Your Comments

in response to the idea of a "school run" tax. my 13 yr old who as i mentioned earlier is disabled, attends a school, that is out of our catchment area, due to the fact it is the only local middle school that has a lift as well as stairs, so he can access the first floor of the building, this school is an hour's walk away from our house, do you really think that penalising mefor doing the right thing for a young boy who can't walk very well, or without pain, would be right. i would have no problem with the lea collecting him from home and taking him to school, however as he is out of catchment, this isn't an option, we could only get transport for him if he was in catchment. it costs me a fortune to drive him to and from school, but i have no other choice

I use my car for work which there isn't much public transport. I work in the care sector. I drive to work do sleep overs than travel back its 16+ miles to my place of work. When I am off work which lately has being one day a week I walk to were I am going or use public transport. So why should I and others have to pay extra expence when we are doing a important job for the community I have tryed to get a job with young people localy but it hasn't being possable. We all pay expences for our cars so why suffer more hardship. It will effect us all as everything will go up in price to cover the cost.

Why not build a chip into new cars that relates to the vehicles carbon footprint. Petrol pumps read this chip and charge an appropriate level of tax.
Big brother is not looking over your shoulder where ever you go and different levels of tax could be charged in rural filling stations etc. People retain choice and freedom to choose where they travel.

I see these charges as another tax and a good way to clear the roads for the well off. Could we not look at reducing the number of vechicles per household? Making motorway hard shoulders into extra lanes with run offs provided where there is room and improving public transport would be a start. We need lots of solutions/ideas not just one!

the government is giving consessions to companies for purchasing electric and low emmision vehicles.
all avenues should be carefully considered with this issue of car taxing because no matter what someone will be hurt by it. though on average it is the wealthy who come out smelling of roses.

with the arguement of public transport, has anyone tried getting a wheelchair on the new adapted busses. the space provided normally has a pushchair in there and very few (note not all)parents are willing to fold the chair down to allow the wheelchair on. any request for this is normally met witha barrage of abuse.
the problem is similar with the trains, although the staff are normally fantastic the provisions are difficult to say the least and normally need to be booked in advance and are not available on all services.

because of the above problems most disabled people rely on their own transport. as suggested before if the new system was introduced a concessionary rate would be essential for disabled and small/ self-employed businesses.

the 3 or more car families should think if it is really necessary to have all their cars or would it be better to time-share one or two instead.

as with all new systems there will be a lot of bugs to iron out, however i for one am not happy at thethought of having a box installed in my car, much less at my own cost.
as for being paranoid i just see this as the next step to finding out what else they can tax us on. this is supposed to be a free country but there is little freedom.

as the saying goes they tax us when we are born and then tax us to death but they don't even stop there.

good luck to everyone i dont see a way of stopping them.

I live in the Highlands where a car is a necessity. a colleague from Yorkshire commented on the large number of 'bangers' on the road and how well maintained they are : up here a car is not an ornament! there is little public transport. the government should subsidisepublic transport, instead of leaving LAs to decide what to spend subsidy on (here they keep the council tax low) If there was a sliding scale of road tax, based on the age of the car, this would discourage people from changing cars every two years which is wasteful. my Passat does 50 miles to the gallon and has 208,000 miles on the clock!

As I have to commute 110 miles to work (not through choice) and therefore live at my working location during the week to save on driving and stress, the public transport system would not be able to provide a sufficient and practical commute.

However I favour a system where we pay no road tax or tolls or charges, but instead pay a higher tax on fuel only, thereby, the more you use you car the more you would pay, and if you want the extra luxuries of a 4x4 or a bigger car that guzzles fuel you would simple pay accordingly which seems a lot fairer.

