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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6186496.stm

Charging 'could fund new roads'

A substantial number of new roads could be built if the government introduced "pay as you drive" charges on Britain's roads, research suggests.

The Independent Transport Commission said enough money would be raised to put roads in tunnels in built-up areas.

It said the charges would have to be relatively high to cut congestion, but could be lowered with the building of new roads to ease jams.

The suggestion of building more roads is likely to anger environmentalists.

BBC Transport Correspondent Tom Symonds said pay-as-you-drive road charges were now firmly on the government's agenda.

New roads would be most beneficial on the edges of towns and cities, where traffic pressure was growing fastest, our correspondent said.

The proposed building of roads in tunnels in certain areas is about six times more expensive, but more environmentally acceptable.

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The countless billons that would be spent installing and operating a road pricing system would be billions collected from motorists that could NOT be spent on roads.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

The british motorist already has 37 billion a year taken off them from road taxes. Maybe if they spent a little less on pointless civil servants and a silly war over oil in iraq we'd have those extra roads we've already paid for by now.

What the 'powers that be' have failed to understand is the massive adverse effect on the UK economy.
For example, if you like touring as your holiday, as my wife and I do, where will you tour. This year we have spent 10 days touring the North of England. We certainly won't be doing that if road-charging at c.30p per mile becomes a reality. No, we'll go to Ireland, France, Belgium, Spain or Germany where there will be no mileage charge. To get to Dover we'll use all the little back roads. So the areas of the country relying on tourism will suffer greatly (the Lake district, the South West, Scotland, Wales, etc, etc.). It will spell doom for those involved in the tourist trade.
For companies with many vehicles on-the-road the charges will be potentially terminal. Either they pass these costs on to their customers as an inflationery charge, applying to goods sold in the UK and abroad, thus making for a recessionary trend in UK business and driving our manufacturing and, now, or service industries, abroad. We'vew already seen some truck companies re-locate to Belgium to avoid the high UK truck taxes. I think many companies would re-locate their service centres in, say, Belgium or Eire, register their vehicles there and base their service and sales operations abroad. Remember, there will never be an effective way of making foreign vehicles pay unless there are toll booths on every chargeable road and that's not very likely. In France their toll roads just drive traffic onto non-toll roads, with the consequent congestion moving elsewhere.
Once again, it just hasn't been thought through and is just seen as an easy 'cash-cow' for central government who, in reality, don't give a s**t about congestion.
Of course, the real solution is to increase fuel duty and cance all road tax, but, hey, that's far too simple and it prevents the opportunity to monitor everyone's movements at all time (to counteract terrorism, you undertand).

This is really all about making the roads an attractive proposition for a future sell-off. It failed with the railways, lets see if they can f'k it up again with the roads....

Well, look at it this way -- if the roads were privatised, would any company want to install speed cameras on their patch?

Just to correct that nice Mr 'Teabelly', the government collect £42 Billion, not £37 billion from motorists every year.

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

The 37 billion is a figure from Jason Barlowe and who did that reallly good dispatches programme about how utility companies are wrecking the roads by digging them up, often without permits, and frequently not re-instating them correctly.

If it is 42 billion then it is even worse! Tight wads only spend about 3 billion a year on maintenance, during the seventies it was nearer 6 billion! If you account for inflation then no wonder the roads are in such a disgusting state. They've had the money out of us so it is time they made sure roads were in decent repair.

A lot of the edges on country roads are collapsing. Out Whitchurch way on the A525 is getting awful. There are so many HGVs thundering down that road it is disappearing into the hedges. Driving around Stoke today I saw holes that are clearly collapsed due to somebody digging it up and just recovering the tarmac as it has sunk in a suspiciously neat square....

Amazing - few years ago we had a stock transfer fiasco in our town - like other parts of the country---it's where the local council tries to persuade tenants that they'd be better off with a private landlord than with the council and all sorts of spurious facts are put forward ( and promoted by the ODPM - Or Office of the Deputy Prime Minister ).AND if it all falls apart the council tax payer foots the bill.

Part and parcel of the promises ( all for selling off the nations heritage for a few pounds and letting private landlords hike up the rent ---see the similarity ) was the promise of new kitchens and bathrooms.


So yet another con job by HMG -- for houses read road tax.For hike in rents read road pricing. For new kitchens etc read more roads . Then go out and see how many contented ex council tenants now exist ( and see how many told HMG where to go).

And i suspect that if we look deep enough, we'll see the portly figure of Prescott ( or his office's finger ) digging into the pie

Empty words.

The entire UK road network was built without the need for pay-by-the-mile road pricing, why should it be a prerequisite for road building now?

They are clutching at straws.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

Worse. They are trying to shift public opinion by tossing out imaginary carrots.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety