Could a pay-per-use road charging scheme powered by vehicle data reporting be viable?

[NotATrainspott]

None of what you’ve written changes that tax is about getting money. Any societal stuff is just spin.

The problem is reducing revenue - so as with they did for Road Tax, they up it without regard to logic. They’ll do the same to where we do “fuel” the vehicles from. Far easier.

The usage of the roads, congestion and pollution are just layers that habeen added - it is not why this revenue collection needs to happen.

It doesn’t matter if the tax makes no sense as I illustrated with VAT. Stamp Duty makes it harder and disincentivises moving home yet for decades the Government has had a “get on yer bike” mentality that we seek opportunity.Death duties? Why? What has society or the Govt done to earn taking a portion of wealth given the death costs fall on the estate anyway - the answer now, as ever, is nothing. It’s just a point in time that their assets can be easily assessed and they get away with it because the person doesn’t need it anymore and the inheritors cant complain as they are still getting something.

Your own post illustrates the problem, rural roads would be lower priced. Why? They cost more to maintain and urban road costs can be amortised over so many more users.
Such an argument is impossible to even have for every mile of road.

You've brought up the example of Stamp Duty, which is good. It is 100% true that it is a bad tax, and the amount of revenue it creates is dwarfed by the economic inefficiencies it creates. Charging people money to move from one home to another means more people live in homes which are inappropriate for them - e.g. older people not downsizing, people not moving closer to their work.

What you're asking for is a new road tax system which creates even more of these sorts of nonsense disincentives. However, these disincentives and inefficiencies are exactly the issues which you've just dismissed as 'spin'. Congestion is inefficient. People making unnecessary journeys means slowing down the journeys which are necessary. Pollution is inefficient, because in the end the NHS ends up having to pay for medical treatment for the people who suffer from it while these people are less able to make a living to drive the economy and pay taxes. Road accidents are inefficient since they tie up emergency service resources.

The main difference vs Stamp Duty is that the inefficiencies created are more obvious as negative externalities. Congestion, pollution and accidents are all things which are easy to point out as being bad. People not moving from one house to another just because of Stamp Duty isn't anywhere near as obvious. It's almost a bit odd that you've managed to notice more subtle inefficiencies while completely dismissing the more obvious ones! Is that because Stamp Duty is a separately applied state tax which is inefficient, rather than an indirect LACK of taxation which has a negative impact?

Creating other taxes to replace road taxes can have similar bad-but-somewhat-subtle effects as Stamp Duty. Make the road tax a pure mileage charge and you will make life worse for rural areas. It's not a specific 'Rural Area Tax' but it has the same impact, even if it's not as directly felt. We don't want to tax rural areas unfairly. There's a reason rural areas end up getting subsidies - countries that don't make life easy enough for their rural hinterlands end up becoming city-states instead!

The reason we don't want to tax rural roads as much as urban ones is that rural road journeys tend to be less viable to be made by any other means. We like it when people move around. People moving around is typically a sign that things are going well and people are able to do what they want. Moving around means you've got money to spend and you're able to make money. In cities though, these same benefits of mobility are possible by walking, cycling or taking public transport at far less overall societal cost.

Your suggestion of an invasion of privacy for health (a) isn’t actually happening, (b) is very different than one for revenue replacement. That should be obvious. It also serves to reinforce the libertarian arguments on this thread.

Ref Covid, the blunt reality is that once a load of people have died, and the rest have had it, normal life will resume. Prep for another will merely be medical capacity and training - a wider volunteer system perhaps and many of the ad hoc things that have been done in recent weeks, being formalised in planning, exercises and education.

If you think this will green light bringing in authoritarian surveillance more widely you are naieve at best - the backlash would annihilate anyone proposing it. If anything peoples tolerance will have been exhausted by this and the sense of unfairness if that is exploited would be huge.

If you genuinely believe this, then you haven't been paying attention. I'm quite sorry.

We are currently in the 'Hammer' stage of the pandemic. This is when governments have put in place the most stringest possible measures to reduce the R value (the number of other people infected by one person). The bad stats of infections and deaths are starting to flatten out across the world because 3 weeks ago people stopped infecting one another. If R is now solidly below 1 on average, then the infections will die out, as more people will recover or die from the illness then get infected. China has managed it more-or-less completely. The number of people who are infected and able to transmit will drop down to 10s or 100s across the country.

If we then go straight back to normal, then the R rate will be the same as it was before. We'll end up in a similar position to 3 weeks before the lockdown, as the virus starts to spread again. By the time we've noticed the death rate has picked up and hospitals are starting to suffer again, the only thing that will be possible to stem the pandemic will be another full lockdown.

Going from lockdown to lockdown is not at all possible. We need to reduce R, but without the complete stoppage of everyday life. There are some ways in which this can happen with minimal effect. For instance, it is extremely likely that everyone in public or on public transport will be made to wear a mask. It doesn't need to be a medical-grade mask for it to have a big impact on the R rate, and it doesn't interfere with most aspects of everyday life.

The problem is that we know masks are not enough. People aren't going to wear them permanently, even inside their homes. There will still be many other vectors where people will be able to spread it. R will still be above 1, which means that an epidemic is inevitable. It might take longer to take hold, but it'll still take off with exponential growth.

With a lockdown being unacceptable for months and months and months, both governments and people will demand something else. They want the cheapest possible way to reduce R below 1. Nothing else matters to governments and people. We want to return to bars and restaurants and cinemas and being able to hug our grandparents. We don't want to be afraid of the very real and not at all hypothetical risk that our loved ones, or ourselves, are going to die.

Apple and Google have just released their plans to implement APIs in Android and iOS which will make it easy for public health authorities to build apps which will do some semblance of privacy-safe contact tracing. What contact tracing means is that once we know we have a live infection, it will be possible for us to very easily lock down just the few people who are most likely to have been infected. Since we can do it on a fine-grained individual level, we can jump in with testing and other measures to stop the spread even more than we have today. For instance, it's not practical for everyone in the UK who is self-isolating to get all groceries delivered and not to have a reason to leave the house. Inevitably in households with symptoms people are still interacting with the rest of society in a way which is necessary for their survival but has a major impact on the R rate. With mass app-based contract tracing, we can have as few people as possible locked down, and those who are locked down can have the absolute best attention. Hell, you could even make it that we take them away to a place with a private garden and enough space to isolate so that we don't have the problems of poorer people and those in urban areas being crammed into small spaces for too long.