KEEP EVERYONE ON THE ROAD ITS A BASIC NEED IM SURE EVERY ONE WILL AGREE WE DO PAY ENOUGH TO KEEP MOTORING. GET RID OF THIS GOVERNTMENT PEOPLE WANT TO VOTE WITH THEIR WHEELS AND DRIVE DOWN TO THE POLLING STATION AND VOTE FOR ANOTHER PARTY.DONT CARE WHITCH PARTY AS LONG AS ITS A DIFFERENT ONE THAT DONT TAX THE HELL OUT OF ALL US HARD WORKING PEOPLE !!! REGARDS NEIL

I signed the petition because my job is hard to get to by public transport so I need my car. I also live in London, so the road cgarges would be high. Although it is not far to my job I believe that as I pay my taxes, income, petrol and road, my insurance and all other costs associated with running a car, I don;t understand why I am being priced out of driving.
My car is an old banger, which means higher repair costs anyway, I am not rich, if if I had to pay £20.00 (guesstimate) per week I could not afford to do this.
Even if I could get to work bu public transport it is dirty, cold, unrelaible and often unsafe.
A also work very close to the new Olympics site, so I am sure transport will get worse. At least with a car you can divert your route to try to avoid the traffic.

What that idiot in No 10 does not realise is that why should we pay more and be spied upon when we make our journeys ? Is the Road Fund tax going to be abolished so that it would be easier for drivers to pay for this new Tax?
Not a bit of it !! It is a complete con ! We have the worst Public Transport system in Europe and the worst road maintence .The Road Fund Licence has
never been used for the improvement and the up keep of the roads .It has been
used on other things such on Health and schools and a hundred other different things .That is why the road system especially maintence has never improved . More Taxes mean more waste by this Government . Our money
goes into a deep hole never to be seen again .Look at the N. H. S as a perfect example !

Has anyone considered how much the IT solution will be to track 25m vehicles on the UK road network. How many road types and "hits" are going to have to be stored
I don't think they have thought through the costs! Road pricing will end up paying for the technology just to track the vehicle!
Talk about jobs for the boys!

Why dosnt the government stop taxing all vehicles and put the price of petrol and diesel up. As they loose millions of pounds on people not paying taxes on their vehicles, this will help the government getting back those millions as every one needs fuel. The government will also save money for not paying pen-pushers in DVLA. I think a lot of people would like this system.

Whilst I have sympathy with trying to sve the environment I also live in the Country and travel into London regularly (by Train) and can make very direct comparisons between the inadequacies of public transport in rural areas.
However there seems to be a point missing on all this road charging it would seem to me that at any one time 60% of all journeys are associated with work, either travel to anf from a place of employment or delivering, repairing or servicing the needs of a customer/client. If we charge for all these journeys somewhere along the line individuals will need to be reimbursed through salaries by their employers and companies will have to pass on the costs to their customers. Where will this leave inflation and the cost of living?

I for one could not afford to work if they were to propose a mileage tax such as this. I teach in further education in which there are few full time jobs I hasten to add, and where the buildings are usually within town centres. Public transport is not practicable since I work between Liverpool, Blackburn and Ormskirk and travel between them pretty much every day. Even if I didnt there are no direct bus or train routes from home to one place of work never mind all of them or between them! I have numerous files to carry plus marking and work evenings too. I would hate to negotiate public transport whilst carrying those heavy files for several hours after 9pm!! And since the ex public sector organisations want you on the payroll, I would not be able to offset the expense of travelling against tax.

I only get paid for the hours that I teach and to be frank, the money is not great. The last time figures were published I calculated that it would cost me £250 a week to get to work and back - who can afford to take that out of their wages????

What the answer is I'm not sure. Better driving alone would help as would parents being allowed to drop kids off at schools from 8am to avoid the last minute crush on the roads. I understand that schools no longer allow this because of 'safety' concerns. I can also appreciate that parents who work will not want to walk the kids to school and then walk back for the car to drive to work. I personally would probably use public transport occasionally if both that and the cost of owning a car was cheaper. I use the car rather than investigate the alternatives because I have forked out so much on insurance, tax etc!

Improved roads and road design would also go a long way to improving congestion and bad driving. Chicanes, poor traffic light systems etc do not help.

