Travel Tax : The campaign to scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy

Check the forums

Please visit the forum pages for the latest news and activities.

From the Daily Express

FUEL prices could be slashed by 14p a litre under ground-breaking plans to help hard-pressed motorists.

The Daily Express has come up with a mechanism that would cut fuel duty as the price of crude oil rises.

Our system, the opposite of the controversial fuel price escalator which is set to put another 2p on a litre in October, would be funded by the Government�s £6billion windfall from higher taxes on North Sea oil.

The innovative scheme was backed by industry experts last night. Sheila Rainger, deputy director of the RAC Foundation, said: The proposals sound spot on. And the AA�s Paul Watters said: A price stabiliser like this would be something well worth looking at.

Drivers Alliance on the Politics Show

The West MIdlands version of the Politics Show lead with the formation of the Drivers Alliance and the ever increasing cost of motoring.

Please see the Forums and News for further information and a link to the show.

Petrol Prices and tax

The 41p is the price that Petrol can be bought and sold on the world market today and is linked to the crude oil price. The crude oil price is dependent on many factors but mainly the demand for oil and actions of producing countries. It is true that oil companies are making record profits but the hard business reality is that oil companies would make those profits without selling a drop of petrol to customers - we would simply sell all the oil on the world market and not refine it into petrol and sell it at petrol stations.

The cost price for the petrol sold changes on a daily basis. For instance, Shell produces only 3% of the worlds crude oil and cannot influence the global oil price.

Prices in the crude oil market are set by supply and demand.

Current world oil price of US$125/barrel is equivalent to 39p/litre - Petrol prices on the world market are 41p/litre. The example below is slightly out of date but the principles hold true.

As an example if petrol sells to customers at 108 p/litre then it is broken down as shown below.

Duty - 50.35p
Product - 32.60p
Vat - 16.07p
Retailer/Delivery - 8.88p

The 8.88p margin is the name given to the difference between the wholesale cost of petrol that Shell buys on the open market and the pump price. This margin has to cover all the costs like transporting the fuel to the service station and the costs of running the service station - wages, power, maintenance, credit card charges and so on.

Stop the Charge

There is a new website with a petition to sign against the Manchester CONgestion charge.

www.stopthecharge.co.uk

It also has some good videos and interesting information.

Manchester TIF bid announcment on Monday

Ruth Kelly will announce the result of the Manchester TIF bid on Monday. She will say the bid was successful which opens the doors to the world�s largest congestion charging scheme.

It seems this government are Labour Lemmings careering towards the cliff of oblivion. If Gordon Brown wanted to destroy the Labour movement, he has been very successful. I for one am disappointed as I believe we need a credible opposition to the new government lead by David Cameron and at this rate, the Labour Lemmings will have committed electoral suicide by 2010.

One thing we should note here, the cost of the scheme is £25 million MORE than the full extension of the Manchester Metro. Why not just provide the much sought after trams and save some money?

Everyone except Goverment knows the tolls cause the congestion.

Motorists across the county have been urged to join a protest against a planned 50 per cent price hike in toll charges at the Dartford River Crossing.

The rise in the fee from £1 to £1.50 to enter or leave Kent on the M25 follows an 18-month public consultation into the future of charging and is expected to be introduced in the autumn.

This is despite the original cost of building the two tunnels under the River Thames and the QE2 Bridge over it having been met in 2002 - with the legal authority to charge a toll expiring in April 2003.

The toll is now seen as a stealth tax which is adding to the misery of motorists already struggling to cope with the effects of fuel prices spiralling out of control. But supporters of the change say motorists will benefit from free travel between 10pm and 6am, which is designed to encourage off peak travel to reduce congestion.

Gordon Henderson, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, wants families in Kent to sign an online petition calling for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to scrap the charge altogether. He said: �Most motorists in Kent use the Dartford Crossing at some time and many people use it regularly. It is a scandal that although the cost of constructing the crossing was covered years ago, we poor old motorists are still being stung for almost £100 million each and every year. To propose increasing the cost by 50 per cent is quite simply daylight robbery. The crossing, consisting of two tunnels and a cable bridge connecting Dartford with Thurrock, is operated jointly by Le Crossing Company Ltd and the Department of Transport.

A DfT spokesman said that any suggestion of scrapping the charge would be counterproductive and that compromises were already in place.

He said:

We recognise that traffic levels are bad but we are already taking steps to try and reduce the level of congestion through the Dart Tag scheme and dropping charges at night time.

Our modelling shows that at peak times the bridge and tunnels can be overwhelmed so the fee is intended more as a congestion charge, which is then lifted at quieter times.

The department says that congestion levels would rise if the �user fee for the bridge and tunnels were scrapped and is keeping the original £1 charge for those drivers using its pre-paid Dart Tag system.

However, the online petition on the No 10 Downing Street website states that removing the toll booths would significantly reduce the amount of traffic queuing up on either side of the river. It also states that the exhaust fumes generated by the cars waiting in line causes unnecessary environmental damage and that the delays add extra expense to business and transport costs.

