Officials seek road charging system that calms "big brother" fears

12 March 2007

Ministers feel a zonal system, such as London's, may be workable (Pic Mark Wohlwender)

The Department for Transport wants proposals for road user charging to address the concerns of 1.8M people, responding to an on-line poll, who thought that "the idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is sinister and wrong".
The DfT wants drivers’ privacy to be protected in road user charging pilots, but has stressed that a zonal system where the exact position of a car would not be detected is only ‘one way’ of overcoming motorists’ concerns. Roads minister Stephen Ladyman told a conference last week that a zone-based system "would solve our privacy problem because we wouldn’t need to know you were in Acacia Avenue at 12.30. All we would need to know is which zone you were in and whether you crossed a border into another zone".
But a DfT spokesman stressed this week that, contrary to a report in The Times, there was ‘no plan’ for introducing zone-based charging nationally. ‘We don’t want to be prescriptive about the form road user charging takes. We’re simply telling local authorities that we want them to come forward with innovative packages for tackling congestion that involve some kind of road user charging.’ But, he added, that given the fact that the privacy issue was a key concern of motorists, the DfT was keen that this was addressed in the pilots – but zone-based charging ‘is not the only way of doing this,’ although he could not elaborate. No conurbation, city or town should take the statement as endorsing any particular technological approach, he stressed.
An independent report produced for the West Midlands authorities into road user charging options for the conurbation finds that a zone-based system could be introduced much more quickly than a distance-based system requiring every vehicle to be fitted with a satellite positioning system. A zonal system could be delivered by 2014, but a distance-based scheme, while fairer because charges would reflect journey length, would only be possible post-2020, by which time the conurbation could be facing ‘gridlock’.
A report to Greater Manchester’s Passenger Transport Authority – West Midlands’ competitor for the transport innovation fund cash, expected to be worth £10bn by 2014 – by contrast recommended ‘differences in price depending upon destination, length, direction and timing of journeys’. The business cases for Transport Innovation Fund packages are required to be submitted by July.

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Officials seek road charging system that calms "big brother" fears

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