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Road Capacity & Charging Forum
Chairman: Jim Coates FCILT
Your Institute is introducing some changes, making us more open and relevant to you, whichever sector of logistics or transport you work in.
We are replacing the four Faculties with eight Professional Sectors. These Professional Sectors will provide specialist activity for a particular area of interest whilst continuing to offer opportunity and involvement across the profession.
What you need to do...
We are now asking all members to update their details and tell us which Professional Sectors and Forums they want to belong to as soon as possible. You can do this in a number of ways - online through ‘My Membership', complete the Member Selection form that you will shortly receive in Focus, or complete the form included on the Current Awareness Bulletin over the next few weeks.
Please note, you can now belong to as many Professional Sectors and Forums as you wish.
Should you wish to make your selections online, please remember that you will need to create your password to login if you have not already done so. A short guide to making your selection online is available here.
Not a Member of CILT? Click here to find out how the new Professional Sectors and Forums are relevant to you.
Road Capacity & Charging Forum
The future of road pricing has been cast in doubt by the resounding rejection of the Manchester TIF bid by the local voters and the decision by the London Mayor to abandon the Western Extension of the Central London Congestion Charging Zone. The Forum will be considering what the Institute's attitude should be and what further activities we should now undertake. Together with colleagues from other transport institutes in the "Green Light Group" we met senior DfT officials in March to get their assessment of the situation. Although road charging is clearly off the political agenda of the main parties until after the next Election, DfT's studies of the operation of time and distance based charging are to continue, with support from the Treasury. The results will be available after the Election!
CILT (UK) submitted a memorandum last year to the Transport Select Committee's Inquiry into Road User Taxation. The Chairman of the Forum gave oral evidence to the Committee on 5th November. The Committee's report was published on 14th July. You can find it at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmtran.htm#reports, together with the Institute's Memorandum (Evidence 136) and the report of the oral session.
Key Points from the Committee's Report
The Committee point out that road user taxes in the UK are at about the average for the EU and raised primarily through fuel duty*, which the Committee supports as it is broadly proportional to use. But the Committee is very critical of the Government for:
- not being open about the levels of road user taxes and what they are spent on
- lack of progress in pursuing road pricing options and failing to explain them properly to the public
The Committee suggest that progress should be made on
- voluntary road pricing (with offsets of fuel duty for those who opt for this). They admit that people are unlikely to opt for pricing unless it is cheaper for them personally. So commuters in busy cities are unlikely to do so and Government revenues could fall. But they think that it might be a way of familiarising drivers with the idea.
- introducing a simple system of electronic charging for lorries to level the playing field with foreign hauliers
- explaining clearly the results of the Government's current research on how pricing would work
- developing a scheme like that in the Netherlands, in which pricing will be revenue-neutral. The Dutch start off with very high taxes on vehicle ownership and purchase, which will be abolished under their proposals. In the UK a revenue-neutral scheme would require a big cut in fuel duty, which might be opposed on environmental grounds. It would also require the operating costs to be reduced considerably (the Dutch are struggling to meet a target of 5%) and would not provide extra funds for higher levels of investment in transport (which the Committee say they would like to see)
The Committee are in favour of earmarking the proceeds of local charging schemes for local transport improvements. Bu they are against hypothecating the revenues of national road user and say this should be decided on broader socio-economic grounds.
* the Committee mention that duty on diesel is the same in the UK as on petrol. The higher diesel price is due to the higher basic production cost. Per mile it works out cheaper, of course.
The Forum is sponsoring an invited seminar in September to consider the future of road pricing in a world where revenues from fuel duty will progressively shrink as vehicles become more fuel efficient and alternative fuels (including electricity) replace fossil fuels. The seminar will beheld under the Chatham House rule and will include speakers and participants from other transport institutes, local government, the City and organisations such as CfIT, ITS UK and the RAC Foundation. We will report on the conclusions. In the light of the seminar the Forum will decide what further work the CILT can usefully do, either by itself or in conjunction with colleagues in the Green Light Group (a grouping of the main professional transport institutes) or the wider Route Map Group of interested individuals.
Several of you have expressed an interest in helping with the Forum's work. If you have any thoughts on road pricing or would like to be involved please contact:
Contacts for further information on the Road Capacity & Charging Forum
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