Government funds road charging

A new fund to help local councils develop regional road-pricing schemes has been set up by the Government as part of its move to nationwide pay-as-you-go charging.

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A new fund to help local councils develop regional road-pricing schemes has been set up by the Government as part of its move to nationwide pay-as-you-go charging.

The Department for Transport’s (DfT) new Transport Innovation Fund will provide billions of pounds to councils to develop ‘local transport strategies’, which combine some form of road pricing with improvements in public transport.

Initially, £280 million will be available when the scheme starts in 2008 but this is forecasted to rise year-on-year to more than £2.5 billion in 2014.

The local projects will be used to test approaches to a nationwide system of road-user charging that the DfT announced last month.

Although Edinburgh residents rejected plans to introduce a congestion charge in a recent referendum, the DfT is confident councils will be tempted by the cash and run pilot pricing schemes. It hopes to name the councils and regions it will work with next year and have systems in operation by 2008.

The DfT’s final nationwide goal is to charge motorists between 2p and £1.34 per mile depending on the time of day and congestion levels on the route. Although there is no official timetable for the UK-wide scheme, it could probably be put in place in around 10 to 15 years.

The planned introduction of nationwide road pricing for lorries in 2008 has been postponed until the launch of the system for all road users. Originally announced in 2002, the system would have been the most ambitious project of its type in the world. However, it has been delayed following the difficulties experienced in Germany with a far simpler scheme.