For Whom the Road Tolls

Yesterday, Mr Cameron unveiled his latest masterstroke in a bid to ease the congestion that suffocates our transport systems like dull, London smog.

The PM called for an urgent readdressing of the nation’s road networks, suggesting improvement through an increase in the amount of private investment.

Without doubt, road investments, along with improvements to rail facilities, have been sparse and transportation networks no longer remain efficient means of commuting people and products to their destinations. Motorways in particular frequently reach saturation points and widespread jams are the norm around London, Birmingham and other metropolitan centres.

In Europe, many motorways have only two lanes and yet continue to carry their traffic with much less disruption than in the UK.

With a certain tenacity for issues under the umbrella of ‘infrastructure’, Cameron detailed the need for repair as urgent to combat “decades-long degeneration” and necessary in order to "build for the future with as much confidence and ambition as the Victorians once did".

Among the problems highlighted, environmental and economic issues were brought to the forefront: with increased delays, more fuel is burnt and deadlines are increasingly missed or deliveries received late.

It is estimated that some £7 billion a year is lost due to mismanaged and under-invested motorways.

However, the cost to the public is already rocketing because of these problems. As only grazed by the prime minister, more time spent in traffic jams and slowed motorways increases fuel consumption and combined with rising petrol prices, this ensures that more and more journeys are  costly for the consumer, requiring extortionate refills in motorway service stations. Asking for even more public contributions to right these problems is bound to cause an outcry of sorts.

Whilst privatisation then appears a reasonable measure (and something that all major government parties have considered in the past), how would this affect current motorists?

Indeed, many people may question the increasing sum payable for road tax if the schemes were implemented. With company and foreign investment becoming accepted, the tax would appear an unjust means of continuing to solve the nation’s debt crises. Since there is already no direct correlation between road tax to the government and parliament’s use of these funds on road investment, the hallmark of ‘road tax’ would merely become a phantom cloak for the government to claim addition state funds, without having to invest any amount of the sum back into the road infrastructure.

Besides, when privatising and adding tolls to roads, this incurs additional costs to families at a time of recession. Whilst the funds would generate new links for businesses, the average middle-class family may not be able to afford wide-spread highway men fees, to pardon the pun. The M6 toll, opened in 2003, remains an uncongested stretch of motorway because many families would rather save the £6 fee expected to use the stretch of road.

The stumbling block of these debates is that the British public hate privatisation and, with the water boards aside, there continues to be great resistance to any movement deemed to be taking power out of the hands of the British public.

Yet, the government could see forecasted figures of around £100 billion being injected into the chancellor’s funds by consequence of the move and therefore, it is rather popular to a cash-strapped Westminster.

However, with the prospect of foreign investment comes further concern. Many are sceptical as to how much investment would be pledged versus the amount of profit netted by the companies concerned; this a particular trouble after Cameron compared the schemes to water privatisation which saw massive profits for businesses.

Essentially, whilst investment is needed, there is no measure of how those in charge could be held accountable. As the prime minister insists there need be vision like the Victorians, the Englishmen of the late 19^th century would never have considered selling the country’s infrastructure in such a jigsaw manner, but rested on a sense of nationalism and pride that appears forgotten.