Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Hyperlocal Road Pricing - a Viable Option?
Our area has a long history of road pricing. In 1739 the Stamford Hill Green Lanes Turnpike Trust started taking tolls on Green Lanes at its intersection with Tottenham Lane (subsequently renamed Turnpike Lane).
Turnpike Lane Toll Booth, late 19th Century (disused and soon to be demolished)
In 1789, the Manor House Turnpike was established.
Manor House Toll Booth 1869 (three years before the end of the turnpike system)
Both gates lasted until the turnpike system was swept away in 1872. Road charging wasn't seen again in the UK till the early years of the 21st century. First came Durham's congestion charging scheme in 2002, closely followed by London's in 2003.
Eighteenth century thinking saw the case for road charging as being revenue raising to pay for the maintenance of roads. Twenty-first century policy wonks made the case by way of a traffic management rationale.
Around the world today various road pricing schemes are being planned, trialled and implemented. Unless they apply to bridges and tunnels, all schemes tend to be city-wide or road-system specific. When road pricing began in the eighteenth century however, it was much more local.
I have begun to wonder if there's a case for hyperlocal road pricing where only certain roads or neighbourhoods are involved. Pricing could be variable, where different rates could be charged to different groups with some groups being charged nothing at all.
Some vehicle owners may see such a scheme as the thin end of the wedge. Others might see it as a cheap to administer form of traffic management and revenue raising (With the technology in place for supermarkets to road-price their car parks, the technology barrier is gone).
Is it an idea whose time has come or one that should just leave us cold?
Additional Info:
- RAC report (attached)
- DFT report (attached)
- roadpricing.blogspot.co.uk
- EU Website info on roads & transport
Tags for Forum Posts: congestion charge, road pricing, traffic
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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A toll gate on Forest Road has been suggested here before. Watch the endless stream of one-person-occupant private cars sitting in the jam around Seven Sisters and Tottenham Hale junctions in the morning, I bet most of them have just passed at least three tube stations and countless buses.
The River Lea creates opportunities for traffic management from the east, as there are so few bridges.
Actually this is old school thinking, a physical barrier. Just extend the congestion charge zones. This crossroads is one of the most polluted sites in London.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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Turnpikes are an excellent example of early PFI Hugh. With a government unwilling/unable to invest the ability to charge became a real incentive to mobilise private capital.
We have to get to a point where we all pay for the use we make of the roads, the technology is there. I really do not see why it is not done, other than political fear. Its stuff like this that you need a cross party commission that takes on these intractable problems that need longer to resolve than a single political term in office:
- Road use and pricing
- National energy infrastructure investment
- Pensions reform
- Old age care
This list is long, but not as long as the grass these issues constantly get kicked into.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Hulbert on
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Alas i think it is not something that scales down very well. The costs of running the London Congestion Charge is about £80m per year and for this to be in anyway fair and effective, it would have to be implemented over a significantly larger area that Whiteman Road and the Ladder.These are extremely complex systems to set up.
I believe that we suffer from being on the edge of a thriving city that is too expensive for most people to live in. The result being that more and more people are being forced to travel greater distances between work and home. Whether they choose to go by car is going to be down to many factors such as the type of work they do, their mobility and their public transport choices. Road pricing may well come but it will most likely be as an extension to the existing schemes we have so far.
Richard
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Thanks for that Richard. It's interesting that the technology for electronic traffic management seems to work for no right turns and yellow box junctions. Is that a much simpler technology?
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