£1.5 billion scheme

The Government are now looking at how to make that difference more noticeable, and their solution is to add green coloured number plates into the mix.

The scheme is part of a £1.5 billion drive to raise awareness of electric vehicles, and we’re told that along with the green number plates, it will offer numerous other benefits including free or reduced parking, and perhaps the right to travel in bus lanes.

Except … don’t a number of cities already offer that for electric vehicles? Just without the green plates.

It’s admirable that Grant Shapps wants to incentivise buyers of Battery Electric Vehicles, but reducing the grant to help with the purchase of a new EV is just the opposite, as is changing the criteria for getting help to fit a charging system at home.

So what the Transport Secretary is really saying, is “We want to incentivise you to buy green, but in such a way that the incentives are meaningless, and don’t cost us anything; we’re giving you a gimmick.”

Positives and negatives of electric power

To be clear, I’m not anti-electric vehicles, or pro-fossil fuels. I genuinely think we’re witnessing tremendous breakthroughs, the likes of which haven’t really been seen since Karl Benz first strapped an engine to vehicle, but I’m anti gimmicks, especially those that cost us, as motorists, even more in tax.

£1.5 billion to promote “Green number plates are a really positive and exciting way to help everyone recognise the increasing number of electric vehicles on our roads” (Grant Shapps) or “The number of clean vehicles on our roads is increasing but we don’t notice as it’s difficult to tell clean vehicles apart from more polluting ones.”

“Green number plates make these vehicles, and our decision to drive in a more environmentally friendly way, more visible on our roads.” (Elisabeth Costa, senior director at the Behavioural Insights Team).

This is quite literally the UK government beating their chest, ticking some boxes and shouting that they’re doing all they can to promote green travel, whereas the reality is nothing more than a number plate design change.

Campaigners against

While making glib comments about a motoring class system is all well and good, truthfully, there are real concerns from road campaigners that it could ‘foster resentment’ from owners of traditional ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) powered cars, particularly those than aren’t in the position to afford a switch to electric.

Nicholas Lyes, head of roads policy at the RAC had this to say: “While the sentiment seems right, there are question marks as to whether drivers would see this as a badge of honour or alternatively it could foster resentment among existing drivers of petrol and diesel vehicles.”

“On the face of it, drivers we’ve questioned don’t seem too impressed – only a fifth think it’s a good idea and the majority said the number plates wouldn’t have the effect of making them any more likely to switch to an electric vehicle.”

The future

Without any doubt, electric vehicles are the future of transportation, and the technology involved gets more cost-efficient with each new model rolled off the production line, but more needs to be done to help those that aren’t financially able to swap.

It’s all very well offering a meagre scrappage scheme to help buyers, but targeting the most needy with two or three thousand pounds is absolutely pointless, it’s just another gimmick that can be trotted out to satisfy the box-tickers – “Yes, we’re doing everything within our power to help people convert to green”. (“The fact that they aren’t converting to green is no concern of ours … we offered them money and everything”).

Are green number plates a gimmick? Should the govt. save the money and actually offer some useful help? Or are they doing the right thing? Let us know in the comments.

Nearly 500 miles

As of April this year, there were 488 miles of smart roadways, with a plan of extending that figure to around 800 miles by 2025. Highways England are keen to point out that there were 77 deaths on traditional motorways in 2018, with just nine on smart roads. The inference being that smart roads really aren’t that dangerous.

With this in mind, Mr O’Sullivan has rejected the calls to put a hold on the extension plans, and to add more emergency lay-bys as he feels that would do very little to improve safety on the smart roadways. Edmund King, president of the AA has a different point of view: “It’s ludicrous to suggest that having more lay-bys won’t improve safety … if drivers have more places to pull off the motorway, that’s going to make the whole thing a lot safer.”

Good reason to stop

King’s assessment is somewhat backed up by O’Sullivan’s own admission that many of the accidents are  caused as a result of motorists stopping inappropriately, such as to check directions or swap phone numbers after a minor bump; surely if there were more refuge areas, drivers wouldn’t take the risk of stopping in a live lane?

Bringing out the argument of a money grab or stealth tax is quite easy, perhaps expected, but the reality is that these motorways are much more cost-efficient to build, and of course allow for an easier monitoring system, which in turn boils down to revenue, than traditional motorways, and even the most pro supporter needs to acknowledge that argument.

Best estimates put traditional motorway building or widening at the cost of around £30m per mile, while a Parliamentary report states that the M42 smart scheme was implemented at a cost of just £9m per mile, and in the days where budget is at least as important as ‘safety’, you can clearly see why it’s the favoured method of adding capacity.