The government also has to accept that you are not going to stop car ownership. The days of living on the same road as your family and shopping at the local store are long gone and people will want to own a car for things like that if nothing else. Its encouraging them to leave it at home at appropriate times. The environmental argument wont win either in my opinion. Apart from the fact that all 'evidence' of global warming has been produced by 'government' scientists, that there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary and it has also been suggested that one train packed with people produces more CO2 than the equivalent amount of cars on the road.

Mind you, if its true that a quarter of all vehicles on the road are not insured, surely that would be the obvious way of easing congestion in one foul swoop!!! It might get rid of half of the bad driving at the same time!!

Let me guess, David L lives in London or another big city with a good underground/bus service. Let me tell them I live in a large town, I work just three miles away, if I take the bus it takes me over an hour to get to work. If I take the car it takes 25 minutes in the rush hour or just over 10 minutes on a Sunday.

To get to Tesco’s (less than a mile away) again takes over an hour on the bus and ten minutes in the car. I could use the ‘park and ride’ in our town but that would require a car journey of one and a half miles as opposed to half a mile if I drive straight to the town centre.

City folk have no idea of life outside their beloved cities where community transport is both cheap and plentiful.

Until there is a quick, easy and affordable substitute then we who live outside the conurbations must have our cars.

Finally, I do not trust the government (deliberate small ‘g’, this is not a political statement). I remember the introduction of parking meters when we (motorists) were promised that the charges were being put towards cheap off road parking. Was any money ever spent on providing parking? No it was not!

When one lives, as we do, in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest access to public transport (a bus route) being over two miles away, it's simply not feasible to travel by public transport. With three children to transport to school/college and shopping to transport home for a family of five, there is no way we can avoid using our own vehicles. To tax us will simply make the economics of daily living even more difficult than it already is and with no way of earning more to accomodate it ... it will come as a hard blow to us. Those in support of the taxes need to remember that no everyone is in the same boat as them ... if we could use public transport (and at an affordable price of course) we would!

If the Government could be trusted to use the money raised by Road Pricing to produce a first-class transport system I think more people might be amenable to the idea, and it would meet the objective, ie to reduce traffic. But we know by experience that will not be the case.
Also, I think almost everyone is uneasy about the issue of one's whereabouts being known at all times, even if this information were to be used responsibly and efficiently.
It just seems like the latest in a long line of schemes to make the motorist feel guilty and to part him from yet more cash.

The only reason the government is taxing the motorist so hard is to claw back some cash to fund the war that it couldn't afford! Hit the motorist, is a sure source of income, eh?

If there is a lot of traffic on the road, I do exactly what road pricing aims to do: take another road (helped by my traffic-sensitive Sat Nav) or travel at a different time, if possible (I often drive in the evening and stay in a hotel near my work that day rather than drive in the morning).

Road pricing involves expensive satellites, expensive controlling systems, expensive boxes in cars, security/privacy issues, complication in completing expense claims for work travel probably - and how do we charge people from other countries who won't have the same box in their car?

Better-off people will benefit from free roads, and the poorer will either take longer to get where they are going (which may be more efficient for society overall) or suffer higher costs. New Labour...!

I agree that we should pay to travel on our congested roads with disabled people and those that transport them to be exempt. The tax should also include the upkeep of our roads and indeed the development of rail and bus systems to help people gain access to our rural areas as well as to our cities. Tax should be taken off fuel and levied on mileage this could be via our MOT's mileage certificates. Those that do the greatest mileage should pay the greatest charge due to the wear and tear on our road, gas emmissions etc. We pay a lot of taxes in this country but i can see no other way to combat the congestion on our roads than to rearrange the way we pay taxes, take it off fuel and car tax and put it onto mileage.

Another backdoor tax - I work in a rural location leaving home at 05.15 and travel 25 miles each way returning home from work at 18.45 so if I take the suggested costs as proposed here in Scotland this tax would cost me £37 per day X 5 days = £185.

This would leave me the same amount to live on.

