What are your views on "pay-per-mile" driving in the UK?

Question

This isn't a rumour or a myth, i work closely with the transport industry and pay per mile driving will be a reality in Britain by 2012. It is to be trialled in Birmingham and involves speed camera style beacons being erected on every single road around the city. You will be recorded driving past and sent a bill each month for your mileage.

The cost is £1.50 a mile at peak times but every single road has a different charge from 2p to £1.50 depending on time of day and traffic. This means an average 5 mile drive into and out of the city would result in a £230 a month charge.

The government say after a public survey, the public back the scheme and are more than happy to pay the fee to help cut congestion. I cant believe that so i want to hear some of your views. This will become a national scheme should the trial be a success.

Car tax will be dropped but not fuel tax. This is how they plan to make people like it, people who can't do maths will think they're saving money by not buying car tax. This is another reason tax is rising so much so that when its dropped it will seem like a huge bill dropped

I forgot to add as well, dont forget this will push the price of everything up. Food, etc all has to be delivered to shops and haulage companies will be paying thousands a month extra to deliver so we'll all have to pay for that.

Answer 1

Pay per mile will only work if they scrap the road tax why should we have to pay both.....more importantly where the hell does all the money go that they are getting now!!!! The roads are in a terrible state of repair in some areas. I used to live in Spain and they do not have road tax...yet still manage to maintain a reasonable standard of road. Once again this is an example of why this incompetant government should NEVER have been put into power! How long before I am taxed every time I fart??? it can't be long at the rate these pr*cks are going!
By the way....what about foreign motorists on holiday....how will they pay? or are they exempt?

Answer 2

I too am surprised that there's a claim that the public back the scheme and would expect people to respond in the same way as the answers you've had so far.

Congestion is absolutely awful and we all hate it. Apparently it costs industry a lot of money too. I don't know how that is calculated but I expect that the transport department have worked costs of extra stress, lost time and lost productivity caused by congestion into their equation.

Personally I think it would be wonderful if:

When people NEED to use cars their journey can be quick and easy. People would soon adjust to feeling happy about it being expensive if there was also:

Cheap, reliable and well thought out public transport. If it's well funded and welll worked out it will become the preferred way of getting around for the rest of the time.

It's not unrealistic. Nowadays many companies have ways of working out imaginative ideas and solutions that fit exactly what people want to do (look at the ideas that Yahoo! and other companies have come up with) so it would only be a matter of money and positive attitudes to get that kind of thinking into providing transport. Yahoo! bus/taxi/electric bike/family pods on demand, cheap clean and friendly services adapted precisely to people's needs? I wouldn't be surprised.

One of the main reasons we all use cars is because there's no sensible alternative. It takes imagination to see a different scenario, and money to make it happen. I don't believe it's impossible.

(If you are interested and want to follow this further, look at the City Car Club website. http://www.citycarclub.co.uk It's a shared car idea that works for an increasing number of people. I think the ETA (environmental transport association) www.eta.co.uk also has some information about schemes which could work in the future.)

You could also look at what the RAC are saying about ways to combat congestion, including getting people to work from home one in every so many days. http://www.racfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=361&Itemid=35

Answer 3

I am a taxi driver, we operate on a meter which is set to a fixed price per mile. How do the government propose dealing with us, at £1.50 a mile to use the road I would be making just 3p per mile. from this would have to come fuel, maintenance, insurance and of course my wages... I use around 160 litres of fuel a week so already have a huge tax burden, the government need to look at ways to deal with those of us whose very livelihood is threatened directly by this. Watch out for the day when you can't get a cab for 3 hours because the roads are too expensive... It is difficult enough running a small business in the UK, the powers that be seem determined to stop us all from actually making any money. I used to make a good living from this job for a 60 hour week, I now have to work nearly 100 hours a week for 75% of the income.
btw. for those that think we can just vary our price to cover the extra cost, we can't. In most of the UK taxi fares are set by the local authority and it is illegal to charge any more than the price they set.

