I have noticed that all these Doomsday reports are mostly produced by a Sir or Lord at the bequest of the Government.
Some one that could possibly have been Bought and paid for, can hardly be objective ,and we don't know who is and who isn't bought and paid for .Even The Great Lord Archer has become a TV personality Criminal record and all and is being paid for out of the Licence FEE.
Don't be surprised if he is the next author of a report.

terry fegan, newtownards, N/Ireland

If the government wants us to use public transport, why don't they subsidise it? I would use a bus to go to work (15 miles) if it was cheaper than using my car.

Les , Lavendon, UK

about the the £1-50 amile watt about people drive there cars that there only way to get around becuase they are not on bus route too this no fair to anybody ?

jill, ashford, kent

You wonder why people are worried about road charging when the figures supplied by the Government sa that the charge could be £1.28 per mile. For me that would be horrendous as I travel 70 miles a day just to get to work and with no alternative of public transport I have no choice but to use my car along a main A road. Prime target for charges.

That would mean that I would be paying just under £16,000 per year just to get to work. Thats why I am so concerned.

The point of making people pay for the amount they travel is already in place with the tax on fuel. The more miles you do the more tax you pay so calling it the congestion charge is just an excuse to get everyone to pay more and for what returns.....Who knows.

Chris Lawrence, Lichfield,

Bring back Guy Faulks, all is forgiven!

Richy, Seaham,

Alice suggests it is not surprising the myths take hold as the government don't dispell them. Well it was Roddy boy himself who suggested £1.28 per mile peak on major routes, not some mysterious 'myth factory'. My son uses the most direct route to work, the M1. Under Rod's scheme that would mean finding a through-the-villages back route or paying £15,000 a year in road charges. And as for the myth that the government wants to charge us whenever we drive, where did that come from!!? Well, that would be the EU. They have insisted any road pricing scheme uses their expensive and otherwise pointless Galileo satellite system. So while the tolls were thought up by our own idiots, it falls in line with the bigger idiots on the continent. One way to cut down on congestion and pollution is to get the empty buses off the road.

Ian Cook, MK,

I like the article, but I would like to argue the comment 'Congestion charging at peak times on busy roads is an inevitability' is playing into the hands of the doom-mongers who see charging as 'the' solution. From my experience, congestion is self-regulating; if traffic gets too bad on one route, I try an alternative. I can also adjust my departure time to find a less congested commute 'window' - see problem solved! Not a Government initiative, or fancy, expensive pricing scheme in sight. All it takes is the application of a little thought.

Yes, we maybe should use our cars a little less, which is also self-regulating. I use my car as little as possible because of all the tax I currently pay to run it. Also, if traffic is an issue & my journey is not essential, I don't drive. Yet another non Government-influenced method of saving money & the planet. I must be a genius!

Andrew Potter, Dereham, Norfolk

The railways you mention are expensive and inefficient - the last thing the roads should be doing is emulating them. In fact, it's the railways that should be reformed not the roads. And if roads become too congested poeple won't use them anyway. Finally, why should the Government be taxing driving more than children's clothes in the first place?

Tony, Gillingham,

So, in the car it would cost 40p to buy the newspapers, 20p to meet someone down the road, 40p to the post office and so on - Alice Miles misses the point, she should get a bicycle for these short journeys. Safe cycle lanes, separated from the main road, should be provided.

Toby Martin, Munich, Germany

In response to John Machin concerning a mileage allowance:

That's just as ridiculous and more totalitarian than a pay-by-the-mile system. You cannot simply tell people how far they are allowed to travel, restricting the freedom of a person's movements is preposterous and it already happens inadvertently to too great an extent as a result of horrendous public transport. What are you going to tell the Children in August, "Sorry kids, we can't go on holiday this summer. We've used up all our miles. We can go to the park instead. Oh wait, it's hot and the buses tend to break down. Well, we'll just have to stay at home then and watch the telly."........Nope that's no good either, we might get fat, the government wouldn't want that now either.

DPF, London,

Forget the obvious outrage of having your movements tracked,the problem lies with the government not providing a viable alternative.It's a win /win situation for them.They don't actually produce a solution,and they manage to drag more money out of the public.While constantly professing that all their efforts are environmentally based,there is no real change to the system.Reduce the workload and increase the prices; I am in the wrong job!

Colin Drain, Hainault, Essex

When I see neighbours driving 1/4 mile to collect a newspaper in perfectly good weather I do ask if some punitive action is not needed to curb their actions. Of course road pricing is only going to occur in Cities and busy commuter routes, the shear cost of installation and monotoring will dictate that.
Alice Miles is right ; this protest is essentially an hysterical outburst by a few very selfish individuals, aided and abetted by the "Gas Guzzling Tendency" who think that the alternative is to continue paving over our beautiful countryside. I fully support the notion that the polluter should pay. We need a holistic approach to global warming and more protection for our local environment. This is not an argument about democracy but what legacy we want to leave our grandchildren, of whom I have 5 [five].