The second half to this is that testing becomes a matter of public health too. Going up to someone and jamming a swab up their nose would qualify as assault. In normal circumstances, it is acceptable for people to reject medical interventions against them unless we deem them to be incapable of making their own decisions. In a pandemic scenario, we cannot allow some people to reject being tested for coronavirus. It would be rational for people to reject testing - being tested and found positive, even if asympomatic, means their life would be turned upside down for a few weeks. The only way we can make mass testing and contract tracing work is if people have no right to refuse a test. This includes people who have individually done nothing to justify that treatment, as they may have picked it up from someone else through airborne droplets without having endangered themselves first (e.g. went and licked a shopping trolley handle).

The masses are going to demand the imposition of the contract tracing app and mandatory testing with the same zeal that they have demanded the lockdown. I think many libertarian politicians are a bit shocked at how 93% of the population are in favour of restricting their most basic rights according to a YouGov poll. We didn't impose the lockdown early enough because the government thought the population would reject it.

 

[AM9]

None of what you’ve written changes that tax is about getting money. Any societal stuff is just spin.

The problem is reducing revenue - so as with they did for Road Tax, they up it without regard to logic. They’ll do the same to where we do “fuel” the vehicles from. Far easier.

The usage of the roads, congestion and pollution are just layers that habeen added - it is not why this revenue collection needs to happen.

It doesn’t matter if the tax makes no sense as I illustrated with VAT. Stamp Duty makes it harder and disincentivises moving home yet for decades the Government has had a “get on yer bike” mentality that we seek opportunity.Death duties? Why? What has society or the Govt done to earn taking a portion of wealth given the death costs fall on the estate anyway - the answer now, as ever, is nothing. It’s just a point in time that their assets can be easily assessed and they get away with it because the person doesn’t need it anymore and the inheritors cant complain as they are still getting something.

Your own post illustrates the problem, rural roads would be lower priced. Why? They cost more to maintain and urban road costs can be amortised over so many more users.
Such an argument is impossible to even have for every mile of road.

Your suggestion of an invasion of privacy for health (a) isn’t actually happening, (b) is very different than one for revenue replacement. That should be obvious. It also serves to reinforce the libertarian arguments on this thread.

Ref Covid, the blunt reality is that once a load of people have died, and the rest have had it, normal life will resume. Prep for another will merely be medical capacity and training - a wider volunteer system perhaps and many of the ad hoc things that have been done in recent weeks, being formalised in planning, exercises and education.

If you think this will green light bringing in authoritarian surveillance more widely you are naieve at best - the backlash would annihilate anyone proposing it. If anything peoples tolerance will have been exhausted by this and the sense of unfairness if that is exploited would be huge.

There is no such thing as 'road tax', all vehicle tax (car tax) is based on the impact on the environment and other citizen's health.

We do at last seem to be discussing in this thread the concept of fairness in relation the impact of private transport on those who do not or cannot use it themselves. Changes in the future, as NotATrainspott has described will be a chance to break the 'I want to drive as much as I want as cheaply as possible, irrespective of the impact on others' selfishness that is so common now. It is clear from you points that tax is just a burden to you, and presun=mably, you haven't thought about why tax is necessary in society in general and the UK specifically.
Although off topic, your comment about the 'blunt reality' of COVID-19 indicates to me a cavalier about that problem as well.

 

[Meerkat]

ANPR is everywhere. Speed cameras, almost all commercial car parks (my local Sainsbury’s has had it for at least 15 years), all the trunk highway network, entrance to most settlements of any size (my parents rural village for example). I’ve just done a 6 mile return trip to a supermarket, and will have been ANPRd at least 8 times, and that’s without using a trunk road, and not including the 2 police traffic cars I drive past.

Blimey, you must live in a bad area!!
Only average speed cameras are ANPR and do they actually hold the data? They are only interested in the number plate until you go through the exit camera. If they do then surely that’s a data Protection breach!
I would guess Sainsbury’s cameras won’t be connected to the database - just send offending number plates to a collection unit? Again keeping the data would be a data protection breach.
i only see the ones that ring my town, they don’t know where you went inside that ring and don’t cover the suburbs. And again I think it was outrageous that the ANPR system was set up without public consultation- they just appeared almost overnight - so I don’t accept them as a precedent.

 

[Peter Sarf]

It might be worth reading more of the thread. I've pointed out fairly comprehensively that you cannot rely on the taxation of fuel as a proxy for vehicle use. This is the system we have today, but it's about to implode with the dawn of mass-market electric vehicles. The more you cling to the fuel-based tax system, the greater the distortion it will cause in favour of electric vehicles, giving you even less control.

A tracking system works on the fundamentals. A given vehicle was at a given place at a given time. How that vehicle is powered is irrelevant. The only way to pay less for using your car is to use your car less, which is the intended effect.

The example you raise of parking charges is an interesting one, because it also shows how attempts at resolving this without a tracking system can and will result in perverse outcomes. If you make the upfront fixed costs of motoring high in an attempt to dissuade vehicle use, it will do two things:

• Some people who can't justify or afford that cost will no longer be able to use a vehicle at all, even for rare journeys where it is the most effective option. This is bad.
• The people who can afford and justify that fixed cost will then be incentivised to use their vehicle as much as possible to gain as much benefit from that fixed cost as they can. This is made worse if you no longer have efficient ways of taxing incremental usage.

There's nothing wrong with someone buying a £20k car and leaving it on their driveway, gathering dust. For the rest of society, that's no worse than someone going and buying themselves a £20k grand piano and never playing it. If you are willing to pay for the land/space used to store that useless £20k lump of metal, then you can do whatever you want.

(Obviously this now gets into issues about the efficient taxation of the finite resource of land - this is resolved with a Land Value Tax).

If you are daft enough to pay the parking charges required for your £20k lump of steel to sit, unused, on a street parking space then that's also your prerogative. It's not different to the charges councils impose for skips to be on the street.

The cost of private vehicle happens when you start driving it around. We need to tax that incremental use, and the ultimate way of doing that is to track usage of vehicles at all times.



