Why did this thread start ?. It is because road tax is too simple and has been abandoned for "ecological" cars. We could tax fuel but many want a more sophisticated system. Those who can will pay whatever is required. Those who cannot will use public transport, move jobs or retire early.
For many the use of a car is tantamount to a basic human right. So be careful how we restrict/ration them. We should have been controlling this in the 1950s. A parallel is the "Chelsea Chariot" or four wheel drive large car. The government did not start discouraging them until they had really caught on.
As intimated up thread. Public transport has to be cheaper. But it also has to be more attractive. With too much demand (and social distancing) I feel public transport needs IMPROVING.
NotATrainspott
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The problem is that it can't. The government isn't going around advocating use of active transport just to satisfy the green lobby. They've been told by the Treasury that getting Britain moving again is absolutely necessary for the economic recovery. But, social distancing measures on public transport mean that the way we've got people to move around won't be available to the same extent.
Why not just use more car journeys? Because the nature of induced demand and widespread support for motoring means that the road network is already at capacity. There's simply not enough space on the roads for everyone who currently uses public transport to switch to the car. Most public transport use is actually happening in response to road capacity shortages - think of all the park and ride services deliberately set up to reduce congestion.
Active transport is the next most space efficient way of getting people moving around urban areas. Sure, it won't work for longer journeys, but the vast majority of journeys in the UK are short enough for it to be viable. Removing a few unnecessary school runs will help make sure there's space for the other people who do have no choice but to drive. Rather nicely, making space for active transport is also very, very cheap. There's basically no need for anything more than some bollards or traffic cones. Routes can be set up temporarily at minimal cost and disruption. In the worst case scenario where the haste of planning means that mistakes are made, these can be rectified very quickly as well. Compared to infrastructure investment, the range of legal challenges available to block progress are also a lot more limited. As far as I understand it there's no legal obligation for the state to permit private vehicles to freely use the public highway, but there are many requirements for the state to ensure that the environment is protected when there's a plan to build a new road.
In many cases it's fundamentally impossible to make public transport better without making life more difficult for cars in the process. In many cities, public transport has been on a downward spiral where increased congestion means bus services get slower, which means less demand for buses and more demand for driving, which means more congestion, so buses get slower again. The simplest way to fix that is to go in and set up proper dedicated bus lanes on the most important trunk routes. The most effective places to do this are the places where it'll have the biggest impact on private vehicles. It's all fine and well providing a bus lane on a 1930s boulevard but if it runs out once you get into older and narrower streets, then it's a waste of time. This will likely mean removal of parking from trunk roads in urban areas.
Indirectly this is exactly what you'd get from a standard road pricing scheme. Places where there is good public transport will already be busier and denser and there'd be a higher road charge. It's self-evident that the road price for a journey from Camden to Clapham should be very much higher than in the Western Isles.
Making it specific to individual circumstances means entering a whole world of pain for no great benefit. There'd always be too many people caught on the wrong side.
gg1
Established Member
Indirectly is the key word, the problem is it's too indirect and take no account of the fact that due to the hub and spoke nature of public transport systems, even in urban areas which have a generally good public transport provision as a whole there will still be many journeys that require a number of changes, often over a very indirect route, net result is a journey that can take more than 3 times as long than driving.
Would it really be that difficult so set up a national database of public transport provision? There are after all numerous local ones which already exist (e.g. the database which sits behind this West Midlands based websbite https://journeyplanner.networkwestmidlands.com) it's just a case of pulling them together then linking that to the road pricing system, i.e. the vehicle tracking system knows you travelled from A-B between 8am and 8:45am on Monday, it then cross checks with the database to identify what the equivalent cost and time would have been to make the same journey by public transport and charges you accordingly.
The result would be a much fairer system with far fewer people 'caught on the wrong side' than would be the case with a simpler but blunt pricing system just based on mileage and the area of the country you happen to be in.
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Ah, but it isn’t. On some stretches of road, and at some times of day / week it was at capacity. The number of these affected stretches of road is rather fewer now, and will still be fewer when everything gets back to ‘normal’; a 10% hit to the economy (for example) will inevitably lead to a reduction in traffic. There will, of course, be some parts of the road Network that remain at capacity (principally into cities, and certain parts of the Motorway Network), but given that the highway Network carries so much more traffic then the rail network, it will be able to absorb a fair bit of ‘ex rail’ traffic quite easily.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
Yes my commute involves crossing the spokes of the Croydon Hub.
My morning commute by car takes 10-15 minutes. If I use buses it is 45 minutes. So my car journey can treble in time taken before I then start reminding myself of the benefits of door to door rather than a walk to/from the bus stop and a change involving a bus stop with no shelter !.
Yes :-
NotATrainspott
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It's these stretches of road at these times when public transport is necessary to shift the right number of people for the economy to function. At 2am on a country road it's clearly fine to rely on private motoring. At 8:30am on the way into Leeds city centre, not so much.
We're talking about public transport capacity being cut by huge amounts to enable physical distancing. When public transport already carries so many people per square metre of road space used, and cars are so incredibly inefficient, it doesn't take many people to switch from public transport to driving to overwhelm road capacity again. Yes, with a weakened economy, transport demand will be lower than normal. But, that won't be enough to fix everything. And, in any case, it's in the Government's interest to get as much of the economy going as possible so that we can avoid the worst possible economic consequences of Covid-19. Any reduction in transport demand due to a weakened economy is a problem that the Treasury will ultimately need to fund the solution to.
The shift to working from home will have a major impact on commuter rail into major urban centres. Trains are typically used by commuters who work higher-value jobs in city centre offices which are likely amenable to working from home. The distances these people are travelling are normally too great for active transport to be a realistic alternative. In some urban areas, driving to the office may be feasible (e.g. offices in Charing Cross in Glasgow just off the M8) but it's unlikely there will be anywhere near enough parking given that the offices were built with the assumption of train commuting.
It's buses where the worst impact will be felt. Bus services are used by a much wider range of people to do many shorter journeys. Your average bus passenger is more likely to be doing a manual labour job where WFH is impossible. In some urban areas, it's likely that bus passengers won't even have a car they can use instead to get to work. The only affordable way for the country to give these people a way to continue getting to work while physical distancing measures is in place is to make it as easy as possible for them to walk or cycle.
There's no way any road pricing scheme will be in place before we get to the end of special societal measures to deal with Covid-19. In the meantime the government is just going to have to do anything it can.
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