Policy instruments (4) - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 243

form of the Versement Transport public transport tax which is levied on businesses in a
number of French cities.
15.4 Road user charging
As a general principle road space in Great Britain is provided free at the point of
use. However, as noted in section 15.2, motorists make a very substantial financial
contribution to the Exchequer through fuel duty and this can be interpreted as a form
of surrogate payment. If so then it has the merit of being easily collected and 'fair' in
that payment is broadly proportional to use. As an instrument of road user charging
however it has the disadvantage that the broadly constant rate of payment (i.e. pence
per mile) is unrelated to the costs of provision and to the external costs which are
generated - principally in terms of delay to other road users and of environmental
impacts. These are factors which vary greatly by place and time. It is principally in
response to growing congestion and the impracticability and/or undesirability of
overcoming this by increased road capacity that interest has arisen in more direct
charging methods which can take these factors into account.
The theoretical case for direct user charging as a means of securing economically
efficient use and provision of road space had been argued since the early years
of the 20th century (Bonsall and Milne 2003) . The possibility of pricing as
means of restraining the projected growth of traffic demand in urban centres was
acknowledged in the Traffic in Towns report (5.5) although the political limitations
were anticipated:
The political limitations derive from the fact that, before long, a majority of the
electorate will be car-owners….
It is calculated [in the Report] that there will be room for only about 1 in 4 - in
London 1 in 10 - of the cars that would come in if there were no restriction. What
licensing system could be devised, in a democratic society, that would turn away
75% or 90% of the applicants?
(Sir Geoffrey Crowther: Preface 'Traffic in Towns' MOT and MHLG 1963)
This led to their conclusion about the importance of urban public transport which
would enable people to be 'persuaded' not to use their cars (since it was not realistic to
imagine that they could be compelled).
Although there are inevitably practical difficulties with any pricing scheme
(defining boundaries, determining exemptions, devising charging systems, securing
enforcement and so on) it has essentially been the issue of political acceptability which
has prevented the economic logic of road user charging from being converted into
practical implementation.
As we saw in section 7.3 the prospect of road pricing in the UK, and the logic
underpinning it, was an important component of the 'New Realism'. Hence, by the
time it came to be included in the 1998 White Paper:
The concept of charging had been championed in academic and local authority
circles for more than a decade but the potential political fall-out from introducing
'new taxes' on motoring together with opposition from the Treasury to the
concept of 'hypothecation' meant that it never really became a serious policy
proposal. [Hypothecation is the use of revenues for predetermined purposes -