Congestion charge to be rolled out nationwide

[DimPrawn]

If moving people and goods get priced off the road, what does that do our costs and inflation compared with other countries?

Delivering goods becomes expensive as does getting workers to work?

What about hospitals and schools in towns? Getting staff to work in these places will be very costly.

Ideally, the congestion charge should be waived for all journeys to and from work.

Social travel, school run, shoppers, and pensioners should pay for bloody clogging up the streets.

[Xerxes]

There is only one reason that the government is keen to switch road taxation from fuel duty to road usage, and that is to protect tax revenues long term as more alternative, more lightly taxed, fuels become available. If you are charged per mile you travel, it doesn't matter whether you are using petrol, electric, biodiesel, LPG, nuclear power plant, anthracite, or a horse drawn car.

Any effect on congestion is merely an added bonus.

It's all in the interests of "fairness" you see.

[IR35 Avoider]

"If you can get from A to B reliably in your car, then you are not affected by congestion and won't have to pay the charge."

Yes you will. None of the proposals included 'free' roads. All roads would incurr a cost. The levels of congesstion would simply be a factor which is applied to the base cost. But if you price a motorist off a busy road by forcing them onto a cheaper one surely this will increase the congesstion there. This will increase the price on the cheaper road. Do you really trust the government to reduce the cost of the expensive road (as the motorists are going elsewhere) if the price of the cheaper one rises?

If they are proposing to charge on all roads then they are indeed screwing things up.

I've dealt with the issue of alternative routes in another reply. Yes it will mean charges have to go up on the "alternative" road - each road is considered in isolation. Of course "they" would not then decrease the charge on the original road - "they" would be wrong to do so - each road must be priced in isolation to control congestion on it, what happens elsewhere is neither here nor there.

I had a contract a while ago where I had to get from my house to the other side of Manchester. The total distance was some 18 miles. There was no way that I could use public transport AND fit 8 hours in the office. The best I could get was 7 hours of work and 4 hours commuting.

If (for example) there were a congestion charge costing you one hours net pay and reducing your commute to two hours, wouldn't you consider yourself better off? (Edited: I may have misunderstood - thought you meant you commuted for four hours by car. If you meant four hours on public transport, I agree you can't do that. The point of congestion charge is to allow highly paid people like you to use the roads and for them not be clogged up by people with less (economically) important journeys. If you are able to do 18 miles in under an hour then I'd agree that your roads are sufficiently uncongested that there shouldn't be charging on them, though I guess it would take an economist to work out just what the right balance should be. In central London I dream about being able to reliably (not just on average) do 10mph. At the end of a week my computer tells me I've averaged 22mph, despite 80% of my commute being on roads with 40mph or higher speed limit.)

London congestion charge probably costs me about 15 minutes net pay, haven't bothered to work it out exactly, it hasn't made my typical journey that much quicker, but it has made my commute far less variable. I'm much less likely to have one hours travel unexpectedly turn into a 2/3/4 hour nightmare than before. Having said that, the London system is crap in its primitiveness - I read somewhere recently that only 10% of vehicles in the zone actually pay the charge - so no matter how much they increased the charge they couldn't improve things much more.

[IR35 Avoider]

If moving people and goods get priced off the road, what does that do our costs and inflation compared with other countries?

As I've said elsewhere, with or without congestion charging, there are journeys not being made. Congestion charging ensures that the journeys not being made are the economically less important ones. How can it be good for the economy for a scarce resource not to be priced according to demand?

If roads were electricity we would build a fixed number of power stations, tell everyone to help themselves to as much as they liked (charging a fixed levy per household regardless of usage) and just put up with the power blackouts as the system failed during peak periods. Surely a system where blackouts don't happen is better - even if making industry pay for their inputs does put up costs? And what would the cost of random unplanned blackouts be? How many companies would avoid setting up in the UK altogether because of the unreliable supply?

[stackpole]

As I've said elsewhere, with or without congestion charging, there are journeys not being made. Congestion charging ensures that the journeys not being made are the economically less important ones.

I don't think this theory has been born out when fuel costs have been hiked up. Road usage has still increased.

How can it be good for the economy for a scarce resource not to be priced according to demand?

But it is already priced according to demand - fuel costs. This method has two added advantages - it encourages more efficient vehicles, and it is far simpler and cheaper to administer than the satellite, computer systems, bureaucracy and inevitable problems and errors of a blanket congestion charge system.

If roads were electricity we would build a fixed number of power stations, tell everyone to help themselves to as much as they liked (charging a fixed levy per household regardless of usage) and just put up with the power blackouts as the system failed during peak periods. Surely a system where blackouts don't happen is better - even if making industry pay for their inputs does put up costs? And what would the cost of random unplanned blackouts be? How many companies would avoid setting up in the UK altogether because of the unreliable supply?

I don't think the electricity metaphor is apt because any person can take more and more of it; however a person can only drive one car on the roads at a time.

Personally, I think that congestion is just a symptom of the real issue - our island is getting more and more overcrowded. If the population had remained static since 1997, when it was quite stable, we would be approaching saturation point by now, by which I mean that we would run out of new people to join the traffic.

[DimPrawn]

I don't think the electricity metaphor is apt because any person can take more and more of it; however a person can only drive one car on the roads at a time.

Que Threaded and a brace of 8 Series BMW's.......

[expat]

There is only one reason that the government is keen to switch road taxation from fuel duty to road usage, and that is to protect tax revenues long term as more alternative, more lightly taxed, fuels become available. If you are charged per mile you travel, it doesn't matter whether you are using petrol, electric, biodiesel, LPG, nuclear power plant, anthracite, or a horse drawn car.

Any effect on congestion is merely an added bonus.

It's all in the interests of "fairness" you see.

I believe that LPG cars, at least, do not pay the London congestion charge.

[Xerxes]

I believe that LPG cars, at least, do not pay the London congestion charge.

Precisely. So what happens when all cars (or a larger proportion than now) run on LPG or other exempt fuels? Tax revenues dry up. Answer? Charge all vehicles by the mile under the disguise of "fairness" and reducing congestion.

You're not thinking NuLabour.

[Dundeegeorge]

Don't like to be pedantic but

Precisely. So what happens when all cars (or a larger proportion than now) run on LPG or other exempt fuels? Tax revenues dry up. Answer? Charge all vehicles by the mile under the disguise of "fairness" and reducing congestion.

You're not thinking NuLabour.

You're not thinking, NuLabour

[Phoenix]

So would it help once they have produced the car based on a fish that runs on sheep piss?