Volunteers will be driving force for road charging

30 January 2008

Volunteer drivers testing road-user charging (RUC) technology options will be running up ‘surrogate’ bills by summer 2008, the Department for Transport’s newly-appointed road pricing framework division head pledged this week.

Speaking at the 2008 EU RUC conference in London, Phil Carey hoped public involvement would give the case for RUC ‘increased profile’. T

he trials, to be spread over two years, would aim to show that a complete, end-to-end, interoperable charging system could be ‘fair, accurate, trustworthy and deter evasion’, Carey said. Satellite-based time/distance/place (TDP) charging could be one option. It remained on the official agenda, although the DfT does not feel confident enough yet to move towards it.

Contracts to be awarded would cover RUC service provision, certification and verification, and driver compliance. The DfT would specify the outcomes it expected, but leave private-sector contractors free to develop solutions.

‘Industry says it has the capability,’ said Carey, ‘and we want to see a new, multiple-supplier sector emerging’.

Key technical criteria will include systems’ ability to discriminate – for example, between passenger cars and commercial vehicles, and between levels of environmental performance.

The existing DVLA register will also come under scrutiny, to ensure it is fit for purpose as the ‘cornerstone of the enforcement process’. In order to drive the RUC agenda forward, the DfT is also launching a new interoperability forum, to engage stakeholders,and help users make sense of what it hopes will be increasing numbers of local schemes.

But, Carey warned, this should not be seen as the precursor of a national scheme. Discrimination would also be key to the EC’s new Intelligent Charging (Eurovignette) Directive, to be transposed into UK law by June 2008, said the EC’s Szabolcs Schmidt. European schemes would have to allow charging variations to reflect, for example, levels of congestion.

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