Gerald Spencer, Andover, Hants.

Love it. A grumpy person from a flat city telling the rest of us in the country to cycle. You'll be telling me to use the tube next. You really should get out more and realise not all of us live in the Islington, Westminster, Fleet Street triangle. So notions dreamt up in the Ivy are a bit of a concern to the rest of us.

Meanwhile, back to why I signed. As Mr. Blair now knows here I live and is going to send the boys round to point out the error of my ways as I have been 'misled' by a concern over things that 'have not be ruled out', I do hope I will get full disclosure of how all this dosh goes to helping my kids' future environmentally and not propping up his bloated circus of departments' and beholden quangos' pension plans.

Peter 'Junkk Male' Martin, Ross on Wye, UK

I have said for many years that immigrants to this country, whether they come from Asia, Africa or Europe, should be made to understand that they are admitted on the basis of common decency. If they cannot keep our laws then it should be the law that they forfeit all rights to stay in this country, whatever their circumstances. My husband and I are recent victims of credit card fraud, others have suffered abuse and violence. The judge is right, Molasi and his pals should be sent back from whence they came. We do not want them and we should not have to pay to keep them. If immigrants misbehave then their passports should be deemed invalid and removed. No appeal. This should be the law of the land as soon as possible.

Su Knight, Staines,

I live two and a half miles from the centre of Epsom. The local buses cease running after 8pm. The net effect being that young people and the elderly are deprived of entertainment and leisure in the town. If Government first gives us decent reliable public transport then I might be persuaded to accept moderate road charging.

Frank, Epsom, UK

Road pricing would not be so bad if there were a viable alternative. Here in the countryside, if I could get a bus to go where I want, when I want (and more importantly, get me back home again), it would be a miracle. Not using the car for journeys too far to cycle is not an option. It's like so many New Labour bright ideas - totally urban and out of touch with reality.

Andy, Sedgeford,

A charge applied to people who cannot avoid it - because public transport does not work well enough, if at all - is not a "disincentive", it is a tax. Worse, it is a tax on mobility, a commodity favoured by governments keen to have 'lean, efficient workforces' - which means, employees used to temporary jobs and lots of travel.

It is, of course, an inflationary tax. When people see their income being taxed - for example, by having to pay for the privelege of getting to work - they tend to expect pay to rise to compensate.

There are lots of alternatives. Why not find some that make life better instead of worse?

loftwork, horley, surrey

To add to Garret's point, cars also have very little impact on the road structure. One truck does many many more times the damage of a car. Cars generate the need for road width between our trip ends, but through all the levels of taxation, we have bloody-well paid for this width. In fact through purchases we have paid for the damage the trucks have done.
So, get these economists to take their heads out of their anuses and look at the big picture.
I want to use what I have paid for, and willingly will continue to pay my taxes for the same in the future. Transit can never be the elixir for mobility that economists promote. It does not serve the trip requirements of most people.
Work-from-home, car-pool and branch-office policies will do more than transit on congestion, but "growth" eats up each gain we make by adopting these measures.
The mileage charge is regressive in nature and therefore is lousy pubic policy - and they know it, but won't admit it.

G davis, Newmarket, Ontario, Canada.

My journey here on the M25 just now: traffic at a standstill one way; traffic at a standstill the other way.

If not 'pay as you drive', how are we going to get traffic off the road? Letting things continue untouched is not an option, unless the terrible traffic I've just endured is going to have to be acceptable on an everyday basis.

HM, Milton Keynes, UK

I live in Hampshire and my mum, nana, sister & brother are in Lanarkshire, Scotland. My journey to see them is predominantly motorway so if at a conservative amount cost £1/ mile cost me £800 to my sisters and them whilst I'm there another £50 to see my mum and nana. So it would be cheaper, depending on the increased taxes, to go by air. How is this saving the environment. This road pricing stikes me as a way of raising more money for the government than saving the environment. Oh and that aside, I would have to give up my work as I could not afford to get to and from the offices.

Fiona Hood, Farnborough, Hampshire

When this super road use taxing system is set up with a transducer in every motor vehicle (20million plus) and a constellation of satelites covering the country there are a few "what ifs" to consider.

What if the software is of the came calibre as all the other IT systems that HM Government has installed?

What if, as will inevitably happen, the computer hacking fraternity get busy and infect the satellites and base computers with sophisticated viruses. Even worse ( or better) they can send signals to the satellites that can kill the electronics completely.

What if the car mounted transievers are exposed to strong electromagnetic pulses that blow their chips and put them out of action? A micro wave oven might just do the job.

Back to the drawing boards guys.