Added to that is the £41m revenue generated from fining drivers for lane infringements or speeding, and smart motorways seem like manna from heaven for the government.

Less driving

As a nation, we’re driving less miles than we’ve ever done; the average car mileage is 17% less than it was in 2002, and it’s thought that a large part of this is due to the nature of driving on our roads – motoring is no longer an enjoyable pastime, it’s not a leisure activity as it once was, and we rarely choose to just ‘head out for a drive’ on a sunny Sunday.

Perhaps it’s the overcrowding on the roads, the lack of courtesy and respect, poor lane discipline or the constant fear of being targeted through the use of non-discretionary cameras, but driving in the UK is on a downward spiral, and that could be the saving grace of the smart motorway.

If, as a nation, we’re turning to our cars for purely perfunctory reasons, only using them as needed rather than as wanted, volume of traffic will be lessened, and there may not be the need to squeeze every last bit of road space from our network.

Of course it could be argued that while we may be driving less, the volume of traffic could still increase thanks to the population increasing, but as autonomous vehicles become common place, their ability to manage traffic interaction and avoid collisions could be key to removing the dangerous element of smart motorways – the human.

Smart charging

It could also be argued that smart motorways are just another minor step towards charging motorists per mile; much of the infrastructure needed is already in place, and with a few tweaks to the software, instead of capturing registrations for rule breaking, it would be just as easy to issue a bill for using the motorway.

Technology has an ever-increasing presence on our roads – noise cameras, ‘safety’ cameras, traffic monitoring, speed limiting … surely we’re getting closer to the day where all vehicles are the same, never travelling above the speed limit, with whisper quiet running? Homogeneous motoring is upon us.

Should smart roads dictate our lives? Will there come a day (in the not too distant future) where we’ll all be driving the same ‘vehicle’? Let us know in the comments.

Photo © Copyright Robin Webster and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

All councils

A recent announcement by the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, has made it clear that he’s ready to issue all councils the right to implement and charge for moving traffic violations, previously the remit of the police. Essentially, this is all about those yellow box junctions.

After the Commons transport committee stated that the police were ‘too thinly stretched to enforce everyday traffic violations’, Shapps has placed the responsibility of these minor infringements in the hands of local councils, and will be allowing them to keep any monies ‘earned’ from them.

Road improvements

It would be nice to think that all local councils have an understanding of where their traffic hotspots are, and make improvements to aid the flow of traffic, thereby negating any possible need for box junctions, but cynical as I am, I can’t help feeling that there will only be enough budget to place a previously unseen / unneeded box junction in place of other traffic improvement measures. The fact that they can now make money from them of course won’t influence their decision.

Nicholas Lyes of the RAC thinks that there may be a conflict of interest: “Local authorities know where congestion might require some form of enforcement, particularly in the case of box junctions, so it stands to reason they should be able to improve this through the use of enforcement.”

“However, we remain concerned that cash-strapped authorities may see this as an opportunity to extract more revenue from drivers.”

It’s worth noting that a report by the National Audit Office in 2018 stated that local authorities have had a 49.1% real-terms reduction in government funding between 2010/11 to 2017/18. Northampton County Council have been effectively declared bankrupt, and Norfolk, Surrey, and Lancashire County Councils aren’t too far behind them.

Northampton council have been given special dispensation to raise their council tax by 5% this year.

Between 2017/18, Transport for London collected up to £16 million in fines from drivers who fell foul of a yellow box junction, but nearly 80% of respondents to an RAC poll said that it was purely down to poorly structured traffic management; being forced to stop in the box junction due to poor sequencing of traffic lights beyond the box itself.

Discourteous driving

Box junctions were first introduced back in 1967, so impatient drivers aren’t a new phenomenon, but it does seem that as traffic volume builds, driving standards are falling. With the increase of ‘surveillance’ technology, the crime of ‘failing to supply information as to identity of driver when required’ has skyrocketed – from just 12,056 convictions in 2006 to 82,029 in 2016.

This is clearly an indication as to the proliferation of monitoring devices, and with technology advancing at such a rate, this soon will be outdated and unneeded; the car will automatically monitor and send data where needed, and as we’ve seen, adjust your speed accordingly.

But as with all technology, there will be downsides: Just the same as speed or safety cameras, there will be no discretion, no allowance for external influencing factors, and no escaping the penalty notice. To a degree, these box junction cameras are already at that point – blaming poor road design, or in-built blockages that seem almost designed to stop you in your tracks is no excuse, you will get fined for any indiscretion, minor or otherwise.

