The media is full of coverage of the dilemma facing Chancellor Rachel Reeves at the forthcoming budget.
- Is it time to increase fuel duty after 14 years of real term freezes?
- Should we start to charge electric vehicle drivers a per mile tax to avoid a massive drop in tax income in the coming decade?
- Is it time to resurrect a national road pricing scheme where people pay more for travelling at busy times and less for journeys off-peak and in more rural areas?
Professor Greg Marsden suggests that anything that is announced in the budget will just be a sticking plaster. The real issue, he argues is the £79bn we spend on simply owning, maintaining and insuring cars in the UK each year.
“Once we have invested in cars to this extent, then the logic is to use them. We know we need to adapt the tax system for motoring because electric vehicles will, for many people, be considerably cheaper than petrol cars. If we are going to alter a system that has been in place for 100 years, we need a more radical rethink, so we create a system that is fit for the next several decades. In the INFUZE project we are working to understand the potential for a major shift to accessing mobility on-demand. We need to think about a tax system for all modes which is organised around what we use and encourages shared access rather than focussing on incentivising individual ownership and use”.
The INFUZE project asks what a world would look like where you didn’t need to own your own car to get around. This includes thinking about how the payment and tax system should work. We look forward to working with communities and businesses to bring a fresh perspective to a debate which seems stuck in the slow lane.
Read the transcript from Greg Marsden’s talk “How should we pay for driving“
View the full slide presentation
