British Business Urges Road Aid
“Congestion costs business ($30 billion) a year and is getting worse. And increased fuel duty will add billions more in the next few years,” said John Allan, chairman of the CBI’s Transport Policy Committee, speaking at the confederation’s national conference Nov. 3. “Taken together, these costs will put a huge burden on business and could seriously damage UK competitiveness.”
The CBI found unexpected support from another speaker at the meeting, European Union Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock, who long has been a champion of revitalizing Europe’s freight railroads
“It is self-evident that increased movement costs and reduced transport reliability seriously undermine the competitiveness of the European Union and every country in it,” he said. “The environmental impact of congestion is also massive. The energy consumption and some of the polluting emissions of crawling traffic are as much as three times as high as those of free-flowing traffic.”
Geoff Dossetter, spokesman for the British Freight Transport Assn., a trucking group, agreed “absolutely, 100%” with Mr. Kinnock’s remarks.
“In Britain we continue to suffer from underfunding for transport infrastructure,” he said. “And we pay nearly twice as much in fuel duty as other European countries, which puts us at a competitive disadvantage.”
Diesel fuel taxes have soared since 1993, when the former Conservative government implemented the so-called “fuel escalator,” which required annual increases in diesel taxes of 6% above inflation.
“The reasons the government gave at the time was that this wretched fuel escalator would discourage road use,” Mr. Dossetter said. “It’s a stupid policy, a failed policy that doesn’t work for road transport, because no one in his right mind drives a truck one kilometer more than he needs to.
“It’s essentially turned our industry into a cash cow, with 85% of the price of liter of fuel going to government in taxes.”
The CBI says Britain needs to increase its investment in transport infrastructure by at least $4 billion a year for maintenance and new construction.
“Without more investment, (the Labour government’s) integrated transport strategy will fail at the first hurdle,” the CBI’s Mr. Allan said.
About a third of that funding, said Mr. Allan, should come from the private sector through introduction of road tolls, which would be dedicated to transport infrastructure projects.