Scale of charges

A number of campaigners are suggesting that a warning notice would be an appropriate response for the first-time offender, perhaps with a sliding scale of charges – repeat offenders that are blatantly trying to cheat the system should face severe penalties.

However, if councils invest money from their ‘spend to save’ budgets, you can guarantee that they’ll want to see those savings immediately, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see a softly-softly approach when it comes to revenue generation. The full force of the law will be applied, with no doubt a lengthy, tenuous, and drawn-out appeals process.

Will we see a rise in box junctions with this new legislation? Do you think it will be aimed at creating a solution for traffic congestion? Or just a simple, quick and dirty way of making money? Let us know in the comments.

Photo © Copyright David Dixon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

“Tackling the climate emergency is essential, but this is about more than what we must do to meet that challenge, it’s also about our health, and the sort of towns and cities we want to live in.”

A cynic may say that with such focus on health, air pollution and congestion, rather than encouraging or incentivising other forms of transport or motive power, it’s pretty much guaranteed that “this isn’t about pricing drivers off the road” will pretty much exactly equate to that.

Paying more?

Research by the RAC has shown that 75% of motorists are worried that any change in how we pay for the roads will result in them paying more, and with sales of new Battery Electric Vehicles rising by 122% in the first nine months of 2019 (despite there being an overall 2.5% downturn in new car sales), we can clearly see that the government will need to implement a new pricing strategy sooner rather than later.

It’s long been argued that whatever form of taxation (such as the current VED) is added to the price of fuel; motorists who use the roads, will pay for the roads, but it’s quite possible that adding a surcharge to fuel will price hundreds of thousands of families off the road, and that still wouldn’t be a solution to the whole electricity debate.

Further still, it’s not quite as simple as adding tariffs to our domestic energy supply either – what of those motorists that haven’t been able to afford, or want, to make that switch over to ‘green’ motoring? It’s pretty clear that there must be some overlap between the systems.

Previous attempts

Back in 2005, an attempt was made to introduce, or at least, discuss, a new way to charge to motorists for using the roads. The idea being that small cars on small or uncongested roads would pay less than large cars using large or congested roads.

The examples used at the time were £0.02 per mile on uncongested roads, and as much as £1.34 where traffic was a problem. Each car would be fitted with satellite technology, which could track and calculate charges as the car was driven.

Unsurprisingly, 1.8 million motorists (around 6% of all drivers at the time) signed a petition against the scheme in 2007, and it was duly dropped. Fears of extra stealth surveillance and taxation were the main concerns.

Modern day

Worryingly, we’ve become so used to in-car technology, and the interference with our driving, that it will soon be mandatory to allow it to limit our speed, which of course means tracking our movements. As Lilian Greenwood points out – we’re much more aware of issues such as climate change, pollution and congestion now. So could this be part of the next attempt to monitor driving and apply charges?

There has been talk of ‘charge neutral’ and ‘congestion neutral’ pricing, but reading between the lines of the earlier statement by Greenwood, it would seem that congestion and air pollution are two of the hottest topics to be covered, so it’s doubtful that congestion neutral pricing will happen.

Given that any pricing structure would need to cover congestion, air pollution, emissions, road usage & maintenance, fuel duty and electric charging, it would seem doubtful that we’d be looking at the lower end of per mile charging.

National debate

The Transport Committee have proposed a national debate take place in 2020, in which these issues can be discussed, and put forward to the public for their input: “This isn’t about pricing drivers off the road, it’s about making sure that as many people as possible have a say in future plans so that we can manage the changes to come. The Transport Committee want to kickstart that conversation.”

Rarely have charges been introduced that favour the motorist, we often hear about stealth taxes and how it’s the motorist that’s being made to make up any shortfalls of revenue, we’d suspect this won’t be much different.

How should the government tackle this problem? What would be a fair pricing scheme? Do you think it could price some families off the road? Let us know in the comments.

Driven to distraction

Campaigners for road safety and MPs say record levels of road congestion and a lack of traffic police is the reason around 10million drivers continue to reach for their mobiles—to relieve the boredom of sitting in traffic.

According to the motoring organisation’s annual report, 23% of motorists confessed to still making or receiving calls on a hand-held phone while driving. The figure shot up to 51% of drivers between 17 and 24 years of age. Thirty-five per cent of the same under 25-year-olds age group said they checked email, social media, and text messages while driving. That percentage alone is terrifying, but even more so when you learn that this selfish and unnecessary move can up the chances of an accident by up to 24 times. In drivers over 25 years old, the figure was a lower, yet still worrying, 17%.

