SCOTTISH ministers will next week challenge the Treasury to promise tax cuts to compensate rural Scots for the introduction of road charges of up to £1.20 a mile.
The prospect of drivers paying for every journey came a step closer yesterday with a Treasury-backed report which concluded the only way to cut traffic congestion is to price some people off the roads.
Sir Rod Eddington, the former British Airway
s chief executive who wrote the report, said that building more roads is simply not viable, meaning motorists must be encouraged to drive less. "The UK cannot build itself out of current road congestion," Sir Rod said. "For me, in the end, road pricing is an economic no-brainer."
His report made no firm recommendation about how and how much drivers should pay, but suggested a maximum charge of £1.20 per mile to travel on urban roads at their busiest.
"Ask yourself: do you in 20 years' time want to waste up to four more working days of your life each year sitting in congested peak traffic in UK's largest cities?" Sir Rod said. "Or are you prepared to change your travel patterns, and pay a full, but reasonable price to reflect environmental impacts, and benefits in terms of improved speed and reliability of your car journey?"
Ministers in London and Edinburgh have already signalled their backing for a road charging scheme when technology allows, and Sir Rod's report, commissioned by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has only reinforced that determination.
While the Executive would have the final say on any charges levied to drive on roads north of the Border, Westminster and Holyrood are in agreement that any charging system must apply across the UK to be viable.
Publishing its own 20-year transport strategy on Tuesday, the Executive will confirm its willingness to participate in a road-charging scheme.
However, that backing would be dependent on the Treasury agreeing to cut road tax or fuel duty to offset the costs of the charging scheme.
"The transport minister [Tavish Scott] is in favour of the introduction of road-user charging as a way of combating congestion, but for this to work it would have to be done as part of a UK approach involving the restructuring of motoring taxation," said an Executive spokesman.
In particular, it is understood that the Executive is concerned that a charging scheme could penalise rural Scots, who often have no alternative to cars.
Ministers may therefore argue that people living in rural areas should be given even larger tax breaks by the Treasury.
Cutting congestion is part of Sir Rod's plans to improve the "economic connectivity" of the UK transport network. He concluded that government transport policy should focus on freeing up key "pinch points", improving connections to ports and airports and easing major inter-city routes, rail and road.
And as Jack McConnell, the First Minister, yesterday officially opened the £19 million terminal extension at Edinburgh airport, Sir Rod also gave strong support for plans to expand UK airports. Failing to build new runways would cost business £6 billion, the report said.
Aviation policy is reserved to Westminster, and Sir Rod backed the 2003 white paper, which said that if central Scotland is to have a new runway, it should be built at Edinburgh.
Green groups have said air travel should be curbed to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Sir Rod said that the wider gains to be made from flying more could justify the environmental cost.
"Provided economic analysis shows that there is a net benefit from increased airport capacity, even once users pay the full environmental costs of their journeys, there will remain a strong economic case for additional runway capacity," Sir Rod said.
SPEED LINK STILL BACKED
BUSINESS leaders yesterday vowed to press on with the argument for a high-speed rail link between Scotland and southern England, even after the Eddington Report effectively dismissed the proposal.
As expected, Sir Rod Eddington advised that the government should not build any major new networks, focusing instead on freeing up existing routes.
While the former British Airways boss acknowledged that many business leaders believe a high-speed train could replace many air journeys to and from Scotland, he said: "The evidence is very quiet on the scale of resulting economic benefit."
But Graham Birse, of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, insisted that "large-scale investments necessary to bring such a scheme into being have to be considered".
