Comment: Road pricing – Manchester and beyond
Stephen Ladyman, minister of state for transport
Friday, 31, Oct 2008 08:00
A decision that will shape the future of road transport in Britain will be made this December. It won't be made by the government or even parliament. It will be made by the people of Manchester when they decide whether or not to back the Transport Infrastructure Fund proposals for their city.
The 'prize', if they choose to accept it, is an unprecedented and probably unrepeatable investment in Manchester's public transport system. Nearly £3 billion of spending would transform the transport infrastructure of that city. The 'cost' is that part of the money would need to be repaid from a road charge.
The proposal has already united some strange bed fellows in opposition. The Labour party has a manifesto commitment to move forward with road pricing, the official Conservative party position on road pricing is that it has an important part to play in transport policy and local councils should be left to get on with it and the Liberal Democrat frontbench position is that the government should be going ahead faster: yet there are MPs and councillors from all these parties opposing the plan.
The reason why is clear. Road pricing is unpopular.
Never mind that the overwhelming majority of people in Manchester will pay no more than they do now. Never mind that the deal on offer represents a unique opportunity from which every local citizen will benefit or that the bulk of investment will be in place before road pricing begins. Never mind the environmental and economic benefits of reduced congestion or the improved journey times for those who continue to drive into the City. The agenda of those who oppose the scheme is driven by the perception that opposing the scheme is a vote winner.
Nationally, whether or not the people of Manchester vote yes, road pricing will happen one day. We live on a small island, where the average cost of a mile of Motorway is £23m, where every road building proposal is opposed on environmental grounds and where congestion is on track to cost the economy £22bn a year. We cannot go on like this and love it or loathe it road pricing will eventually be needed to play a part in containing traffic growth and to spread it more evenly over the whole road network and throughout the day. So the question is, what can we do to make road pricing popular?
Those of us who believe that road pricing offers huge benefits need to speak up. In particular we must rebut the four key arguments raised against it.
Firstly, we must counter the claim that privacy will be compromised by a national road pricing scheme. There are no privacy issues with road pricing that cannot be completely addressed. For example, the road price could be collected by 'trusted' third parties such as mobile phone companies – they already have the ability to track our movements but we trust them not to do it; or charging could be based on zones so that data on where a vehicle has been can't be identified by the charging authority.
Secondly, we need to rebut the charge that road pricing will be a further tax on motorists. There has never been any intention that road pricing should provide extra revenue – it has always been seen by government as a different way to raise revenue from drivers and not an additional way to do so. The problem is, this has never been articulated in clear terms and the Treasury needs to do so. We also need to spell out that people in areas with poor public transport, such as rural communities, will pay less to use the roads under a national system of road pricing than they do now.
Thirdly, the claim that road pricing will be expensive to administer must be knocked down. There are already organisations, again including mobile phone companies, which have the 'back room' systems to collect a road price efficiently.
And fourthly, the claim that it will never work must be proven baseless. Manchester will start that process if they say yes but we need to go further at a national level. Introducing 'high occupancy and toll' lanes on the most congested motorways is one option but re-visiting lorry road user charging would be even better. It would prove the technology and the income raised could be offset against vehicle excise duty for lorries, thereby giving British hauliers a competitive advantage over foreign companies.
Whether Manchester says yes or not, the debate over road pricing will continue. The one thing that is certain is that those of us who believe in it are not going to win the argument without making a lot more noise. Good luck Manchester!
Stephen Ladyman, is Labour MP for South Thanet and minister of state for transport.
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