Let's have a debate

Transport Minister Douglas Alexander has today decided that we need a 'debate' on the proposed idea of road charging.




The idea is simple: Every car in the UK will have a tracking device. It will know what roads you drive on, when you drive on them and, it will know how fast you are going.
You are then sent a bill every month based on the mileage you do in that month. The 'clever' bit though is that you will pay more per mile for using congested roads at congested times. Drive down a country lane a 2:00am on Sunday morning and you'll pay about 4 pence a mile. Drive on the M621 at 8:30am on Monday morning and you'll pay £1.40 for sitting in traffic.

OK it's not a simple idea at all, it's a stupidly complicated idea and most of the revenue will be lost in administration costs, but our glorious leaders think that it will cut congestion and fix the hole in the o-zone layer.

Now quite what Douglas Alexander thinks he'll achieve by having this 'debate' I'm not entirely sure. Call me naive, I'd say that having more than one million signatures on a Downing Street petition against the idea is probably enough to gauge public opinion.

You could argue that the whole idea is a non-issue anyway. I mean with 14m motorists in the UK, no political party in their right mind would alienate about 50% of the electorate. That assumes our political party leaders are in a fit state of mind however.

Road charging isn't that uncommon already. Most major river crossings are now toll roads, the imaginatively named M6Toll is one as is all of Central London. We've got two in Yorkshire, the well-known Humber Bridge, which costs £2.60 to use, and the not very well known Aldwark Bridge, which costs bugger all because nobody knows where Aldwark is.

The most likely way of charging motorists to use the roads will eventually be congestion charges like those in London and Leeds has got that covered as well, or at least, we used to.

As part of the "Supertram deal", Leeds put itself forward to pilot the trial for congestion charges. As a result cameras and detecting equipment was erected on all major routes in South Leeds, tracking every number plate that entered the city with volunteer vehicles also having RFID sensors fitted in them.
Whilst it was merely a trail, HM tax collector could easily start sending out bills to West Yorkshire's motorists, just with the flick of a switch.
Anyway, when the Supertram idea was chucked in the waste paper bin and when the council realised that about £45m had been wasted, the cameras came down in a defiant two-fingered salute back to Westminster.

Of course, I could all go on about how road charging wouldn't be so bad if we all had an alternative to driving but I don't want to be responsible for blocking the blogger server.