I would be better off unemployed and selling the car.

i drive a 54 mile round trip to work and that is my choice to enjoy myself in my own space before i get to my job for the goverment and to calm down after a hectic day, and i drive a nice big 2.5 v6 thank you very much which i pay through the nose for now so why should i pay more for travlling on unmaintaned roads,and just to upset a few more people i have a 4x4 to for towing a horse box, on top of this i have just been awarded a massive pay rise of 1.5% from the goverment for a job which most of you have no idea about.SO THAT IS A BIG NO TO ROAD PRICING SINCE WE ARE ALREADY THE MOST EXPENSIVE IN THE WORLD WITH THE LEAST INVESTMENT. P.S ANYONE NO HOW MANY FORIEGN CARS ON OWER ROADS WITH NO ROAD TAX ,INSURANCE OR M.O.T

My dad travels from Ilford to Kent everyday as he works there. Public transport is limited at the current location; besides he has shift work (6am - 2pm and 2pm - 10pm) - So how on earth do you expect him to go to work. He has no choice, but to use a car. Taxing working people who need to travel by car means additional costs to them. So is the government going to increase their pay to compensate for this???
There are basic solutions to such problems, but it seems people lack what I call 'common sense'.
Firstly, Pressurise the car makers to produce more efficient and friendly cars. Make smart and eco-friendly cars cheaper than the ordinary - I.e. tackling global warming.
Secondly, charge the rich who have 3 or 4 unnecessary luxuries, who go for long-drives as if they are taking the dog for a walk.
Thirdly, If you are a member of parliament, try implementing these rules on yourself first, before telling others to do so.
Oh yes I forgot to mention: A bus fare costs £1 and a return zone 1-4 costs £5. This means a person needing to use tube and a bus to get to work, will spend £7 on travelling per day. Out of 365 days, 96 days are weekends. This leaves 269, and assuming an employee gets 25 days holiday, there are 244 days. Taking these assumptions, a working person pays over £1700 just on travelling. After paying all that, they get the best service in the world- delayed and defective trains, moaning drivers, no seats and above all; they still have to make effort to get to their destination - I.e. walk home in the rain. So why would a sane person leave their cars and use public transport? You can't have both sides of a coin. What is the point in increasing congestion charge as well as public transport costs. If you want people to use more public transport then it has got to be cheaper.

i missed the dead line to vote however i am totally against the idea it will cost me and my partner privately a fortune also may put his company out of business!!!!!!!

I signed the petition for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are clear privacy issues, and I am sure many of you don't want the Government knowing where you are/were at any one time (and can the "if you have nothing to hide" brigade please put that tired and flawed defence away). We are also the most taxed nation on this planet and until the Government can spend, and not fritter away our hard-earned money they should not be taking any more.

In addition, I hate the way that every time there are tax rises, it is always the motorist who gets hit hardest. It is a lazy way of Labour trying to balance their (very) dodgy books, and it is unfair that we are seen as an easy target.

But the main reason, is that cars are no longer luxury items for most people. The public transport infrastructure is too expensive and too unreliable. Even those people I know who do travel to work by train or bus, still have cars on their driveways. I walk to work and could park outside my place of work for free, but still need a car to get anywhere outside Macclesfield.

If the Government can provide a realistic alternative to the car, then increased taxes that do not infringe peoples' privacy MIGHT be acceptable. Until that time they should go and target some other easy group for tax rises. Smokers, maybe?

If anyone REALY thinks people will stop using there cars and get on a bus ,just because they paint it a nice colour or mop the sick up from under the seats a little more often(ever been on a bus on a saturday night), you are very much mistaken. The charges are nothing to do with congestion and everything to do with the kayoto agreement. They will not be getting my vote next time.