We already know the nature of roads and streets, so setting a charge will not be difficult. Google Maps already does it when you plan a route. It knows that it should prefer motorways, then trunk roads, then main roads, and only then do smaller routes.

Yes I did rather scan read to catch up .

I believe in ecology but we have steadily moved further and further away from it. Go back about forty years and there were very few shopping areas outside town centres. Now the retail industry is inside out. The councils and government have encouraged car use by allowing out of town shopping centres. For Croydon the big supermarkets and DIY stores have very little public transport access. Car parking is free and plentiful. Town centre shopping is dying in front of us - not helped by the internet. It is impossible to expect people to give up their car nowadays.

When I first moved to Croydon (1988) there were supermarkets in the town centre that I could use whilst walking home from East Croydon station. I went without a car because I had just moved from the countryside where I had needed a car. Eventually Sainsburys moved to an out of town site and I had to use a car to get groceries. Ironically after twenty odd years as an underused space the old Sainsburys is now a Lidl - and I find it quicker and easier to find what I want in Lidl.

None of what you’ve written changes that tax is about getting money. Any societal stuff is just spin.

The problem is reducing revenue - so as with they did for Road Tax, they up it without regard to logic. They’ll do the same to where we do “fuel” the vehicles from. Far easier.

The usage of the roads, congestion and pollution are just layers that habeen added - it is not why this revenue collection needs to happen.

It doesn’t matter if the tax makes no sense as I illustrated with VAT. Stamp Duty makes it harder and disincentivises moving home yet for decades the Government has had a “get on yer bike” mentality that we seek opportunity.Death duties? Why? What has society or the Govt done to earn taking a portion of wealth given the death costs fall on the estate anyway - the answer now, as ever, is nothing. It’s just a point in time that their assets can be easily assessed and they get away with it because the person doesn’t need it anymore and the inheritors cant complain as they are still getting something.

Your own post illustrates the problem, rural roads would be lower priced. Why? They cost more to maintain and urban road costs can be amortised over so many more users.
Such an argument is impossible to even have for every mile of road.

Your suggestion of an invasion of privacy for health (a) isn’t actually happening, (b) is very different than one for revenue replacement. That should be obvious. It also serves to reinforce the libertarian arguments on this thread.

Ref Covid, the blunt reality is that once a load of people have died, and the rest have had it, normal life will resume. Prep for another will merely be medical capacity and training - a wider volunteer system perhaps and many of the ad hoc things that have been done in recent weeks, being formalised in planning, exercises and education.

If you think this will green light bringing in authoritarian surveillance more widely you are naieve at best - the backlash would annihilate anyone proposing it. If anything peoples tolerance will have been exhausted by this and the sense of unfairness if that is exploited would be huge.

I am afraid so. Taxes are a way of bringing in revenue for the state. Charging road use too highly is counter productive. TfL transport policies are paid for by road use. If everyone switched to bus and train the fares would have to go up !.

Regarding a more robust health system. How long before people forget the history lesson I wonder ?.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

If everyone is now going to be using electricity for heating, you can't trivially tax large electricity use, because then you're taxing people heating their homes!

The principle of taxing people for heating their homes was accepted over 25 years ago when VAT was imposed on gas and electricity domestic energy supply.

 

[paul1609]

I think the bigger issue is that you need to travel so far to London to work (even if not regular). The London centric nature of the economy is what is going to ruin the country. We need to get "good" jobs back into the regions and stop the concentration on London.

We've been going to northern Uni open days with our son. He's wanting to do the "placement" year and nearly all the unis have said most of the placements will be in London. It's crazy.

There used to be head office and regional offices of banks, big law firms, national accountancy firms, insurance firms etc in smaller cities and large towns - nearly all that's gone and most are now centralised in London - that has meant no decent jobs in the regions.

I'd like to hope that we'll start to see changes during the fallout and reconstruction of the economy after Covid-19 is over.

I'm old enough to have worked in one of the regional offices of one of the major insurance firms. The jobs that were there haven't moved to London they've been replaced by technology. Everything has been moved on line because its cheaper. My Bank is in theory in Edinburgh but all the automated letters come from Leeds. I've only had to speak to a person once in the last 2 years and that was someone in a call centre in Dingwall. My life insurance is in Reading and my pickup truck insurance in Cardiff. To get back on topic the National Rail Enquiries people I used to talk to were in Brighton now they're in India.
Covid isn't going to change the advance of technology.

 

[AM9]

Blimey, you must live in a bad area!!
Only average speed cameras are ANPR and do they actually hold the data? They are only interested in the number plate until you go through the exit camera. If they do then surely that’s a data Protection breach!
I would guess Sainsbury’s cameras won’t be connected to the database - just send offending number plates to a collection unit? Again keeping the data would be a data protection breach.
i only see the ones that ring my town, they don’t know where you went inside that ring and don’t cover the suburbs. And again I think it was outrageous that the ANPR system was set up without public consultation- they just appeared almost overnight - so I don’t accept them as a precedent.

There are ANPR cameras on each of the road entrances to the centre of St Allbans, - I think I've seen at least 7 of them, and although they are probably for security reasons, the city has a major traffic problem with a high proportion of residents using private cars for quite trivial local journeys so they are of use there. There are also plenty of ANPR cameras in commmercial car parks, retail parks and I think even St Albans City station. As far as holding the data, who knows? The fact is that the number plates are machine read and the information is stored somewhere, so by simple legislation, those data can be deployed in the interest of the public, even that which is held by commercial organisations which is much more unjustifiably acquired.

 

[Meerkat]

There are ANPR cameras on each of the road entrances to the centre of St Allbans, - I think I've seen at least 7 of them, and although they are probably for security reasons, the city has a major traffic problem with a high proportion of residents using private cars for quite trivial local journeys so they are of use there. There are also plenty of ANPR cameras in commmercial car parks, retail parks and I think even St Albans City station. As far as holding the data, who knows? The fact is that the number plates are machine read and the information is stored somewhere, so by simple legislation, those data can be deployed in the interest of the public, even that which is held by commercial organisations which is much more unjustifiably acquired.

