Transport policy makers keen to introduce road pricing should resign themselves to the fact that it may be twice as long as commonly thought before UK motorists pay for every mile they drive, a seminar heard on Thursday.

RAC Foundation director Steve Gooding told the ‘Priorities for the road network in England’ gathering in Whitehall that road pricing “is a fantastic economic theory that’s extraordinarily difficult to work in practice”. He added: “The old joke is that road pricing is always 10 years away. I think it is probably nearer 20.”

Mr Gooding also called on Highways England to do more to relay useful information to motorists stuck in traffic. He pointed out that while stationary in a tailback on the M1 recently he saw a variable message sign showing ‘Queue ahead 60’. “Why would anyone tell me about a speed of 60; we haven’t moved!” he remarked. “As a motorist I want to see a supercharge in thinking about how better information can get to me.”

He went on to say that highway developments are lagging a long way behind improvements to vehicles. “If Telford and Macadam came back today would they say ‘good heavens we got it right, no wonder nobody has changed anything in 200 years’ or would they say ‘how strange that nothing seems to have changed’. And yet in the vehicle world we are even writing drivers out of the picture. Where is the equivalent innovation in the design and delivery of the carriageway itself?”

The conference also heard from the former Transport Minister Baroness Kramer, a Liberal Democrat peer, who said in response to a question on road tolling: “We have had road tolling in our policy for a long time. The problem is when we have a system the losers all scream and the winners take the benefit for granted. I think the shift to electric cars will drive it.”

The conference was organised by the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum.

(Photo courtesy of Elliott Brown and licenced for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)