2008/03/28

For the lack of education and trust

Here is a revealing chart re fuel taxes from Economist.com on 24 March 2008. It explains why Brits are more aggressively opposed to road pricing than are Yanks... if you drove in Britain and you thought that road pricing would be in addition instead of a substitution, wouldn't you complain?

The two biggest barriers to the needed tax shift from fuel to road-use are:
  1. education of motorists and politicians that fuel taxes engender congestion and that road charges relieve it; motorists should be begging for the change.
  2. trust that governments would switch instead of add; so far they have been added because no technology has existed that permits this shift, until now.
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1 comment:

  1. Rob DawgThu Apr 03, 10:36:00 am GMT-4

    The cenurban areas will scream if road pricing is applied fairly.

    The real problem you've already covered; trust. the issue isn't that there is suspicion. The issue is that there is absolute certainty that road pricing will not be used to rational price/consumption externalities but rather to advance political agendas much like the excreable "location discrimination mortgage" debacles of both the 1950s and 2000s.

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