Environmental transport organisation 'concerned' about potential carbon impacts of road pricing

Thu 10 March 2005 View all news

The Energy Saving Trust has expressed concern about the potential CO2 impacts resulting from the introduction of road user charging. The organisation also suggests that any introduction should follow a simpler, affordable model such as that being developed in Portland, Oregon.

The Trust, which runs a range of programmes to encourage the purchase and supply of lower carbon vehicles, has two reasons for expressing reservations about the proposed charging system.

Firstly, if road pricing were introduced in tandem with a cut in fuel duty, it could become cheaper to drive (at least in non-congested areas) than is currently the case), leading to more traffic and higher CO2 emissions.

Secondly, in principle at least, road pricing does not distinguish between the type of car being driven, offering no incentive to drive a low carbon vehicle. Therefore, EST believes that a road user charging scheme should charge high emitting cars more than low emitters. This would be particularly important if Vehicle Excise Duty - currently graduated to reflect CO2 emissions - were reduced to make way for road pricing.

Though the Oregon road pricing scheme does not include vehicle efficiency incentives, EST say that the fee structure could easily be modified to include environmental objectives. The main benefit of the scheme, they say, is that administration costs are low because it works with the existing tax collection system rather than introducing a new system from scratch.

Related Links

Energy Saving Trust - "Pricing Roads - is there a better way?"



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