Britain will be divided into a patchwork of road-pricing zones where drivers will be charged varying rates, under a government plan to make them pay by the mile without tracking them on every road.

Ministers believe that a zonal system would protect drivers’ privacy and deter them from rat-running in residential areas to avoid high charges on main roads. All roads in each zone would be charged at the same rate, regardless of how congested they were.

A driver using empty side streets to visit a shop or take a child to school would pay the same price per mile as those queueing on the high street. Stephen Ladyman, the Roads Minister, gave details of how the system would work in an attempt to address concerns raised by the 1.8 million drivers who signed a petition against road pricing.

Speaking to The Times, he said their main concern appeared to be that road pricing would allow the Government to track every driver’s movements through a satellite positioning device in each car. He said that tracking could be avoided by abandoning the idea of having a complex charging system in which the price varied from street to street. “We could have charging by zones instead of by streets. The heart of a congested city would be Zone 1, the area just outside it would be Zone 2, further out in the suburbs would be Zone 3 and rural areas would be Zone 4.

“It would solve our privacy problem because we wouldn’t need to know you were in Acacia Avenue at 12.30. All we would need to know is which zone you were in and whether you crossed a border into another zone.” Mr Ladyman said the system would also solve the problem of drivers taking longer routes to avoid high charges, as already happens in London where people divert around the £8-a-day congestion zone. “It wouldn’t pay you to come off busy roads on to quiet roads because you would still be in the same zone.”

He described how the system would affect a motorist driving on the M1 towards London. “As you got closer to London, the zone price would increase. But if you pulled off the motorway at any point you would still be in the same zone, so there would be no point in cutting through a rural village.”

The Social Market Foundation, a think-tank that is close to the Government, said that the system would also make it easier for drivers to predict how much they would pay for each journey.

Ann Rossiter, the foundation’s director and author of a study published this week which supports road pricing, said: “It’s important if you are on low income to be able to work out what a trip will cost you. A zone system would be much simpler to understand and easier to administer.”

Peter Roberts, author of the petition and member of the Association of British Drivers, said: “The Government may not know exactly where you have been but will know which zones you have been in. That’s still an invasion of privacy.”

Edmund King, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “This might deal with the problem of diversion on to smaller roads but it also creates an unfair situation in which quiet local roads would be just as expensive as main roads in the same area.

“The best way to win support for road pricing is to allow drivers to volunteer to have black boxes in their cars in return for a reduction in fuel duty. They would save money by driving less because it would be like having a taxi meter in your car, making you question the value of each trip.”

Mr Ladyman said that the Government was considering reducing fuel duty and road tax to compensate for road pricing, which he expected to be introduced around 2015. He refused to rule out increases in road taxes in the years before road pricing beganbut said it would not add to the overall tax burden on motorists in the year it was introduced.

Mr Ladyman also confirmed that the Government was considering a special charging scheme for foreign lorries to force them to contribute towards the costs of the road network.

Under the scheme, which could be introduced within two years, foreign hauliers would have to buy and display a permit, known as a vignette, costing about £7 a day.

One in seven lorries weighing over 38 tonnes on British roads is foreign. Inspections have shown foreign lorries are three times as likely to be breaking safety rules.

They are able to undercut domestic hauliers by arriving in Britain with full tanks of cheap, European diesel.

Britain in a jam

33m Number of vehicles in Britain, up by six million over the past decade

25% Amount by which traffic congestion is predicted to increase by 2015

£22bn Economic damage inflicted by congestion by 2025

2 miles Maximum distance of one in four car journeys

Sources: Department for Transport; Eddington Transport Study

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