Radical plans to reduce the number of cars on the road could see Britain’s first pay-per-mile charges introduced.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan could consider the move as part of an extensive transport strategy that will attempt to cut reduce the number of car journeys in the capital and push people onto public transport.
Other policies designed to force people to consider alternatives to owning a vehicle include banning car parks in new housing developments. Healthy routes where walking and cycling are given priority and cars banned altogether are also being considered.
The mayor’s office said the strategy would “explore the next generation of road user charging that could harness new technology to better reflect distance, time, emissions, road danger and other factors in an integrated way”.
It is thought “this could include a single ‘per mile’ charge which takes into account both congestion and emissions objective” as Mr Khan hopes to increase the proportion of journeys taken on public transport to 80 per cent from the current level of 64 over the next quarter of a century.
Transport for London would work with individual London boroughs to develop other traffic management policies, the mayor said in a statement.
This could reportedly include more local systems which would charge people to drive into an individual area or a workplace parking charge that could force people to pay to drive to wok.
However, Edmund King, president of the AA, told The Times: “If it is just a straight road pricing scheme, it is going to be very difficult to sell to the public. Drivers don’t trust the government to come up with a workable scheme and that’s the danger here.”
