Putting a price on driving round York

HE doesn't look like a revolutionary. Dressed in a smart suit, white hair and beard neatly trimmed, Jonathan Tyler could happily pass for a company director.

Only the sparkle behind the spectacles suggests something more. It's the gleam of the radical.

Mr Tyler knows how to end York's hundred years war with the car. But his peace settlement will have many motorists reaching for the Panadol.

It can be summed up in two words: road pricing. Everyone should pay for the privilege of driving on York's roads. And just as with other services, price would vary according to demand.

"We are probably talking at peak time in the centre of York - 25p a mile," Mr Tyler said.

"In the evening it would be much less. Out in the suburbs it would be very little. On the ring road it would perhaps be a lot more, especially in the peak."

Mr Tyler is aware that his solution may be seen by some as extreme. But he believes that there is no other way to save York - and beyond - from the curse of the car.

Now 64, his career in transport planning and his interest in environmental politics have developed over decades. Ideas honed by both have been crystallised in his York Manifesto For Sustainable Transport.

This 1,400-word submission to the council's Local Transport Plan consultation sets out four reasons why our transport system must change.

The big two concern climate change and declining oil production. Mr Tyler has studied the evidence on global warming and is convinced by it.

He says that a quarter of the emissions of carbon dioxide, the prime "greenhouse gas", comes from transport. "If China joins American levels of car use, then we're finished as a species."

Dwindling oil supplies, meanwhile, "put the economic system under severe strain and threaten many aspects of our way of life".

Although road pricing will be expensive, "the cost of letting things get worse is almost incomprehensible".

Away from these universal issues, road pricing is necessary to cut York congestion. Jams build up because motorists are not charged appropriately. Road space isn't governed by the economic law of supply and demand.

The real cost of motoring "is variable between the country road in February with nothing about and St Leonard's Place at 8.33 on Tuesday morning," Mr Tyler said.

"From virtually nothing to 20, 30, 40 pence a mile in terms of the social cost, petrol inefficiency, noise, pollution."

Road pricing would be more transparent. "It's related to the real cost of using the road at each particular moment in time and place.

"It's metered. You see the meter ticking away."

The final reason Mr Tyler cites for road pricing is the need for York to cut its levels of pollution. It is extraordinary that "over the last few years we have become more and more obsessed with public safety and yet we do nothing at all about the pollution that vehicles cause," he says.

"The city started its studies on pollution four or five years ago promising a massive consultation exercise.

"What's happened? Damn all, because it has chickened out of the only possible solution to the problem, which is serious constraint of traffic."

For drivers, there are two possible methods of payment. One would see cars fitted with a box which transmitted the time and place of every journey to a satellite receiver. From this an itemised bill, like a phone bill, would be sent out to the registered driver.

Alternatively, motorists could buy a card offering them 100 units of travel. This total would tick down on a dashboard meter, diminishing faster when driving on busy roads in rush hour, and slower on quiet roads off peak.

Mr Tyler admits that vehicle excise duty and other motoring costs would have to be made simpler and often reduced if road pricing were introduced.

As the extracts from his manifesto reproduced in the panel make clear, he sees road pricing as part of a package of measures to cut unnecessary car journeys.

"People should realise the significance of what they're doing: consuming a scarce resource of road space and the environment, so that at the margins people change their decisions and realise some of their use of cars is unnecessary.

"There are alternatives."

Better public transport would be paid for by road pricing. The congestion charge was introduced into central London by mayor Ken Livingstone who "argued and proved that appropriate pricing of roads generates its own income streams".

Less traffic on the roads would allow a boosted bus service to become more reliable. Mr Tyler even envisages the return of trams to York's streets, partly funded by his revolution.

But how can it ever happen when the public will fiercely resist?

Before the last council election Steve Galloway ruled out road tolls in York. And after the clamour over extra parking charges, surely a political party pledging to introduce road pricing would be committing electoral suicide?

"I want our politicians to be brave," Mr Tyler says. "The situation is desperate. The longer we leave it, the more dangerous it becomes, and the more difficult the adjustment is going to be.

"I think they might actually be surprised at the public response, which is partly to do with the current disillusionment about politics.

"People might respond to something more revolutionary, more brave, more visionary.

