I cannot see it would cost £7 billion to run a year. Given 20million cars on the road that is £350 a year each. NAH it can't cost that.. even the current incompetents...
On second thoughts it could
I can see all those big continetal lorries accepting one being fitted..NOT.
O that basis, a nice evasion system could generate loadsofmoney...
IF true, then the people who support the system should look at the CSA and be forced to work there for a year... perhaps they might chnage their minds..
madf
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This is the real problem with such an elaborate scheme. The costs are just horrendous, and non-payers will get off scot free. One of the reasons the Poll Tax failed was because of the high level of non-payment was undermining authorities abilities to cary out their basic functions. If 2,000,000 get away without a simple thing like tax and insurance, the possibilities for evasion are, ass tated earlier, endless.
And how on earth are we supposed to check the accuracy of a charge that is levied at different rates at different times on different roads? Log each trip according to road type/time/duration? Impossible! And no, don't tell me the computers will never get it wrong!!
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So does the government not use 100% of the current VEL and plough it back into the roads infrastructure, public transport etc?
Don't tell me they only spend about a third of the VEL on transport? No, that couldn't be. Surely trading standards would have the government for selling something not as described....
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So does the government not use 100% of the current VEL and plough it back into the roads infrastructure, public transport etc? Don't tell me they only spend about a third of the VEL on transport? No, that couldn't be. Surely trading standards would have the government for selling something not as described....
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Winston Churchill was, I believe, the first Chancellor of the Exchequer to appropriate some/most/all of the Road Tax and use it for general government expenditure.
Ther is nothing new under the sun.
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The most encouraging aspect of this report is the fact that it will need Gallileo to be working before it can operate. I doubt I will see that day. It was originally supposed to be in operation by 2012, this has now been set back to 2020. Another 13 years to get it going?? Make that 25, or probably never.
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Phil
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>>The most encouraging aspect of this report is the fact that it will need Gallileo to be working before it can operate.
This article by Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph on 18 Feb details the problems of Gallileo.
A fiasco on this scale could be seen from space
As the Downing Street petition saying "no to road charging" breaks all records by soaring past the 1.5 million mark, one crucial factor gets overlooked. Our Transport Secretary, Douglas Alexander, may say he "welcomes a debate" on what, last May, he called his "personal priority", but he knows full well that in this respect we have little choice.
Regardless of how many people log on to the Downing Street website to say that they don't want it, we are committed to basing any road charging scheme on the EU's Galileo satellite system. The only trouble is that the EU is making such a shambles of it that it is highly unlikely to be in place before 2020, if they can get it to work at all.
The reason that Mr Alexander describes charging motorists for using the roads (at up to £1.34 a mile) as his "personal priority" is that three years ago Brussels issued EC directive 2004/52 on "the interoperability of electronic toll collection systems", to ensure that all the EU's planned road charging schemes are similar. But herein lie two practical difficulties.
First, Brussels is committed to drawing up a "technical standard", to which all national systems must conform, and so far, due to the huge technical problems involved, there is no sign of it emerging. A second problem is that the EU scheme is to be based on Galileo, its rival satellite system to the US Navstar. And Galileo - to which UK taxpayers have already contributed £200 million in development costs - is itself a shambles.
Despite the fanfares which greeted the launch, courtesy of a Russian Soyuz rocket, of the EU's first trial satellite last year, it is now clear that Galileo's future is fraught with difficulty. Within a few years Russia and China will join the US in having their own global positioning satellite systems, free to users all over the world. Galileo alone will depend on charging users for an encrypted signal, and since Cornell University last year cracked its operating code, the commercial future of the system looks increasingly uncertain.
As Galileo's development bills soar, it cannot even be guaranteed to become operational, although Mr Alexander has already promised £2.5 billion to local authorities by 2015, under his Transport Innovation Fund, so long as they agree to charge for road use. Our Government is thus locked into a hugely unpopular and complex project which we cannot have any assurance will work.
Mr Alexander obviously cannot tell us this, because it would be too embarrassing. Instead he tells us we can have a "debate", to which he has absolutely no intention of listening. But the chances that we will get our EU road charging system even by 2020 (it was originally promised for 2012) become slimmer by the day. If it wasn't all so time-wasting and dishonest, it would be quite funny. As the Downing Street petition saying "no to road charging" breaks all records by soaring past the 1.5 million mark, one crucially important factor gets overlooked. Our Transport Secretary Alastair Darling may say he "welcomes a debate" on what he last May called his "personal priority", but he knows full well we have very little choice in the matter.
Regardless of how many people say on the Downing Street website they don't want it, under EU policy we are committed to setting up a satellite-based system for taxing motorists - the only trouble being that the EU is making such a shambles of it that it is highly unlikely to be in place before 2020, if they can get it to work at all.
The reason that Mr Darling describes charging motorists up to £1.34 a mile for using the roads as his "personal priority" is that three years ago Brussels issued EC directive 2004/52 on "the interoperability of electronic toll collection systems", to ensure that all the EU's planned road charging schemes are similar. But herein lie two practical problems.
First, Brussels is committed to drawing up a "technical standard", to which all national systems must conform, and so far, so huge are the technical problems involved, there is no sign of this emerging. A second problem is that the EU scheme is to be based on Galileo, its rival satellite system to the US Navstar. And Galileo - to which UK taxpayers have already contributed £200 million in development costs - is itself in a shambles.
Despite the fanfares which last year greeted the launch of the EU's first trial satellite last year, courtesy of a Russian Soyuz rocket, it is now clear that Galileo's future is fraught with difficulty. Within a few years the US, Russia and China will all have their own global positioning satellite systems, free to users all over the world, Galileo alone will be dependent for its viability on charging its users for using an encrypted signal, and since Cornell University last year cracked its operating code, the commercial future of the system looks increasingly uncertain. As its development bills soar, it cannot even be guaranteed ever to become operational, although Mr Alexander has already promised £2.5 billion to local authorities by 2015, under his Transport Innovation Fund, so long as they agree to charge for road use.
Our Government is thus locked into a hugely unpopular and complex project which we cannot have any assurance will work. Mr Alexander obviously cannot tell us this, because it would be too embarrassing. Instead he tells us we can have a "debate", to which he has absolutely no intention of listening. But the chances that we will get our EU road charging system even by 2020 (it was originally promised for 2012) become slimmer by the day. If it wasn't all so time-wasting and dishonest, it would be quite funny.
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Roger
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
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Might it provide a timely boost to real off-road drving along routes recently opened up by ramblers...........
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