Could a pay-per-use road charging scheme powered by vehicle data reporting be viable?

[Peter Sarf]

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.

I think the point @Bald Rick makes is that, outside of a few examples like central London, the road net work could easily soak up what Public Transport used to take. I am not sure generally but, certainly for my example the roads could be a lot more congested before i resorted to the bus again.

And, lets face it, the overcrowding on trains and tubes in the past was absolutely disgusting. I do not know why i put up with it. It was unhealthy at the best of times and stressful.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

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.

Whole World of pain again. Mr. Smith lives 500m away from one bus route that costs £2 to get to work, but only 400m away from another route that would cost £3. Which route to you use as a basis for charging him? Mrs.Jones could according to the database get to work by bus in 45 minutes, but one of the connecting buses is unreliable. If it's a few minutes late, she misses her connection and then it takes over an hour. So is it reasonable to class her car journey as a could-ve-been-made-by-bus one? Ms. Brown could get from home to the shops by bus easily but she doesn't because she needs to drop her neighbour off at the dentist en route, and the dentist isn't near the bus route. Since dropping the neighbour off only takes 10 seconds, the system has no way of knowing that's that she's doing, and sees only that she's travelled (by an apparently slightly strange route) to the shops. Is it really fair to charge her as if the journey could've been made by bus? Mr. Green has a bus every half hour that gets him straight to work. But he drives because the bus runs every half hour and either gets him to work 25 minutes early or 5 minutes late. It's a customer-facing role and not acceptable for him to be regularly 5 minutes late. So do you really want to charge him on a 'should've used the bus' rate?

Oh and - on the other side - Mr. and Mrs. Orange (Yeah, I've run out of sensible names) don't give a monkeys about the environment and wouldn't be seen dead in a bus. After researching the local options, they deliberately choose to buy a house in the one part of town that doesn't have a good bus route - just so that they can get charged a lower rate for driving.

You'll never get something like that to work in any way that would pass a reasonable 'this feel fair' test to most people. Far better to keep it simple and just charge rates according to who rural vs urban and typically congested the overall area is.

 

[90019]

To add to that, how would it work for a journey where there is a public transport option going one way but not the other?
Say I need to go somewhere but will be returning after the last bus - it's not like I can take the bus there and drive back, so would I get charged a much higher rate for driving the outward journey even though the public transport isn't actually an option?