As I said a ring of ANPR but little if anything inside or outside that ring.
assuming the number plates are covered by data protection they should be deleted as soon as you leave a car park as they don’t need that data any more.

 

[Peter Sarf]

There are ANPR cameras on each of the road entrances to the centre of St Allbans, - I think I've seen at least 7 of them, and although they are probably for security reasons, the city has a major traffic problem with a high proportion of residents using private cars for quite trivial local journeys so they are of use there. There are also plenty of ANPR cameras in commmercial car parks, retail parks and I think even St Albans City station. As far as holding the data, who knows? The fact is that the number plates are machine read and the information is stored somewhere, so by simple legislation, those data can be deployed in the interest of the public, even that which is held by commercial organisations which is much more unjustifiably acquired.

You have just jolted my brain. Of course the school run is a BIG culprit. When the schools are off the drive is so much quicker.

Makes me think, what we need is a tax based on how far the journey is. I mean if it is a short journey hammer the car. My commute to work is 3.5 miles. It would be easy by bus if it was one bus but it involves a change and the first bus I use is the first of the day - except when I have to start early or on a Sunday when the service starts too late !. Ten minutes by car versus 40 minutes by walk, bus, bus, walk. I used to do it before I broke my leg 18 months ago. Now I have got used to the car I cannot face the bus anymore. I have walked the whole journey in an hour via out of town shops but now I am 60.....

 

[AM9]

As I said a ring of ANPR but little if anything inside or outside that ring.
assuming the number plates are covered by data protection they should be deleted as soon as you leave a car park as they don’t need that data any more.

Unless there has been a (perceived) violation of the displayed rules for the car park. They can then be retained until the matter is closed, by the action being confirmed a within the rule, by the offender paying the penalty charge or when the matter is concluded by a court hearing.
However this thread is discussing the level of ANPR that already exists and it's ability to render additional information about road use by vehicles which can legally be repurposed for other matters. In fact any photgraphic evidence of activities in a public space can be requested by a government enforcement agency even if it was gathered by private equipment.

 

[Bald Rick]

Blimey, you must live in a bad area!!
Only average speed cameras are ANPR and do they actually hold the data? They are only interested in the number plate until you go through the exit camera. If they do then surely that’s a data Protection breach!
I would guess Sainsbury’s cameras won’t be connected to the database - just send offending number plates to a collection unit? Again keeping the data would be a data protection breach.
i only see the ones that ring my town, they don’t know where you went inside that ring and don’t cover the suburbs. And again I think it was outrageous that the ANPR system was set up without public consultation- they just appeared almost overnight - so I don’t accept them as a precedent.

There are ANPR cameras on each of the road entrances to the centre of St Allbans, - I think I've seen at least 7 of them, and although they are probably for security reasons, the city has a major traffic problem with a high proportion of residents using private cars for quite trivial local journeys so they are of use there. There are also plenty of ANPR cameras in commmercial car parks, retail parks and I think even St Albans City station. As far as holding the data, who knows? The fact is that the number plates are machine read and the information is stored somewhere, so by simple legislation, those data can be deployed in the interest of the public, even that which is held by commercial organisations which is much more unjustifiably acquired.

What AM9 said.

With the addition that almost every speed camera now has ANPR, as are most car parks with any form of enforcement. And as I said before, plenty of other detectors not used for enforcement.

As I said a ring of ANPR but little if anything inside or outside that ring.
assuming the number plates are covered by data protection they should be deleted as soon as you leave a car park as they don’t need that data any more.

But this is the point. The data is collected. I can’t vouch for how GDPR works in this respect, And in St Albans’ case it’s a lot more than a ring - there’s multiple ANPR on every main road in/out of the City. Of course most people don’t realise what they are, as they are not yellow with big signs saying “ANPR here!”. It’s the same everywhere.


And, still, I don’t know what you are concerned about re using this for road pricing for vehicles (not individuals).

 

[The Ham]

Some people who can't justify or afford that cost will no longer be able to use a vehicle at all, even for rare journeys where it is the most effective option. This is bad.

Why would this be bad?

Whilst there'll be problems with the loss of productivity due to needing to use travel options which aren't as suitable as going by car.

However it depends on the level of impact. For instance if by doing so it reduces congestion it could still be worth doing.

Now if this happens then there'd be more pressure for better public transport, or at least the number using it would increase leading to better bus services.

If you are daft enough to pay the parking charges required for your £20k lump of steel to sit, unused, on a street parking space then that's also your prerogative. It's not different to the charges councils impose for skips to be on the street.

That's not strictly true, in that if your car want parked there then there'd be more road space available. This could be used to provide better cycle/walking facilities.

Alternatively it could allow others to park their cars in a safe and suitable way.

 

[The Ham]

Going back to the start:
This is nothing to do with road use/congestion or pollution.

Tax is simply the Government trying to raise mo as easily as possible.

• It’s why road tax was created and has always gone into general funds.
• It’s why road tax was changed after everyone got low tax cheap vehicles and now clean ones pay more than dirtier ones.
• It’s why after the protests in the early 2000s, the Government stopped arbitrarily raising the fuel tax in the way it had previously.
• It is no different from when windows were taxed because they could walk round the (tiny) towns, stand on your doorstep, count them and demand payment.
• It’s why we pay 20% “Value Added” tax on stuff that was made in another country, shipped here and driven to the store with no “value” being added in this country at all.
• It’s why we pay 10s of £1000s when we want to move home.
• It’s why the Government takes some of our saved wealth when we die.

The problem is electric vehicle are not dependent upon an easily applied universal tax at a few discrete points because people can charge them from their homes and the money the Govt makes from energy costs is a fraction of what it makes off fuel tax. This neatly illustrates how far fuel tax has become divorced from the actual real world costs of that energy.

In effect, the Government has been caught with its hands in the “energy cost of motoring” till.
(This is something a lot of people will make very obvious once the majority of us can charge from home vs cost of fuel)

The answers are simple.

1. energy (electric) prices that jump if you use them a lot - ie charging a car daily is going to really increase your electricity consumption. I have lightbulbs and a tv off mine at the moment - 15k miles a year is going to be rather noticeable!
2. Increase annual lump sum payment for owning a car / greater purchase taxes / stamp duty style tax on any vehicle purchase incl 2nd hand.
3. Tax on battery servivcing / replacement / disposal as that is mileage linked.

