US-style ‘single lane tolling’ (SLT) will appear as an option in a forthcoming Highways Agency report on network capacity to the Department for Transport.
The report will review projected widenings in the light of both potential charging solutions for hotspots and the success, in ‘providing capacity where needed’, of hard shoulder running in the agency’s M42 active traffic-management pilot.
Technology for SLT would be ‘simple’, network operations director, Derek Turner, told a road pricing conference in London on Tuesday. It could, however, include a green option for emissions-based surcharges.
But, he warned against seeing SLT as a ‘short- or even medium-term solution’. Meanwhile, improvements will go ahead on all-purpose roads such as the A14, which are not suitable for ATM.
Issues being explored for ‘re-engineering’ ATM prior to network roll out include coping with varying intersection frequencies in planned ‘through junction’ hard shoulder running; handling strategic national traffic, such as HGVs on the M6; and the need to maintain current levels of compliance with variable speed limits.
Reviewing technology, new transport minister, Paul Clark, said implementation of results from early 2009 trials of time/distance/place-based charging would be ‘a long way off’.
Conservative spokesman Stephen Hammond MP suspected the trials would pave the way for UK-wide, rather than simply local, charging.
Liberal Democrat opposite number, Norman Baker MP, pledged the revival of lorry road-user charging. On local consultations, RAC Foundation deputy director, Sheila Rainger, offered to investigate a potentially ‘fairer’ process. This could extend to people living outside, but driving into, a proposed charging zone.
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