W D Toulman, Walkington, United Kingdom

Ms Miles appears to be making a genuine attempt to find her way through the morass of facts and deceit but the question remains as why her trips to get the paper, post office etc. all had to be done by car. One of the problems of modern car usage is that such a high proprtion of trips are of such short distances.

Richard Burgess, Cambridge,

The point which Alice Miles misses so completely is that if the mechanism exists it will, eventually, be used. I'm sure the government has "no plans" to charge people in rural areas, and has "no plans" to serve speeding tickets based on the data collected via the tracking boxes, but I'm sure I've heard this kind of thing before... If the mechanism exists, a government somewhere down the line will find the revenue-raising potential irresistible.

This kind of government meddling should be deprecated utterly, as it will inevitably just become an extra source of income for the exchequer. It is, in any case, unneccessary: when traffic becomes too heavy people will change their habits with or without an extra tax.

Steve, Cambridge,

Having just visited London for the first time for 15 years - got to add, I can see why the congestion charge works there - the tube, you can move around the city very easily and only ego would make you use a car. Try the same in Manchester and the it sudenly becomes impossible not to use a car - public transport is very expensive, poor quality and stuck in the same traffic as you are in a car,( the metrolink is too limited in its coverage ) - just another way of extracting a bit more tax and until public transport becomes a realistic altenative (ha!) we will have to keep paying it.

Dean, lowton,

Your columnist may have missed a point; I signed the petition because it was there - because I could - but mostly because the fools that govern us apparently do not listen. In the spirit of anything they think is a good idea, simply cannot be - I shall sign some more.

Richard Ashton, Tunbridge Wells, Kent

The argument isn't a complete fallacy, it's perfectly straightforward and simple. Government actions re road pricing etc can often (but not always) be seperated into two principles; a) what do we need to do to ensure the good economic functioning of the country, and b) how do we encorage/disencourage people to behave in a certain way. A certain amount of tax needs to be raised to pay for road maintenance and building etc, additionally due to capacity restrictions and latterly environmental considerations consideration issues re the level and number of car journeys taken. At present c.50% of petrol's price is tax (VAT and duty). This is supposed to both help fund road building etc and disincentivise people from using their car unnecesarily. The problem is people are used to the price and don't react to the disincentive. Putting road pricing into the mix means that you could (if fuel duty was stopped) easily calculate the comparative cost of individual journeys and tax according to use.

Thomas Davies, London, UK

We already pay for every mile we drive our car. This is from the tax on petrol. There is no need for more direct or indirect taxes. Those of us who pay 40% income tax + 17.5% VAT are already paying more than 57.5% of our income in taxes.

Abdul Basit, Newcastle, U.K

What this government, aka Gordon Brown, has been most successful at during the last 10 years has been raiding our pockets either directly or indirectly. £50 billion is already collected through taxes on motoring and yet only about £15bn is put back into improving the road infrastructure. If they proceed with this scheme, which is clearly their intention, the same relationship between collection and expenditure will, no doubt, continue. It is more about increasing tax revenue than relieving congestion. Mr Brown is an old labour wolf in sheep's clothing: beware!!!

Richard Lomax, Newbury, Berkshire, England

I believe it was Khrushchev who said "a politician is someone who will promise you a bridge even though there is no river." What the good citizens of the UK should be worried about is the conversion of public roads into toll roads which are then sold off to private enterprise to own and run. In the mid 1990s the Government of Ontario financed the first toll highway in Ontario with the view that it would become a free road when the tolls paid off the cost of building the highway. Along came a new Conservative government and they sold the toll road to a consortium for what seemed like a good price -- to the consortium. The drivers of Highway 407 have been hit with one price increase after another since 1997, and God help you if you have a complaint about the toll charges, as poor customer service can keep you listening to toll road propaganda on the telephone for up to an hour at a time waiting for a so-called customer service representative. Keep the roads public.

Patrick Legris, Thornhill, Ontario, Canada

A simple, flexible and market led system would be to pay a compensation payment to all those people who do not drive. The young the old and the disabled and the poor whose quality of life is lessened by the selfish use of the motor car. The compensation payment could be in the form of free travel vouchers which would lead to increased spending on public transport and a great insentive for private investment to attract that spend. Those too frail to use public transport should be allowed to use small electric vehicles. The compensation payment would be financed by increased taxation on the dwindling number of motorists, until even our super rich have to think twice about driving to the shop to buy a paper.

Clive Stringer, Eggesford, Devon

Does the government think we drive on congested roads for the fun of it? The fact is that for local journeys outside of major conurbations, or for long distance journeys that don't start or finish in London, public transport in this country is non existent for all practical purposes. Yet again this is the government imposing metro-centric solutions on the rest of us.