I live in a rural area with little or no public transport,without my wifes and my car we cant get to our workwhat do the townies propose to help us

It is possible for me to use public transport to get to work if I worked the time table hours, as I work varied shifts within each week an 8 mile jurney that takes 15 - 20 minutes varies on public transport from 50 mins, 90mins or no service available within my normal week. Added to this having to collect children from school (a position I am in because the children could not be allocated a place in my local school but one 5 miles away) I am forced to use the car.
At present there are issues of safety with public transport that have been highlited by the media
a) routine maintenance on our railways (also the above inflatioin rise in fares)
b) the tragic murder of a 9 yr old child in Germany on his way home from school on public transport.
There is no instant quick fix more like deja vou.
If public transport were still nationalised would we be any better of, but there would be no dividend to pay to shareholders.
Now getting off soap box.

I have sat and read 75 comments so far from the perfectly reasonable arguments to the downright rediculas and I am sorry to say nothing has convinced me that the travel tax is a good idea. neither do I think fuel charges should go up. After all will all the MP's be giving up their cars? I dont think so. Next time the Mayor of any of our towns has an official visit to make do you think he will get on the bus in his chains of office OR will he get in his chauffer driven limo? HMM I wonder. How will visitor to the country be charged? By the time the bill is ready they will have gone home. How about hire cars? HGV's and the like from abroad how will they pay? As many other I live in a rural area but work 14 miles away. As will others the journey takes me 30mins each way by car and 2 hours by bus. No trains for us so not an option. that would add an extra 3 hours min to my working day. On top of that I take my son to work every day 12 miles as the bus doesnt start early enough for him to get there on time. The buses here are only hourly. Then there is my husband to take into account he is also one of the many disabled he cant walk as far as the bus stop. His disablity means he cant propel a large wheel wheelchair or drive a motorised one so I have to push him. How do I get him to hospital appointments. The problem as I see it is not the number of cars on the road but the lack of understanding of the workers and disabled of this country. The powers that be are ok they can claim the huge travel cost on their expenses ( which guess what WE PAY FOR) Can you imagine the Caos if we all left our cars at home and got the bus we would probably never get there as the buses couldnt cope. As to bio deisel what makes you think its cheaper? There was a Bio Deisel station in Manchester that had to close last week as it was LOOSING money and the gov would NOT help them out by cutting the taxes. So dont kid yourselves the charges are NOTHING to do with the environment and ALL to do with the greedy Government

I think that a geat contribution to solving the road crisis would be for more councils to operate park and ride .This seems to work well in the towns that
operate it there are plenty of suitable sites around most towns and cities
in the uk it would remove cars from the centres and cut down on pollution.
If it was cheap and well used I am sure it would be viable from the cost factor. even London could find somewhere on the outskirts,why not the
olympic site another impending burden on the country!Bus trains could be developed to bring people into the city.

لما لا يحصلأنفسكم موقف يئن وجمل. ما من يتمّ ضريبة على واحدة من هذا وهم حول [300كمس] على حدبة الماء

I think it is unfair to penalise people when the alternatives are just simply not viable for alot of people.

I have often contemplated getting rid of my car, but public transport would take me over an hour to get to work, with an additional 15 minute walk to the bus stop. This is in comparision to a 10-15 minute drive. I would then have to consider how I would get all my files, laptop etc etc to and from the office every day. So I need my car for work.

I also travel into the city for one week a month for which I try to use public transport. To use public transport I have to leave my house at 7.30 to get to town for 9am. If I were to drive I wouldn't have to leave until 8am at the ealiest. Even leaving at 7.30 I can end up being late as the trains are often cancelled, and when they do turn up they are far to cramped. An extra two carriages would only just make things comfortable! But this doesn't look like it will happen!

Only a week ago I was looking at travelling from Bristol to York to visit family. As it is, I only do this trip twice a year due to the petrol costs, which would be about £60 (split betweem two). But the train was going to cost us £80 each, with the added cost of a taxi at both ends, so probably an extra £40 on top of the train fair. £200 compared to £60 doesn't really give public transport much appeal! I don't think deciding to drive is me being selfish, if the alternatives were viable I would more than happily use the train / bus etc, but its just not worth it!

Make public transport user friendly, and more people may use it. I think Nottingham has great public transport. More cities should take their lead. I think alot of the problems come from public transportbeing ran by private companies. The public transpost in Nottingham is ran by the council, and every time I visit there, I never use my car!