Answer 4

Im a car driver and I have not spoken to anyone who thinks that 'pay per mile' is a good idea. Personally I believe it is just another way to get more money out of the general public.
At the moment, where I live, it is cheaper for me to run my car than to take public transport (I have tried it out for 3 months) will the public transport charges be cut? I dont think so, I assume they will go up as well as I cant imagine they will be exempt from the pay per mile scheme so whether you take a bus or a car you will be paying more anyway and for this reason I dont believe that the scheme will cut the number of cars on the roads.

Answer 5

I agree it is one of the most insipid, silly plans to come about since the invention of internal combustion. Also, I might add that decent public transport is vital to any plan to revamp driving habits.
I am now existing in Arizona USA where there is next to nothing in the way of public transport, so I can well empathise with the the UK situation in rural areas. I live about 12 miles off dead centre of Phoenix. From my Addy one must walk about two miles and wait for a bus to come along about every half hour or an hour. There are no buses after about 9PM and next to none on weekends. No rail service at all, anywhere within a couple hundred miles, and this is a metro area that includes millions of people and a vast geographical area.
Out of the metro area, or on the outskirts, it is hoof it, ride a bicycle, hire a cab, drive, or beg from neighbours!
I can imagine the hell on earth a by the mile toll charge would bring on the inhabitants of this living hell.
"no matter where we live, idiot politicians reign... if they had to pay their own taxes and live our lives it would be different!"

Answer 6

I live in a rural area. My workplace is a forty mile round trip and I work shifts. There is no public transport option although a few of us share lifts when our shifts coincide.
I work in residential care (which I enjoy) and the pay is notoriously low, just above the minimum wage. Transport costs are already a huge monthly expenditure for me, I cannot afford any increase.
If I lived in Birmingham with a 9-5 job. I would already be using public transport. There just isnt a viable alternative for me unless I move to a city or become a farmer.

Answer 7

In a sense we are already taxed by the mile because we pay so much tax on fuel.

I object to the idea of 'pay-per-mile' IF public transport systems are so poor in rural areas. If I had to rely on public transport, it would be virtually impossible for me to get to work and back at the times when I need to. My son wanted an evening out in a town 15 miles away and the last bus he could get back was 1730h! Needless to say I had to pick him up at a reasonable time in the evening.

If public transport systems were reasonable then it would not be so bad. People in towns don't realise the advantages they have with transport which is frequent and sometimes varied, although not inexpensive.

Public transport needs to be reliable, efficient and understanding of the needs of the local people who are likely to use it. It should aim to ENCOURAGE people to use it rather than using their cars. This should be positive encouragement, not punishment by payment.

Our system locally has recently got much worse, leaving people (including the elderly and infirm) stranded for hours or the service has been cut completely. Along with the demise of local rural Post Offices, people in rural areas have a raw deal.

Answer 8

Just another way of making the UK an even more depressing place to visit. I left nine years ago, in some ways I miss it. I miss average people being able to drive properly and knowing the name of more than one other country.

But when I come back and see the cameras everywhere, read about ID cards and hear about this pay per mile garbage. It's very sad. I feel so sorry for Birmingham and for my family and friends who are still back in the UK.

Answer 9

Having spent sometimes as much as 2 hours to drive from junction 18 to 23 on the M25 at 8am, I think its a marvelous idea. So many people drive who don't need to (especially the school run mums) that they have to do something about it, as its only going to get worse.

That said, there could be a system of need, whereby people who need to drive (like myself, having to drive 20 miles for work, where the only public transport is a train into london and back out again) get a cheaper rate than those who drive 1 mile because they're lazy.

Answer 10

think the idea is total pants. It will start of by all the Private motorist driving at night and saving money, then the rates will creep up until no-one but the govt. and their cronies will be able to afford to drive. As stated food will go up and we will not only be the highest taxed nation in Europe, we will also be the poorest. Unemployment will rise, how many will be able to afford to drive to work ?- no matter how much they improve public transport, it cannot get everyone to every area. It sucks!! BAH!!