Toil of the Tolls
British toll roads can be complicated and congested, but there's a better way.
Driving in the UK can cost a lot. Firstly there are the costs of buying and maintaining a vehicle. Then you need to pay vehicle excise duty and insurance to make sure you’re road legal. And then there’s the cost of fuel or electricity, and possibly parking, when you actually take a drive. The most annoying costs though, come in the form of the long list of tolls that you may rack up depending on the journey you take.
Tolls have their uses. They can support the creation and maintenance of new infrastructure, and they can help to regulate traffic at peak hours or on busy roads. On the few occasions I’ve passed by Birmingham, the M6 Toll has been a blessing despite the high cost as it bypasses long tailbacks on the complex array of congested junctions near the city centre. Similarly, Clean Air Zones can provide powerful incentives to decarbonise vehicles and improve the air quality in city centres, as has been evidenced in London.
Paying the Price
The reason that they are annoying though, isn’t so much their existence, but in how they are operated. The UK Government has a list of the charged roads in the UK1, including one tolled motorway, 18 tolled bridges and tunnels, and congestion charging zones in both London and Durham2. Each of these often has its own management, its own website, and its own payment and appeals process.
On top of these, there are Clean Air Zones in no less than nine cities, and whilst most of these can be paid via a single portal on gov.uk, Transport for London still maintains a separate system for the LEZ and ULEZ within Greater London3. As such, a drive from Birkenhead to London might involve having to register with three different payment providers to pay to cross the Mersey, use the M6 Toll, and then drive within Greater London. The complexity caused by this system not only creates annoyance and wastes time for drivers, but also leads to higher rates of non-payment than would otherwise be realised.
One of the busiest tolls in the UK is the Dartford Crossing that connects the M25 over the River Thames, with 150,000 vehicles crossing on an average day4. In an average month, around 200,000 penalty charge notices (PCNs) are issued to drivers for non-payment5. That’s equivalent to giving everyone driving over the bridge a PCN for a whole day, every month, and then some more for good measure.
A Smoother Ride
But there’s a simpler way forward, and the Department for Transport has already shown how. Just as the UK has centralised Clean Air Zone payments, we could also centralise the payments of all UK Tolls onto the same portal. Rather than setting up a new account, payment, and direct debit every time a motorist makes a journey on a new route, they could instead have a single account that automatically pays a direct debit whenever they make a journey that requires it.
Other countries already utilise similar systems. Subscription model telepeages provide inter-operable toll payments across France, Spain, and Italy6; and in the US, an increasing number of highway operators are adopting the E-ZPass system, with the potential for nationwide rollout. Consolidated toll systems ease the administrative burden on motorists, reduce the risk of exposure of account and bank details by reducing the number of organisations with access, and also increase payment rates.
But whereas the European and American systems usually rely on devices affixed to vehicles, the UK is well placed to have a fully virtual system, building on the Clean Air Zone portal that already exists, as well as the device-free Dartford Tunnel setup. It would be particularly useful for haulage and logistics organisations that operate large fleets of vehicles across the country. For tolls that are currently operated privately, the Government could offer integration to the service for a fixed charge per vehicle in exchange for the Government taking the compliance risk on enforcing charges and collecting PCNs. This would also reduce operational costs through enabling all tolls to be fully digitised with Number Plate readers.
We could go one step further though. The UK has particular difficulty in collecting toll payments from foreign-registered vehicles, for which debt collection is far more complex than for domestic ones. Failure to collect these tolls ends up requiring British drivers to pay even more to maintain the same level of revenue, and penalises British freight operators compared to European ones. With a single UK tolling portal, we could require the owners of foreign vehicles to pre-register on the portal as part of their journey by Eurotunnel or Ferry, potentially requiring the upfront payment of a vignette as is required to utilise motorways in Switzerland.
Tidying up the UK’s convoluted administration of tolls, congestion charges, and clean air zones into a single portal is a simple way to make life easier for motorists, haulage firms, and foreign drivers alike, whilst easing the burden on the taxpayer by increasing payment rates. The road to improvements is clear, and ready for the Government to implement.
It’s worth noting that all public road tolls in the UK are in England. Scotland abolished tolls in 2008, and the last toll in Wales, on the Severn Crossing, was removed in 2008.
There are also some smaller private tolls that are not listed, such as the tollgate on the Dulwich Estate in South London.
Low Emission Zone and Ultra Low Emission Zone.
Source: https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/hundreds-of-thousands-of-dart-charge-fines-issued. Recently the number of PCN issuances has been much higher, but this is due to a handover of the payment service to a new provider and the need to re-register all payment accounts.
Such as Ulys, Emovis, and Bip&Go.
The map (and the gov.uk website linked) does not include the Oxford ZEZ.
And low cost vehicle ferries that charge a fixed fare (costing less than, say, £30) should be included in any common scheme of payment if they accept advance payment (or must certify that they accept contactless payment on the day). Example: Cowes Floating Bridge on Wight; there are a handful of others similar, in Southwest, Scotland.
Needs primary legislation to enforce common solutions for all ANPR collected/enforced payments including an automatic PAYG option, and for nonANPR enforced solutions, requirement to support NFC contactless (with a cash discount option for the very smallest payments, limited to approx 15p discount to cover use of NFC equipment, remaining equipment costs to be offset via VAT return (mandatory even if no VAT is charged to better track private toll and parking revenue)