Is the UK’s lorry vignette scheme the first green shoot of recovery for RUC schemes?

The ITS-UK road user charging interest group conference last week saw speaker after speaker search desperately for good news for those who advocate road pricing in the UK and, while many of these searches may prove to be fruitless, there were one or two signs that charging could come to the UK… eventually.

Rik Thomas

25 February 2011

Ludger Linnemann of AGES International showed that back in 1990 lorry RUC schemes in Europe were very much in their infancy, with only Switzerland having any kind of vignette system...

... but that, by 2011, only the UK, Finland and several former USSR countries had no kind of lorry RUC scheme in place at all

Those in favour of road user charging (RUC) schemes in the UK have suffered several serious setbacks in recent years, with referendums in Edinburgh and Manchester both rejecting congestion charging schemes by significant margins; London mayor Boris Johnson withdrawing the Western Extension of the capital’s scheme introduced by his predecessor; and the previous Labour administration cancelling its planned RUC scheme for lorries. And yet, according to Stephen Joseph, CEO of the Campaign for...