The UK Press Association:

There is a “possibility” that national road tolls could be introduced within the next decade to help prevent US-style gridlock, the Transport Secretary has said.

Douglas Alexander said a “still sceptical” public had to be brought round but claimed there could be schemes within cities such as Manchester and Birmingham rolled out within the next few years.

Asked whether road pricing was inevitable, Mr Alexander said it was a “debate that we need to have”.

He told BBC One’s Sunday AM programme:

“Unless we are are going to face the alternative of US-style gridlock with some of our busiest roads simply becoming car parks action is necessary.”…

Isn’t it funny how there is always some potshot at the U.S. when it comes to such an issue, but never, say, at Mexico or . . . India?:

Yep, no gridlock there.

But picture that junction in London or in any major UK city? There’d be at least a roundabout, filter traffic lights, pedestrian islands, pedestrian guard barriers preventing people “straying” across the road at “unsafe” points (and perhaps also a Pelican crossing), bollards, double yellow lines, “Red Route Clearway” signs and red lines, white lines, bus lanes, cycle lanes, “Keep Clear” words at spots on the road, “no left turn” signs, “no right turn” signs, “no U-turn” signs, controlled parking signs restricting non-permit holding non-residents from parking between 2-3 PM Mondays through Saturdays, some “Pay and Display” parking bays allowing non-residents to park in them from 6 AM to 6:30 PM only (no return within one hour, though), and of course traffic light cameras and CCTV cameras.

Oh, yes, THEN you’d also definitely NOT have gridlock.

Anyway, back to the U.S. Oh, yes there is indeed traffic — in places lots of it. (As, like Britain, the U.S. has a functioning economy; one might think traffic is a part of that reality.) But we’ve all also seen wide expanses in the U.S. where there is little to no traffic. Similarly, snarls are already as bad (even legendary) on the English M25, M1 and M4, as they are on many a U.S. busy major road. However, there are also large parts of Britain — in East Anglia and in the Southwest, Wales and Scotland and elsewhere, believe it or not, yes — where motorists do not yet die of old age in traffic jams.

…he ruled out more road-building programmes as a solution, saying: “The Conservatives tried that and I think most informed commentators realise we can’t simply build our way out of the challenge of congestion.”

Actually, Indians seem to have one means of handling “congestion”: forego all the road safety furniture that is taken for granted in Britain. But that’s not the main point to this post. It is this argument, which begs the question of whether the debate we need to have is actually more about whether or not the Transport Secretary understands how operating an automobile works:

Mr Alexander said the number of vehicles on British roads had gone up from 26 million in 1997 to 33 million…

Which means what? Well, apparently that that 7 million increase between 1997 and now, as well as that undoubtedly likely to “explode!” further in coming years is supposedly some sort of justification for road pricing by the mile?  (Actually, shouldn’t it be by kilometer?)

Some reality is called for here. The number of vehicles themselves is irrelevant in Mr Alexander’s assertion — for a very obvious and important reason. Let’s have some fun, shall we?:

In mid-2005 the UK was home to 60.2 million people, of which 50.4 million lived in England. The average age was 38.8 years, an increase on 1971 when it was 34.1 years. In mid-2005 approximately one in five people in the UK were aged under 16 and one in six people were aged 65 or over.

The UK has a growing population. It grew by 375,100 people in the year to mid-2005 (0.6 per cent). The UK population increased by 7.7 per cent since 1971, from 55.9 million…

So the population of Britain has grown by just under 5 million in the last 35 years, which is, yes, a large increase compared to the increases during the previous hundred years. But the last hundred’s increases have been distorted and probably surpressed by the World Wars. (The first in particular killed so many young men that it has quite likely taken until about now — several generations after — for Britain finally to be coming out of it, “aided” by immigration; essentially, Britain might have hit 60 million decades ago thanks only to “natural replacement” had there NOT been WWI.) So it is hard to know what the recent increase means; some does seem to be “fuelled” mostly by immigration and asylum seeking (much of it illegal), which are, interestingly, issues courageous politicians seem far more fearful of touching than “road pricing”.