"There's an awareness amongst a significant number of people that things are pretty desperately adrift.

"People feel frustrated because they know there's very little they can do individually, and they are looking for leadership."

Local politicians might put party rivalries aside and work together on this crucial issue. Now is the time to restore York's status as a sustainable transport pioneer.

"It was a deserved reputation but I think the council has got complacent in recent years."

Mr Tyler runs Passenger Transport Networks from a top floor office in Stonegate which boasts a unique view of the Minster, framed through a skylight. Once a driver, he no longer owns a car and "I organise my life not to need one".

If others were persuaded through road pricing to reduce their car use the benefits would be manifold, he argues. No more jams. Our city centre freed from the danger, dirt and noise of traffic congestion.

For residents, the quality of life would be vastly improved. For tourists, York would have a unique selling point. For traders, appropriate road charges would offer "a huge incentive for the development of one or several out-of-town depots, to which big lorries would deliver all the goods".

These could be brought to the shops by vans, or better still by electric milk float-style vehicles and bicycle delivery services.

"In the longer term, I believe we would have a sounder economy.

"I don't buy the argument that York must jump on the global bandwagon. We need to consider whether, in the long run, we have a more stable, sustainable economy with much more local production.

"Prices like these could help to bring this in."

Mr Tyler says the new Local Transport Plan is our best chance to stop "tinkering at the edges" of our traffic nightmare and do something positive.

"The essence of what I am saying is this. If we want York to be a more liveable city; if we want to extend pedestrianisation and give pedestrians priority, make cycling safer, and all the other things to make it more civilised, then it's not a matter of overnight change.

"Even I, at the extreme end of the argument I expect, am not saying we are going to stop you driving your motor car tomorrow.

"What we are saying is introduce the city to policies which will influence all these decisions and lead us in a particular direction from the last few generations.

"We need to be somewhere else in a generation's time."

The following information is an exact copy of Jonathan Tyler's manifesto:

A YORK MANIFESTO FOR SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT

a submission to the Local Transport Plan process

Jonathan Tyler

Passenger Transport Networks, York

For four reasons the transport system must change - in York, nationally, globally.

The absence of any transparent connection between the full cost of using a motor vehicle and the perceived charge for doing so at the place and time of use is the fundamental cause of congestion. Demand for any good that is not properly priced will be exaggerated. It is extra-ordinary that the dominant mode of transport, which has so many impacts in so many fields, is not subject to market forces (transport cannot be classed with healthcare and education as a right available free when required). The only possible solution is to introduce universal road-pricing as a matter of urgency, with prices set to ensure that drivers face the economic, social and environmental cost of each trip. Every time a choice has to be made that would lead to more rational decisions about lifestyles and transport modes, and hence about land use.

Climate change is real and dangerous. The physical costs are rising, the likelihood of severe weather events is increasing, and the possibility of catastrophe is not negligible. It is too late to avert some effects. There is still time to moderate the consequences. Transport is one of the principal sources of greenhouse gases and includes some of the most irresponsibly wasteful uses of fossil fuels (such as 4x4s and driving to the gym). The advice of climate scientists is that we must make huge cuts in the burning of oil - at least halving it. Tinkering at the margins is irrelevant, and we cannot rely on other people or some technical fix to save us.

Worldwide demand for oil is growing apace. Worldwide production of oil (allowing for short-term market fluctuations) is on a plateau and will start to decline. The oil industry calls this phenomenon 'peak oil', and it arises from incontrovertible facts about natural resources and their exploitation. The result will be that soon, and possibly very soon, prices will start to rise sharply and inexorably - and that is before we consider the risk of violence arising from our dependence on energy from dodgy regimes. This will put the economic system under severe strain and threaten many aspects of our way of life. Renewable alternatives are very unlikely to offer a substitute for oil in the manner and on the scale at which it is currently consumed, particularly in transport, while the nuclear route would be costly and unacceptably dangerous.