Richard, Knutsford,

Alice - Well Said ! Lets not get tied up into whether she is right to drive to her neighbour - the fact is that she has the right to. If you were less able bodied, would you wish to be confined to your home because someone thinks it disgraceful to drive a couple of miles?
Also, I believe the human rights act makes provision for me to have privacy, which does not fit with tracking my movement. I will be quoting this very loudly when they throw me in prison for not having a tracking device. I think the next logical step for the Goverment is to have ankle tagging devices fitted to the population at birth - they treat us all as criminals anyway.

Jo, Wirral, Wirral

Smug cyclists? Pay?

What is it with people like you?

Cyclist have zero impact on the road surface, generate no emissions, no noise. Should they be allowed to break traffic lights?. Absolutley not and there should be stricter enforcement of the law on this issue. Like most cyclists I go from A to B lawfully, using a form of transportation which I feel addresses many of my needs be they environmental, fitness, financial. Smug cyclist? No. Happy cyclist. Yes!

Garrett, Leeds,

Unfortunately it is a difficult debate because it is not about congestion directly. It is often more about saving the planet and trains and busses, not to mention this governments obsession with monitoring everything, including where you are and where you are going. And the cost argument is nonsense. If you are stuck in a jam you lose money in extra running costs as well as lost time - just how much fuel cost is actually direct taxation?

Time to face facts - the car is an essential part of modern life and congestion charging will do nothing to change that.

alastair harris, Derby,

I've just moved out of London to Birmingham. It used to take me 45 minutes door to door and cost £31 for Zone 1-4 travel (Mill Hill to Holborn approx 12 miles one way). I used to get cramp in my legs and back from lack of space and seating on the only method of transport available. Some would say, the transport monopoly faced by down trodden Londoners every day. It now takes me 40 minutes door to door and costs £22 petrol (Birmingham central to Whitley, Coventry approx 21 miles). I live outside Birmingham New Street station and tried that for a week, catching the bus at the coventry end. It took 65 minutes and cost £25. I do miss the thinking time I got on the train but the freedom, ability to carry large equipment effortlessly and the extra time in bed matter to me more. Such a pity as the trains up here are much more pleasant.

Alistair Kipling, Birmingham,

simple solution to this proposal should it ever be implemented........everybody refusing to pay.......end of the matter
do as the french would do

terry kates, lincoln, uk

What happens to poorly paid people who couldn’t afford to pay a road toll charge? Do they just not work and live off the state as they can't get out of the position. This situation is happening now with housing, young or low paid people can't buy a house. Charging to freely move is immoral and impinges on the freedom of the less well off in society in effect a taxing of poorer people. Wealthy people won’t be inconvenienced in any way just as they avoid flight problems by hiring private jets.

Alan , Newmarket, Suffolk

I have to drive to work as there is no public transport available. I live in central london and drive out and back in every day and find the real reason for congestion is bad management of traffic lights, road works that continue for months and cars breaking down on flyovers etc. If the government had a team of people keeping roads moving by helping the car broken down on the flyover to a safer place where there is room, they would ease congestion, reduce emissions and make a whole lot of people happier. Tax energy companies for keeping a road dug up for several months, get councils to monitor and manage traffic management systems better. Everyone will still drive when pay as you go tax comes in, so it won't achieve any of its aims. Also I'm sure someone will have mentioned but isn't petrol already a pay as you use tax. What does the government do with this money? This is simply an exercise in raising revenue and appearing to be doing something.

Tom, London,

The argument is more about the fact that people already pay per mile, whether in London's congestion area or in rural areas. This system is called fuel duty... The shear fact that gas guzzlers are sitting in traffic with their engines running mean that they are paying more to drive about than a more economical vehicle.
The problem is that people want the convenience of 'public' transport picking them up at their door and dropping them directly outside their destination.
To be attracted to public transport it needs to be
a) reliable,
b) more competetive with the same car journey &
c) be more flexible (in our village there are no bus-stops you just stop it where you want)
When other cities get the revenue for pt that London does then it might become an alterantive.

Nigel, Hull, East Yorks

We could stagger the amount of traffic on the roads by requiring schools to start at 7am rather than 8 or 8.30. It's half term this week and the roads are empty in comparison to usual!

John , Cambridge,

Fuel duty is already effectively a tax paid per mile driven. The only point of introducing road charging would be to encourage certain driving behaviours such as congestion charging in cities or congestion charging on motorways during rush hour peaks. If the government wants to discourage driving generally then all it needs to do is increase fuel duty - i.e. there is no point wasting money on implementing a road charging system.

Geoff Bryant, Southampton,

Why not just tax petrol more ? To me that achieves two aims in one go : - people will search for "greener" forms of transport whether that is hybrid cars, or the bus etc..... AND it should reduce congestion.

