Progress in 2008 but new threats loom

If you're wondering why this blog has been so quiet for the last couple of months, it's down to a sense that 2008 offered a glimmer of hope that car users are turning the corner against overbearing politicians and repressive eco-mentalists.

Wishful thinking? Probably. Maybe the recent drop in fuel prices and the temporary delay of road tax hikes announced back in the Pre-Budget Report has gone to our heads.

Our last posting back in October heralded the start of the debate over congestion charging in Manchester. Thankfully the plan was rejected resoundingly by almost 80% of local voters.

This was despite the best efforts of the government and its BBC supporters to bribe locals with the promise of billions of pounds of spending on public transport projects.

These were projects than Mancunians justifiably thought should be provided anyway, paid for out of the considerable taxes they have already handed over to the government - rather than the billions of pounds extra that congestion charging would have cost them.

C-charging under fire

Of all the projects dreamt up by today's politicians - who seem to regard car users as cash machines they can raid repeatedly whenever they've wasted too much money elsewhere - congestion charging took the biggest kicking of 2008.

Some months before Manchester's triumph, the archdeacon of the anti-car lobby, Ken Livingstone, was ousted as mayor of London - having threatened a completely unjustifiable £25 daily charge that would have hit a wide range of normal family car users.

Livingstone spun the plan as designed to target those dastardly 4x4s that the eco-extremists seem to have an irrational obsession about. Irrational, given most 4x4s are no bigger, nor as gas guzzling than many mid-range family cars.

Spun out of office

Trouble was, anyone who could glance at a car magazine knew that targetting just 4x4s by emissions was impossible and that far more people were going to be financially slammed by the massive increase than Ken claimed. So Ken was kicked out.

A lesson there for all politicians about the dangers of over-confidence in the ability to spin a political agenda in the face of blatantly contrary facts.

His successor, Boris Johnson, has already consulted local people and pledged to scrap the westward extended area of the London zone.

Almost 28,000 took part in the consultation, of whom 67% and 86% of businesses supported the removal of the zone - similar numbers to those opposing its introduction in the first place, but whom Livingstone simply ignored.

The zone will be shrunk to its original central area by 2010, but given current economic circumstances local businesses and people are pushing for the toll to be lifted sooner.

Anyone listening?

While locally-based congestion charging faced an overwhelming public battering in 2008 - in addition to the 1.8 million people who signed a Downing Street petition in 2007 - road pricing has not yet been driven off the government's agenda.

What is it going to take for these people to get the message?

This year the Department for Transport will press ahead with trials for a pay-as-you-drive scheme that could see car users paying £1.30 a mile at the busiest times.

The basis of the idea is to ration road space rather than provide the necessary capacity or a viable alternative - an approach which, if applied to hospitals or schools, would cause uproar.

In addition to the democratic insult of ignoring repeatedly expressed public opposition to the idea, according to the Daily Express trails have already cost £10 million and the bill is only going upwards.

Rationing roads

The government line is that the trials are designed to "inform the work of those local authorities who are considering taking forward local congestion charging".

But what council would still seriously consider such a scheme after the fate that befell policy-makers last year in London and Manchester?

Naive defenders of pay-as-you-drive - such as some long established organisations purporting to represent the interests of motorists - seem to have the idea that if such a scheme replaces road tax, or if fuel tax is reduced, then drivers could benefit.

Leaving aside, as those organisations sadly do, the privacy implications of individual movement-tracking, does anyone seriously imagine that the government would implement a system costing billions of pounds if it wasn't going to rake in more money from us in the long term than whatever taxes it replaces?

Further moves towards road pricing look set to remain the biggest policy threat to the finances of car users into 2009. But, of course, authorities both national and local are already planning many other petty annoyances to hinder and frustrate the vast majority of car users for whom there is no viable alternative to life on the road.

More about those in another post.