We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy.

[chesters1]

I was watching the Minister for Transport debating(?) on TV the other day. He was saying that there are three ways that they can tell where you drive. Your car didn't have to be chipped. he went on to say that, as technology advances, they would use other means to determining how much you owe. I got the feeling that the 'technology' he was referring to hadn't been invented yet! I got the same feeling from the e-mail today. I wonder if the source of this 'technology' is the same one that provided 'proof' of WMD.

 

John.

any speed camera that uses numberplate recognition can dob you in but these are rarely seen on non motorway roads or outside city centers and would be the first to be employed to charge you.

speed cameras are "supposed" to make safer drivers and "should" only be used in blackspots with at least 2 deaths ,once they change the law this "technology" could be in every street in britain ......for YOUR "safety" ofcourse!

once they are there then for "safety" (ofcourse) they will price you off the road ,after all if your not driving you cant knock people over ,safety has many money grabbing powers yet along with hundreds of other excuses drawn up by consultants paid by money raised not lives saved.

 

I wonder if the source of this 'technology' is the same one that provided 'proof' of WMD.

 

no that was deliberate lying .lying and government need no technology to propagate it !it comes naturally! technology only makes it easier to fool more suckers more of the time

Edited February 21, 2007 by chesters1

[Colin Brett]

Its no good ............ I cant resist joining in, and yep I work for DfT! So no new roads eh? where shall I start, without referring to our info, how about £1bn a year on new roads cos thats how much is spent, and no they are not cheap! A30 Bodmin Indian queens, M6 toll, M6 Carlisle to Guardsmill, Weeford to Faseley,M42 ATM, M5 and M4 widening to name but a few, I could go on but admittedly these are Trunk roads not the local highways that we drive on the most. The trouble is even if you double rail capacity you only take out one years worth of traffic growth. given that we cant just keep building and building new roads, nor afford it something has got to be done. The trouble is we all think that we are not part of the problem nor part of the solution but we are. Pricing roads higher at peak times has to be a good idea to spread the load, better than closing a slip road because the motorway is full, which is also under research. Forget the global warming issue for a moment and put aside the example setting issue, if we dont do something soon none of us will be driving anywhere at any speed!! .......... or maybe thats the answer let congestion be the catalyst.

 

Only 1bn spent on new roads?? What happened to the rest of the taxes we pay as motorists?

 

Where I live, more money is spent closing roads than building new ones!

 

I thought the M6 toll road was built with private money?? [i could of course be wrong]

 

Last week the schools in this area were closed for half term, result, NO CONGESTION!!! So why do we need road charging? Just change school timetables.

 

Perhaps keeping the population in check would help cut congestion as well.

 

Colin

[kleinboet]

I received an email today from the PM and replied (as if he is going to read it!!! ) that why all this difficulty add the tax to the price of petrol and it becomes a FAIR tax!!!

And why can't he add the road tax to petrol prices too - he xcan turn from villan to hero overnight!!

[Peter]

I also received my e-mail from Mr B-liar. I sent him a one word reply. It sort of ryhmes with those things in boats that support the oars. My wife also received one, so I replied for her as well. This reply involved a pineapple and a twisting motion.

sufficiet to say I was not vastly impressed

[Dan]

Only 1bn spent on new roads?? What happened to the rest of the taxes we pay as motorists?

 

Where I live, more money is spent closing roads than building new ones!

 

I thought the M6 toll road was built with private money?? [i could of course be wrong]

 

Last week the schools in this area were closed for half term, result, NO CONGESTION!!! So why do we need road charging? Just change school timetables.

 

Perhaps keeping the population in check would help cut congestion as well.

 

Colin

 

 

That's 1bn on new Motorways and Trunk roads, it doesn't include maintenance or local roads. M6 toll was constructed with private money but required a combination of Public/Private resources to get it built. Interestingly the cost of most DBFO (privately financed built roads and other projects) is shown on public balance sheets as a total cost for finance/accounting reasons.

 

But you are of course right, we pay far more in tax via road fund licence, vat, car tax and fuel tax etc than is ever spent on the roads, but if you accept that the money is needed as a whole then if it isn't raised there it will be raised somewhere else.

 

While I don't agree with road charging on top of all the other taxes, it seems right to me that there should be a higher cost for travelling at peak times in congested areas, we accept it on the trains after all. The trouble is it will require flexible work patterns, reinstating school buses etc etc, but perhaps that's the answer?

 

Dan

[Steve Walker]

But you are of course right, we pay far more in tax via road fund licence, vat, car tax and fuel tax etc than is ever spent on the roads, but if you accept that the money is needed as a whole then if it isn't raised there it will be raised somewhere else.

 

Do you not think mode of transport is a somewhat arbitrary way of deciding who pays how much towards the cost of running the country?

 

While I don't agree with road charging on top of all the other taxes, it seems right to me that there should be a higher cost for travelling at peak times in congested areas, we accept it on the trains after all. The trouble is it will require flexible work patterns, reinstating school buses etc etc, but perhaps that's the answer?

 

There's more than one way of looking at it. At the moment, access to the roads is rationed by queuing. There is an argument that queuing is the fairest way of allocating the resource, given that we all get 24 hours in the day, prince or pauper. The proposal is to ration it by ability to pay instead. Those who can't afford to pay will be priced off the roads to shorten the journeys of those who can. That's the simple point of the exercise. I think it's an ironic approach from a nominally socialist government to the question of how you ration access to a publicly owned resource; I wonder when they will apply the same principle to NHS waiting lists?

 

No doubt that road pricing will be the most economically efficient way of utilising roadspace, letting market forces have their way usually is (though there are undoubtedly cheaper, lower-tech ways of doing it). Whether it's fair or not is a different question and depends on what your understanding of fairness is.