Motorists face a potential bill of more than £600 to fit a black box needed to make a full pay-as-you-drive road pricing system work, Whitehall documents have revealed.

A blueprint drawn up by the Department for Transport showed it could cost £62 billion to set up and £8.6 billion a year to run.

Every motorist could end up paying nearly £300 just to cover the expense of collecting the charge, according to the department's feasibility study. Details of the study emerged as the Prime Minister signalled his intention to press ahead with road pricing in the teeth of fierce opposition.

More than 1.5 million people have signed an online petition against the policy, which it describes as "sinister and wrong".

In a newspaper article yesterday, Mr Blair, who will be emailing everyone who signed the petition, said: "The focus on this issue that the e-petition has brought about will help improve our understanding of the problems and the realisation that there are no cost-free answers."

But critics continued to attack the scheme as it emerged that hundreds of law-abiding motorists had been monitored by police in London using congestion-charging technology.

It added to the fears of motoring and civil liberties groups about the routine monitoring of drivers under the proposed measures.

The disclosure of the DfT's feasibility study showed it had looked at an array of road pricing options, including a comprehensive scheme in which more than 30 million cars on the nation's roads were tracked.

Other options included making drivers pay to use the outside lane on motorways, which would be separated from the rest of the carriageway.

Urban charging schemes were also examined — from a variation on the one in operation in London, to a version of that running in Singapore where cars are charged for crossing a certain boundary.

The study looked at the equipment that would need to be installed in a car. The cheapest option, at about £15, would be a transmitter capable of being read by a roadside gantry. A more sophisticated unit, costing £175, would enable a car to be tracked within what the study describes as "500-metre square cells".

The most sophisticated device giving an accurate picture of a car's journey would, at 2004 prices, cost anywhere from £100 to £525, with a further fitting fee of £100.

Even foreign cars arriving in Britain would be expected to have equipment installed and a temporary account set up, according to the paper.

The DfT even calculated that 15 per cent of motorists would require "debt management" and debt collectors would be needed to deal with three per cent of drivers. Much of this work would be co-ordinated by an enforcement agency and a fraud detector would also be engaged.

Under a comprehensive pay-as-you-drive system, the information would be sent to what the DfT describes as an 'on-road service provider" that would draw up the bills. Payment would be handled by call centres and there would be a direct debit option.

Douglas Alexander, the Transport Secretary, has pledged that the data would not be shared with other organisations but civil liberties groups have voiced fears.

Michael Parker, spokesman for NO2ID, said: "This sort of tracking represents an enormous threat and eventually people will become almost anaesthetised to their every step being tracked. It is tragic that a Government is prepared to think about this sort of thing."

Motoring organisations were equally alarmed.

"In terms of value for money you would have to have a phenomenal rate of return to invest £8 billion to run the scheme," said Paul Watters, the head of roads policy at AA Public Affairs.

"Can you imagine the size of the call centre and billing centre that would be needed to run this?"

Environmental groups maintained their support for the principle of road pricing. Jason Torrance, Transport 2000's campaigns director, said: "The Government must answer concerns about road pricing by announcing that any future scheme would give people real travel choices, with increased investment for public transport to tackle climate change."

Brits thinking about GPS tracking every car on the road
Posted May 3rd 2007 7:46AM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Transportation

Wow, those Brits sure do love surveilling each other. Even as both Houses of Parliament conduct independent investigations on how nearly-constant CCTV monitoring is affecting British citizens, a group of researchers issued a report on future transportation policy that recommended the growing British traffic problem be solved by tracking every car on the road with GPS. While every-car tracking in the name of security is nothing new for the Brits -- they already do it with cameras -- the GPS scheme is primarily meant to reduce congestion and pollution, an idea we've definitely heard before. The researchers say that satellite-tracking will allow for variable speed limits and road-user access charges, making for faster journeys and fewer carbon emissions. The major hiccup in the plan, of course, is outfitting all 30 million cars in Britain with the appropriate transceivers, a rollout that the researchers say will take up to 10 years, but can be aided by requiring auto manufacturers to build the devices in -- something they claim is a "simple extension" to current GPS navigation units. Oh, and how do they plan to deal with those pesky personal privacy issues everyone's getting so worked up about? With "appropriate laws," of course! Yep, that'll be enough to keep those stalkers at bay.

