Wednesday 14 November 2007

If all they can think of is road pricing...

If all a political party can think of is national road pricing it shows they are incapable of thinking of anything else. The poverty of ideas that they have for our roads is just amazing.

The problems are:
Taxes on our lorries are so high that it is much cheaper for foreign lorries to drive on our roads ... and they don't pay for that.
In distant rural areas the car is an essential so you don't want to overprice that.

One possibility instead of road pricing is to change the annual tax disc system. We pay for our road tax each year. Split the road tax into two sums: One the annual MOT and insurance check, the other a vignette for using Motorways and dual carriageways. You pay for them together but if you happen to live in a rural area you could opt out of paying the Motorway and dual carriageways vignette. So no real change for almost everyone except its cheaper in rural areas. The big difference however is that all foreign cars and lorries now pay for the use of Motorways and dual carriageways with a vignette that like the Swiss system is a sticker in the window. They get that sticker and pay the fee when they arrive at Dover or any other port.

The big advantage is that it evens out the competition for road hauliers by charging foreign lorries for the roads.
Foreign cars make a contribution for the cost of the damage they are doing to the environment and towards the repair costs of the roads
AND
Its a hell-of-alot simpler to organise and administer than these irresponsible road pricing technological proposals.

There are more alternatives to national road pricing than just this idea but it illustrates how our politicians have shown that they are unwilling to think constructively about the problems.