Road Charging petition - please sign!

[nichomach]

Actually, in some cases, lights on a roundabout are a DAMNED good idea; where I join the M61 just outside work (see HERE) is having them fitted - there's at least a couple of shunts a week there, and some quite serious accidents. Basically, it's a roundabout with poor visibility, quite a lot of exits/entrances, and drivers tend to enter it at way too high speed. That, plus the fact that it's difficult to get onto at peak times results in crunches, tailbacks and aggro just about every evening. They're putting lights in now (YAY! for the Highways Agency...and I'll bet you don't hear THAT very often), and I for one will be damned glad when they have.

[G4Z]

It may reduce accidents but no doubt it will also slow traffic to a crawl.

[nichomach]

So no change there then...

[99Flake]

Personally I don't see why we can't have the same system as the French with road tolls like the M6 Toll, it is a far better idea.

Does have its drawbacks though, like being timed from one toll to the next so if you speed you get fined. Not a problem in itself but the speed limit on our motorways is too low, if it were to be raised this would be fine.

My other gripe would be that in this country we all know that the revenue from said tolls would never go directly back into the road itself, unlike in France. This is one of my pet hates about the road tax and fuel tax. It is massively high here but we see no return, roads in Kent are appalling and the motorways need huge overhalls with roadworks that aren't there for over 2 years!!

[Richh]

To clarify, it will not use GPS or Galilleo

[pantomime mode] Oh yes it will! [/pantomime mode]

(no idea where Rich got that from)

Well more than anywhere else I got it from EDS Astrium, one of the companies actually making the Galileo satellites, whom I've done some work for in the last couple of years. Where do you get your ideas?

or any in car boxes at all.

Wrong. Your idea about ANPR equipped CCTV cameras every couple of hundred metres is, frankly, bollocks. This has not been proposed, and if it was, the human rights brigade would be declaring world war 3. Deploying CCTV on the scale you suggest, on every UK road is also hugely impractical.

The satellite-enabled model has been the only proposal put forward by Government for road pricing, and has always involved Galileo as the primary enabler, exactly as mentioned previously. The ANPR-driven movement database is the police's baby, sod all to do with road pricing.

Seeing as you like Wiki links, here's one for you to read, FYI, like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_pricing

And...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...7/nroads27.xml
http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/...9160902,00.htm
http://www.vnunet.com/computing/news...galileo-system

And, if you really want an interesting read, here's something direct from the Department for Transport itself:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/road...cin4002?page=8

[Barakka]

The intial tests carried out by the BBC in November 06 used GPS, but there has not been a concrete decision even to go ahead with the system, let alone exactly how the technology will work.

The ANPR system is indeed more of a police thing and the linking of this into CCTV has been going on for over a year IIRC. There is no need for the road pricing system to track vehicles as it's already covered by the ANPR system which is linking into CCTV and petrol station forecourt cameras.

The following is a reply I gave on another forum:

Do you agree with the system?

Not sure, I would have to see what the government finally proposes before deciding that. I've read the proposals/reports on the Department of Transport's website, and all the info on the tests carried out by the BBC last Nov. but nothing has been decided yet, it's all still conjecture.

tell me what exactly is wrong with the long-running system of fuel duty we already have.

It makes no allowance for how important or relevant the miles are based on nature of task or geographic location;

Example 1 - Relevance
A woman in the BBC tests, was a non-working mum who used the car for the school run, her bill came in at £83 a month. This sounds outrageous, but it became evident in the tests that she was dropping the kids off at school and then running a multitude of errands - during rush hour !

When she found out the potential cost she said that she would have to send the kids on the bus. Obvioulsy she would also then have to run the errands later in the day - i.e. not rush hour - when the roads are cheaper to use.

Example 2 - Geography
The current system with fuel duty makes no distinction on geography, the cost (assuming fuel is the same price and cars are the same) to do 10 miles in City Centre Manchester is the same as in the most rural locations e.g. villages in the Scottish highlands.

However, in Manchester City Centre you can usually find a supermarket within about 5 miles, although in rush hour it may take you 25 mins of driving (polluting, clogging up the road) to travel that 5 miles. In the rural location it could easliy be 20 miles to your nearest supermarket and rush hour is a concept mentioned by people from out of town which requires much mocking and laughter.

why should we pay more to travel on busy roads at peak times? theres a REASON we all have to be on the same roads at 8:30 in the morning. Its called work.

Well, as above really, the idea is that by getting the people who don't really need to be there off the roads, leaving only the people that do.

Charging more at those times is a further penalty on those who work!

This is the big point, the sticking point if you will, and how it is being put accross by those apposed. Part of the aim of this scheme would be to try and make businesses re-consider things like opening times and employees ability to work from home. The government needs to address this, and that's obvious in all the documents that have been drawn up so far. In order to get the general populus to buy in on this they need to make it appealing, and the main way to do that is to show people how they could save money by doing it.