Alan, london,

Alice Miles, You drive too much. Reorganize your life, move, or both. I cycle to work. My wife walks the children to school and shops on foot. Your choice is selfish and destructive. Do you really have to drive down the road to talk to someone? Four miles to buy a newspaper. You are in a hole - stop digging.

Grumpy Londoner, London,

what confuses me is the complexity of the proposed system. When for example I buy milk at my supermarket I know the price. But imaging the complication if I were to drive along various roads at differing times, how would I calculate the cost? How would I know the price difference by changing my travel time to a 'non' peak time. It's easy on a train to understand this but to calculate this everytime before I get into my car? Yes I do cycle and walk and when trains go into manchester at 4AM I/m sure I will consider that too.

richard, Bolton,

Charging for congestion won't make it go away. What we want to know is what is the solution. Better public transport, trams etc. Wouldn't object to paying for that but paying to be stuck in a traffic jam doesn't make any sense!

Richard, Harrogate, UK

Personally I would like to see smug cyclists paying a contribution to the roads tht they use and the problems that they cause other road users.

Craig, Liverpool, UK

So I am priced out of living in the city (Bristol in this case) and am forced to move further afield, commuting to work each day. Now it seems I am to be priced out of this too. I can't pick and choose the times I go to work each day, and I car share the journey with my wife as it is. For travelling 40 miles each way to work and back we're paying more because of fuel duty, so to pay again for road pricing seems unfair to me. Cycle? 40 miles along the M4? Take a train? It's a 30 minute drive from the station so we'd still need to use the car partially, and the cost of a season ticket is more then the cost of my already highly priced fuel, even without accounting for the trip to the station and back each day. In truth I'd happily move closer to work and cycle / walk in every single day, I'd consider it a luxury compared to the hour each way commute I currently endure. But not all of us have this option, and it is us that will suffer with the introduction of this scheme.

Paul, Bristol,

<i>Sir Rod is an economist; he is not talking about the wasted time of a mother driving her kids to school, of a pensioner getting the bus to the shops.</i>

I have to ask: are you sure? I have not read the report, but when it comes to the full cost-benefit analysis requred for Treasury approval, for a specific scheme, don't such things have to be reckoned in?

David, Godalming, UK

How many ways are there to tax a person who wants/needs to get to work? Gordon Brown and his cohorts obviously are good dreamers. Do they ever go to bed and just think "sense"? If public transport worked, we would use it. As it doesn't, we don't. Simple. We taxpayers would prefer to pay for a sensible public transport system than this focussed motorist tax. Motorists are as keen as anyone else to get the system right.

Gordon, Woking, Surrey, UK

To those living in big cities with public transport solutions (and I know having lived and worked in the Birmingham area for a number of years), please stop grumbling about those of us who don't.I would love not to have to pay for my car, but without it I simply CANNOT do my job.Let's improve public transport across the country, as per James in Godalming's suggestion.The French do it, so I see no reason why we can't too.We need to give drivers an option other than the car rather than just adding tax, which in the end will impact the poor the most.And Barry in Wallington, with your buses and tube, Alice Miles didn't mention whether rural public transport should be improved because that was not the point of her article! She wasn't trying to give us a comprehensive solution, but rather to comment on frankly muddled, metro-centric government thinking. To so many people who share their opinions, please understand the purpose of an article before going off the deep end about your pet issue.

Simon, Bangor, Gwynedd

My mother, who will be 77 next week, lives 335 miles from me. All but appproximately 330 of those miles involves the use of major roads, (M3, M25, M1, A1m, A19). If the government goes ahead with road pricing, using a conservative charge of £1 per mile it would cost me £660 for a return trip to visit my mother. Add to this petrol costs of around £75 and it turns out to be an expensive weekend. Furthermore, if I take her out for lunch I could easily add another £12 to that figure before I had even ordered the meal.

This gives us a grand total of £747. Something not quite right if you ask me!

Thankfully, however, my mother in law only expects us to visit once a year which is a blessing as she lives 450 miles away in Scotland!

David Hood, Farnborough,

Where will I hitch my horse when I go to town?

Ian, Uckfield, East Sussex

Why does every goverment think they can solve a problem by taxing it. Oh silly me thats what pays their wages.

Stuart Mackie, London,

The true currency of road use is not money; it is MILEAGE. The road-pricers are right to say drivers must have a disincentive to drive, but as soon as that disincentive is proposed as a financial penalty - whether road user charge or extra fuel duty - it becomes a regressive tax. Ration mileage, and you affect all drivers equally, rich and poor. Give everyone a yearly Mileage Allowance, calculated on postcode (urban postcodes with public transport get less, rural get more), emissions (cleaner cars get more, guzzlers less) and business use (if your vehicle is your livelihood you get more, plus help to run a cleaner vehicle, but you're not exempt). Record and report mileage at the MoT test, electronically. Punish overruns with mileage penalties or fines for serious abuse/fraud. If road pricing actually WORKED, it would be because poorer drivers were priced off the roads, to the benefit of the rich - the reversal of Labour principles begun under Blair would be shamefully completed.