Government advice is that we should keep our mobile phones in our car’s glove compartment, but the RAC’s survey of 1,753 motorists discovered that only 15% are heeding this warning—25% say they keep their phones on the seat or the dashboard, instead, and 24% admitted to leaving their mobiles on audible, increasing the chance of distraction.

To compound matters, the number of Traffic Officers in England and Wales dropped from 3,766 in 2007 to 2,643 in 2017—that’s almost 30% over just a decade. In contrast, data from the Department for Transport reports that traffic congestion in Britain increased by 6.5% in the past ten years.

Not much cop

Lilian Greenwood MP, Chair of the Transport Committee, said:

‘In 2017, there were 773 casualties—including 43 fatalities and 135 serious injuries—in road traffic collisions where a driver using a mobile phone was a contributory factor.

‘Every one of these casualties could have been avoided if drivers had been paying attention to driving and not their phone.’

Tim Rogers, the lead on roads policing for the Police Federation of England and Wales, said:

‘Often they’re doing it in traffic, but inattention at any speed is lethal. These people will say they rarely see police on the roads, that they’ve never been stopped by police, so they perceive no risk in doing it.’

‘There’s also a problem with chief constables who cut dedicated traffic officers then claim “all our officers are traffic cops”.

‘Why do we accept it is OK for six people a day to die on our roads? It’s certainly not acceptable. We need more traffic police to reduce the number of causalities [sic] on our roads.’

The RAC says that the first thing the police need to do is catch mobile phone offenders in the act, but they also want both the government and the police should look into cars having the technology that can enforce the law against using hand-held devices while operating vehicles.

Look, Ma, no hands!

To stay within the law while driving or riding a motorcycle you must have hands-free access to your mobile (although MPs are proposing a ban on all hands-free devices in cars) or sat-nav and use a Bluetooth headset, voice command, a dashboard holder or mat, a windscreen mount, or a built-in sat-nav and the same applies whether you’re stopped at traffic lights, sitting in traffic, or are supervising a learner driver.

Unless circumstances dictate otherwise (like your job), the best bet is to keep your phone in your glove compartment, on silent. It’ll be near enough to you in an emergency. Research also shows you’re a better driver when driving in silence but if that bores you to the point of phone temptation, maybe consider the radio or an audiobook—or perhaps listen to Led Zeppelin?

Any device you use mustn’t block your view of the road ahead and you must stay in full control of your vehicle at all times. If the police stop you because they think you’re distracted or not in control, you could face prosecution.

While police numbers are down, in 12 months of ‘Operation Tramline’ alone, officers across the country in three so-called ‘supercabs’ caught and recorded motorists committing 1,062 offences of using hand-held devices while driving.

And, yes, modern life is busy but nothing on our phones is worth incurring penalty points, a fine, a prison sentence, or losing your licence. Even less so if it means risking your life.

Do you agree with the RAC’s findings? Have you noticed fewer police cars on the roads? Tell us your thoughts in the comment section.

1/3 cheaper to run

There seems to be a lot of misinformation when it comes to costs associated with going green, least of all a clear understanding of what it actually costs to run an all-electric vehicle; when averaged out per charge, how much will a single mile cost you?

To be clear, this isn’t about purchase price, maintenance cost, battery leasing & purchasing, but just mile for mile cost of energy – electricity versus unleaded and diesel if you will.

None of us would be surprised to hear that electricity miles are cheaper than fossil-fuelled miles, but being able to put it in to context does give us a little more insight and understanding.

The most frugal electric vehicles (the KIA e-Niro and Renault Zoe) offer a range of 33.1 miles to one pound (£1), the best diesel (Honda Civic Saloon 1.6i DTEC and the Ford Focus 1.5 EcoBlue) aren’t even close; 10.8 miles for each pound (£1) of ‘energy’.

Make up to an £11,740 difference

It could be argued that the price differential between the KIA e-Niro (£32,995) and the Honda Civic (£21,255) would buy you an awful lot of miles – nearly 128,000, but what of the Renault Zoe? The list price of the Zoe is actually less than the Civic, only by £35, but that’s not important; it isn’t just getting close to traditional ICE vehicles, it’s beating them. (And that’s before we look at any assistance to buy).

However, taking the Zoe as an example, you hire the batteries, and the bigger than annual mileage, the bigger the financial charge; with annual mileage of 10,500, you’d be paying £99 per month for the hire of the battery – nearly £1,200 on top of the purchase price.

Further still, the obvious comparison between the practicality, styling or just plain old ‘want’ of the vehicles isn’t to be underestimated. The Zoe is a small hatchback, ideally suited to town driving and loading up with shopping, whereas the Civic has more space, more range, looks smarter (although of course, that’s subjective) and is made by Honda, which means it should outlast the cockroaches that see off a nuclear holocaust.

