schlackman.org

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy – for UK citizens and residents.

I’m not normally one to bother with online petitions, but the fact that this one is hosted on the official British government petition service, and has already made national news, makes it of note.

The UK government plans to pilot and eventually introduce a system whereby every car using the roads is tracked and charged according to the distance they drive and what road they use. There are several reasons this is being opposed by many, including the privacy implications of one’s every move being recorded, but that one honestly doesn’t bother me that much. The simple fact is that we are already taxed based on how much we drive due to the high level of taxation on fuel (curently 47.10p per litre; right now fuel prices are about 86p per litre, giving a taxation level of 55%). This not only ensures that the more I drive, the more tax I pay (without any expensive or intrusive tracking system) but also ensures that less fuel efficient vehicles pay more tax, making it one of the few taxes with inherent environmental considerations.

The only difference the proposed system would make would be to implement variable road pricing, whereby some roads are more expensive to use than others. Frankly I don’t see that such a system is worth the expense of what it being proposed, or would make a significant difference to congestion. Only a fraction of the existing tax collected from motoring sources goes towards the roads, so any additional tax is nothing but punitive.