Pay-as-you-drive

ddvmor · **I am the Jammie King!**

Pay-as-you-drive

Short Santa · **For entertainment purposes only!**

yup, its supposed to belanced out by reduced fuel tax and VED, so they say....

hate to say it but we already have a system which makes those that use the roads (or drive inefficient cars) the most pay more. Its called fuel tax, more you drive, more you pay, simple, why the need for this i don't know.

This system would also appear to take away the environmental benefits of the current system too (variable VED, efficient vehicles cost less to run)

Could it be something to do with keeping tabs on where you (well your car) are at all times? - no thats just being paranoid, surely?

Anyone know what one of these boxes is gonna cost, and who's going to pay for it? (hahaha, as if i don't know the answer to that already...)

hmmm:

"you would reduce the congestion that we would otherwise face and you would avoid the gridlock that you see in many American cities today," he said."

any of our American resident friends like to comment on this?

-- Edited by Short Santa at 09:12, 2005-06-06

ddvmor · **I am the Jammie King!**

Short Santa wrote:

...hate to say it but we already have a system which makes those that use the roads (or drive inefficient cars) the most pay more. Its called fuel tax, more you drive, more you pay, simple, why the need for this i don't know...

...and you would avoid the gridlock that you see in many American cities today,"...

Of course the counter-argument to your most excellent fuel-tax point is that different roads would cost different amounts - little used country lanes costing 2p a mile and city centre and motorways costing £1.34 - the aim being to tackle congestion in the cities and on motorways (more on that in a sec). So you would effectively have to charge different amounts for the fuel depending on the driver's intentions. The obvious way around this is to chage more tax on city and motorway service station petrol and less on country, but all that would happen is that people will drive out to the country to get their petrol.

With the black box route, taking Bristol as an example, rather than drive down the M32 (motorway) into the centre, I would reduce my costs by driving down the A38 (narrow, twisty urban road), as would everybody else. How does that help the congestion issue?

With regards to American gridlock... if they'd only drive smaller cars, there'd be more space on the roads. Problem solved. Get them all Ladas.

(American Gridlock... good name for a band...)

Short Santa · **For entertainment purposes only!**

agreed, but scrapping fuel tax/VED does not encourage more efficient vehicles, therefore less congestion, more SUVs, more climate change and dead kiddies