Error parsing XSLT file: \xslt\FacebookOpenGraph.xslt Damian James' Blog: 30 November 2009 - Going Dutch?
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Damian James' Blog: 30 November 2009 - Going Dutch?

Date: 30 November 2009

Damian James is Head of Transport Provision for Bracknell Forest Council and a technology champion

The Dutch Government has announced this week that they will be introducing a pay per kilometre road charging system in 2012.

Interestingly they are selling this to the Dutch public as a zero cost initiative. This is because they are doing away with the purchase tax on new cars and road fund licence. According to the government's calculations this will then end up costing the average driver no more than they currently spend.

I will be fascinated to watch this process evolve over the next two years and see if it is a model that we in the UK are likely to adopt as some stage. I'm sure there will be various political parties watching the development and the public's reaction very closely.

I think the main challenge for the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management is to install a 'GPS device.in every vehicle'.

The only mention of figures is nine million road users so assuming this is the amount of vehicles that need to have a black box put in them over two years I think they have an impossible job on their hands. This means that there needs to be 375,000 boxes installed every month or 12,500 every day until 2012. I doubt that the timetable for this project can be achieved unless there is some sort of staggered start.

As I have said before there is no doubt that the UK will eventually have pay per mile road pricing but lets hope when it happens the government don't set impossible targets or else the project will fail before it has even got off the ground.



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