Kelly to unveil scheme for pay as you drive motorway lanes

Kelly to unveil scheme for pay as you drive motorway lanes

Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, will today unveil plans for "pay as you drive" motorway lanes in a bid to reduce congestion. The move follows huge protests to Downing Street over proposals to introduce a compulsory motorway toll system enforced by satellite tracking. Those ideas appear to have been put on hold.

Instead, Kelly will present initiatives designed to cut congestion in the short term, rather than wait for the technology and political consensus required to introduce the more radical national scheme. A green paper will be published in the summer, with legislation next year, and the pay as you drive lanes will come into force around 2010, officials said.

Kelly will also publish maps showing where 435 miles (700km) of extra lanes will be built on existing motorway hard shoulders. She will suggest that in each case one lane should be set aside either for motorists willing to pay a premium to escape congestion, or for those who are sharing a car.

In a keynote speech on congestion, foreshadowing the green paper, Kelly will also suggest that new technologies can be used to manage the flow of traffic by closing entire lanes, or imposing speed limits right across four lanes.

Extra cash to support congestion charge schemes in cities will also be provided. At present only Manchester and Cambridge have expressed interest in following London by introducing an urban congestion charge.

Speaking to the Guardian, Kelly said: "There.....continued below

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are two sides in this debate. Those that have concerns about privacy and cost of a widespread road pricing scheme, and those who say it is essential that we constrain traffic growth and the only means is a national road pricing [scheme]. In the middle is the public. We need a fresh approach. I want to tackle the problems of congestion wherever they occur, using all the latest technology available. Traffic has grown faster on motorways over the past 10 years than any other kind of road. Motorways account for 1% of total roads, but carry 20% of total traffic and 40% of heavy goods vehicles."

She added: "If you are thinking of an existing three-lane motorway, and you open up a fourth lane, one of those lanes might be a reserved lane, and by doing that people can put a premium on reliability. You could imagine a stretch on the way to the airport, or wherever it is essential to get to your destination on time.

"The touchstone here is giving people real choice on the motorway network, so where people value reliability they have the option to pay for it. Everyone else would have the choice of remaining in the existing three lanes. It is a win-win situation."

She is determined to introduce the changes relatively quickly, amid signs that traffic on motorways is growing faster than any other form of traffic. Plans to build extra lanes on motorway hard shoulders follows a successful pilot in Birmingham, which revealed no extra dangers, so long as safety lay-bys were built.

Kelly's predecessor, Douglas Alexander, had reaffirmed plans to introduce a road charging scheme using technology such as satellite tracking to automatically enforce a pay-as-you-drive fee for every mile a motorist travelled by 2010.