Charge by the mile?

So the gov't are proposing scrapping road tax and fuel duty in favour of a charge by mile rate with varying rates by time of day and location.

I think the basic idea is good but i think it would be a massive and costly nighmare to employ.

I'm all for paying more if you drive more and less if less.  Can't help thinking that in the end we'd all be paying more overall  

Any comments…?

bad idea for people who like to drive (like myself) but then I do drive late at night!

I think it's another scam to make us think we're getting a 'better' deal when really it will cost us more..

Also, how are they going to keep track of our milage? black box? they'd also use it for checking all sorts of other things!

I personally wouldn't mind (as I'm in an uncongested area where the charges, I assume, wouldn't be much! :mrgreen But it could be a nightmare for people in congested areas who have to commute miles every day because they can't afford to live in city centres near to their place of work. Suppose the whole idea is to get them to use public transport instead!  :evil:  It could also feel unfair that people who drive big, petrol guzzling cars/landrovers/mpv's and do the same mileage/use the same roads, only have to pay the same as small economical vehicles. I agree that it'll be a nightmare to control and the costs would be horrendous. Are they going to have black boxes in every car and send bills out?! It'll probably be years before they even get on with it anyway!  

….and what about the hundreds of thousands of foreign cars coming through Dover, clogging our roads………..
….and they will NEVER abolish Road Tax - surely it is the system whereby they ensure that there are no uninsured, non mot'd cars on the roads……oh, sorry…..
………by the time they get this up and running (let alone running properly) I'll have long given up driving!

Now you have upset me for the weekend……  

If public transport was reliable and the trains and buses where clean, I would certainly make the switch. The reality is the buses and trains are not reliable and they are filthy.

The idea of introducing tolls on roads is nothing more than another stealth tax.

Regarding the black box, I would take it out of the car and attach it to the TV. That would mean no road tax and the nutters in government thinking that my car has not left the drive.

I think the only workable system would be if this 'black box' recording system was built into newly manufactured cars, and existing cars would have to stay on the existing road tax system. I can't see it being workable fitting a 'black box' to every car in existance on the roads, it would be too easy to romove it or tamper with it.

Nice idea, but completely and totally un-workable in my opinion.

If you think about it though it would be maybe slightly fairer on people like me who run two cars, as I wouldn't be paying the full road tax on both cars every year, only paying for what I used the cars for which would be the same regardless of what car i took. therefore if I didn't use the golf for six months over winter say, I wouldn't have a tax disc sitting there effectively costing me money.

I wish someone would also come up with a fexible insurance policy which covered both cars as long as only one was being driven at one time, I think there's a market for that! (i know completely un-related!)

Mike.

I agree the black box is open to abuse. What if say my Golf was fitted with a blackbox and I decided to leave the car in the garage for a year or more. I then brought another Golf and transfered  the tax and the plate to the car, would that not mean beating the system?

Just another 'Bog Brother' tactic IMO. You can bet stage 2 will see them working out average speed covered over the logged miles. (or maybe I've just got a complex……..)
Road tax put on fuel best option if they were going to do it I would have thought. More miles = more fuel = more tax. Also encourages use of more fuel efficient cars to keep the greenies happy. No 'black boxes' needed and fairer on those who have more than one car (ie, don't have tax for 12mths but only use it every other weekend !)

We have got to do something. Its getting to be madness out there and gridlock is only afew years away .  
But Alistair Darling and the Labour Government does not have the answer ! So what is the answer ???

More Trains Busses Etc …..Na that wont work either , any way food for thought.

Problem with just adding to fuel cost is that you can't differentiate over time of day and location.

Roads are only really bad at certain times of the day in certain locations.  Rates would have to be pretty cheap in the highlands at 2am on a Sunday morning  

Pay by the mile tax? It's called bloody petrol isnt it?

Naff off labour and next time tell us these type of 'bright ideas' before the election not a month after re-election.

rrrrr . And relax

Just tried working on the maths on this.

I do about 25,000 miles a year.

It costs me ?50 to fill up my Audi now (?40 3 years ago!) which lasts me about a week. So about ?200 a month, ?2400 a year.

?40 of this is fuel duty tax though. So without fuel tax it would cost me ?480 a year. At an average of 50p a mile I would have to add a further ?12500.

 :evil:

I worked out that you have to do less than 6500 miles a year to be better off.

Oddly enough, good news for those of us keeping the Mk1 as a second car. The Mk1 will be cheaper to run under the new scheme.

Cheers,

Drew.

I think drivers should be charged by the number of Golfs they have in their garden and by the number of unfinished car projects in their car port

rotis23 said

I think drivers should be charged by the number of Golfs they have in their garden and by the number of unfinished car projects in their car port

…you mean the more Golfs you own, the less you pay?!

Don't listen to that rotis23 - he's a MK1 Golf owner wannabe  

He's jelous cos he doesn't have a garden in which to park any Golfs!!

crazyquiff said

Don't listen to that rotis23 - he's a MK1 Golf owner wannabe  

He's jelous cos he doesn't have a garden in which to park any Golfs!!

Could squeeze one more in!!

Our Mk1's would be far cheaper to tax every year if labour hadn't scrapped the rolling exemption for classic cars - as it stands, the Mk1 will never fall into this exemption bracket unless the ssytem is changed..

is there any way in which you can show your approval/disaproval? webbies/phonenumbers etc?

Or a 40ft Wallboard out front of Number 10 saying ' TONY! You tart, If we pay per mile, you pay per lie!'… or along those lines