The mass production of the motor car was one of the great liberating developments of the 20th century, widening travel horizons and creating new opportunities for
the majority of people in Britain. We
now commute further to work, often take our children to school by car and rely on our cars to access out-of-town shopping centres. Our roads, however, are becoming increasingly overcrowded and in some
city centres there is virtually gridlock at peak travel times.
A hard-hitting report by the transport select committee recently concluded that road-user charging is the most important way of cutting congestion. A policy supporting unrestrained car use is unsustainable. But winning the political case for road-user charging is going to be
a hard task. It has been on Labour’s agenda since a 1966 transport white paper, which stated: ‘road pricing – a metering system
to charge for the use of congested roads
– is, from the economic point of view, the most obvious solution to this problem.’
The ippr has long argued for road-user charging. Patricia Hewitt advocated congestion charging for London in a 1989 ippr pamphlet which said, ‘it is the absence of road pricing, not its introduction, which is unfair.’ For years, successive governments have considered road-user charging but dismissed the idea as too politically risky. Even though congestion is often cited as
a top local concern, there is a gap between peoples’ acceptance of the problem and their willingness to pay for road use.
Politicians rarely do the unpopular, even if it is for the greater public good, and so the world watched with interest when Ken Livingstone launched his congestion charging experiment in London. The results so far show the scheme is working, with traffic levels down by 17 percent and buses carrying 14 percent more passengers. A recent MORI poll also found that
half of Londoners support the charge.
Following London’s early success, rightwing commentators have started to claim the idea as their own. But road-user charging as a policy idea should sit more comfortably with the centre-left. In the lead up to the London charge, the Evening Standard ran a series of articles claiming that it would price the poor off the
roads, but in fact the scheme is broadly progressive. Nine out of ten people who drove to work in central London prior
to the scheme were in the top half of London’s income distribution. Few
low-income Londoners even own a car. The Mayor has pledged to spend £84 million on improving bus services and
so the biggest winners will be low-income householders who tend to travel into London by bus.
From 2006, the government plans to introduce a national system for road-user charging for lorries based on satellite tracking. Rolling out a similar charging system for private cars would be more socially equitable than current motoring taxes. Fuel taxes and vehicle excise duty tend to disadvantage low-income households in rural areas where there is
less congestion and pollution and there may be fewer alternatives to the car.
Opinion poll surveys suggest that motorists are more willing to accept charging if it doesn’t lead to an overall increase in their motoring costs. A politically attractive option could be to
use the revenue from charging to replace
a proportion of existing motoring taxes and to ring-fence funding for public transport improvements.
Earlier in the year, the Prime Minister signalled his support for road pricing. Alistair Darling, however, continues to stand on the sidelines and has not yet publicly backed London’s congestion charge as a first step towards the wider
use of road-user charges. With the review of the government’s ten-year plan for transport underway, it will be important that transport ministers follow the Prime Minister’s lead and seek to make the case for extending road-user charging on the grounds that it is both socially equitable and environmentally sustainable.