Internal combustion engines emit a large number and quantity of chemicals. The damage that some cause to health, to ecosystems and to buildings is known. Many others may be damaging, but their effects, especially the compound and cumulative effects, are poorly understood. On the precautionary principle society should be more cautious. The ethical approach is that one individual should not cause substantial harm to others (that is a proper constraint on the concept of 'choice'), and it is absurd to focus so much attention on the risks from tobacco smoke while ignoring the cocktail pumped out in city streets by motor vehicles. Nor should we address road traffic hazards any less rigorously than we do other threats to public safety.

Any one of these four factors should lead to drastic measures. The fact that they are now coinciding in their policy implications cannot be ignored. The attempt to accommodate mass motorised transportation through planning and engineering measures to control its impacts has plainly failed, even if it is understandable how that strategy began. And it is equally clear that appealing to people to behave responsibly is useless, for without some real pressure it is in no one's self-interest to stop using a car when the road-space they vacate will at once be filled by someone else.

It is time for York's civic leaders and transport planners to lead us out of a worsening mess.

York has a precious heritage and a sense of community worth nurturing.

York presents itself as 'science city', preparing for the future.

York boasts (with some justice) that it is at the forefront of transport policy.

York's Local Transport Plan LTP for 2006-2011 is supposed to involve tough choices.

So let us seize the moment.

What should be done ?

1. The LTP must introduce user-charges for every road within the Ring Road, and the Ring Road itself when used for local journeys, by 2011. The technical requirements are demanding but achievable, given the political will. Without such a policy the Council will spend inordinate effort trying to ameliorate here, adjust there, fudge somewhere else, to little avail and with increasingly damaging and contentious consequences. With such a policy inessential trips will be discouraged, the most economically and socially valuable ones will become easier and less polluting, and the environment will be enhanced.

2. The LTP should reduce marginal car-ownership by stating the intention steadily to raise the fee for residents' parking permits. There is no right to park a motor-vehicle on the highway. Parking spaces at workplaces and shopping centres should be compulsorily metered.

3. The LTP must reinforce the priority accorded to pedestrians, cyclists and bus passengers in the hierarchy of road users introduced in earlier plans, for in too many places its implementation has been weak. Measures should include a speed limit of 20 miles/hour on most roads within the City, longer pedestrian phases at traffic lights, redesign of street layouts to emphasise the precedence of pedestrians and cyclists (especially where they are present in large numbers or where the townscape is of great importance), extensive priority schemes for buses to ensure that they run faster and more reliably, and strict enforcement of traffic law (notably regarding speeding and abuse of the foot-street rules).

4. The Council must be totally determined to improve air quality, even if that renders drastic action inevitable to restrict the use of internal combustion engines in some streets in the city.

5. Planning permission must be refused for any development that presupposes access primarily by car. That means, for example, no expansion of out-of-town business parks and blocking housing intended for long-distance car-commuters. The Ring Road must never be widened.

6. In the short run the number and size of freight vehicles entering the City should be reduced through measures to pool deliveries. In the longer term the Council should deploy every possible tool to encourage people and businesses to shorten journeys (the greater part of the growth of traffic has arisen from the lengthening of trips, not from additional trips) and to induce transport-minimising production systems, so that the City is prepared for the impending energy crisis. A more localised economy would also make for a happier, healthier and better balanced way of life.

7. The income from the road and parking charges should be used (a) to replace existing charges on road users, (b) to fund a transformation in the design of the city's streets (see 3), and (c) to support the introduction of an all-day high-frequency minibus network in the central area, including links to outlying sites such as the University, the station and the railway lands beyond. This might in due course involve some light tram routes. Its purpose would be to make it easy (and seen to be easy) to move about the city without being dependent on a car. These schemes, offsetting the restrictions, will ensure that York continues to attract employers and visitors and remains a delight to its people.

8. The Council should be totally open and blunt about the reasons for these policies, prepared to face down obscurantist and selfish objections, and not dismayed by practical difficulties. Since real sustainability is not negotiable it should point out that it is seeking to influence in a wiser and probably vital direction the millions of transport decisions that individuals, businesses and developers take - for the sake of future generations. (It could use the revenue stream from charges to fund transitional assistance for those most affected.) And it should assert that the unique combination of an historic city with a science city both requires it and enables it to be at the forefront of a policy shift that will become a commonplace within a decade (for if it does not our civilisation could simply collapse).

York, July 2004

Updated: 08:41 Wednesday, October 13, 2004