Transport Crucible . com

Skilfully selective reference to environmental concerns by policy-shapers has enabled governments to increase the extent to which use of motorised transport can be taxed in practice. Some critics of trends in transport charges in the UK go as far as saying that even the enforcement of speed limits by automated cameras has become little more than another motoring tax. See ABD, Safe Speed and Drivers Alliance to read more. Nevertheless, in theory at least, there are now two primary reasons for governments to levy charges and taxes related to transport.
The first is to raise revenue to fund infrastructure maintenance or development and to subsidise essential services that would otherwise not be economically sustainable. The second is to penalise violators of regulations and try to change travel behaviour by imposing charges designed to deter people from choosing to use particular modes at peak times of demand. Fees and fines relating to car parking and Congestion Charging – as in London and proposed for elsewhere in the UK are prime examples.
In theory, various existing and proposed charging mechanisms including fuel duty and road pricing are designed in accord with both types of justification for taxing transport usage. In practice there is very little evidence that charging systems delivery much in terms of tangible improvement to transport amenity.
An inadvertent consequence of this situation is that transport professionals with expertise in civil engineering are expected to achieve goals of social engineering. Another is that politicians are faced with the tempting prospect of charging as much as they feel they can get away with rather than setting charges in accord with costs to the state. Occasionally politicians get such judgement calls spectacularly wrong. This was well demonstrated in the UK in 2004 when a planned rise in fuel duty prompted protest that ground the nation to a halt – and forced Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the day to retreat from that policy direction.