Or this byzantine system of pricing every mile of road, legally requiring people to declare their whereabouts at all times and the infinite arguments that creates. Good luck, but I dont think Sir Humphrey would even have a description for how “courageous” that would be - looked at what happened to fuel tax escalator, motorway pricing and ID cards - of which this is all 3.

It depends, there's two things to consider:

How would we replace the lost taxes or are we going to cut more services?

If you tax incomes then that's going to upset everyone in one way or another.

Even if you got that past everyone then there's nothing restricting how much people use their cars, which would likely result in more congestion. This would ultimately mean that it's harder to move about and therefore harm the economy.

Secondary, given that school holiday traffic is about 90% of that if term time and the amount of congestion that is noticeable between the two, now imagine how much worse this would be if traffic volumes increased to 110% of what it is now?

Why would this happen? Well currently the cost of fuel is typically 10-15p per mile, with electric cars this would fall to typically 1-5p per mile. Therefore once you own an electric car the increased cost to drive short distances is quite low and so people wouldn't have an incentive not to drive and so would do so.

 

[The Ham]

None of what you’ve written changes that tax is about getting money. Any societal stuff is just spin.

The problem is reducing revenue - so as with they did for Road Tax, they up it without regard to logic. They’ll do the same to where we do “fuel” the vehicles from. Far easier.

The usage of the roads, congestion and pollution are just layers that habeen added - it is not why this revenue collection needs to happen.

It doesn’t matter if the tax makes no sense as I illustrated with VAT. Stamp Duty makes it harder and disincentivises moving home yet for decades the Government has had a “get on yer bike” mentality that we seek opportunity.Death duties? Why? What has society or the Govt done to earn taking a portion of wealth given the death costs fall on the estate anyway - the answer now, as ever, is nothing. It’s just a point in time that their assets can be easily assessed and they get away with it because the person doesn’t need it anymore and the inheritors cant complain as they are still getting something.

Your own post illustrates the problem, rural roads would be lower priced. Why? They cost more to maintain and urban road costs can be amortised over so many more users.
Such an argument is impossible to even have for every mile of road.

Your suggestion of an invasion of privacy for health (a) isn’t actually happening, (b) is very different than one for revenue replacement. That should be obvious. It also serves to reinforce the libertarian arguments on this thread.

Ref Covid, the blunt reality is that once a load of people have died, and the rest have had it, normal life will resume. Prep for another will merely be medical capacity and training - a wider volunteer system perhaps and many of the ad hoc things that have been done in recent weeks, being formalised in planning, exercises and education.

If you think this will green light bringing in authoritarian surveillance more widely you are naieve at best - the backlash would annihilate anyone proposing it. If anything peoples tolerance will have been exhausted by this and the sense of unfairness if that is exploited would be huge.

Stamp duty is a fairly small cost compared to the other charges involved in moving house. The bigger barrier to moving is the high cost of housing. Where I live the value of my house has nearly doubled in the last 10 years. It also means that to gain an extra bedroom by moving house it would add at least £100,000 to our mortgage. Compared to the ~£12,000 cost of stamp duty it's not a significant figure.

If houses were to reduce in value back to where they were a decade ago then stamp duty would fall. It is all part of the problem of having high housing costs.

By removing the taxes from cars (by them bring EV), then chances are you'll have a significant backlash from there being too much traffic around for people to get around.

As an extreme example. If there was limited finical cost to driving more then people would do so, this could get to the point where the ability to transport goods about becomes hard. If this gets too bad it could even lead to shortages within shops as deliveries are unable to be made.

 

[Meerkat]

With the addition that almost every speed camera now has ANPR, as are most car parks with any form of enforcement.

only average speed cameras have ANPR don’t they? And the car parks shouldn’t be storing the details

And, still, I don’t know what you are concerned about re using this for road pricing for vehicles (not individuals).

There isn’t much point continuing this if you don’t understand the need for privacy nor the potential danger of a government being able to so easily track its people.

 

[Bald Rick]

only average speed cameras have ANPR don’t they? And the car parks shouldn’t be storing the details

No, most if not all speed cameras are ANPR. They don’t go about developing photos, identifying number plates, and then looking them up on the Police National Computer. It’s all done automatically but ANPR.

I agree let’s call it a day, because I haven’t found any scenario where the use of vehicle data already collected (en masse) would cause an issue if it wasn’t applied to some form of road pricing. (Much like it already is on most road tolls in this country)

 

[Meerkat]

No, most if not all speed cameras are ANPR. They don’t go about developing photos, identifying number plates, and then looking them up on the Police National Computer. It’s all done automatically but ANPR.

I agree let’s call it a day, because I haven’t found any scenario where the use of vehicle data already collected (en masse) would cause an issue if it wasn’t applied to some form of road pricing. (Much like it already is on most road tolls in this country)

Where is the ANPR done? I though the camera sent the shots of the offenders to base, where the ANPR was done. This would be very different from them sending every plate that passed by onto a database
Not sure I understand your second paragraph - are you saying you can’t see why a government would want a record of all drivers movements, to the metre? Or can’t see why that could be a breach of civil rights?

 

[NotATrainspott]

You have just jolted my brain. Of course the school run is a BIG culprit. When the schools are off the drive is so much quicker.

Makes me think, what we need is a tax based on how far the journey is. I mean if it is a short journey hammer the car. My commute to work is 3.5 miles. It would be easy by bus if it was one bus but it involves a change and the first bus I use is the first of the day - except when I have to start early or on a Sunday when the service starts too late !. Ten minutes by car versus 40 minutes by walk, bus, bus, walk. I used to do it before I broke my leg 18 months ago. Now I have got used to the car I cannot face the bus anymore. I have walked the whole journey in an hour via out of town shops but now I am 60.....

The only way of measuring journey distance like that would be a vehicle tracking system. 10 journeys of 1 mile vs 1 journey of 10 miles - how do you tell the difference without it?

Why would this be bad?

Whilst there'll be problems with the loss of productivity due to needing to use travel options which aren't as suitable as going by car.

However it depends on the level of impact. For instance if by doing so it reduces congestion it could still be worth doing.

