The road to the future opens this summer as the pricing debate gets under way. According to Transport Secretary Alistair Darling, either gridlock will make our roads impassable in 20 to 30 years, or we will be paying between 2p and £1.34 a mile for the privilege of driving our cars.
The minister has yet to spell out all the details other than plans for a trial within two years, but insurers and the way they charge for policies could play a vital role. Norwich Union looks set to become the pioneer in persuading drivers to adopt the 'black box' technology which can be used both for pricing journeys and setting insurance premiums.
Other moves are also afoot. On 4 July, London's congestion charge will rise from £5 to £8 a day. The three main political parties have quietly agreed that such road-pricing measures are a lesser evil than ever-increasing congestion and pollution - and we are on course for more such schemes to be introduced.
Transport for London, for instance, is consulting on extending the congestion charge westwards, a move which it says could cut traffic by 14 per cent and congestion by as much as 20 per cent. Meanwhile, the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise are developing a scheme, aimed at a 2007 launch, that will charge heavy trucks for their level of road use.
This is being seen as a forerunner of schemes for cars - the Department of Transport has begun a trial of black-box technology with private motorists in Leeds.
During the general election campaign, Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats all expressed support for the idea of road-pricing. This was a shift from 2002 when Professor David Begg, chairman of the government's Commission for Integrated Transport, was almost a lone voice in suggesting that road-pricing schemes were the only practical way to deal with problems related to congestion, pollution and parking. It was only after London mayor Ken Livingstone introduced congestion charging in 2003 that the politicians gradually came around to the notion.
The big problem facing politicians now is how to convince the public - a congestion charge in Edinburgh was rejected in a referendum last February. The London scheme is regarded as a big success by Transport 2000, but the paying motorist may be less enthusiastic.
In national terms, Darling is clearly supportive of road-pricing, but the government could be accused of dragging its feet on the technology, which it says will not be ready for another 10 years. What they are talking about is a scheme through which each car would be fitted with a black box linked to a satellite-based global positioning system (GPS). The box would record the time of day and the car's location and speed, with penalties levied if, for example, it was registered on a busy road in the rush hour.
However, government excuses about the technology look thin when you talk to Norwich Union, which came up with a similar idea for insurance purposes four years ago. It has been successfully piloting the scheme with 5,000 drivers, all fitted with black boxes, over the past nine months. GPS technology operating at one-second intervals can place a car within five to 10 metres.
'We are very confident that we can take this product to market by the end of 2005 or the beginning of 2006,' says NU spokesman Douglas Vallgren.
The company plans to use the technology to charge for insurance by the mile, with reference to the time of day and type of road the driver is using, discouraging driving on high-risk roads at high-risk times. Black box technology about to be used in the United Arab Emirates allows the car's top speed on any given road to be pegged at the speed limit.
If Britain goes down the road-pricing route, the government will need to decide whether it will be fiscally neutral or if the average driver will end up paying more.
Begg wants to see the use of carrots as well as sticks to get the new systems off the ground.
'There have to be incentives for road users,' he told Cash. 'The key thing is to try to give them a price incentive to travel outside peak hours.'
He believes that insurers such as Norwich Union will drive the issue forward, encouraging people to install black boxes (currently £200 each through NU) in return for cheaper insurance. The government could then piggy-back on this technology.
Until we reach this stage, however, the government could still encourage schemes such as the London congestion charge, where the technology depends on cameras on the boundaries of the charging zone.
As the debate develops, all sorts of issues will be up for grabs. The motorists' lobby will want the vehicle excise duty (currently between £55 and £170, depending on the vehicle) and fuel excise duties (at present 50p per litre of unleaded petrol) to be cut in return for adopting the new system.
But environmentalists will argue that motoring costs need to be raised (they have fallen by 11 per cent in real terms since 1975, according to government figures). If we are to meet our international obligations on greenhouse gas emissions, motoring needs to be made more expensive - and public transport more appealing and convenient.
