From Deseret News archives:
Blimey! Pay per mile in Britain?
But to motorists stuck in traffic jams that now clog its roads and provincial towns, it could feel more like Edvard Munch's "The Scream."
Congestion on British roads has become so bad that government officials are proposing a dramatic measure to stave off what they call "L.A.-style gridlock."
Under the plan, drivers would pay for using every single road in the country. Sophisticated satellite and global positioning equipment would track vehicles, charging them according to the route they take.
Busy roads at busy times of day could cost as much as $2 per mile, according to preliminary proposals. Small rural routes would cost just a few cents a mile.
The idea, set to be formally unveiled today in a speech by Transport Minister Alastair Darling, would be unprecedented. Several countries have talked about road pricing, or variable pricing, for decades, but nothing on this scale has ever been considered before.
And despite some grumbling that satellite tracking would breach privacy, it's an idea that may be spreading.
A pilot project similar to the British plan began near Seattle late last year, but results won't be reported until 2006. Cities from New York to Moscow, meanwhile, have been watching London's landmark congestion charge scheme with interest.
"It's a national issue now," says a government spokeswoman. "As the country gets more prosperous and people use their cars more, it's an issue we'll have to address."
A government study found that road pricing could reduce congestion by 40 percent and result in $20 billion in time savings, she adds.
A fully functioning nationwide system — involving roadside devices that monitor every journey of every vehicle — is still a decade away. But the government hopes to legislate in the next couple of years.
The impetus is a simple case of supply and demand. Demand for roads has risen dramatically as vehicle numbers have increased more than tenfold in the past 50 years, to 28 million. Yet supply, in the form of road capacity, has increased by only 20 percent, according to Philip Hale of the RAC motorists' organization. The only way to smooth out the imbalance is to increase the supply of roads or introduce a pricing element to deplete demand.
"If we were to price for other goods the way we do for road space, there would be huge inefficiencies and massive excess demand," says Professor David Begg, a former government adviser on transport and the director of the center for transport policy. "We are pricing for road use the way the former Soviet Union used to ration bread — through queues, not prices."