It's ok for people in City's, but what about other people? The government has had policies on housing, and other issues for years making cars essential. All new 3 Bed Houses MUST have at least 2 off-road parking spaces as part of standard planning applications. They want us to have cars!! If only 10% of automotive taxation was spent on Roads / Public Transport we'd have and amazing system. The fact is it is NOT. Without the viable alternative I personally have no option other than to drive. If the tax is high, working will not be viable, thus living on benefits will be the best option. As soon as a fraction of the population do this, the country will be driven into economic disaster. The problem has been a lack of investment. Most other major Euro Countries have significatly better Roads, and Public Transport and simply taxing EVERYONE is not helping. There is no option other than the car..... so currently we're stuck. The figures of cutting congestions are complete rubish, and not based on fact. If everyone left cars at home for a day the tax loss would be massive, and public transport crushes would result in chaos across the country...

Get real government. You can't currently administer getting people to pay for Tax or Insurance on car... with 10% un-insured. Get the simple things in order first.... do you really think bypassing a little box (or unplugging it) wouldn't be simple to do?, or hacks won't be on the internet within MINUTES?

When I go to London I use Trains, in Sheffield I hop on a Tram.... give people the options, and they'll take the best choice!

I live in a small village near Chester, but just over the Welsh border. We have very little public transport, in fact Chester is the only place we can go to by bus. This means that the majority of people from the village need to use their cars out of necessity. Where do people like us start in these great schemes?

If the Government had put a fraction of the investment into public transport that they've burned on warsin Iraq, bureaucracy in the NHS and so on, we would have a system that people would and could use. As it stands, even in London it's incredibly uncomfortable to travel on public transport. For those of us who live in more remote areas, going to work by public transport would mean a journey time approaching two hours, compared with 45 minutes in the car. What kind of quality of life would we have if we spent 12 hours a day working and commuting? Why should we work if we cannot enjoy the proceeds of that work? Taxing people off of the roads is not the solution. More careful use of existing income in order to improve public transport should precede any tax measures.

As for road building, the problem is that the Government response to road-planning is knee-jerk. A road is busy - widen it. If you did an anonymous survey, asking where people live and where they work you would find that improvements could be made to both roads and public transport which would be more effective than simply trying to improve the pinch-points in people's existing routes. People don't travel on the M25 because it's a direct route from home to work, after all.

I am another person who relys on my car 100%....I was beaten up when younger twice on public transport for no reason whatsoever therefore I now have anxiety attacks due to my issues with regards to personal safety on all public transport......

Also to get to my job I would have to get two trains and a bus (two hours later) arriving at work.....when trains are cancelled or buses and not advised this again causes work problems for my husband.

Suggestion: Congestion charges for school runs???? Walk to school... school bus provided..

I used to walk or cycle the 2.5 miles each way to and from my work each day but now have a medical condition where my heart beats at resting like someone continually working out (over 123 beats per minute) however I am not considered 'disabled' by any means. There is no bus service from where I live to near my workplace and there is no way I could afford to pay for a taxi, so I need to take a car.

Why should we all be charged more for driving in the city centre than in rural areas. How many shops and businesses do you see in the middle of nowhere? Many of us have no choice on where or what times of the day we must travel to and from work.

Quote From 'Una B, 18th February 2007 1:30pm'
"i am still of the mind set that if you drive more than others you should pay more than others"
On this point I would just like to state that people who drive more DO ALREADY pay more than those who drive less often, because they buy more fuel, which is already so heavily taxed!
And on the public transport cost, the train costs me twice as much as driving my car to work, and takes considerably more time. If the Government wants us to stop using our cars then they should stop PUNISHING us, and start giving us all some REAL INCENTIVES for alternative transport.

One last point before my rant is over... Think about this? What is the Government's real motive here, - to cut congestion or just another stealth tax to get more money out of us. Would the Government spend all this money if they wouldn't become better off from this!???? Let's see how much they cut their 'Road Tax' by!!!