These latest demands come as the Government is facing mounting pressure over fuel costs spiralling out of control. As KOS Media reported last week, nearly 100 truckers from Kent joined a fleet of 500 lorries which converged on Downing Street to protest at the crippling cost of diesel for haulage firms.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has since warned that high oil prices are here to stay, following a meeting with industry bosses last week.

More of our money being wasted on road pricing

The government funded Technology Strategy Board has announced that it is to invest £3 million to support six ground breaking research projects that will develop innovative technologies to assist traffic management.

The funding, which will support research in the UK valued at £6 million, is part of the Technology Strategy Boards Intelligent Transport Systems and Services Innovation Platform. This was launched in 2006, in collaboration with the Department for Transport, with the aim of accelerating the development of technological solutions to assist road traffic management, including issues such as congestion, traveller information, safety and integrated travel.

Speaking about the Technology Strategy Boards decision to support the six projects, its Chief Executive, Iain Gray, said, The Technology Strategy Board is committed to stimulating the development of technologies that help address major societal challenges. Traffic congestion has negative economic, environmental and social impacts across the country.

He added, But this challenge also represents a major business opportunity for the UK. We aim to help position British companies to benefit from the growing international demand for intelligent transport systems. The technologies that will be developed by these projects could be applied around the world.

The six projects are

OccuTek. Led by HW Communications Ltd, the objective of the project is to investigate and validate the use of mobile phones to verify declared vehicle occupancy levels, as a means of promoting ride sharing through occupancy related discounts to road user charging.

Trusted Driver Model for Privacy and Accountability of TDP Road Pricing. Led by Kizoom, this project will develop a Trusted Driver Model which will use advanced cryptographic techniques to guarantee the privacy of the user.

CLASSAC. Led by PIPS Technology Ltd, this project aims to integrate York Universitys advanced image recognition capabilities into the PIPS Technologys camera range. The object is to make additional metrics available for road user charging.

Integrated mapping systems. Led by ESRI (UK) Ltd, this project will identify the optimal configuration of the partnerships software along with ESRs own integrated enterprise mapping software to provide a road price/user information collation solution both for commercial and domestic road users.

3GRSE: Led by telent Technology Services Ltd, this project will develop 3rd Generation Road Side Equipment using an innovative approach to enable Time Distance Place (TDP) implementations that integrate road pricing technologies.

Trusted Road Usage and Emissions Profiling (TRU EP): Led by Trakm8 Ltd, this project will expand Trakm8 current in-use fleet management Road User Service Provider system to provide a suite of services bundled into an efficient low cost in-vehicle device. The system aims to reduce the overall cost of travel whilst improving safety and security. It will also monitor CO2 emissions and fuel economy.

Road-pricing opposition hardens

Jun 2 2008 by Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail

PUBLIC opposition to road charging is hardening with 60% against the idea of paying to use clogged-up routes, a Department for Transport (DfT) survey has found.

The DfT regularly conducts surveys of public attitudes towards contentious issues and since 2005 has asked drivers and non-drivers a series of detailed questions on road charging.

It found 31% of people � and 35% of drivers � were flatly against any changes in the way we pay to use the roads, a rise from the 26% figure recorded in 2005. And 60% were against paying to use roads at peak times, while 58% opposed a system of paying more to use busier routes.

The proportion describing road charging as a �fair� policy has dropped to 29%, down from 32% in 2005, while 52% think it would be �unfair�. Drivers (58%) are more likely than non-drivers (39%) to consider a charge to be unfair.

Although ministers have expressed a desire to see a national road-charging scheme in place by 2015, there has been little enthusiasm on the part of local authorities to take part in trial schemes. Gordon Brown has struck a cool note on the idea, telling the Western Mail in an interview last month: �Local areas should have local decision-making powers, they should have local ballots to decide that. If people have the chance, locally, to be making that decision, the decision... will be what people actually want.�

Drivers pay £8 a day to drive in central London, between 7am and 6pm, Monday to Friday. The only other road-charging scheme is on the M6 Toll around Birmingham and Wolverhampton, which charges cars £4.50 to use the 27-mile stretch.

The Government�s Road Transport Bill will hand powers over road-charging to Ministers in Cardiff Bay. There are no plans at present for a specific scheme, but the power is almost certain to be used to introduce charges on the new M4 relief road, due to be opened in 2010.

But Ministers at Westminster are unlikely to show much enthusiasm for a national scheme with motorists already unhappy at rising petrol costs.

Plans to change the system of vehicle excise duty to make larger cars pay more, due to be introduced in April, have also provoked opposition from backbench Labour MPs.

The DfT survey found the main reason people objected to road charging was that �people won�t be able to change their travel behaviour�, suggesting those for whom car use is essential would regard it as simply another tax.

New Drivers organisation?

If there were a new road users organisation campaigning full time against road pricing, workplace parking levies and for lower motoring taxes, would you like to be a member? This new organisation would offer discounted motoring related products and competitions to win cars etc.