The quote is for a report into "road pricing" [1] by which they seem to mean mean pricing individual roads, rather than roads collectively.

Right now, the country has a variety of toll roads, toll tunnels, toll bridges, congestion charge zones, low emission zones and suchlike. They can have complex pricing schemes - higher for more polluting vehicles, free at evenings and weekends, free for wheelchair users, higher during rush hour, free for taxis and busses. Dozens of schemes across the country have different ways of paying - and often the money goes to local, rather than national, government.

So I think a mileage tax was not in the scope of the report. This was a report specifically asking "what if all roads were toll roads?"

[1] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmtran...

Indeed. It doesn't allow differential pricing per road type. Driving 10 miles through London is almost certainly worse than 10 miles down a country a road in terms of impact. Is that something worth giving up everyone's privacy? I personally don't think so, and I'm not even particularly privacy conscious.

Might that be more open to fraud than a telematic solution? Doubtful. Those people who would attempt to commit fraud that way will be just as likely to do so otherwise.

That seems like a 99% solution, but the farmers or amateur racers who put mileage on their cars outside of public roads might be annoyed by that solution. Same with people who spent a lot of time driving outside of the UK.

But based on the privacy implications of the other approach, I'd much prefer yours, maybe with a way to submit documentation of off-road/out-of-country miles.

> That seems like a 99% solution, but the farmers or amateur racers who put mileage on their cars outside of public roads might be annoyed by that solution.

They still release pollutants into the atmosphere, though.

The whole point of this taxation change is to account for ongoing electrification. The government are concerned about lost tax revenue from fuel duties and need a new mechanism to fund public roads through taxation by those who use it the most.

It's not just about pollutants.

That's a second-order concern - the view that fuel taxes are effectively road usage charges is already cemented by the fact that "red diesel" (fuel with an added chemical colorant) used in agriculture has a much reduced taxation regime vs regular pump diesel.

Tractors do use the road and as large and heavy vehicles I imagine they do a disproportionate amount of damage. I think tractors are just considered more essential so low fuel tax can be considered a subsidy of sorts.

A problem with annual milage is annual tax. How many people are planning for a 4 figure tax bill? Gas tax is per fill and built in.

This is largely a solved problem; consider income tax. You "pay" (withhold) monthly and true-up at the end of the year.

Income tax is withheld on the income. Are you suggesting that we open the door to more taxes being withheld from paychecks?

No - I'm just pointing out that amortization and prepayment of an annual tax bill is largely a solved problem. I was more thinking of a monthly request to pay X.

It is predicated on the motorist estimating their annual mileage; but if there was a simple mechanism to make adjustments based on deviation from the estimate then I can't imagine it would be too bad.

Now find a way to make sure it's actually used for its charter, and you'll be celebrated for centuries.

withhold the tax when you fill up, get a refund at the end of the year.

Monthly tax bill for the year prior?

Seems reasonable, a typical payment cycle. What happens when someone doesn't pay? (This is probably a more general question to payment period)

Apply same laws as council tax and/or not paying road tax

Agreed - although remember the MOT only starts once the car is there years old. There is no MOT for the first few years.

Also, and more of an edge case, there are some vehicles that don't require an MOT, such as vintage vehicles (which also don't pay VED) and don't public sector fleets (such as police cars)

Also, there is significant evidence that reducing the frequency of MOTs would be a good thing all round (no real downside, until a car falls below a specific level).

Maybe it could allow new vehicles to self-report yearly until the first MOT.

Most of the point of road pricing is to charge (much) more At places and times where traffic is congested, so traffic flows well 24/7 and we don't have to keep adding lanes and freeways eternally for the non paying traffic.

The report calls for pricing to be dynamic based on time/congestion and take into account geography - a straight annual mileage report would not allow for this.

Dynamic pricing is just a way to justify trackers.

The main issue, though, is simply that when people buy an EV they stop paying massive amount of tax on petrol/diesel.

Dynamic pricing is the only way to allocate a resource of fixed supply but hugely variable demand.

The alternative of building more and more road is untenable.

dynamic pricing can be trivially done with toll roads. Plenty of countries have toll roads with transponder tags. See, the big problem here is that you could share the transponder with a friends/family/co-workers and that makes spying more difficult. Doubleplusungood.

Therefore, we must install it right into your car, preferably at the factory, so you cannot remove it easily to make sure the spying data we get is of the highest quality.

They just want to spy on you, and with time control your car remotely, and they'll come up with all sorts of pretzel logic to justify it.

Spying. There are no other reasons.

I assume license plate readers are much less work and expense for everyone than transponders.

I love Canada’s system. I simply got a bill in the mail in the United States based on my license plate they read, and no need to slow down traffic or deal with toll booths, or get a specific transponder for Canada.

Except this is not an issue and, in any case, not the issue here.

Number of cars on the road depends on population at this point an on the housing model. We don't build "more and more roads" just to accommodate an infinitely growing number of cars. This is a mature market, no the 1950s or 1960s. If areas are deemed too congested there are already ways to limit congestion.

No, this is a tax income problem caused by EV but they are taking the 'opportunity' to bamboozle us into thinking that trackers and dynamic pricing is required and that there is no alternative.

I don't know why they do it, EVs already transmit all sorts of data that makes spying so much easier.

Is it just the creep factor they want to avoid, by making you do the performative act of installing the tracker yourself, and thus "consenting"?

> If areas are deemed too congested there are already ways to limit congestion.

Such as? I have not seen an alternative to variable rate tools in the US.

Here in the UK there may be congestion charges to enter certain zones, "Park and ride" schemes, limited and expensive parking space.

To install a tracker on every car along with all the infrastructure for handling and billing is calling a nuclear strike on a molehill. Again this is just some interests trying "to load the boat".

Yes, I can agree these on vehicle trackers are unnecessary, since license plate readers would do the job just as well.

> every year

New cars don't have to be taken for MOT for several years. After buying a car you don't need to even take it to a mechanic for the first two or so.

Either make the MOT required from new or have a sub-MOT milage check. It's a completely trivial problem.

> It's a completely trivial problem.

Well yeah - the simplest solution is doing it remotely, which is what they're doing.

I'm not sure how you feel that is that the simplest solution. Building an entirely new way of thousands of cars reporting their milage without fraud or privacy concerns. Versus doing nothing different other than using the data which is already gathered for a majority of cars.

I guess the plan would be to base pricing in such a way that it will incentivise good behaviour? For example, a journey distance of 1 mile or less could be made so expensive that people choose to walk instead.

But this could also horribly backfire, with people driving ten miles to get gas or to the shopping center across town.

Exactly. GP assumes there are only two alternative goods, but like almost every well-intentioned idea it doesn’t actually take into account human behavior and how artificially changing demand for one thing can have really bad consequences.

Presumably the goal is to also reduce congestion, by having variable rate tolling that charges more for driving at high demand times and less for low demand times.

They never heard of toll roads?