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SPY IN THE SKY TO TRACK ALL CARS
Drivers face £16,000-a-year-bill
By Martin Evans, Daily Express, 7 August 2006.
MOTORISTS will be charged for each mile they travel under a new pay-as-you-drive policy. Every car in the UK will be fitted with a black box to allow a central computer to spy on each journey.
Drivers will receive an itemised bill each month - adding thousands of pounds to the cost of motoring. Commuters and mothers on the school run will be the hardest hit under the proposals by Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander, which are aimed at cutting jams by discouraging non-essential journeys. But critics claim the scheme could cost many motorists £16,000 a year and is simply yet another way of swelling Treasury coffers.
Details of the pay-as-you-go policy were revealed in a leaked letter spelling out plans for a Bill next year to pave the way for the widespread use of tolls to combat traffic snarl-ups. The scheme would be calculated on a sliding scale with the exact cost dictated by location and by the time of travel - with rush-hour routes charged at a premium.
Motorists already pay around £42billion a year in road tax and fuel duty but ministers have always claimed that the timing of further road charges would coincide with the scrapping of other revenue-raising systems. The Department of Transport claims it is essential in combating congestion, which is estimated to cost businesses around £20billion a year. But the costs of a national road pricing system would be enormous, with some estimates as high as £40billion.
Motorists have also expressed concern over the Big Brother aspects of the scheme which will mean every single journey made is closely monitored.
The letter to Leader of the Commons, Jack Straw, dated July 20, makes clear that Mr Alexander is considering imposing charges not just in city centres but also on trunk roads.
"The main purpose of the Bill would be to support our efforts to cut congestion and improve public transport, particularly in the major cities outside London," he wrote. "It would also help to pave the way for a national road-pricing scheme.
The system would rely on satellite technology, which some motoring organisations fear may be rolled out to provide the police with a way of catching speeding motorists more easily.
Paul Smith, the founder of the motoring campaign SafeSpeed, believes the proposals would do little to cut congestion.
Complex
He said: "Road pricing is fundamentally flawed and will never deliver an improvement in congestion. It is a tax on the poor and while it may alter the average wealth of those stuck in traffic it will never ease congestion.
"It is also massively complex and expensive. It would burn massive amounts of money and deliver no significant benefit."
Nigel Humphries, spokesman for the Association of British Drivers, insisted that the proposals would end up hitting the poorest drivers hardest.
He said: "This is just an exercise in avoiding investing in the transport infrastructure. The Government think they can just wave a magic wand and 10 years in the future everything will be sorted but that is not going to happen without a massive injection of investment."
He added: "They are just punishing those motorists who have to drive in order to get to work, or take the kids to school or to attend a hospital appointment. There are no benefits whatsoever to a system like this."
Liz Kennett, spokeswoman for the RAC Foundation, said pay-as you-drive may have an impact on congestion but drivers would be very suspicious about paying yet more motoring costs.
She said: "A lot of people accept that congestion is getting worse and something has got to be done about it. But motorists are only going to accept this if a deal is done and there is a trade-off to reduce road tax and fuel duty. We believe that road pricing schemes are the way forward but we want to see a significant improvement in public transport, particularly in rural areas."
Reacting to the leaked details, Shadow Roads Minister Owen Paterson said: "This leak is another ill-planned instalment of the Government's weak transport policy. It has already failed to introduce charging for lorries, which it said it would do.
"There still seems to be no clear idea about whether these charges will be in addition to current motoring taxes or instead of them.
Instead of leaks we need a broad, comprehensive statement explaining what it is trying to achieve through road pricing and how it is going to get there."
Last might a Department for Transport spokeswoman said: "The Government has been very clear about the need to explore road pricing as a way to tackle congestion. It is only right that we explore what legislation might be required to do this."
But the latest scheme may cause resentment and revolt among the UK's driving public warned Paul Watters, head of roads and transport policy at the AA Motoring Trust.
He said: "This is not going to be popular while fuel duty is so high. There is very much the feeling that the public are paying more and more to be stuck in the same congestion. Any national pricing scheme would need to have a significant impact on congestion as motorists would want to see results.
"From our research, people are pretty lukewarm, they do not like the idea of a Big Brother system, knowing exactly where you have been, when and on what roads. In a way motorists prefer fuel duty because the more you drive the more you pay."
Critics also believe the levy will be a huge incentive to drive unregistered cars which cannot be tracked by the technology. The problem of evading excise duty is also growing - with 1.55million untaxed vehicles in Britain.
Rush-hour trips to cost £1.34 a mile
THE pay-as-you-drive scheme would enable the Government to monitor every road journey made in the UK.
Using technology similar to that found in car satellite navigation systems, a vehicle's exact position could be pinpointed.
Each of the UK's 32million cars would be fitted with a black box satellite transmitter and receiver which would beam information back to a central computer every time the vehicle was on the move. Charges would be levied depending on when and where the motorist had been driving. For journeys in built-up areas in rush hour, each mile would be charged at £1.34. For trips off-peak in quiet areas the charge could fall as low as 2p per mile.
Each trip would be recorded and motorists would receive an itemised list of the costs they had incurred that month. The technology and administration needed to operate such a scheme would be vast, with start-up costs put as high as £40billion.
Motorists doing more than 20,000 miles a year, often in rush hour or on busy motorways, could see their annual bill top £16,000. The average driver who travels 10 miles to work in a built-up area could see his or her annual road use bill rise from around £500 a year to more than £3,000.
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