Reports:

Paying for road use

Conclusions

Congestion has been shown to be the biggest issue for business and of great concern to people locally. CfIT believes that the most anti-car policy is to allow the growth and spread of congestion.

CfIT believes that there would be big wins to be had through changing the way we pay for road use as set out in this report - reduced congestion, improved journey quality, environmental benefits, social inclusion. At the same time, however, our proposals do raise a number of difficult issues that might prevent us from achieving these major benefits. CfIT believes that further work should be put in hand to understand better and to overcome these potential barriers.

Successful implementation of such a regime would need general public support. The impact would need to be clearly understood, benefits would have to be set out and the additional costs that would be faced by some road users would have to be clearly identified. Gaining public acceptance will take time and will not necessarily be easy. CfIT calls for a mature public debate on paying for road use, informed by any necessary further study and modelling.

We accept that a lot needs to be done before our proposals could help shape the implementation of a road charging scheme on a national scale, not least because they are based on real improvements having been made in public transport as set out in the 10-Year Plan. CfIT supports the current urban charging policy with revenues being hypothecated, to deliver congestion reduction in urban areas and to fund high quality public transport alternatives.

There are long lead times before the introduction of such change. CfIT believes that the debate should start now.

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