Thursday, June 09, 2005
New Road Charges Plan
On the BBC news site today they have reported that the transport secretary Alistair Darling wants to introduce a new traffic charge that will replace the old road-tax and fuel duty charges.
The basic idea he outlines is that a satellite tracking device in every vehicle will track where that vehicle goes and will be able to charge the driver based on its usage, where different times of the day and different roads will attract different costs. For example, rural roads might attract 2p a mile, whereas driving at rush-hour on congested roads might attract a £1.30 a mile charge.
It sounds nice and simple, and personally I would be all in favour of something like this. But... [and it's a big 'but', as you can tell], I don't see that the technology is available to achieve this, yet. In theory it is possible, but scaling the system to 30 million cars, sounds unreasonable. Then, there's various liberty and demographic issues.
First, lets deals with the technology issues. When they say a "satellite tracking device" they presumably don't mean a GPS, which is a passive device (that is, it only listens to the satellites). They presumably mean something which says "I'm here".. "I'm here".. so that some computer somewhere is able to add on costs to some account. If this is correct, the bandwidth requirements would be astronomical (even for a satellite!). If 512 bytes of data were transmitted every minute by 30 million cars in the country, then that's around a 256Mb/s throughput - and that's not including any error correction that would need to happen. The architecture to provide this throughput would cost a fortune, not to mention the devices that go in the cars and have to be able to communicate with satellites (have you seen satellite dishes?). Of course, a GPS could be used to keep a track of the vehicle saved somewhere in the device and 'downloaded' at some later date - but who's going to collect that data? Who's going to ensure the data is untampered with (de-crypting data seems a hobby for some people)? What about all those holes in the GPS signal field? Do you get charged for those?
Ok, so let's say they get the technology working, somehow. Who's going to pay for the satellite tracking devices? Us, of course; whether it be through taxes or our of our own pockets. Yes, we have to pay to add devices to our cars so that the government can charge us to use our cars. Alot of people would do this, but what about the 16% who (in the initial survey) said they would refuse? Are they going to send them to jail? Ok, let's say they do send them to jail and everyone who has a car has a device. I have a PDA - it shows me how to get from A to B and I can make it avoid certain roads. Now, if I want to get from A to B and it points me along a piece of road that costs £1.30, but there's clearly a way that takes me along 2p a mile roads, which do you think I'd take? This is the concern of the environmentalists who say that this system would just shift traffic onto rural roads.
The environmentalists also make the point that this system (unlike the current fuel duty system) penalises frugal drivers, as it doesn't distinguish between them and 'gas-guzzlers'. This could be got around by linking into the DVLA systems, so that when you get your box fitted it is able to identify your type of car, and therefore how gas-guzzly it is. An extra levy is applied according to that. For newer cars this could be connected to the engine management system to provide exact miles-per-gallon scaled levies. Sounds alot more complicated than fuel duty, though!
There's also the problem of authentication, verification and accountability. Surely someone
would hack the device? Surely someone would refuse to have, or simply remove the device? What if you're a farmer and only drive off road? Who do you contact if your bill says you drove to Edinburgh and back when you didn't?
There's also the 'big brother' issue. There's a computer somewhere that knows exactly where we are (if we take our car), where we've been, what we like doing, where we shop, which school the kids are in, etc. etc.
I think the whole idea of road charging is a good idea, but there are so many problems, so fraught with litigiousness, and is, basically, intractable that it will almost certainly never actually come into force. I think the government need to think of something simpler to get people out of their cars and onto their bikes.
What's your thoughts on it?
The basic idea he outlines is that a satellite tracking device in every vehicle will track where that vehicle goes and will be able to charge the driver based on its usage, where different times of the day and different roads will attract different costs. For example, rural roads might attract 2p a mile, whereas driving at rush-hour on congested roads might attract a £1.30 a mile charge.
It sounds nice and simple, and personally I would be all in favour of something like this. But... [and it's a big 'but', as you can tell], I don't see that the technology is available to achieve this, yet. In theory it is possible, but scaling the system to 30 million cars, sounds unreasonable. Then, there's various liberty and demographic issues.
First, lets deals with the technology issues. When they say a "satellite tracking device" they presumably don't mean a GPS, which is a passive device (that is, it only listens to the satellites). They presumably mean something which says "I'm here".. "I'm here".. so that some computer somewhere is able to add on costs to some account. If this is correct, the bandwidth requirements would be astronomical (even for a satellite!). If 512 bytes of data were transmitted every minute by 30 million cars in the country, then that's around a 256Mb/s throughput - and that's not including any error correction that would need to happen. The architecture to provide this throughput would cost a fortune, not to mention the devices that go in the cars and have to be able to communicate with satellites (have you seen satellite dishes?). Of course, a GPS could be used to keep a track of the vehicle saved somewhere in the device and 'downloaded' at some later date - but who's going to collect that data? Who's going to ensure the data is untampered with (de-crypting data seems a hobby for some people)? What about all those holes in the GPS signal field? Do you get charged for those?
Ok, so let's say they get the technology working, somehow. Who's going to pay for the satellite tracking devices? Us, of course; whether it be through taxes or our of our own pockets. Yes, we have to pay to add devices to our cars so that the government can charge us to use our cars. Alot of people would do this, but what about the 16% who (in the initial survey) said they would refuse? Are they going to send them to jail? Ok, let's say they do send them to jail and everyone who has a car has a device. I have a PDA - it shows me how to get from A to B and I can make it avoid certain roads. Now, if I want to get from A to B and it points me along a piece of road that costs £1.30, but there's clearly a way that takes me along 2p a mile roads, which do you think I'd take? This is the concern of the environmentalists who say that this system would just shift traffic onto rural roads.
The environmentalists also make the point that this system (unlike the current fuel duty system) penalises frugal drivers, as it doesn't distinguish between them and 'gas-guzzlers'. This could be got around by linking into the DVLA systems, so that when you get your box fitted it is able to identify your type of car, and therefore how gas-guzzly it is. An extra levy is applied according to that. For newer cars this could be connected to the engine management system to provide exact miles-per-gallon scaled levies. Sounds alot more complicated than fuel duty, though!
There's also the problem of authentication, verification and accountability. Surely someone
would hack the device? Surely someone would refuse to have, or simply remove the device? What if you're a farmer and only drive off road? Who do you contact if your bill says you drove to Edinburgh and back when you didn't?
There's also the 'big brother' issue. There's a computer somewhere that knows exactly where we are (if we take our car), where we've been, what we like doing, where we shop, which school the kids are in, etc. etc.
I think the whole idea of road charging is a good idea, but there are so many problems, so fraught with litigiousness, and is, basically, intractable that it will almost certainly never actually come into force. I think the government need to think of something simpler to get people out of their cars and onto their bikes.
What's your thoughts on it?
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I must say I don't understand why the government is so worried about the congestion thing, because if they just leave it, the problem will sort itself out. If the roads get filled up, people won't be able to drive around, so less people will drive around, and then people will get work/set up business nearer to home and so on. I'm sure it would sort itself out naturally. I should write a blog post about this haha.
Oops and then what i meant to say was, eventually the roads wouldn't be blocked up anymore. Did any of that make sense?
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