On the down side it's also one of those systems where it's going to take a few years to "settle in". But the potential benefits are huge, for example everyone complains that money made from drivers doesn't get spent on roads. But if the government is thinking about repairing/improving a road the 1st thing they do is commission a review of the situation, a monitor of the traffic etc. Well this system means they would already have all the information on all the roads, how busy they are, at what times etc.

To be honest i'm nowhere near decided i'm just not going to dismiss it without finding out if it's going to be any good.

[geezerone]

Hi

Just found this petition which opposes what our 'wonderful' government wishes to impose on the nasty horrible motorists in the UK. The petition is on the number 10 website but funny how they didn't tell anyone about it!

Sign and pass the link on to whoever you know please!!!!

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax

[JPreston]

Wow.

I for one have certainly heard nothing about this petition, particularly in the last few days. You'd think it would be in the media, or posted on more forums, or something, but no it just totally passed me by.

[GeorgeTuk]

Please go to the previous post http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=98722

Thank you

[geezerone]

We are already heavily taxed in the UK with stealth tax upon stealth tax and this would just be another tax on not just workers but also people living in rural locations and having to travel long distances to work for instance or where public transport is not an option. Public Transport is very bad and expensive and many reports carried out on TV showing how a family would cope without the car for the week etc just highlighted how poor the public transport network is. Now the network is private, if it doesn't make money there will be no coverage.

The road charging is a cash cow and could easily be used to plug NHS, Schools, pension shortfalls whilst still leaving gridlock on the roads.

[G4Z]

[pantomime mode] Oh yes it will! [/pantomime mode]

Well, as said above it is not decided yet, however there are a few reasons to go with ANPR over a GPS based system that mean in my opinion the GPS/Galilleo system is unworkable.

1. ANPR is here now and Gallileo is 10 years away at a minimum.

2. how can you force everybody to have one of these boxes in the car? how can you stop people disabling them? As any secuirty professional knows once you have direct physical access to a system, all bets are off.

3. ANPR is cheap, CCTV on every road is most certainly feasible, all of the telecoms infrastructure in this country follows the roads. I should imagine it would compare well financially with retrofitting 30 million cars and maintaining the equipment in them.

[Saracen]

Wow.

I for one have certainly heard nothing about this petition, particularly in the last few days. You'd think it would be in the media, or posted on more forums, or something, but no it just totally passed me by.

It's been in the media. It was in the BBC and C4 evening news yesterday, for a start, and on one of my local BBC radio stations.


I don't sign online petitions, by the way ......... except for this one.

[G4Z]

/me throws sarcasm detector at Saracen.

[Moby-Dick]

threads merged.

[Richh]

...Gallileo is 10 years away at a minimum.

The first Galileo satellite is already up. Mass rollout of road charging is also a similar period away, precisely because it is slaved to the full deployment of Galileo. Did you read the links I posted previously?

how can you force everybody to have one of these boxes in the car?

By making them mandatory on new car production, and tying them into schemes that "sweeten the pill" such as pay as you drive insurance, and automatic anti-theft and tracking features.

how can you stop people disabling them?

By making them a mandatory part of the car's instrumentation - and alarm system. In other words the car doesn't start until it receives a satellite position, and the owner has authenticated it with his fingerprint or ID card/smart driving licence. All this is mentioned in the DfT feasibility study I linked previously.

As any secuirty professional knows once you have direct physical access to a system, all bets are off.

You're forgetting that 99% of drivers are clueless numpties who can barely check their own oil level and tyre pressures. Sure there will be an industry devoted to exploiting whatever loopholes there are in any law, but mandatory black boxes most definitely are part and parcel of this idea, and Government believes, rightly or wrongly, that most people won't dick with them.

3. ANPR is cheap,

The software to do it is cheap. The mass datalinks and a large supply of high resolution, night and foul-weather capable CCTV cameras are not.

CCTV on every road is most certainly feasible, all of the telecoms infrastructure in this country follows the roads.

The wires follow the roads. Tapping into them every couple of hundred yards and adding sufficient copper (or fibre) to support the amount of data the cameras will create will be horribly expensive. This is why satellite tracking has been proposed as the primary enabler for road pricing right from word go, even before Galileo was floated.

I should imagine it would compare well financially with retrofitting 30 million cars and maintaining the equipment in them.

No it doesn't and for one crucial reason. The scenario you suggest with mass ANPR cameras would result in Government directly picking up the tab, both for installation and maintenance.

Putting a box of tricks in every car, by contrast, would force the costs almost directly onto each vehicle owner, either in terms of an increase in manufacturing cost on new vehicles, or else an upfront charge to "buy" the box, and also requiring the car owner by law to make sure it stays fully functional.

[chicken]

By making them a mandatory part of the car's instrumentation - and alarm system. In other words the car doesn't start until it receives a satellite position, and the owner has authenticated it with his fingerprint or ID card/smart driving licence. All this is mentioned in the DfT feasibility study I linked previously.

If this law comes into play I am NEVER going near a tunnel again!