Really worried about the possibility of “pay per mile”

[Yorkiepud2614]

I’ve been seeing more and more about this new proposal “pay per mile” that would replace car duty (I think). Which the average household bill somewhere around £450 - £600. Lots of reports that it may come in this October.
Living in the Highlands this would completely cripple us. Do people really think the new government will bring this change in?

That could work for petrol/diesel cars, but how would you make it work for electric? If you increase tax on electric, you're penalising everyone who uses electric, not just drivers.

In a decade or two, most cars will be electric, so the horse has long bolted for more tax on petrol/diesel.

That's the whole problem. The govt needs to find a new way of raising revenue to replace the billions that will be lost as more and more people stop buying petrol/diesel.

In Japan, as I mentioned, motoring incurs all sorts of expensive costs (not PPM yet, but in the future, probably yes), and of course these costs “technically” get passed on to me.

The thing is, though, it’s outweighed massively by the fact that I don’t need to own or run a car, and my suburban friends mostly only run a single car per household and use it a lot less than a UK family would. And we all benefit from reduced congestion, which is a huge cost sink and productivity destroyer in the UK.

There are reasons why nearly all economists are in favor of PPM and similar systems - and I’m talking about dry center-right think-tanks types as well, not save-the-planet hippies.

Dont take it personally Op. Folk on here often like to come across as superior. Just remember that its not about you. It makes them feel better about themselves.

The taxpayer already massively subsidises cyclists, bus and train users. It would cost tens/hundreds of billions to improve public transport and cycling infrastructure to the extent that most people wouldn't need to drive cars.

The money enables Japan to invest in really good PT so that there is usually an alternative to driving unless one lives rurally - the UK needs to do the same, frankly.

Thing is with the UK government no matter how much money they raise from vehicles, could also apply to most taxes, they never seem to spend it on what's promised.

Over my many years of being old enough to vote one thing I've learned about a government is that those in leadership spend most of their years telling us about how badly the last government did and pass the blame.
No need to keep telling us...just get on and fix things..

Nail on the head there. People would soon starting complaining when their tradesman increases his prices, the supermarket delivery costs rise, Uber fares rise, and even Just Eat delivery charges are hiked up.

I’m not sure if I understand this correctly?

At the moment, petrol/diesel motorists (of which I am one) pay fuel duty so are effectively taxed per mile. The more miles you drive, the more fuel you use, so the more tax you pay. That’s correct isn’t it?

The proposed pay per mile is for electric cars as obviously they won’t be paying a fuel duty, is that right? So it’s just the government replacing the lost revenue.

Or am I missing something? Entirely possible!!

So if the year before I do a couple of big trips, say to Scotland and into France, and this year I don’t, then I pay the same as if I did?

And for the first year of driving I pay nothing as I didn’t drive the year before?

It’s a bit of a blunt tool if so.

Yes Ofcourse they will. They are anti- middle class, anti countryside dwellers, anti north. Why not put another tax onto hard working families who commute for work / care responsibilities and just choose to live somewhere other than places with effective transport links. Next they will tax private healthcare, second car owners, people living in more than 300sq ft per person. Ridiculous. Can’t wait for them to be voted out in the next election and they’ve only just taken power 🙄🙄🙄

Which is why we need to be building an awful lot, especially in cities. At the moment, the housing shortage results in people being stuck in properties that are not right for them - big families in homes that are too small for them, non-drivers in areas with terrible public transport.

The UK needs to deal with this issue by building, not allow the housing shortage to fester and then pile a load of new problems on top by saying “Well, the lack of housing means people are stuck in the wrong house, so PPM would be mean. We’ll have to let the roads get ever-more clogged and fall to pieces under the weight of ever-increasing cars and driver-miles.”

I would just ignore it, there is a thread going at the moment about the posters on here and how nasty a lot of them are, it's just what they are like, you can report any personal attacks though

Prove it or you’re talking bollocks about subsidising active travel. Investment in active travel infrastructure has some of the best RoI

https://roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/new-report-shows-staggering-economic-benefit-of-active-travel/

And yes, tradesmen will pass on costs. There will either be tax breaks for business, or you can have shitty road surfaces. They have to be paid for somehow.

