Trading in road travel permits?
A column in today’s FT by Giles Keating proposes a scheme similar to the carbon emissions permits marketplace for the buying and selling of rights to drive on Britain’s congested motorways. While the I’m sure many people will find the proposals crazy, I expect they would face less opposition than would nationwide road congestion charging, and so I expect they will be eventually introduced. Britain’s busy motorways — the M25, the M1 and the M6 are full of hardly-moving traffic — will force the introduction of some policy along these lines within the next decade. Let’s hope the policy-makers do a better job of the designing the system than has been the case with the ETS.
“As in the government’s plan, use of each vehicle would be monitored by satellite technology. Popular routes and times of day would cost more, and each motorist would receive monthly bills and fines for non-payment. But settlement would be in permits, not cash. Below-average users or non-drivers would have spare permits to sell or give to friends. Average drivers would use their permits. Above–average users need pay nothing if they received permits from others as gifts, which could be delivered via text message.”