Road user charging

The need to tackle congestion

Why traffic congestion is getting worse

• Our towns and cities were built long before the car was invented and there is no room to provide more roads or parking spaces within them
• Car ownership continues to grow rapidly: 71% of households have access to a car; ownership of two or more cars rose from one in six households in 1986 to one in four in 1999
• The relative cost of owning and driving a car is getting cheaper - and the government forecasts that costs will fall a further 20% over the next 10 years
• Meanwhile, public transport fares are rising and continue to attract less subsidy than elsewhere in Europe
• We are using our cars more and driving them further than motorists in the rest of Europe. The UK has seen the fifth highest growth in car modal share - increasing by 6.8% between 1980 and 1998, compared to the European average of 5.3, even though there has been a lower than average increase in car ownership
• We spend an average of 216 hours a year in our cars - in 1976 it was 92 hours
• We are commuting further to work
• We are driving our children to school more and 'school run' traffic adds a fifth to the total number of cars on the road at peak times
• We all want to use the busiest roads at the same time of day - and there is no incentive or penalty, other than congestion, to do anything else
• An RAC Foundation study has shown that just to keep traffic congestion at current levels would require a five-fold increase in what we spend now on road building, or a rise in fuel duty to five times the current level
• Large road building programmes are unpopular with the public on environmental grounds - there were widespread protests and demonstrations during the last Conservative government's road building programme
• As new roads are built traffic levels quickly grow to fill the extra capacity - the M25 is a classic example
• No growing economy has yet managed to cut congestion
• Roads are almost the only public utility that is free at the point of use
• We pay a higher tariff if we use the phone at peak times, the same goes for electricity. Railways, planes, buses and ferries manage demand by price and by how busy the services are. We all pay higher fares to travel on trains during peak hours and we pay a higher price for our ferry crossing during the summer holidays. Why should roads be any different?

Problems caused by congestion

The UK's roads are the most congested in Europe. This is partly due to the fact that the UK is a small and densely populated country. Yet in smaller, even more densely populated Belgium there is less congestion. The difference is that in Britain we have developed a special, relationship with our cars. Even though we own fewer cars than our European neighbours, we spend more time in them and drive them further. Almost nine in ten motorised journeys (car, bus, motorbike) are made by car compared with the EU average of just over eight in ten.

Road congestion has a negative impact on British life in many areas:

• Increased noise, fumes and air pollution reduces the quality of life for those who live, work, or shop in many urban areas. It can be deterrent to visitors, including tourists from abroad
• Delays caused by congestion cause frustration among drivers and users of public transport
• Traffic congestion makes life increasingly unattractive to vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists
• High traffic flows and congested streets are intimidating to pedestrians and create barriers to movement
• More of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO₂), is produced when traffic is slowed to a crawl
• Although technical improvements have reduced polluting emissions from vehicle engines, air pollution increases as a result of inefficient use of fuel in clogged traffic
• Motorists are spending a larger proportion (15%) of their disposable income on driving but they are getting less and less in return as they cannot make the reliable, delay-free journeys that were once possible
• According to the CBI, the impact of congestion on the UK economy in terms of lost time, fuel costs and general stress runs to billions
• The effectiveness and economic viability of bus operations is compromised by traffic congestion, resulting in fewer and poorer services
• Traffic congestion brings scheduling problems and much higher fuel costs for freight operators, who often have to deploy extra vehicles to meet customer deadlines
• Effective transport links are critical to economic prosperity. The UK's congested roads compare and compete poorly with clearer roads on the other side of the Channel

Managing demand

There are a range of opportunities by which authorities across the UK can manage the demand for travel. They are designed to ensure that travellers enjoy free-flowing traffic, efficient public transport, as well as providing adequate space for walkers and cyclists. The wider aim is to make life, particularly in urban areas, less stressful, healthier and more enjoyable.

Options:

• Allocating space by people flow rather than the more traditional traffic flow. For example, a bus can carry up to 80 people and takes up less than three cars. On busy roads it might be a better use of road space to give a bus its own lane. In some busy town centre roads you can see cars parked on both sides with one slow-moving traffic lane in between, and pedestrians squeezed on to narrow pavements. Hardly a fair or effective use of road space
• 'No parking' areas to ease the flow of traffic
• 'Resident parking only' zones to discourage traffic in quieter areas
• Price - Introducing parking meters and paying car parks where drivers are charged by the time in a zone. Prices can be raised to a level that influences travel behaviour
• Congestion charging - where drivers are charged for entering a charging zone
• Workplace parking levy - where companies and organisations are charged for each parking space at their premises. Currently, up to 90% of people driving to work park freely when they get there. As a result there is no incentive to consider alternative forms of travel
• Effective penalties and adequate enforcement to ensure drivers stick to the rules
• Park-and-ride - where motorists are encouraged to park out of town centres and use cheap or free dedicated bus services - running on bus lanes - to get into the centre
• Cycle lanes - to give people more confidence to travel by bicycle
• Extra, secure parking facilities for bicycles and motorcycles
• Traffic calming - creating zones where road humps, visual obstructions and zigzag routes discourage fast driving and encourage motorists to consider alternative routes
• Speed restrictions - introducing, for example, lower speed restrictions outside schools and other areas
• Pedestrianised areas - separating traffic from pedestrians completely, particularly in parts of city centres
• Gated areas - which allow buses through to the centre of a city but exclude cars
• Green travel plans - which encourage employers to incentivise staff to come to work by other forms of transport. This might mean extra money for people who car share, negotiating bulk discounts with transport operators for season tickets, or providing special facilities like showers and secure bike parking for cyclists. The incentive for companies is that it can reduce their need for parking spaces, which can reduce their costs and the space which then be put to better use