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New Road Charge Proposals –Politically Radical, But The Technology Is Available Now
Source:www.its-focus.org.uk , Source date:
ITS United Kingdom welcomes the recent contribution of the Commission for Integrated Transport to the debate over how our roads should be paid for. The CfIT proposes that GPS technology should be used to enable vehicles to be charged according to the road space they use and the time they use it, with the charges replacing the equivalent amount of fuel tax and vehicle excise duty. The proposals are founded on an application of ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems), of which GPS location systems form part, to distribute the cost of the road network in a new way. They will bring one aspect of ITS technology into the mainstream debate and stimulate public interest in how technology can be applied to manage our transport networks in new ways.
David Clowes, Secretary General of ITS United Kingdom, said “The CfIT proposals will stimulate much-needed debate on who should pay for our road network. At the same time, the Commission has rightly identified an ITS technology as the key to redistributing these costs. The technology to undertake this is available now – there is no need to debate whether it can be done, only whether it is the right way to go. I am pleased to see ITS enter the mainstream debate in this way.”