Now if this happens then there'd be more pressure for better public transport, or at least the number using it would increase leading to better bus services.

The problem with the fixed charge is that it creates a discontinuity in taxation at the point you fully own a vehicle. That means people who do own a vehicle benefit at the expense of people who do not, and that's easy to paint as unfair. The fewer journeys made by people not owning a car would most likely be outweighed by the more journeys being made by those with a car.

And, as I've made clear throughout this thread, it isn't a mortal sin to make a private vehicle journey. There are some trips which are only practical by private transport, and no amount of investment in public and active transport will change that. Cars work for the long tail of unlikely and complex journeys. Bicycles and walking also work for arbitrary journeys but the maximum distance, speed and carrying capacity is severely reduced.

The journeys by non-car-owners prevented by this policy could be really quite socially and economically useful and/or environmentally inexpensive. E.g. someone driving to an early shift at a factory when (even the gloriously enhanced) public transport network yet isn't running at a high enough frequency, but the roads are clear and there are no children walking to school to be run over. By forcing someone out of their car, we could very easily do more damage (e.g. forcing them to wake up earlier to catch the only bus) than we gain by them not driving. The corollary is true for the car owners making extra journeys. Any extra ones are probably possible by other means at no greater societal cost, so they don't need to drive.

That's not strictly true, in that if your car want parked there then there'd be more road space available. This could be used to provide better cycle/walking facilities.

Alternatively it could allow others to park their cars in a safe and suitable way.

Parking charges are conceptually a type of rent. There's a whole world of discussion about encouraging efficient use of land but the solution is known to be a Land Value Tax. Conceptually an LVT is the same as the state owning the 'freehold' to all land and charging rent in return for your use of the services (schools, roads, defence, etc) it provides. Private land ownership is then just the ownership of the exclusive right to occupy that space for rent, rather than the right to gain rent yourself for the value created by the state.

While the existing schemes of parking charges for public roads aren't ideal, the basic system can be used to pass on the LVT charge since the parking spaces are essentially just little pockets of land rented from the state for a few minutes at a time. The state can then decide what spaces it wants to put out for rent to maximise its own gains. We know that reducing the number of parking spaces and using that room to provide cycle paths is more efficient, so the state will have an incentive to reduce the number of them and charge more for the privilege of parking.

 

[AM9]

Where is the ANPR done? I though the camera sent the shots of the offenders to base, where the ANPR was done. This would be very different from them sending every plate that passed by onto a database ...

With modern optical image recognition developments, the plate numbers themselves can be sent directly to a central location via GSM/4g/etc.. In some towns with street wi-fi and soon almost anywhere with an expanding 5G blanket, that would be even easier, - the data package per car would be less than 100 bytes including the sender location, time of sighting, plate number itself and whatever security measures were necessary to make the system meet data protection requirements. If cars passing the location at a rate of up to one per second, the maximum data rate would be less than 1kB/s, and local buffering would ensure that delays encountered with 'difficult' to read plates, (e.g. insufficiently clean, broken or with a limited in-view time), the images could be stored locally and sent in quieter times to base for more detailed analysis.
In reality the actual additional cost of the hardware within each camera installation to do the full ANPR function would be peanuts compared with the existimng costs of a continuous power supply, a sturdy pole mounted in the ground, a weatherprood enclosure, the camera sensor, lens, power supply and it's control hardware. The computing power to do the actual recognition iseasily provided, see this project which almost does the complete image recognition task as an amateur project on a £35 educational computer:
https://circuitdigest.com/sites/default/files/License-Plate-Recognition-using-Raspberry-Pi.zip
That is how near we could be to a comprehensive, fair, road use charging network.

 

[Bald Rick]

Where is the ANPR done? I though the camera sent the shots of the offenders to base, where the ANPR was done. This would be very different from them sending every plate that passed by onto a database
Not sure I understand your second paragraph - are you saying you can’t see why a government would want a record of all drivers movements, to the metre? Or can’t see why that could be a breach of civil rights?

Re the ANPR - I don’t know, but the end result is the same, ie a times location of the identified vehicle, which is then recorded.

My second paragraph, put simply is:

1) Vehicle location data is already collected, en masse
2) In many cases it is already used for charging (toll roads, congestion charges, car park charges, car park enforcement, speed enforcement)
3) so what is the problem with using the data for more road charging, and,
4) how is identifying vehicle location a breach of civil rights?

 

[Meerkat]

Re the ANPR - I don’t know, but the end result is the same, ie a times location of the identified vehicle, which is then recorded.

My second paragraph, put simply is:

1) Vehicle location data is already collected, en masse
2) In many cases it is already used for charging (toll roads, congestion charges, car park charges, car park enforcement, speed enforcement)
3) so what is the problem with using the data for more road charging, and,
4) how is identifying vehicle location a breach of civil rights?

The end result isn’t the same - if only offenders get sent to the database then there isn’t a database of every passing car.
1) It really isn’t collected on even fraction of the level proposed
2) car park and speed camera data shouldn’t be stored, and doesn’t offer the level of detail proposed
3) The Road charging require massively detailed records of our movements
4) That is like saying what is the issue with computer monitoring, as that also isn’t directly monitoring you. We have data protection laws so there is a clear recognition of an expectation of privacy.

 

[Peter Sarf]

The only way of measuring journey distance like that would be a vehicle tracking system. 10 journeys of 1 mile vs 1 journey of 10 miles - how do you tell the difference without it?



The problem with the fixed charge is that it creates a discontinuity in taxation at the point you fully own a vehicle. That means people who do own a vehicle benefit at the expense of people who do not, and that's easy to paint as unfair. The fewer journeys made by people not owning a car would most likely be outweighed by the more journeys being made by those with a car.

And, as I've made clear throughout this thread, it isn't a mortal sin to make a private vehicle journey. There are some trips which are only practical by private transport, and no amount of investment in public and active transport will change that. Cars work for the long tail of unlikely and complex journeys. Bicycles and walking also work for arbitrary journeys but the maximum distance, speed and carrying capacity is severely reduced.

The journeys by non-car-owners prevented by this policy could be really quite socially and economically useful and/or environmentally inexpensive. E.g. someone driving to an early shift at a factory when (even the gloriously enhanced) public transport network yet isn't running at a high enough frequency, but the roads are clear and there are no children walking to school to be run over. By forcing someone out of their car, we could very easily do more damage (e.g. forcing them to wake up earlier to catch the only bus) than we gain by them not driving. The corollary is true for the car owners making extra journeys. Any extra ones are probably possible by other means at no greater societal cost, so they don't need to drive.



Parking charges are conceptually a type of rent. There's a whole world of discussion about encouraging efficient use of land but the solution is known to be a Land Value Tax. Conceptually an LVT is the same as the state owning the 'freehold' to all land and charging rent in return for your use of the services (schools, roads, defence, etc) it provides. Private land ownership is then just the ownership of the exclusive right to occupy that space for rent, rather than the right to gain rent yourself for the value created by the state.

While the existing schemes of parking charges for public roads aren't ideal, the basic system can be used to pass on the LVT charge since the parking spaces are essentially just little pockets of land rented from the state for a few minutes at a time. The state can then decide what spaces it wants to put out for rent to maximise its own gains. We know that reducing the number of parking spaces and using that room to provide cycle paths is more efficient, so the state will have an incentive to reduce the number of them and charge more for the privilege of parking.

Actually if it is going to cost even more for me to live in London/Croydon then I will move out of London and pay to commute in - that will definitely be by car if the current job. So I will use my car more AND for longer journeys. I originally moved to London to make commuting easier.

The problem is that over the years we have developed out of town shopping, recreation and work. In Corydon there are fewer larger DIY stores - infact there is none in the middle of Croydon, no hardware at all. That has reinforced the need for a car. My main reasons for having a car are for DIY, shifting peoples stuff and my annual music festival. Public transport is never going to work for the music festival. DIY could be achieved with deliveries if more outlets did reasonable deliveries (B&Q I am looking at you).

We really need to re-design our way of working, shopping and recreation if we are going to to have a sustainable future. That means not turning town centres into dormitories.

 

[bussnapperwm]

Surely charge by age of vehicle×age of owner×2 (for electric) or ×10 (for all other fuel types) with older vehicles/older drivers getting the lowest taxation rates (with no heritage exemption.) Also I'd have Audi/VW products have a double charge and any fleet vehicles having a 10× owner multiplier

That way the young businessman who can afford the newest VW would pay more than the elderly chap who owns a 55 plate.

 

[The Ham]

The end result isn’t the same - if only offenders get sent to the database then there isn’t a database of every passing car.
1) It really isn’t collected on even fraction of the level proposed
2) car park and speed camera data shouldn’t be stored, and doesn’t offer the level of detail proposed
3) The Road charging require massively detailed records of our movements
4) That is like saying what is the issue with computer monitoring, as that also isn’t directly monitoring you. We have data protection laws so there is a clear recognition of an expectation of privacy.

Any future government could however make small changes so that the speed cameras are storing every numberplate which passes by and enter would be little that anyone could do. Which is the same as what you are saying about tracking cars.

Yes it wouldn't be as straightforward as the tracking system, nor would it be as accurate. However the ability of the state to be able to track you would be just as real.

 

[Peter Sarf]

With modern optical image recognition developments, the plate numbers themselves can be sent directly to a central location via GSM/4g/etc.. In some towns with street wi-fi and soon almost anywhere with an expanding 5G blanket, that would be even easier, - the data package per car would be less than 100 bytes including the sender location, time of sighting, plate number itself and whatever security measures were necessary to make the system meet data protection requirements. If cars passing the location at a rate of up to one per second, the maximum data rate would be less than 1kB/s, and local buffering would ensure that delays encountered with 'difficult' to read plates, (e.g. insufficiently clean, broken or with a limited in-view time), the images could be stored locally and sent in quieter times to base for more detailed analysis.
In reality the actual additional cost of the hardware within each camera installation to do the full ANPR function would be peanuts compared with the existimng costs of a continuous power supply, a sturdy pole mounted in the ground, a weatherprood enclosure, the camera sensor, lens, power supply and it's control hardware. The computing power to do the actual recognition iseasily provided, see this project which almost does the complete image recognition task as an amateur project on a £35 educational computer:
https://circuitdigest.com/sites/default/files/License-Plate-Recognition-using-Raspberry-Pi.zip
That is how near we could be to a comprehensive, fair, road use charging network.

Lets hope the process is reliable. So does not sting some one senselessly if there are failed readings. Otherwise incomplete journeys might cost a fortune. Just like Oyster screws you if you take too long over a journey resulting in one journey charged at maximum because it decides you failed to touch out and a second journey charged at maximum because it decides you failed to touch in - the result is the CAP no longer works. Or simply if there is a touch in/out error.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Actually if it is going to cost even more for me to live in London/Croydon then I will move out of London and pay to commute in - that will definitely be by car if the current job. So I will use my car more AND for longer journeys. I originally moved to London to make commuting easier.

You've identified a behaviour which we can expect if we try to create some other proxy for vehicle use other than just tracking vehicle use directly. In a tracking-based charging scheme, you're never going to be better off choosing to have a longer commute. If you try to do something silly like using the address of car registration to set the tax it'll incentivise people to live in areas with a lower tax bracket and then drive into areas with a higher one.

The problem is that over the years we have developed out of town shopping, recreation and work. In Corydon there are fewer larger DIY stores - infact there is none in the middle of Croydon, no hardware at all. That has reinforced the need for a car. My main reasons for having a car are for DIY, shifting peoples stuff and my annual music festival. Public transport is never going to work for the music festival. DIY could be achieved with deliveries if more outlets did reasonable deliveries (B&Q I am looking at you).

We really need to re-design our way of working, shopping and recreation if we are going to to have a sustainable future. That means not turning town centres into dormitories.

This is absolutely true. Unfortunately the government can't just click its fingers and make everyone go and do something different by magic. It's possible for the government to prohibit certain activities by making them illegal, but we can't just make 'using a car inappropriately' a crime. When we have shades of grey like that the only real tool the government has is to tax them at some level proportionate to the damage that happens as a result of the action.

