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• LRUC will offer 'direct insight'
Page 7
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M Lorry road user charging (LRUC) will provide the government with a direct insight into the challenges it win face when it introduces charging for all road users.
As CM went to press (Tuesday), Transport Secretary Alistair Darling told a meeting in London that introducing LIWC would act as an experiment, showing the possible problems of road charging before it is rolled out to the 1.11Cs 26 million cars.
Darling told a national newspaper that he is now considering implementing pay-as you-drive charges using satellite devices fixed to cars to enable the government to impose peak-time tolls for rush-hour traffic Including commuters, motorway users and school-run parents.
But he added that like LIILIC, which is to be accompanied by a reduction in fuel duty, a road-user charging scheme for other vehicles will have to be accompanied by similar tax benefits in order to gain public support.
Darling told the paper: "We have a choice in the next 25 to 30 years: either build more and more motorways—astronomically expensive, environmentally damaging, and I doubt if we could actually do it—or take a radically different look at how we manage the system. That is where road pricing comes In. I am convinced that unless we look at the passibility of road pricing then the future generations will not forgive us."
Kevin Delaney, traffic and road safety manager for the RAC Foundation, says that alongside charging there needs to be a government charter setting out its commitment to improving the roads and an independent regulator monitoring its success: "V road-user charging is introduced it needs to be offset by a reduction in fuel duty and road tax—without this it will be publicly unacceptable."
• Industry bodies are split as to whether introducing differential road pricing according to the time of travel, vehicle and road types is a good idea.
Speaking at the government seminar, FTA president and Exel chief executive, John Allan said the organisation wanted to see different charging rates for peak and off-peak hours and different vehicles and road types to encourage users to change their travel behaviour.
However RE-IA chief executive Roger King says that while it welcomes the introduction of LRUC to obtain a level playing field with Continental operators, it disagrees with the FTA's approach.
He says that a variable charging rate across the road network will make it impossible for hire and reward operators to set their delivery rates.
"We want to see two flat rates for trucks: one for day and one for night-time deliveries. Without this operators will not be able to calculate their price," says King.