I'm sure most of you have read about the road charge scheme. (Road charge at-a-glance)

I was amazed when reading these ideas about the pure insanity of the them. They want to equip each car with a blackbox with sat tracking. Not only the does it cost a lot of money to have every car fitted but also to maintain such a system is heavily expensive. Activily monitoring millions of cars at once will take some serious computing power.

And all that while we already have a system which can be easily changed to achieve 95 - 98% of the benefits at probably less cost of the current system.

As we already have a pay as you go system for cars - it is called FUEL!. You pay for each mile you drive and if you have an enviromentally friendly car you pay less per mile. And if you get stuck in traffic you use more fuel so you pay more.

So just scrap road tax (with exception for cars that don't use fuel) and increase the tax on fuel. That means less administration for the road tax so would make the whole system more efficient. And the government just gets their money from the big cooporations that sells the fuel to you. So less transactions less monitoring and less administration.

Also something else to ponder about.... you get charged by the mile (so in essence you pay toll) on roads that you (the UK people) paid for in the first place with their taxes?

And how can you first charge people out of the cities with the insane house prices and than make sure they can't actually afford to get to work?

Sure it will be cheaper for some people but if you look at what you really save:
- road tax (about 165 pounds a year?)
- and 70% of the fuel cost (as those are taxes)

If you on average drive 10.000 miles a year that saves you:
165 / 10000 = 0.0165 pounds a miles in tax and
70% of 83p (1l of petrol) / 9 (avr miles per l) = 6.45p a mile.

So that means you save 8.1p a mile you drive. And on the busy roads in rushhour it costs 1.34 quid a mile?

It could be me but personally I don't think people join a traffic jam because it is so much fun. It is because they have to be at work in most cases. Especially for example the M25 in the morning is blocked with people trying to get to work not with people trying to get their shopping done early or something. These people have no choice.

There is a real problem but this isn't the solution in my eyes. (no to mention all the "big brother" stuff about a blackbox in your car) Aslong as public transport isn't perfect and cheap it isn't an option for most people so they are stuck with the car.

Personally I think the government can achive way more by stimulating flexible working hours (get rid of the whole 9-5 monday to friday thing) and stimulate working from home where applicable and improving public transport in general.

(Edited by Staff 14/06/2005 14:38)