Draft bill starts Britain down the road to pay as you drive

· Local schemes a precursor to a nationwide network
· Critics say motoring toll is an unfair tax on the poor

Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
Monday May 21, 2007
The Guardian
The government will push ahead with its much-maligned road pricing policy this week when it publishes proposals for pay-as-you-drive trials.

A draft version of the road transport bill will give local authorities the power to introduce road pricing in towns and cities. Ten areas in England considering schemes include Manchester and Birmingham, although ministers say a national scheme is at least a decade away.

The local schemes are seen as a precursor to a UK-wide network that would track the movement of cars by satellite or roadside gantries, charging about £1.30 a mile on the busiest roads.

A government-backed report has argued that a national road-pricing scheme could bring benefits of up to £25bn a year by 2025. Its author, former British Airways chief executive Sir Rod Eddington, has described the policy as an "economic no-brainer" in the face of widespread public opposition to charging drivers.

However, some local politicians have expressed concern over the trials and accused the government of "blackmailing" authorities into applying for schemes as a quid pro quo for greater investment in public transport. Manchester and Birmingham have insisted that pay-as-you-drive or congestion charge schemes will not be implemented without multi-billion pound investments in public transport.

As well as local political opposition, the trials will have to overcome public distrust of road pricing. Nearly two million people signed an online petition on the Downing Street website calling on Tony Blair to abandon the policy. The petition urged the prime minister to "scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy". The petition described road pricing as "an unfair tax on those who live apart from families and poorer people who will not be able to afford the high monthly costs. Please Mr Blair - forget about road pricing and concentrate on improving our roads to reduce congestion."

Ten areas have received government money to investigate schemes: Greater Manchester; west Midlands, incorporating Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Coventry; east Midlands, in a joint bid by Leicester, Derby and Nottingham; Tyne and Wear; Durham; Bristol; Reading; Cambridgeshire; Shrewsbury and Norwich. Manchester is the most advanced but the plan to charge motorists for using the city's busiest roads will not be implemented until 2012 at the earliest.

The road transport bill will also contain proposals that are opposed by many privately owned bus operators. In a move that could roll back changes brought in when the bus industry was privatized 21 years ago, local authorities will be given the power to set fares, frequencies and timetables. Provided they can demonstrate that it is in the public interest, local authorities can establish new contracts with bus operators.

The legislation is driven by statistics which show that in 2005 bus and tram journeys rose by 1.9% in London, where Transport for London has greater control over operators, but fell by 1.2% in the rest of England. Bus operators such as National Express argue that local authorities and passenger transport executives need control of the roads in order to create the priority lanes which, they claim, would make bus services much more efficient. Some bus operators are more pragmatic. FirstGroup, the largest road and rail transport company in the UK, believes London-style bus contracts, where operators are paid to run routes specified by the mayor's transport authority, will be too expensive for the rest of the country and the bill will be a "last resort" for local authorities.

"It is a last resort and if it is hailed as such it will keep the industry honest," Moir Lockhead, FirstGroup chief executive said: "It makes sure that we do what we say we will do. But regulation for its own sake is a negative. Economic regulation does not improve traffic flows." Brian Souter, chief executive of Stagecoach, warned last year that the "dysfunctional" structure of local government would hamper the introduction of road pricing and added that passenger transport executives (PTEs) should have less power over bus companies rather than more. Citing the decline in bus use outside London, he said PTEs such as the ones that run buses and trains in Manchester and Birmingham will need an overhaul.