It’s a funny old world innit

Well whizzing through superficially the government is selectively representing the issue

They have moved away from pollution as the excuse to tax motorists and have started on cost and congestion

The premise itself is flawed as motorists tax is diverted so only a fraction is spent on roads and this has gone on for decades so rather than a burden to the tax payer motorists are keeping a wasteful one afloat

Congestion is being rapidly created NOT by the claimed increase in cars, but my hundreds of thousands of lost road miles all over the country to cycle lanes, bus lanes, crossings and other traffic obstacles reducing road size and stealing entire lanes in a road system that needed to be bolstered 30 years ago but wasnt

The financial angle they are presenting is the loss to business because of congestion,

1 this ONLY happens if a vehicle IS caught in it
2 where its an employee commuting most are docked pay or work late anyway
3 it could be avoided with flexhours schemes anyway
4 they conveniently avoid mentioning how much of that is due to road works for pedestrian crossings, traffic lights, cycle lanes, bus lanes etc etc etc

But introduce the charging system and business STILL gets hit financially, but then its every single business whether they are caught in traffic, run vehicles or not and those costs ripple onto any business they then deal with and eventually to the consumer

Social points

People dont now work and live all their life near where they were born

The social effects include but wouldnt be linked to

Added time commuting, which will curtail peoples social life, time and energy for parenting, for maintaining family bonds etc

Add 4 hours travelling instead of one hours drive to a 10 or 12 hour day and then see how good a parent that person will be

Single parents with several kids who are priced out of cars wont be able to cover a 15 minute drive to drop one child off at one activity and make it to pick another up elsewhere when it entails a one hour commute for the same thing

Family weekend trips for people on low wages will become as much a luxury as a holiday is when just the road tax alone is a hundred quid to go to the seaside

Every item we buy will be affected by increases in transportation and increased wages that would need to be paid, which again ripples down

Many low paid jobs have non reasonable hours, and the public transport system doesnt accomodate safety or ease of travel past peak times

The stregnth of family is already falling apart, but as more people move hundreds of miles for work this will be stretched even further

And then theres tourism, day activities like alton towers, commuting as part of a social life and people being able to date long distance, all of which will be negatively effected

These are just specific and isolated examples, but each represents a whole section of social things that will be impacted on by a road toll

And all this on the back of the fraud of taking tax from motorists under the guise of it being for the cost of the roads and then diverting most of it eslewhere

if the money had been ringfenced to begin with we would have the best motorway system in the world and billions still in the bank unspent

All you have said reinforces my opinion about the automobile. Each point sounds like an excuse to build more roads. Maybe a more logical approach would be to house people nearer to their workplace. Stop doting parents driving children 400 m to school.
There is a need for cars they do serve a purpose but it seems at the moment that the car is the most important thing in some individuals lives.
It amy be obvious but I don’t drive & have not driven for 10 years. I manage to get around the country without too much bother & never get caught in traffic jams. Try public transport it’s not as bad as you may think. Who knows you may get to like it.