But the last 35 years have also seen increasing affluence, with more and more people able to afford cars. So the number of car owners and vehicles has, of course, increased. And more cars have meant even more economic activity, and so the circle then expands still more: there are more trucks on the road; more “white van men” doing all manner of work; people out and about in cars all day long either working for larger businesses and providing services or running their own small businesses from their own cars, getting ’round from client to client, etc., and so on.  Yet even if at times all are delayed by lots of others doing the same at the exact same time on the exact same road, the overall benefit of being able to do so far outweighs the cost in time and inconvenience of such travelling having to be done on infrastructure “static” buses and trains — they go only where “authorities” decree they go and when — or on often thoroughly impractical cycles or by walking.

In the mid-1970s, Britain had been considered a “sick man” of Europe.  Today it is the fourth largest economy in the world . . . with just 60 million people.  But being fourth with such a small populace is, we are being told, a bad thing?  (One wonders if Labour really has any clue.  For instance, how exactly is Mr Brown going to end poverty in Africa or provide ever higher NHS funding without all the money growing economic activity provides Treasury coffers?)

All that said, as to the question of cars “on the road” in Britain, one must always remember the following:

1) Based on those population statistics, about 12 million Britons are under age 16 and therefore CANNOT legally operate an automobile.

2) Nearly 10 million are over age 65. Their car usage is therefore likely winding down, as their daily commute has mostly ended.  Retirees tend to drive sporatically, mostly part-time.

3) Excluding those two groups completely for the sake of argument means that the 33 million cars “on the road” now is a number just 5 million short of the absolute maximum number of vehicles — 38 million — which could be operated by the present total UK population of potential car operators — 38 million — between ages 16-65 . . . assuming of course that every one of those 38 million owned and drove a car. (That last is, as we know, like “100 percent” employment. It is never apt to be the case.)

4) So assuming that car ownership continues to increase at the same rate as it has since 1997, the absolute possible car operating maximum usage will be reached around 2010, at about 38 million . . .

5) . . . and only if the population balloons quickly to nearly 70 million or more — with the vast majority of those people operating cars – might there be an issue. (At present rates — say, 375,000 a year — with no change to current increases, Britain will not hit 70 million for almost another 30 years.) That’s because, as we can readily see, there is a natural plateau at which “cars on the road” can be no more numerous than the number of people. Britain is almost there, but as NO ONE has yet figured out how to drive two or more cars simultaneously, the number of cars “on the road” will NEVER exceed the number of people actually able and willing to drive them . . . one at a time.

I’m not suggesting sticking one’s head in the sand.  We all know that traffic is an issue like all others; too busy motorways are a hassle and noise and narrow roads carrying heavy traffic through built-up areas seriously threaten quality of life . . . and may even endanger life.  But those are local issues.  National road pricing by the mile is merely the carryings on lately from ever more grasping politicos, who rather than attempting to understand how important individual transport is to the economy (and, for that matter, to life: imagine your 999/911 call was responded to via train and bus, and by train and bus was how you were transported “quickly” to a hospital?), appear each more anxious than the last to be quoted as embracing an ever more drastic adherence to the politically correct view that cars need to be made practically illegal. 

Yes, motor vehicles need to be made safer, quieter and less polluting. But if the British people want their economy wrecked, all they need to do is vote for the “pied pipers” who wish to introduce taxation for routine public vehicular motion.  Then, that accomplished, next up will be what?  Will we all get an electronic stamp applied to our foreheads, so we can be captured on CCTV and automatically taxed whenever we step outside?  After all, many sidewalks are “congested“.

Make no mistake, this debate is not about “the challenge of congestion“.  It is about politicos salivating over an as of yet still out of their reach possible cash cow (as well as to some extent dreaming about returning to ye environmentally pure goode olde days).  If anything George Harrison’s song now has an even scarier resonance than it did 40 years ago.  In 2006, it is no longer so much a question of ever higher taxation of personal incomes (which politicians discovered by the late 1970s to be is an electoral dead-end); it is now, indeed, about taxing our “feet”.  

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Oh, and all things considered, no wonder, given the Transport Secretary’s take, that the Labour party is essentially broke.  After all, its math is at least as poor as Reuters’s.