Cheap motoring

For a long time, people have complained that electric vehicles don’t have enough range, are too expensive to purchase, not as practical, won’t fit their need because they can’t tow the Moon behind them – there’s always been a reason (usually financial) as to why they just don’t work (for them).

But today, the electric vehicle market has evolved into something that’s closer in price, with some models beating traditional ICE vehicle prices, a viable alternative for many motorists with range anxiety, and they offer all the performance that’s realistically usable on our road network.

Without doubt, there will be some motorists that an electric vehicle won’t suit, or isn’t yet a viable alternative, and even for those it does work for, you can’t help feeling that even now, there’s a compromise to be made if you choose electricity over internal combustion.

But let’s not forget, mainstream battery-electric vehicles have only really been in production for around ten years, and within that timeframe, battery prices have dropped to around a tenth of what they were, ranges have doubled, even tripled, performance has gone up, charging times have come down, and the breadth of the compromise is narrowing with each day that passes.

As a performance car engineer, I really never thought I’d see the day where electricity could take on fossil fuel in a straight fight and win, and while we’re still not quite there yet, you can guarantee that within this next decade, fossil fuel will be outdated and outclassed.

Perhaps the time is coming where the only drawback to owning an electric vehicle will be the tariffs imposed on us for charging them, and using the roads – much the same for fossil fuels now.

What do you think to electric vehicles? If price wasn’t a consideration, would you own one? Are they practical enough right now? Let us know in the comments.

Subsidies are go(ing)

Despite all the rhetoric, just last month, Shapps admitted in an interview that the £3,500 subsidy toward buying an electric vehicle (the Plug-in Car Grant) is in danger of being stopped a little sooner than we’d like, and this means that it’s likely that the help to install a charge system will also go.

With that said, it has been announced that the government are looking to invest £400m in the public charging networks, of which £70m will fund the installation of 3,000 rapid chargers over the next five years. One could only guess at the financial model attached to it.

Shapps: “We must go further to protect our environment and improve our competitive edge. If we’re to become the world-leader in green technology, we must always be looking to expand our ambitions. The Government’s advisory committee on climate change has said that 2035 is the date to aim for”.

“Just as we rejuvenated our automotive sector in the 1980s, we’re going to work with our pioneering car sector to help them sell the next generation of vehicles around the world”.

Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) isn’t quite as convinced as the crowd at the party conference, suggesting that the government needs to do more to incentivise people to make the switch, if they want to encourage drivers to swap over sooner.

“The car industry is committed to zero-emission transport for all, however, low and zero-emission vehicles still only make up a fraction of the market, underscoring the huge challenge of fast-tracking a shift to zero-emission transport; ambition must be matched by measures that support the industry, allowing manufacturers time to invest, innovate and sell competitively”.

“This includes long-term government commitment to incentives and investment in infrastructure to accelerate the uptake of these new technologies”.

Six electric vehicles

Back in July, we reported that the Green Alliance stated that it could only take six electric vehicles charging in the same location to cause a ‘brownout’ on the national grid, unless immediate action is taken to improve the network, a fact that seems to be missing from Shapps’ speech to the conference.

And therein lies the problem with all the chest-beating toward changing the driving habits and motive power source for all transportation; the car industry could possibly swap over much earlier, but could the infrastructure of the United Kingdom cope with the change?

It’s all very well taxing internal combustion cars to within an inch of their life, in a bid to ‘promote green transport’, but the reality is that according to sources and specialised groups such as the Green Alliance, the switch over to ‘green’ may not be dictated by the willingness of manufacturers or even the buying consumers to adopt green transport, but by the limitations set in place by outdated infrastructure.

Electric vehicles are now a viable alternative (albeit expensive) for a great many of motorists, and if you’ve made the switch to an all-electric vehicle, and it works for you, that’s great. But for the hundreds of thousands of drivers that have no viable access to a charging network, or need a range above average, or just can’t stretch to the budget needed to purchase one, then what’s next?

Of course it’s easy to point out that even at 2035, that’s still a decade and a half away, plenty of time to manage the infrastructure, but environmental groups are telling the government that significant changes need to be made by 2020, and that’s simply not happening, certainly not at scale.

We genuinely believe that electricity will revolutionise the transport world, but only when everything is in place for that to happen correctly, until then, the government should at least take some of the responsibility from the motorist and stop penalising them so harshly for driving fossil fuelled vehicles.

Should the government take some responsibility? Do you believe that electrically powered vehicles will be the saviour of motoring? Let us know in the comments.