In case you haven’t heard of it already, one of the government’s proposals for cutting congestion is the idea of road charging. Currently, we have a tax on petrol (which effectively taxes you per distance driven, and is more expensive if your car is less efficient), and an annual flat fee on your car. Simple, and easy to understand, even if it is bloody expensive.
Road charging involves tracking your car’s movements, and taxing you based on the distance travelled. The twist is that you would be charged more for travelling on bigger, busier roads, and charged more if you travelled at certain busy times of the day and days of the week. The idea is that this will encourage motorists to travel at less congested times, and use alternative routes, and — holy of holies — use more public transport (and we all know my feelings on that one).
Most people are up in arms about this, based on the sophisticated “Fuck you, I don’t want to pay more money” argument. However, the real reason that road charging is daft is this: for a tax to be an effective deterrent, you need to be able to easily predict how your actions are going to affect what you get charged.
The London congestion charge is a good example of this. The rules are simple: if you drive within this area between 7am and 6:30pm, Monday to Friday, you have to pay a fixed fee for that day. The entry points to the charge zone are clearly marked with signs and road markings. It is very easy to understand how to avoid being taxed, and if you are taxed it is very easy to know how much it will cost you.
The road charging scheme, on the other hand, is likely to be incredibly complex. It won’t be possible to classify roads simply, since an A-road in Britain can be anything from a two-lane country road to an eight-lane behemoth coursing through the capital city. And since different roads (and directions) get busy at different times, it’s likely that they’ll have different charging schedules for each different road.
In other words, it’ll be very difficult to predict what charges you’ve incurred; you’ll just have to trust the bill that your black box generates at the end of each month. Not the most effective recipe for a deterrent tax. (And a hellishly expensive one to implement, too, but that’s a subject for another post.)