John Machin, London, UK

Serious congestion only affects a handful of metropolitan areas/motorways at peak times. The rest of the day there is virtually no congestion even in these areas. Therefore the solutions need to be simple and local not mass market and expensive. 1 person per car is silly in the worst areas and easily remedied. Internet/home working/flexitime - simple. Alternate day working is simple, free and works now. i.e. commute only on mon/wed/fri or tue/thu/sat. CHEAPER more frequent trains/buses at peak times. Instead of increasing the price of alternatives, try lowering them. Use Rod Eddington's £28billion to subsidise them.

john smith, manchester, UK

If the point of this is as the government says, that if we don't do it, in ten years time we'll have 25% more congestion, then how can that be. If we are already gridlocked, congestion means that we already can't move, so it is not possible to be 25% or any % more congested. Full up is full up.

If they are saying there are more cars registered, that does not mean there are more cars on the road, only that a lot of families have more than one car, which they already pay through the nose for. However, it doesn't matter how many cars you own, you can only drive one at any point in time.

William McClymont, Saltash, UK

Train travel should be the only way to commute and get around this small and densely populated island. That it is more than twice as expensive - in both time and money - to take public transport than to drive really is appalling. People in central London have a comprehensive PT network. This is why I support their congestion charge. Outside of London, it is skeletal, and so I have to oppose road charging.

PT outside of London is simply not good enough, widespread enough, or cheap enough to offer a serious alternative to driving. My 10 mile drive to work in Surrey costs less than £9 a week in petrol for my small car, and takes 20 minutes each way. There are no viable bus routes. The journey by train would cost £20 a week and take twice as long. If we are to encouraged out of our cars, there has to be real alternative!

James, Godalming,

Of course it is nonsense to suggest a congestion charge for rural areas where there is no congestion and little or no public transport. But what stikes me about the debates on this topic that seem to be going on everywhere you look at present, is the sheer selfishness that's evident. Alice Miles, for instance, just mentions her own trips. She doesn't advocate a revival of public transport in rural areas so fewer people need a car. I don't drive one, so I guess she is happy for places like hers to be no-go areas for silly people like me. That's true of most of those who want to have their cake and eat it, i.e the convenience of a car without regard to the effect of the congestion they contribute to on those using other methods of transport such as buses.

Barry, Wallington, South London

No carbon emissions.
Massive health benefits.
No traffic jams.
Pull those smug mothers from their Chelsea tractors and obese Leeds fan Gary from his white van, and get them cycling.

Harry Mickelson, Edinburgh,

Don't people already tend to plan their journeys so as to avoid congestion bottlenecks - at least for those journeys where they can choose their time of travel? It is, of course, very different when the boss expects you at work by a specific time...
Are we not already heavily taxed for road usage via fuel duty? As far as government is concerned, road charging is a tax with easy potential for Orwellian surveillance. Relieving road congestion and avoidance of a road building programme as justification are simply smoke and mirrors.

GC, Harrogate, England

Another problem, along with congestion charging, where to site the next airport, where to build the millions of homes required. Why does the government keep insisting the population must grow to maintain our standard of living when it is patently obvious, from countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Canada, that this is not so ?

Rick Bowden, Ealing,

I have yet to hear how it is proposed to deal with the problem of pricing drivers off the motorways - which have been provided at great expense to meet the need for fast and high capacity roads - back on to minor roads which could not possibly cope with any additional load. These minor roads have often been allowed to deteriorate to the point where they are seriously below acceptable standard. Is the cost of remedying these defects being factored in to the economic studies?
A better solution to reducing both harmful emissions and congestion is to be more rigorous in applying laws which remove from the roads all uninsured (ie. untaxed) and unsafe vehicles.

Michael T, Surrey, UK

You drove two miles to talk to someone about their garden and four miles to buy a newspaper? Therein lies the problem. You could have combined some of your journeys and replaced some with alternatives.

Most people can CYCLE or WALK two miles for goodness sake, that's why we have legs. Stop being so lazy, stop making excuses and start to make some effort to reduce your car use. Then you will save money, get fitter and benfeit the environment. Everyone's a winner.

Ian Murdey, Leicester, UK

As usual the ignorant lobby (Jay from London, Sean from that meat headed comedy showband the Association of British Drivers) miss the point. Doing nothing is not an option, yet the bleaters bleat and provide no alternative except 'build more roads' - a policy that has failed decade upon decade. I'm almost tempted to let the government back down on raod pricing so we can all see the same people moaning when they can't get to work in their precious (and no doubt expensive) private transport a decade from now.

