Publication February 1997 The Daily Usage Charge
Paying for highway usage
CARS SPELL TROUBLE. On the road transport front, the Tory Government is in
political trouble. In tackling traffic levels, the ideal is that carrots should
come before sticks. Public transport should ideally be improved before the use
of the private car is restrained. But the Government cannot find any way
of doing that. All current DETR proposals put coercion first, and that is
bad news electorally. There is only one idea that would achieve both
objectives simultaneously, favouring public transport and disfavouring
the private car, at a stroke.
EVERY VEHICLE travelling on the Queen's highway should pay a
flat-rate Daily Usage Charge. Not a congestion
charge. Not a motorway toll. Not a mere fee for crossing bridges, using
tunnels. The driver of every vehicle found on any part of the public highway
system during any weekday should pay a fixed-charge for that use, regardless
of journey-length. Society has already accepted the concept of being charged
to use the public highway for parking, with charges rising to
£3-per-hour for on-street parking in central London. The time has come to
pay for moving. Daily Usage Charge would complete the picture.
THE PUBLIC HIGHWAY NETWORK represents an invaluable public resource, constructed
over centuries at huge expense to the public purse. Its use should be paid for.
The daily flat-rates should be realistic, say £5 for cars and £25 for commercial
vehicles, with exemption for buses, coaches and taxis. There would be compensating
tax reductions: Vehicle Excise Duty abolished, Fuel Duties reduced, perhaps Diesel
Fuel Duty even abolished.
NO CHARGE would be payable for night-time use of the highways (6.00 pm to 6.00 am, weekdays)
or for Saturday or Sunday use. The system would be UK-wide, in exactly the same form,
thus avoiding all problems of local competitiveness. All foreign vehicles using the
roads would pay the same as UK vehicles, satisfying the road haulage lobby. As the
use of any highway would generate the same charge, there would be no
"diversion effect", from motorways to the older, superseded roads. Rather, the contrary
would be true: drivers, all paying a flat-rate, would seek to use the best and most
modern roads - "to get their money's-worth".
THIS UNIVERSAL SYSTEM would not require expensive electronic monitoring. Paper tickets
could be issued daily through terminals (the National Lottery terminals would do nicely,
with supplementary programming). Many urban parking systems already rely on issuing
paper tickets through local commercial outlets, and DUC tickets could be
sold that way, spreading extra trade
THE EFFECT of the Daily Usage Charge would be to slash the use of the
car for most minor journeys. As they are among the most polluting, the measure would
be welcomed by many, as an environmentally measure. To pay £5 extra to make a major
journey would be acceptable, given the offsetting tax cuts. But to pay £5 simply
to go to-and-fro school or to the local shops each day would be unacceptable; and
for many people, an extra £25-per-week for commuting-to-work would be unthinkable.
There would therefore be an immediate boom in bus/coach usage, in walking; also rail
commuting, where the facilities were available. Buses and taxis, being part of the
public-transport system and therefore tax-free, would experience a major traffic-increase.
FOR THOSE DETERMINED to avoid the Daily Usage Charge altogether, they
could either travel at the weekend or overnight when the highway network is under-used.
Those who wanted a tax-free drive (young people, students, rebels of all ages, and
anyone with spare time) could simply travel at night, and enjoy "cheating the taxman".
Pressure for increased road-construction would be eased, by increasing night-time usage:
certain commercial movements would be re-scheduled for night-time, to avoid the
£125-per-week charge.
WITH 35m vehicles
anticipate by 2015, the time has come to make a decisive "change of system". Vehicle-drivers
would soon get used to the idea of "buying a ticket" to use the public highway: with all
other modes of transport, some form of advance planning is accepted as the norm.
Concessions would probably have to be made for Old Age Pensioners, disabled drivers,
and the rural lobby. And all occasional drivers would be happy in the knowledge that
for the periods when they did not use their car, they would be paying no tax at all: insurance
companies would even invent new policies to cover (say) "52 days use per year",
engendering a new insurance market. The new system would have both winners and losers.
But there would be a lot of winners.
Whatever the concessions, the Daily Usage Charge would be the most enormous revenue-earner
for the Treasury. And it would at a stroke transform the future of the bus/taxi industry,
by immediately inducing higher passenger-demand. The Daily Usage Charge would
signal a step-change in the management of the nation's transportation system, encouraging
drivers to treat car-usage as a scarce resource. That, in the long run, would be the
biggest gain of all.
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