Group wants schedule to introduce UK road pricing

13 December 2006

The Government should commit itself to a fixed timetable for staged implementation of a combined road-pricing system, the Green Light Group urged this week.
The group, a new Institution of Civil Engineers-led collaboration between transport bodies, sees technology as neither a barrier to deployment, nor a reason to delay scheme design.
A firm political commitment, it says, could ensure that systems were ready for nationwide deployment ‘within a few years’.
The best solution could be to have both remote electronic positioning and dedicated short-range communications – or ‘tag-and-beacon’ – charging methods.
The former, currently satellite-based – although potentially using mobile phones in future – would be used for general real-time distance-based charging, and the latter for cordons around zones in densely built-up city centres, where REP was less reliable. Both could incorporate smartcard payment, while DSRC systems could eventually replace windscreen tags with radio frequency ID (RFID) chips.
The group does not think it necessary for the Government to operate road pricing. Instead, it suggests a franchising system, similar to that in the mobile phone industry, with competing companies offering road credits to their customers.

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