UK Transport Plan Gives Green Light To Road Tolls
Date: 01-Dec-06
Country: UK
Author: Jeremy Lovell
The report, to be published on Friday, also said Britain should expand its sea and air ports but ensure the cost of using all transport fully included its impact on the environment to help tackle global warming.
The report's author, former British Airways chief Rod Eddington, said properly targeted and priced road tolls could save 28 billion pounds a year by 2025 and all but torpedo the case for major new road building.
"A national road pricing scheme of this type could reduce congestion by some 50 percent below what it otherwise would be in 2025 and reduce the economic case for additional strategic road infrastructure by some 80 percent," he wrote.
Without it, some 30 billion pounds would have to be spent on new roads after 2015, with uncertain returns and huge environmental damage.
Eddington said he agreed with former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern who said in October one of the best ways of promoting environmentally friendly economic growth was to ensure that carbon emissions carried a price.
Eddington noted that 61 billion journeys were made each year on Britain's creaking transport system, and that the resulting congestion was costing business and households a fortune.
CYCLE TRACKS
He said that without action road traffic would surge 31 percent and congestion would jump 30 percent by 2025.
Britain is at the cutting edge of high-tech traffic monitoring and management schemes, and the central London congestion charge -- which uses cameras -- has cut traffic by 22 percent since it came into effect nearly three years ago.
Eddington did not propose the use of any particular technology to monitor vehicle movements, but noted likely civil rights complaints and said the public would have to be convinced of the case for such schemes.
He called for targeted investments to ease road and rail bottlenecks, boost public transport and add to the improvements in traffic flow from the congestion charging -- including building more cycle tracks.
But he said the case for a major expansion of the country's high speed rail network was not proven.
"New high-speed rail networks in the UK would not significantly change the level of economic connectivity between most parts of the UK," Eddington wrote.
"Rail's energy consumption and carbon emissions increase with speed and this would erode rail's environmental advantage," he added.
Eddington said the country's cumbersome infrastructure planning system also needed to be reformed to speed up decision-making while maintaining necessary safeguards.
His report, commissioned jointly by the Treasury and the Department for Transport, is one of a series that will feed into a thorough review of the country's energy needs and spending priorities due to be published next year.