By rethinking road pricing as ‘mobility’ pricing, we may be able to build public acceptance
By Alistair Hunter, highways business leader and Patrick Andison, senior economics consultant, Arup
Road pricing in its most simplest form goes back many centuries to the old turnpike roads, where a road user pays a charge or levy to use that infrastructure. The concept around “mobility pricing” is that users are generally willing to pay something for the use of the network; the funding raised from that goes back into other mobility options such as mass transit systems or other public transport options. The current form of pricing – fuel taxation – is coming to a natural end because of electrification of our road network.
Mobility pricing is a more accurate term than road pricing as it represents a more integrated way of thinking to reflect new modes of transport. Mobility solutions such as e-scooters are becoming more integrated all the time, so we can think about how we price things accordingly. There’s a fundamental question about how the pricing goes so that it doesn’t favour the wealthy.
At the moment, the majority of road taxation is used for other reasons outside of transport and that’s a challenge for any government to balance the needs of the public purse. There has to be some carrot to go along with the stick. You can’t simply price people off the roads.
The systems that have been successful have always been mated to an alternative mass transit system, which is key. A couple of examples are Stockholm and Singapore. In Singapore, with one mobility card, you go from road to rail to bus, so the whole transport system is linked. It’s easier in dense, urban populations with high usership, so you need to look at demographics and what would be suitable.
The adoption of mobility pricing needs to be policy-led – there are many variables such as the size of the vehicle, the time of day it’s used, and where you’re travelling.
With the technology side, there has to be better integration of those systems rather than the patchwork of multiple systems we have at the moment. Some of the systems have commonality but, from a customer perspective, unless there’s a real convergence of the systems, it’s going to be incredibly complicated.
There’s opportunity to innovate there, but the whole system has to be charged, maybe via a satellite-based system.
Cities have long been leaders in road pricing. Current and future technologies mean they can explore different policies within their jurisdiction to help shape that transport demand. You could choose a low rate of mobility pricing to encourage businesses to particular areas, as well as to promote growth in target areas of the country.
You need to have an honest and open discussion with the public before making any decisions. There is £35bn that is raised each year from road taxation, which helps to pay for the NHS – so you need to gain some acceptance there. Most people recognise that those public funds need to be balanced, but solutions have to be simple and transparent so that the costs are easy to understand.
The transition needs to be a long-term project, though – and that’s no small change. But we need to focus towards net zero in 2050 and getting people familiar with that transition. There’s a long tail on any national system implementation, so a realistic time scale is at least a decade away if not longer.
It’s not easy and you need to fine-tune systems. It needs to be done slowly and carefully and to build trust with the public. It’s important that road pricing is no longer seen as a standalone topic, but as a tool to help deliver net zero and connected to other government macro policy-making
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