Peter, Birmingham,

In Israel, they have what are called cheroots; seven, eight, ten or twelve seater taxis that take people from A to B without stops. One queues at designated points which are easy to find and when it is full it goes. It can go before being full if the pasengers pay extra.One can take luggage or shopping. They are as fast as private cars, flexible, cheap and used by everyone. If it works in Tel Aviv it would work better in London. Imagine walking for five or ten minutes from virtually anywhere, picking up a paper, waiting a couple of minutes for a people carrier to fill up then travelling non-stop to near your office in central London for less than it cost by train? Or walking to the pick up point in Godalming, travelling non-stop as fast as a car and being dropped in Reading? The cheroot driver then either works part time elsewhere and does the run back or or will have another regular run somewhere else.

R Mason, London, UK

Ministers are clearly not telling the truth about taxes not going up. The Eddignton reports makes it clear that the cost of introducing a national scheme (the planned end point) of up to £65Billion which is probably an under-estimate given the inability of any government to introduce large projects on budget.

This implies an annual financing cost of the order of £6B to £10B. This is clearly money that the government doesn't have at the present time.

This money will either have to come from the traffic charge or from general taxation or a residual fuel or car tax.

R J Self, Derby, UK

i am a taxi driver we have been using the satellite technology the government is talking about which allows our controllers to see where we are at all times also our speed can be checked soon found out that if you wrap the piece of kit it uses in your car with a couple of sheets of tinfoil it is blinded. it doesnt know where you are it could be sitting at home or you could be flying round the m 25

paul cox, bournemouth, england

From here a round trip to Portsmoth some fifty miles each way would cost £150.

It would be cheaper to fly to the Med.

Bernard Parke, Guildford,

To say the petition is fatuous and dishonest ignores Labours habit of lying.
Anyone that uses transport is already fleeced by this government for disgusting amounts of money. ANY kind of road pricing is not going to go down well as we already pay 65% tax on fuel. The London congestion charge is a system of extortion that is not working because there is no alternative to getting to work. The tubes and trains are already overcrowded. To force more car drivers into them is stupidity. Also note the greedy rail system is charging 5x the realistic ticket price. This will keep going up as more people use the system when it should be dropping.
Basically transport in this country is a mess and we have no visionaries on how to improve it. We have only people who think taxes and ticket price hikes are the answer. Inevitably this will lead to job losses as a national pricing system, which I believe government morons have considered, will not improve the roads but secure less taxes than it takes to buy and run the system leaving a negative figure to invest.

David Thijm, Stourbridge, UK

The Government are unable to collect Road Tax efficiently and yet they seem to believe that they can force everyone to fit and maintain a tracking device in their car.

Road Tax and Fuel Duty are very efficient taxes with low collection costs why replace them with something more complex, more expensive and even easier to evade?

Mike Hinsley, Bristol, Avon

Well said, Jon from Rainham.
The current fuel on duty is perfectly adequate, as you cannot dodge it, collection is 'free' and if you desire to drive a bigger car or drive further, then your taxation increases accordingly.
If the government is 'strapped' for cash, then increase this duty by say 20p a litre and scrap road tax. Then enforce the display of insurance/MOT which is more useful information to every other road user.
Me thinks the above to sensible though.

Dave, Paris, France

The Lady writing to this article obviously needs to be punished financially. Why doesn't she combine her trips? She obviously makes single trips by car to go and buy her paper, go to the post office, fetch her kids etc... For the sake of our planet its exactly the kind of thoughtless behaviour that needs to be stamped out. Cycling obviously not an option even considered...
This kind of lack of self-regulation forces government to step in where we all feel it shouldn't.

Esther Phillips, Leatherhead, Surrey

In some respects Alice Mill's article is correct in that by not ruling anything out the Government is making a rod for its own back. The point that she is missing though is that the public simply does not trust Labour any more. Last year the Government promised a review of speed camera policy and a halt on any new fixed sites. Nearly 6 months later there have been an additional 250 fixed sites added. If the country is fearful that the in car satellite trackers will be used to measure speed then this because of Governments obsession with speed cameras. If the public have civil liberties issues then this is due to New Labours fixation mega computer databases and its controlling nature. If drivers are concerned that this the charges will be punitively high then we only have to look at this Governments record of Tax and Spend policies and its relentless war on the private transport. In short; Labour has gone to far.

Sean Corker (ABD), Manchester,

The principle as I understand it would be that as a quid pro quo for a road pricing structure, the tax on fuel and car tax would disappear. Hands up all those who are naive enough to believe that this would actually happen?

My daily journey to work would involve me in approximately 50 miles on the M25/M23 plus abuot 10 miles on other major roads. Let's say that's £1.50 for motorway and £1 for the other roads. That's £85 per day. I can assure you that no amount of set off from fuel and car tax will make up for this additional cost.