40 years old. Actually closer to 41 to be historic status. Thats A reg cars and older.

they aren’t.

people are destroying the cameras, changing their number plates and not registering cars to get round ulez

Cyclists and bus and train users are taxpayers. It's not a them v us situation.

• Thats just for classic cars.

how many people drive round all year in a classic car………very few*

I haven't had to put a car through an MOT for 15 years and they haven't been classic cars.

Just replaced every 2 years, so no need to get it MOT'd.

Don’t be so ignorant. I live in a rural village with less than 1500 people and no shop. Most of us want better active travel links and good public transport to our nearest large town as we want our teenagers and pensioners to have independent transport options, and we don’t want to spend 40mins twice a day in congestion to get to major employment centres.

I didn't mean that they could use that technology just that the conspiracy theorists are already being tracked.

There is almost zero chance of it happening. There have been studies about it, so yes the practicality has been considered, but even still, no chance.

The alleged war on the motorist seems to be one of the things now being used against the new government. Of course, the only war on the motorist of any note is over parking payments, but that won't stop people claiming there is one.

Because not everyone lives in an area where there are alternatives. We live in a rural market town with very (and I mean very) limited public transport. It used to have its own train station but that is long gone. It used to have a decent bus service to the larger nearby towns. Now it has one.

I have lived here for the majority of my life and continue to do so because my family are here. Now both sets of parents are getting on we provide care and support.

There are no opportunities in our town. It is dying. The local council are so utterly incompetent it hurts but it's very insular and god forbid they'd allow anyone in who might shake things up (I tried).

We have to travel for everything. Start charging us for accessing opportunities for our dc (sports, clubs etc) which we already pay extra for with the travel, then we will move. This would have a detrimental effect on our local economy - DH runs a business from home but can work anywhere, we use local as much as possible, we volunteer, and would see a further decline in the town with more like us moving away.

By all means do this for those with alternatives but is a false economy and would significantly decrease social mobility and further increase economic inequality.

Realistically…. I don’t know your village, but public transport is a bit of a nonstarter in the countryside. Even in countries like Japan and the Netherlands, which have really good PT in cities, travel in rural areas is overwhelmingly by car and by electric bike. The per-person cost of providing mostly-empty buses to sail around the countryside is so high that it almost certainly makes more sense to just provide rural residents with some sort of discount or free driving miles or whatever and put the infrastructure in place to make electric cars a possibility.

One thing they should be doing in rural areas is providing more walking-and-biking trails that are separated from cars, which would allow teenagers on e-bikes to enjoy independence and make life easier for their parents, while adults might choose to swap out some of their journeys in this way. I spend my holidays in a rural area of the Netherlands, and the village was delightful, as so much traveling was done by people floating about silently on the bikes along bike trails.

Apparently in some European countries, they build separate roads for very slow-moving farm machinery (tractors etc) and these double up as walking and cycling routes for villagers - very safe, and the drivers also benefit from increased productivity because they are no longer getting stuck behind tractors going at 20mph!

If as suspected the new road pricing structure reduces the congestion. Trades businesses will reduce costs.
I know DP has halved his workload but doubled his business's hourly rate due to congestion. Specific timelines for appointments are now daily rather than specific hours. It used to be the roads were busy at rush hour only, in some areas the roads are busy most of the daylight hours now.

Indeed - we are campaigning locally for car free cycling infrastructure to join up villages. E-bikes are a game changer.

This thread is a worrying indicator of how easily it is to get a population worked up by a rumour.

If you have a read around, it appears that some journalists who may be somewhat bias against Labour, have come up with a story essentially saying "this could happen at some point" and it's got you all in a panic.

If anyone can point me to a reliable source that indicates that this is a genuine labour policy I'll pay you the £444 it's apparently going to cost you (even though we have no idea what the pricing structure will be).

If it was going to be implemented using mileage recorded at MOT test would be crude and practically unworkable. More likely is a black box fitted during manufacture or fitted as an accessory that tells HMRC where and when your car is being used. This would allow differential rates to be charged based on location and time of day. It could be extended to automatic penalties for exceeding the speed limit, driving through bus gates, stopping in box junctions etc.

What isn’t there to love?

If the people who really damaged the roads paid for them, cars would pay hardly anything and lorries would pay even more than they do now. There's a lot more cars on the road than lorries, but road damage is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight.