PAY AS YOU GO
Page 69
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FAD a roll call been taken at the recent British Road Federation 11symposium on road administration and finance it would ,e sounded most impressive. Almost all the leading figures in world of road planning and building were on the list, from Prof. J. Smeed to Mr. James Drake, county surveyor of Lancashire;
m Mr. R. Gresham Cooke, MP, to Mr. C. D. Foster, directorteral of economic planning, Ministry of Transport; and from . A. C. Dune to Sir Reginald Wilson. Those present even inded Mr. Stanley Raymond from the other side of the tracks.
Lmong the few names missing was of Prof. Colin Buchanan, which be said to have had a symbolic tificance. His contribution to the ussion might have provided the sing item in the equation. Not that would have made the reaching firm decisions any more likely. 1 the debate was inconclusive Le as no surprise; there was the I for an exchange of opinions on highly controversial subject. Mr. del Roth should be thanked for wing his monograph on a selfncing road system to be set up target practice.
..06t A FAMIUAR PROBLEM
he basic problem tackled by the sympo n is a familiar one. There is an undisputed I a substantial road programme. ley has to be found for this purpose. question then arises of the organization :h can best be trusted to spend the ey most wisely and most effectively. At ent lavish contributions are made to the h equer by road users in direct taxation. provision and maintenance of roads the responsibility of the Ministry of asport and of local authorities. In theory • expenditure has no connection with tax contributions of users. One may be however, that the connection would mae plain in the unlikely event of expendiexceeding receipts.
a any alternative system which may be pted for the future there seems no inevitplace for road pricing: in other words, a scheme which makes the user pay :tly in accordance with his use. Mr. Roth others who support this concept must w that it has advantages other than theo:ally perfect equity. They suggest therethat payments based on the congestion ch a vehicle causes or in which it shares , by a natural process, reveal progressively that points the road system needs to be roved or augmented. Whatever people are entrusted with spending the money will have their thinking done for them. The voice of the user will be the voice of truth.
The discussions at the symposium showed the strength of the opposition to this particular economic theory. It seems absurd that for the purpose of financial administration alone the road system, which for all other purposes is best considered as a whole, should be arbitrarily chopped into segments to which different price tags are attached. There must be other simpler ways of steering road users away from congested areas.
As with so many other road problems the argument stems from the railways and their parlous financial state. They have to pay for their own track. Why should not road users do the same? When it is pointed out how much road taxation exceeds road expenditure the railways reply that the benefits are spread unequally and that in particular their main competitors, the long-distance operators, are getting their share of the track on the cheap and at the expense of the motorists.
:1 THEME DEVELOPED It was useful in this context that Mr. Raymond had the opportunity of developing the theme he has already broached on more than one occasion. His proposal is for a national authority which should take over the railway track and the road system, and perhaps also the canals and the tracks used by air services. Somewhat surprisingly, Sir Reginald Wilson, deputy chairman and managing director of the Transport Holding Company, appeared to agree. He almost reached the point of saying that if the Government took over the permanent way the railways would be deprived of at least one reason for grumbling. They would have one excuse the less for failing to make a profit.
Supporters of a national authority which would be outside the Ministry received one or two setbacks in the course of the symposium, particularly when Mr. C. D. Foster revealed that he no longer favoured this concept. Whatever body is given responsibility for roads, however, will find no lack of plans and advice. The roads working party of the National Economic Development Office has put forward several proposals for making the optimum use of the available resources. Even more recently the Traders Road Transport Association has made some excellent practical suggestions for sections of road about which complaints have been received from members.
There are plenty of proposals also for raising money to pay for the roads. Mr. Roth's plan boils down to a kind of congestion tax with much lower fuel duties and other taxes on users. With the similar intention of making users, roughly speaking, pay as they go it has been suggested that the fuel tax should be increased. The TRTA, in an otherwise useful memorandum, sounded an unwelcome note with the cheerful assumption that users would not mind paying more in order to get the roads they needed.
SKELETON AT THE FEAST .%4 Perhaps because the railways linger on as a skeleton at the feast it is almost universally taken for granted that the entire financial responsibility for roads lies with users. There is also a widespread feeling that each category of users should make an equitable contribution. From this it is only a step to the self-financing idea of metered transport run by a public utility indistinguishable from the electricity and gas boards.
It is at this point that the Buchanan factor should enter the equation. In his monumental work on urban traffic Prof. Buchanan made use of the valuable distinction between essential and optional traffic. This comes near to saying that there is a difference between the use of the roads by the community or for the community—as in the case of the collection and delivery of most goods —and the use of the roads by an individual for himself, as in the case of most commuters.
Granted this distinction it is feasible to suggest that for some uses of the road the price should be different than for others. Another way of looking at it is that Government money could fairly be spent without special taxation on purposes where the community rather than the road user is the main beneficiary. This seems more in accordance with Buchanan principles than granting road-using privileges to the man with the deepest pocket.
Janus