Toll roads, but it's not road pricing

The Government are reluctant to do anything that is seen as unpopular when it comes to roads. There is an old saying in politics; 'Never get involved with parking or dogs' as it divides the nation pretty equally.

When governments say that they want to reduce congestion everyone agrees,  but disagree violently on how to do it.

Some want more and wider roads. This upsets the environmental lobby as it encourages more cars to use the now clearer roads (and usually just causes worse problems somewhere else on the system).

Some want greater restrictions on driving, such as road pricing, which makes drivers pay for the roads they use according to the time of day and level of congestion. This was simply hinted at in 2007 and caused nearly two million to sign a petition opposing a policy that was yet to be proposed by any party.

A compromise that might be more acceptable is to charge tolls on new roads. Most people seem to back the idea of not raising taxes further and so this is the only way to build new roads.

But is this an integrated transport policy? A series of tolled and non-tolled roads might not work at all. Drivers may cram on to the non-tolled roads to avoid the charge causing even worse congestion in areas not designed for heavy traffic.

The M6 toll road (the Birmingham Northern Relief Road) is a case in point. Opened in 2004 the latest figures show it carrying just 39,000 vehicles a day, almost half the predicted 74,000 a day when it was planned. The rest continue to battle each other for space on the congested M6 to the south.

Toll roads may be a convenient way of avoiding the problems of fiscal policy faced by the UK at present, but it lacks the broader and deeper thinking required to meet the challenge of the 21st Century.

The BBC report the toll road policy here

Workplace parking tax in Nottingham

Nottingham is introducing a tax on workplace parking if a firm has more than ten parking places for employees. The aim is to provide a further disincentive to using private transport and reduce congestion.

The fee for a parking place is £288 a year and employers can pay it or charge their employees. Presumably if the employer pays the fee then employees will need to declare it as a 'benefit in kind' for tax.

Will £288 be enough to reduce congestion very much? Well probably not. But the scheme should raise £14 million and that is going to fund two new tram lines and provide a cheap and efficient improvement to public transport.

Trams are incredibly cheap to provide compared to other types of public infrastructure and if they have good routes will be very fast (but not if they head down crowded streets and compete with cars of course). They are also very environmentally friendly and fit into a sustainable transport policy very well.

We know from places like Singapore that congestion policy needs a series of supporting measures. This increases the effectiveness of each (making the cross price elasticity of demand more elastic). So Nottingham are also introducing parking restrictions to avoid people avoiding the charge by parking on the street. With the investment in trams they are probably doing all a local authority can.

Many people object to this move but it really does seem to be a policy informed by our understanding of transport economics.

Local coverage of the policy is here