Sadiq has said that he won't introduce pay per mile on the roads as as long as he's Mayor (https://tinyurl.com/yrdp6tnh).
I think he's missed a real opportunity to bring in a much more effective way of rationing road space. At the moment the only way it's done is by congestion charging, which is a very blunt instrument. Charging per mile would be much more efficient, because the rate could be varied depending on the conditions and the time of day: for example, a much higher rate at peak usage and a correspondingly lower rate in the early hours, with appropriate variation between those two extremes. The effect would be to encourage road trips to be spaced out more - the obvious parallel being the use of off-peak ticket charging for public transport.Il
It's not even a new idea: the Smeed Report looked at the idea in the early 1960s (https://tinyurl.com/b7asd7xh) but it was never taken forward - but now the technology to handle it is much more advanced. But I'm not holding my breath. |