Government puts national road charging plans on hold

The Government has officially admitted that the recession has more or less played a part in its decision to ‘scrap’ plans for a so-called ‘National Road Charging Scheme.’ According to reports in The Daily Telegraph, Transport Secretary Lord Adonis says the Department for Transport has dropped all proposals of so-far presented charges.

These proposals, as Lord Adonis has stated, would have seen charges of up to £1.30 a mile being levied during ‘peak times.’ He also adds that the introduction of local road programmes is still a possibility, noting that any council looking to charge motorists would “have to prove that they had public support” – as reported by Daily Telegraph.

Adonis comments: “I don’t believe, as Britain is coming out of recession and most UK motorists are feeling ‘under pressure,’ that this is the time to put road charging on the agenda. There will be other times; if road use continues to grow, well in that case, some means will have to be found in order to deal with it – that is the case, frankly.”

Apparently, a petition against road pricing, set up by Telford, Shropshire businessman Peter Roberts, has reportedly attracted more than 1.7 million signatures back in September 2008. And even though road pricing has gained support in the UK road haulage industry, the Road Haulage Association had yet rejected the plans in 2007.