Is there an alternative by public transport ?- Yes if I am prepared to use a bus and two trains and add an huor each way onto my journey. I am not. - I already work from 7.30 to 6pm. Will road pricing reduce carbon emmissons that may cause global warming. The congestion charge hasn't why would this? Thankfully I can afford the charge but many will be forced out of employment as a result. Oppose it NOW

Jay, London,

It may seem dishonest and fatuous to some, but placing the means of tracking our speed and our whereabouts is extremely disconcerting. The UK already went to war in Iraq with large scale protests from the British public, and if they push forward with this pay-as-you-go road charging even though there is so much opposition, do you not think that 5 years after the system is in place, they would not start nicking people for speeding? All it requires is for the Transport Minister to publish some strategically timed report on speed-related deaths, and the debate for catching speeders by their "black box" road charging system to be pushed through (regardless of what the public thinks) because of the "we know best" attitude. Another report, and the police will be pushing to allow someones whereabouts to be admitted in court!

On a seperate note, Londoners have NO idea what the effect of road pricing will have. Unlike them, we dont have a tube, or buses running the same routes every 3 mins.

Pete, Cov,

All the middle class voters who believed the government's "no tax increases" must be feeling at least a few qualms if they start road charging. It would be difficult to determine the actual tax rate and would therefore be a blank cheque for a government that cannot concieve of the idea of value for money when it uses that tax.
Add to this the fact that if it does not increase the cost it is pointless as it will not reduce the road use there is no reason not to panic.
As for subsidising public transport, experience shows that it just increases the wages of those in the industries and destroys those doing the subsidising. Put a price on the additional time of travel by public transport and what is the cost to the country of that?

David Cage, Highworth, Wilts UK

Apart from the rights and wrongs of pricing poorer motorists and country dwellers off the roads, no high profile IT project introduced by this Government has been successful, several have been scrapped at great cost. Why do they think they will be able to track the millions of daily movements of UK motorists and not create numerous problems. Do they not realise that nothing man creates is infallible and vehicle transmitters can and will be disabled or hacked into and it will be impossible to police the millions of vehicles on the roads.

David De Burgh, Kingstone, Herefordshire

Who is the Labour woman MP who claims to have driven 60,000 miles last year (today's news) ? At a nominal £1.50 a mile I make that £90,000 if my mathematics are correct - that should concentrate her mind or the mind of the taxpayers paying her claim.

Victor, Malaga, Spain

Mothers who can barely afford childcare costs will no longer be able to work. Children no longer necessarily attend their local schools, nurseries and playgroups so kids will be withdrawn because families can't afford a daily cost to send them. Many driving based jobs will disappear because employers can't afford them. People will struggle to get to hospitals and supermarkets. Anything that requires delivery will carry high charges. And on. And on. And on. Most people do not have £900 spare to hand Gordon Brown annually, they barely manage their council tax now, and they know the charges will be frequently raised. The tax payer loses in every possible way, this will cause utter havoc and the treasury gains hugely. There are NO PLANS EVIDENT to do anything at all to change public transport along side stopping people driving. This is about the government seeing pound signs and that is all.

Helen, Northants,

I think that a road use charge, if applied in a sensible manner (not £1.50/mile!), would make motorists think twice about the need for the extra, non-essential travel and would, in fact, cut down on road use. The knock on benefit in lower emissions would also be environmentally advantageous.

Ed Evans, Braintree, Essex

The Government already has a road charging scheme that is universal, free to apply and does not involve tracking anything: it is the duty of fuel. If you drive on congested roads, your fuel usage goes up and you pay more.

But pricing people off the roads will not work. It will be a tax on jobs for the low paid. People who can just afford to go to work now will no longer be able to do so. If you want people off the roads, give them a cheap, available alternative. Subsidise public transport. Massively. Otherwise, watch as attempts to price people off the roads wreck the economy.

Jon Banton, Rainham, Kent,

Perhaps the problem is that after the Labour Party's wonderful reforms of the NHS and the schools, the general public is ready to believe that they are capable of unbelievable stupidity?

Not only that, the public may be right.

Jonathan, New York, USA

Dear Sir
My concern is we are told that if nothing is done we will be heading for gridlock. The solution is to tax people onto the minor roads. I thought we have been spending millions on putting in bypasses to keep people off the minor roads. If you send them down b roads and country lanes then it is certain that they will very quickly become more congested and we will all be breathing in the fumes. Added to this, travel on roads designed for free flow (admittedly when they are freeflowing) mean vehicles are working efficiently. Put them on minor roads and fuel emmisions increase as I imagine will the death tolls/accidents. (Revenues from speed cameras may well increase however). In the final analysis if congestion is the real worry taxes will not be necessary, people will learn that if they use minor roads at peak times they can miss the snarl ups, but that would not provide increased tax revenue for Gordon or his successors.

Mike, corby, england