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DfT to provide road pricing funding
23 February 2007

The Department for Transport has announced funding for local authorities to experiment with road pricing – despite major opposition to the scheme

From 2008, £200m per year will be made available over seven years out of the Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) to aid local authorities that want to bring forward local road pricing schemes, alongside major investment in public transport.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said on 24 February 2007 that it has awarded more than £14m to support 10 areas across England developing proposals for the TIF.

The road pricing proposal, which has led to almost 1.8m people signing an online petition against the scheme on the prime minister's website, could involve tracking motorists by satellite and charging them for every mile they drive to cut down on pollution and traffic.

The prime minister, in an email response to the signatories this week, vowed the government would not rush into a new system and that any changes would be fair and protect the public's privacy.

The DfT said the first studies are to take place in the greater Bristol area, covering the former Avon unitary authorities, Cambridgeshire for the Cambridge area, Durham, Greater Manchester, Shropshire for Shrewsbury, Tyne and Wear, the West Midlands area, Reading, Norfolk (for the Norwich area) and the cities of Nottingham, Leicester and Derby and the surrounding counties.

"We are working closely with each of these areas and anticipate the first bids to pilot road pricing to come forward this year, with the first schemes potentially going live in four to five years," the DfT said in a statement.

"It is only on the evidence we get from these established schemes that any decision on national road pricing would be made. The government is working with local authorities as they develop local pilot pricing schemes, and providing guidance on the systems and services that could be used to implement them."

The DfT said it was also working with the private sector to help it understand more about how the schemes would operate in practice.

"We have announced that we would allocate some £10m for demonstration projects to test how different types of technology could be applied, and how the whole system (including data collection and billing) can be made secure and trustworthy," said the DfT.

"Safeguarding privacy will be a key concern for those trials. We expect the demonstration projects will commence later in 2007, and that they will run for about two years."


Source: Kable's Government Computing
Publication date: 23/02/2007 11:30:15

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