purplecthulhu

They were talking about road charging on the Today programme this morning. I got riled, and sent the following message to the Today message board:

There is already a method that charges drivers for road use. Better yet, it is weighted in such a way that less fuel efficient vehicles pay more, that you are charged not just for the distance you travel but for the time spent sitting in jams. The method is also anonymous, so there will be no civil liberties issues about drivers being tracked as they move around the country, and it does not require a new large expensive computing infrastructure so there will be no risks that the project will fail like so many similar government projects.

This method is called petrol duty. We have it now. It works. It could work better by increasing the duty, but the government is too cowardly to actually face up to the complaints this might cause. Instead they're going to produce a new stealth tax whose delivery will be inefficient and expensive.

I think times have changed since 2000, and the public is much more aware of climate change and why we need to reduce car usage. Increased fuel duties, with the money raised hypothecated to public transport, is a much better way of handling this, in spite of the fact that its not whizzy high tech magic. Sometimes old and boring methods are better. This is one of them.

They were talking about road charging on the Today programme this morning. I got riled, and sent the following message to the Today message board:

There is already a method that charges drivers for road use. Better yet, it is weighted in such a way that less fuel efficient vehicles pay more, that you are charged not just for the distance you travel but for the time spent sitting in jams. The method is also anonymous, so there will be no civil liberties issues about drivers being tracked as they move around the country, and it does not require a new large expensive computing infrastructure so there will be no risks that the project will fail like so many similar government projects.

This method is called petrol duty. We have it now. It works. It could work better by increasing the duty, but the government is too cowardly to actually face up to the complaints this might cause. Instead they're going to produce a new stealth tax whose delivery will be inefficient and expensive.

I think times have changed since 2000, and the public is much more aware of climate change and why we need to reduce car usage. Increased fuel duties, with the money raised hypothecated to public transport, is a much better way of handling this, in spite of the fact that its not whizzy high tech magic. Sometimes old and boring methods are better. This is one of them.