News

The implementation of local road pricing schemes remains on the cards following a four-year extension to the £200m-a-year Transport Innovation Fund (TIF). Despite transport secretary Ruth Kelly effectively ruling out national road pricing schemes for the foreseeable future last week with the proposal of hard-shoulder running, local schemes under consideration by local authorities have been given a boost by the new round of funding.

The FTA, which on Tuesday unveiled a paper, Road pricing  schemes in England, says that a number of essential conditions must be fulfilled before it can support local road pricing. Stephen Kelly, FTA's head of urban access and author of the report, says: "Local road pricing schemes could, in some cases, bring benefits to commercial deliveries, and thus the consumer, but must never be viewed as a panacea to the problems of congestion.

"Any road pricing scheme will need to have been preceded by road infrastructure and public transport improvements, together with an open-minded attitude to the social aspects of personal travel, including school hours, flexible or home working, and, for industry, night delivery opportunities." Speaking to MT, Jack Semple, RHA director of policy, says the association's view is that it still remains unproven as to what impact road pricing would have on motorists' behaviour.

He adds: "The RHA's key priority is to relieve congestion for lorries. Pricing motorists who could use alternative means for  a journey is one thing, but trucks have to be on the road - it is their place of work, so a pricing mechanism isn't going to take trucks off the road." The FTA's report examines the ten prospective road pricing schemes that have been awarded grants from the TIF and suggests that a priority action should be to establish how the costs and benefits to industry of a road pricing scheme could be measured.