Safe Speed Forums

A few more on the massive operating costs...

- 30 million monthly invoices * 12 = 360 million annual invoices. If it costs just £3 to process a normal invoice, we're still into over a billion on normal invoice processing alone.

- Imagine the effort required to chase 5% of people who don't pay or who dispute the billed amount. That's 1.5 million disputes a month. 18 million disputes a year. If a dispute costs £100, that's another 1.8 billion.

- Imagine the costs of developing the infrastructure (and don't forget this would be the biggest ever Government IT project).

All in all, I'd be very surprised if the road pricing nonsense didn't cost more than £6 billion each year to run. That's about the same as the ENTIRE road building and maintaining budget.

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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

So those without bank accounts will be disallowed use of the roads, then?



It would HAVE to be tax neutral. Otherwise, the increased running costs of UK businesses would force the cost of products & services to rise and inflation would go up. Even Labour wouldn't take a risk like this with the National economy.

So, assuming that road pricing IS offset by lower fuel tax and VED, what about the whole CO2 issue that the Government are making such a big thing out of at the moment? Will the tax cost of a journey be the same regardless of whether it's done in a Smart Car or a V12 Merc? There is some serious self contradiction going on here...

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

I couldn't agree more.

On the tax neutral thing, during the recent "Oh Christ, the Tories are doing something, let's copy them but in a more taxable way" debate on 'green taxes', one of the less able Scottish Labour ministers (Ian Macartney?) said:
"Green Taxes CAN'T be tax neutral, or they won't discourage polluting behaviour"

So that gets them out of that pledge then....

We shouldn't even debate if it's going to be tax neutral or not.

It needs stopped before it even starts. I'm not having some jobsworth able to track my every movement.

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Wake me up when the revolution starts
STOP the Toll Tax http://www.traveltax.org.uk

The 'Pro / Con' balance sheet is amazing. The entire thing is a 'con' ( ) and the single 'pro' is false.

The road pricing idea is so bad that it should have been killed long before birth.

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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 theory is that road pricing would allow demand for road travel to be balanced better in relation to the available capacity.

However the idea that a government computer system could do that effectively is ludicrous

And the vast majority of congestion occurs only at rush hour. Surely the best way of combating that is to re-arrange working and educational arrangements so that everyone doesn't need to arrive at the same place at the same time.

Why shouldn't all employers offer flexitime to non customer facing office staff?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

This sounds like a good idea until you think about the fuss that is caused just by changing the clocks in Spring/Autumn. It would actually be easier fro people just to get up an hour earlier in the Summer but people won't psychologically accept that this is just the same as the hour change.

I expect my staff to be in at "core" hours of the day to be available to interface with other employees, customers and suppliers.

Why should I give more flexibility to the non-customer-facing factory staff? It causes a problem if their supervisor wants to go home at 3pm while they want to work until 7pm. What about teamwork.

If schools changed their hours to say, 11am to 7pm to avoid the rush hours, how many parents could cope? This is a difficult problem.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Yes, but the key problem with rush hours is that everyone needs to arrive at work within a short time window.

Flexitime works fine in local authorities and many private sector employers. If we are to beat congestion it must become the norm.

if you feel uneasy about the supervisor going home before the junior staff, that is a management issue.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

The most significant problem will be the "I.T. Project" for road pricing.
It has to uniqely identify and track each vehicle in the uk live.
It has then to compute the charge and ensure the correct person is billed.

Given the track record of government and IT do you think it will work 24/7?

Also how long before humpy IT consultants, schoolkids etc. crack the database

This has the potential to make the Tax Credits fiasco look like very small beer indeed

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I walk I cycle I drive and I vote

You know the ones. You phone them up to talk to Mrs X (who is dealing with your case) and she isn't there every time you phone due to flexitime and you get put through to someone you have to explain everything to again.



Actually it's a cost issue. I have to pay for two supervisors who have to sort out mutually agreed times. I could manage perfectly well with one within normal hours. There are also H&S and security issues to solve.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.