Road charging will cost an enormous £300 annually per motorist to implement, according to the Department for Transport.
The Telegraph has reported that internal documents that outline how the road charging scheme would work suggest that the cost of setting it up is £62 billion plus £8.6 billion a year to run it. This means every motorist could end up paying nearly £300 just to cover the expense of collecting the charge, according to the department's feasibility study.
The study looked at a range of options. These included making motorists pay to use the outside lane on motorways, which would be physically separated from the rest of the carriageway. And the cost of the widget that car owners would have to install ranges from a simple £15 transmitter through to journey trackers that could cost over £500 each.
The report follows the PM's determination to press on with his road charging policy despite fierce opposition. This has so far centred around the e-petition on Downing Street's Web site that collected 1.8 million signatures.
But the row continues. There's been a call from an MP for a referendum (see link below) as reported in the Manchester Evening News and supported by the Association of British Drivers.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that "it emerged" that, using congestion-charging technology, the police has monitored hundreds of ordinary motorists. This will confirm the fears of many who see the road charging scheme as a Trojan Horse for those who want to see Britain, already the most surveilled nation on the planet, move further towards a total surveillance society.
Spokespeople from NO2ID, which is opposed to ID cards, said: "This sort of tracking represents an enormous threat and eventually people will become almost anaesthetised to their every step being tracked. It is tragic that a Government is prepared to think about this sort of thing."
Others pointed out the huge scope for things to go wrong in a scheme of this size; the government has a poor record of containing costs or even getting large computerised systems working in the first place.
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