London Mayor Sadiq Khan is investing £150 million in a secret technology project that aims to enhance road-user charging technology, sparking concerns that it could lead to a pay-per-mile road tax. The Telegraph has the story.
The scheme, called Project Detroit, was set up by Transport for London (TfL) to create a “more sophisticated… new core technology platform for road-user charging”.
A series of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests show 157 staff are now working solely on the scheme, with some engineers being paid more than £100,000 a year.
In total £21 million has already been spent on the project, which started in 2021, but the “platform has an estimated final cost of between £130 million to £150 million”.
But Conservatives at City Hall claim Project Detroit, which is creating a single “road user charging” platform for the congestion charge, Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) and Low Emission Zone, could be used to introduce a charge based on the distance driven in cars within London.
One FoI response from TFL says: “The Detroit platform has the capability to be extended and we will be looking to build the system flexibly so that other forms of charging based on distance, vehicle type, etc. could be catered for if a decision was made in future to do so.”
In 2018, the Mayor’s Transport Strategy said an “integrated pay-per-mile charge could replace pre-existing schemes”, such as the congestion charge. …
Peter Fortune, the Conservative London Assembly Member for Bexley and Bromley, insisted that Project Detroit paves the way for pay-per-mile charging.
“Sadiq Khan can deny it all he wants but it’s pretty clear he plans to introduce pay-per-mile road-user charges for every motorist if he wins a third term,” he said.
Worth reading in full.
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I thought the Khant’s London was broke?
Indeed – but it’s not a problem because he can make the taxpayer even broker!
“Pay-per-mile charging has been ruled out by the mayor and no such scheme is on the table or being developed.”
…..
We have no intention of introducing compulsory face coverings, we have no intention of introducing vaccine passports…..
That’s what happens when you have a huge team of software developers on the payroll. Not cheap those guys
I thought that pay per mile was a conspiracy theory.
Anyone who thought he would stop at just ULEZ is a complete cretin
There have been a flurry of 2 year transport-related software development contracts going up recently, so quite plausible.
We already pay per mile! 52.95 pence per liter and 20% vat on top of that, 64 pence per liter near as damn it, so will this tax be dropped when ppm comes along?
Will it buffalo!
(And let’s not forget road tax per annum)
Not much seems to be going back into the roads. Wales had a reputation for smooth roads, not anymore. They listen when the cyclists start complaining about holes in the road.
How ironic that the scheme to further destroy freedoms in London should be Detroit, a city decimated into an urban hell hole caused by globalists gutting the labour force of American car workers through NAFTA.
Now he will decimate the car driving population making it too expensive, slow, and inconvenient for the average person to own and drive their own car in what once was the greatest city in the world.
These guys love screwing us. He’s an evil little narcissistic fecker.
“These guys love screwing us. He’s an evil little narcissistic fecker.”
Yep.
Of course he is. And the Westminster Uni-Party is supporting him.
As this makes clear:
https://bettertransport.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/legacy-files/research-files/22.09.pay-as-you-drive-report.pdf
I will give a shout out to Geoff Buys Cars for alerting people to this. Give an inch they will talk a mile. More people are saying something is not quite right, still too few, but a few more listening to various channels.
He’s just a Placeman , if it is going to be trialed by this charming person then it’s nailed on to be HMG policy at some point in the near future !!
What a $%$#ing miserable way to live, why would anyone vote for this?
It doesn’t matter who you vote for, their plan is to make our lives an utter misery. While they sit on their yachts sipping champagne and celebrating how they’ve made our lives utterly miserable.
If Khan wants to turn London into Detroit then pay per mile would be a good way of hastening that.
Detroit Spinners hits include Rubberband Man and Wake up Susan!
This man ought to be OUT o politics , Out of Office & Out of our lives. Shame on anyone who voted for him.