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?

We are the only country paying out time and time again with extortionate rates on everything. We pay tax in our earnings, road tax, insurance, on our savings, yet this government can send billions to help with guns and weapons for wars etc. Our roads are, a disgrace and we constantly being fleeced. Wish more people would make a stand to all this.

My car is hybrid and I use very little petrol so.I would be furious if this was brought in. I've already had to pay over £500 for the bloody car tax! This country is a joke. If I was younger I would most definitely leave.

Why can't the government keep their sticky beaks out for one minute?

Maybe all motorists should go on strike for a day. See how well the country runs then.

It seemed to run perfectly well when we were all forbidden to leave our homes. What difference do you think empty roads would make for one day?

Can you make it a month? I've got enough shopping in and I'd quite like to hear the birds during the day like I did through lockdown. And the Tawny Owls might come back into the town centre.

It would make a difference to people who have carers visiting them.

You're kidding, right? The UK is unusual for how much is basically free for motorists. You don't even have to pay to drive on most motorways! Very different to most countries I am familiar with.

Nothing is free for motorists. Cars have to be paid for, road tax, MOT, petrol, car maintenance.

It's going to cost more to run a car on way or another. Just another calculation to take into account regarding household finances.

Most people will keep the car and cut back in other places.

Jesus Christ what a shit thought. I do a 110 miles round trip just to get to my office once a week, plus all the other journeys I do because the local bus only runs until 8pm, 6pm on a Sunday, and doesn't go anywhere useful like a supermarket.

The train service is just as bad and it would be a 5 hour round trip to get to the office.

Not everyone works in their home town or somewhere reachable for them on public transport. Not everyone has the luxury of the tube or London bus times.

I'm so sick of being told a car is a luxury when for most people it isn't. it will also hit those squeezed middles the most yet again.

@xxSideshowAuntSallyxx but you are already paying duty on fuel and will be paying more duty than someone who drives fewer miles than you in a week.

The word ‘luxury’ is very overused on mumsnet. In covid I remember cushions being described as such 😂

Making driving more expensive just makes the ‘luxury’ of going to work to pay income tax more expensive.

It is a luxury, going direct from A-B in your own private transport you don't have to share.

It is.

Not saying people's lives haven't been built around this luxury. But it's going to become an increasingly more expensive one. But one that people will accommodate to keep.

And as it becomes more expensive more people will think, do they want to live remote, will they take a job, put their children in a further school?

Just a transition until hail a selfdrive arrives. Because that's the future. I hope. Not in our lifetime but within 50 years.

The analyses I have read suggest that self driving cars probably increase the likelihood that pay per mile will be introduced.

Because the threat is that they will turbocharge congestion and living-further-out-of-town - families choosing to live in "charming villages" miles out, old people deciding to go and live in little hamlets by the seaside - resulting in utter gridlock and massively increased costs to governments, who will face demands to build and maintain ever-growing amounts of road surface and parking, and provide things like care services to people who live in ever-more sprawling areas (which massively increases costs of providing services).

‘Luxury’ don’t be so silly.

From an economics point of view anything other than food, water and basic shelter to survive is termed a ‘want’. Thus either a bus or a car is a want and classified the same.

In terms of people avoiding living in some places - you do realise that there aren’t actually enough houses for everyone who wants one right?

Driverless cars are unlikely to be a reality in middle aged people’s lifetimes based on the trials so far.

The ability of AI is generally overhyped - I thought it was going to take over jobs but right now it can’t even do basic tasks to support humans.

We have, as is always the case, in a relatively short space of time, to regard luxuries as necessity.

A car is a luxury. I have one. I know to keep it it will continue to cost more. So there is a choice to make. I will pay more to keep the luxury of private transport.

It's not a basic human right to own a car. And it's shortly going to cost more. People will complain on here but choose to keep their cars and pay to do so.

That is all that is going to happen.

The comments on here!

At the moment you pay for petrol/diesel - and the more you drive, the more you consume.

In the future you will pay per mile - and the more you drive, the more you pay.

What's the difference? Why are people getting their knickers in such a twist?

The only people who might be miffed are the people who currently have electric cars so don't pay much per mile and will probably pay more under a pay per mile system. But we need to pay for our roads somehow and everyone moans about potholes.

Indeed.

I think some electric car owners thought they would be left alone,.

The idea that the government would give up all that lovely tax money is ludicrous.

I don't know, I was bearish about self driving cars, but it does look like they are gradually becoming reality.

However, replacing all vehicles on the road with SD vehicles is going to take a long time, and in the meantime we will have the difficulty of a situation where some cars are SD and some are not, which will make driving really complicated. It will also cause heated arguments about the causes of congestion and who is to blame for it.

We don’t even have self driving trains or underground yet that run on rails. It really is a way off.

Docklands Light Railway has been driverless since it started, in the 1980s. It is simply untrue that it can't be done. The unions want to block it.

Err of course they do and rightly so, they represent their members who would all lose their jobs.....

Where is the tax take lost going to come from?

Its the same in Port Talbot or all the mine closures, lost tax, replaced from????

Anyway pay per mile isn't even on the agenda... yet another Tory scare story

There are loads and loads of driverless trains around the world. It requires Capex, but it's not even very new these days.

Driverless cars will probably be here at some point, but they will not do anything about the reasons why we need pay per mile. Pay per mile is about generating revenues (in part to maintain roads, which costs a LOT of money), and partly about managing demand so as to avoid gridlock. Neither of these reasons is negated in any way by self driving cars.

Remember all the people on here during covid ranting about how milk and bread were non essentials and people are so selfish leaving their house to get them? I bet they love this idea