Possibly more intermodal paths and large manufacturing facilities which need large quantities of bulk materials.
Rolls-Royce SMR and the Agratas battery plant in Somerset are considering rail freight.
And perhaps better use of the Channel Tunnel for transporting goods too!
The trouble with this argument is that most of the facilities in your first paragraph are in China.
Many goods already come through the Channel Tunnel...!
Thank you coppercapped. I stand corrected and apologise for the inaccuracies.
But I stand by my assertion that road hauliers should be made to pay the full costs of the use of the roads, even if this is passed-on to consumers. They've had it far too easy for far too long.
How do you know what the ‘full costs’ of the use of the roads are? Are you referring to the trunk road network alone or all the roads in the country? And what sort of vehicles are you referring to: HGVs; mid-sized lorries; refuse vehicles; local delivery trucks and vans or all of these?
To get some idea of the size of the issues a quick on-line search shows that there are some 625,000 HGVs registered in the UK and some 5 million vans. In comparison there are about 35 million cars.
All of these have a part in the running of the economy, but what is important for your argument is how you allocate costs transparently and fairly to these disparate types of vehicle, their numbers and uses. Indeed, what are the ‘costs’? Bridge bashes are covered by the vehicle operators’ insurance and congestion is a natural result of movement. Look at films of herds of wildebeest passing through a narrow valley or cattle passing through a farm gate. Or football spectators arriving or departing from a stadium.
They all have to queue. The basic issue is that paths or roads or railways can be infinitely[1] long but they can’t be infinitely wide. Congestion goes with movement - and the costs are borne by those moving.
Trying to get an idea of the costs involved UK Government Departmental accounting reported via HM Treasury shows that in 2024/25 the public sector’s spending on transport included about £6.5 billion on national roads and £6.4 billion on local roads, producing roughly £12.9 billion of recurring annual road expenditure. There are other expenditures under other headings which may or may not be classified as ‘road spending’ so if we say that those I have missed are half of the above figure the total costs of the road network cannot exceed some £18-20 billion per year.
On the other hand the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) states that
Fuel duties are levied on purchases of petrol, diesel and a variety of other fuels. They represent a significant source of revenue for government. In 2025-26, we expect fuel duties to raise £24 billion. That would represent 1.9 per cent of all receipts and is equivalent to £835 per household and 0.8 per cent of national income.
Fuel duty is levied per unit of fuel purchased and is included in the price paid for petrol, diesel and other fuels used in vehicles or for heating. The rate depends on the type of fuel: etc., etc.
See:
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/fuel-duties/
So, fuel duty
alone covers the costs of the roads. However identifying the amount of fuel duty paid solely by HGVs will require longer than I am prepared to spend but don’t forget that those 5 million vans also pay a lot. On the basis of these figures it is difficult to answer the question accurately of whether the road transport industry covers all its costs - but these figures show that on fuel duty alone[2] it is very likely that it does so. If it doesn’t then the difference is marginal.
[1] For some value of ‘infinite’…
[2] VAT is also paid on fuel and the road hauliers also pay NI, income tax, insurance tax, road tax and so on which also contribute to the pot.