The reason we have all these businesses out in car-based retail parks is that the individual business people and investors are not currently having to consider the societal cost of driving when they make decisions. They're looking to make money legally, and building a B&Q out at a retail park is a perfectly legal activity. They make the decision to pay slightly more for commercial rent so that they can get a shop near a major road. It'd be much cheaper to locate out in a farm in the middle of nowhere but then they'd get very few customers.

Once consumers see the cost of motoring, their preferences are going to change. Those preferences are then going to bubble up to the businesses and developers. IKEA, for instance, has an interesting problem in London where their normal car-based shopper doesn't exist to the same extent, so they have had to experiment with more urban showrooms and then rely on delivery services. With vehicle use charging, that same calculation would begin to happen in many more towns and cities as people prefer to use public or active transport to get to the shops. Then there will be second-order effects too. With that tax system, more people will want to live in denser area and not have a car at all, meaning that companies need to adjust to meet their customers (like IKEA).

Even without Covid-19 we're seeing a massive shift to online commerce. Many big-box shops are acting more and more like local warehouses for deliveries. The edge-of-town supermarkets might be in the wrong place for people to get there by foot or bus but they're in an ideal place to then send out small electric delivery vans to make deliveries in towns.

Surely charge by age of vehicle×age of owner×2 (for electric) or ×10 (for all other fuel types) with older vehicles/older drivers getting the lowest taxation rates (with no heritage exemption.) Also I'd have Audi/VW products have a double charge and any fleet vehicles having a 10× owner multiplier

That way the young businessman who can afford the newest VW would pay more than the elderly chap who owns a 55 plate.

This is a silly idea. We don't care about age of vehicle, or age of owner. Why should an elderly chap who owns a 55 plate pay less in tax than a young person in a new VW?

One of the reasons we're in a mess right now before Covid-19 is that we create a whole different accounting system for old people. We have a loop of having low state pensions and lower costs for pensioners, for no good reason. We'd all be a lot better off if pensioners were charged the full whack for everything and then we made it up by actually giving them the right level of pension. The approach we've got today just means we end up with silly problems of cash-poor, asset-rich pensioners and arbitrary points when we start to give people free or cheap stuff.

 

[Bald Rick]

The end result isn’t the same - if only offenders get sent to the database then there isn’t a database of every passing car.
1) It really isn’t collected on even fraction of the level proposed
2) car park and speed camera data shouldn’t be stored, and doesn’t offer the level of detail proposed
3) The Road charging require massively detailed records of our movements
4) That is like saying what is the issue with computer monitoring, as that also isn’t directly monitoring you. We have data protection laws so there is a clear recognition of an expectation of privacy.

All the ANPR data is stored, that is how the police can find out which vehicles have been through a particular ANPR gate when they are investigating a crime.

Anyway, I’m out. I have absolutely no concerns about this, and neither should anyone else. It does not infringe civil liberties, and I have heard no arguments from anyone to explain how it could under normal democratic society

I would have grave concerns about a Government or Authority using the data for oppressive reasons, but that would, I think, be the least of my concerns if a Governement or Authority of such a nature decided to do that.

 

[AM9]

The end result isn’t the same - if only offenders get sent to the database then there isn’t a database of every passing car.
1) It really isn’t collected on even fraction of the level proposed
2) car park and speed camera data shouldn’t be stored, and doesn’t offer the level of detail proposed
3) The Road charging require massively detailed records of our movements
4) That is like saying what is the issue with computer monitoring, as that also isn’t directly monitoring you. We have data protection laws so there is a clear recognition of an expectation of privacy.

1) It has been increasing for the last 30+ years, and doesn't look like stopping anytime soon.
2) Car park and speed camera data is probably kept in many cases at least until there is no investigatory activity continuing that would benefit from that information.
3) Road charging only involves vehicles. You can be out of the country, but if a vehicle of which you are the registered keeper is unsed on public highways, that needs to be recorded. That means that you will be appropriately charged for any use that the car keeper is liable for.
4) Well all accesses to IP addresses are monitored by your internet provider and held for the security services to access for 12 months. Is that wrong?

 

[AM9]

Lets hope the process is reliable. So does not sting some one senselessly if there are failed readings. Otherwise incomplete journeys might cost a fortune. Just like Oyster screws you if you take too long over a journey resulting in one journey charged at maximum because it decides you failed to touch out and a second journey charged at maximum because it decides you failed to touch in - the result is the CAP no longer works. Or simply if there is a touch in/out error.

Any process whether involving human activity, automation or a combination of both can have failures and errors. That's true for imposing tax of any kind, buying goods in shops or online, all issues of healthcare, pensions and income , and as you've mentioned it agregating travel journeys and costs e.g. Oyster tickets.* So no, I doubt that road charging will be the first taxing system in humand existence that never makes mistakes, and nor is that a reason not to introduce it. Clearly if a mistake is made where a road use charge is wrong, the system would need a mechanism to correct those mistakes. I wonder how a vehicle registered keeper would respond if there was an undercharging of use?

* Oyster rules state the maximum time that a journey should take. Given the finite size of journeys and the general nature and frequency of transport modes in the TfL area, the time allowed is not unreasonable and it is part of the deal for reduced travel costs that passengers use Oyster/contactless. Those that have read the rules know what that time limit is and if the total time taken is borderline and not deliberate, it is in their interest to check their account. As many here have explained, a simple phone call is all that it takes to rectify a case of overcharging if the traveller has genuinely not intentionally exceed the maximum journey time.

 

[Meerkat]

All the ANPR data is stored, that is how the police can find out which vehicles have been through a particular ANPR gate when they are investigating a crime.

That is from the ANPR gates round towns, is it true for speed cameras?

Anyway, I’m out. I have absolutely no concerns about this, and neither should anyone else. It does not infringe civil liberties, and I have heard no arguments from anyone to explain how it could under normal democratic society

No one should have any concerns about infringements of their civil right to privacy as per the Universal Declaration of Human Rights??!!

I would have grave concerns about a Government or Authority using the data for oppressive reasons, but that would, I think, be the least of my concerns if a Governement or Authority of such a nature decided to do that.

And their access to this data would restrict your ability to do anything about it.

4) Well all accesses to IP addresses are monitored by your internet provider and held for the security services to access for 12 months. Is that wrong?

You sure about that? The struggles of forums (not this one) to ban troublesome people would suggest that this either wasn’t so or very easy to circumvent