Cut-price fuel for road pricing
West Midlands motorists could be offered a cut in the price of their fuel if they volunteer to take part in a road pricing scheme planned for the Black Country and Birmingham.
Ministers are considering offering incentives to drivers to have a 'black box' fitted to their vehicles rather than forcing all of them into pay-as-you-go motoring. One proposal is for motorists to be offered a discount on fuel duty.
This would apply if they agreed to pay a distance-based charge for entering the busiest zones in the Black Country and Birmingham.
Alternatively, they could earn a discount on their annual road tax fee if they volunteered to have the black box fitted, which would record the car's movements within the congestion charging zone.
The cost per mile in the charging zone would vary in relation to the level of congestion in any particular area.
Although committed to introducing some system of congestion charging by 2015, ministers were taken aback by the strength of feeling among the public against road pricing revealed in a petition which attracted 1.8 million names.
Ministers admit they have not argued the environmental or jam-busting case for road pricing hard enough, and believe an experimental volunteer scheme in a conurbation could help to convince the nation of the value of a wider scheme.
The RAC Foundation supports a voluntary scheme which would offer other benefits to road users such as cheaper insurance and advice on avoiding congestion.
But executive director Edmund King said: "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas and motorists won't support road pricing unless they know that it will come as part of a congestion-busting package."
