Common sense seems to have prevailed in terms of the UK Government's timetable for introducing a telematics-based lorry road-user charging scheme.

In March's Budget it emerged that the scheme would not now be introduced until 2008 instead of 2006, as originally envisaged. The delay follows the severe setback experienced by the parallel yet less ambitious Toll Collect scheme in Germany (see news item, right), and warnings from the industry and observers that the scheme simply could not be made to work in time.

Nor, in the view of many, could the proposed accompanying fuel tax rebate scheme. According to professor Alan McKinnon, a transport specialist at Heriot-Watt University: "Elaborate and costly as this rebate system will be, it will present nothing like the technical and organisational challenges of the proposed system of vehicle tracking and toll collection."

He adds: "The huge cost, effort and political risk associated with the scheme simply cannot be justified by the desire to establish tax parity between British and foreign hauliers."

 

Even the Freight Transport Association, an avowed supporter of the principle behind the scheme, has welcomed the postponement. Chief executive Richard Turner, describing the scheme as "a massive technological adventure," commented: "The difficulties which resulted in the abandonment of a similar scheme in Germany demonstrated the need for a more realistic timetable in the UK."

Some measure of the problems facing the Government was given in a frank presentation by Linda Swinburne of Customs & Excise (which will have to enforce the scheme) at the FTA Summit in March. She acknowledged that the cost model for the system had still not been worked out; nor had the technical standards to be adopted.

In a hint that the FTA might be stepping back slightly from its previous fairly wholehearted support for the scheme, Richard Turner has observed: "There is tremendous potential from getting it right - but there are massive dangers if we get it wrong."

It might be premature to speculate that the postponement could eventually metamorphose into complete abandonment of the system, but a General Election will come before the proposed scheme really beings to take shape, and it could become a political embarrassment to Government that is already under pressure from so many other quarters. And an administration of a different colour might simply drop it or look for less complex solutions.