Project BRUCE/future of road tolling discussion

Yes, lots of Irish people still only ever look at the UK, which has some of the lowest motoring taxes in Europe (and, it has to be said, some of the biggest whingers about road taxes in Europe... the way they go on about the pittance they pay is pretty annoying). We are not a “high tax” country when it comes to cars: we’re about mid-table. (Insurance, on the other hand...)

But while tolls here on average are low, they are not evenly distributed. Take three journeys, all ending at the Red Cow interchange: the toll charges for a car that used M8, M7 to travel from Cork (235 km) come to €3.70, which is expensive by European standards. However, a car using M7 from Limerick (186 km) pays a European-average total of €1.90, but one taking M9, M7 from Waterford (148 km) will costs nothing at all in tolls.

The posted story is definitely something TII is looking at - it’s been on their radar for about three years now. One of the most likely first options is to move the M50 to a Road-Use Pricing (RUP) model rather than a single-point toll. This basically involves setting up multiple “soft” tolling points (camera-based) along each segment of the motorway, and then charging the driver based on how much of the road they actually used. Anyone using the current Liffey bridge will end up paying a lot less, but there will be a lot of complaint from the majority of people using M50 who do not cross the toll-point and so have been getting a free ride up to now.

Also under consideration are discounts for off-peak use and/or travelling with at least one passenger on board. The latter idea (HOV discount) has worked well in the USA, but has never been tried in Europe.

maybe some countries literally have no motor tax and are happy get tax off fuel.

Going slighty off topic but every country has a different tax mix, and Ireland uses VRT (and a high VAT rate too) as a sortof stealth tax to enable lower PRSI and income taxes which get people voted in at election time.

If a politican said they would raise income taxes - which is the fairest tax of all as the richer you are the more you pay, but lower VRT and VAT, there'd be a mutiny, and probably the most aggressive negativity from parties representing lower income people who would benefit the most from taxing income rather than expenditure.

A very lazy post which doesn’t at all reflect the reality of the situation as proven by figures supplied by other posters.

I find it’s this kind of posts which dominate social media and lead to a completely false narrative being popularised.

Un-tolled motorways with tolled side routes would be madness: people would end up diverting onto the motorway even for journeys that would be better taken on surrounding roads, just to avoid a toll. I think the problem with your argument is that in reality, “we”, or rather the people who manage all this stuff, actually don’t want people to use motorways: they want people to use the most efficient means of transport for their journey - that can be a motorway, but it can also be a local road, or for that matter a train, bus or bike. Road User Charging is a kind of “nudge” to encourage drivers to avoid travel habits that cause traffic congestion.

And speaking of bad habits, your usage pattern on M50 is actually the worst in terms of creating congestion: traffic joining and leaving in quick succession is the most disruptive to the overall flow on the road, so if lots of one-hop drivers were discouraged from using the motorway, the traffic would actually flow much better.

Road User Charging would discourage this by charging, say, €0.50 for the first segment used, then €0.10 per segment after. (by “segment” I mean the stretch of road between two junctions). That way, it only makes sense to use the road if you’ll be travelling on it for a fair amount of its length. This would shift the operation of M50 back to what it was originally supposed to be - a bypass of Dublin city centre - rather than just a handy short-cut for commuters who are actually going in or out of the city.

As for getting cars out of city streets, well: Congestion Charging is another kind of Road User Charge, but now instead of paying to use a length of road, you are paying to enter a particular area. I’m not a fan of Congestion Charging in cities unless there’s also a method to give exemptions or heavy discounts to residents.

I didn’t insult you or indeed say anything about you. I criticised your post, not you.

In 10 years Northlink will come back under TII and they will have full control of the M1/N1 you will probably see in about 5 years construction starting on over head gantrys on all exits of the motorway between the airport and border with automatic tolling on the distance traveled once the northlink section is under Full TII control

Actually yes, there is a thing called road tax and Irelands implementation of it is called Motor Tax. In the UK it's called Vehicle Excise Duty and there are similar schemes around the world with different names but similar function.

Anyone claiming that Irish motorists do not pay road tax is not telling the truth.

Not quite. The “I pay road tax” complainers are under the impression that “road tax” is a tax that pays for the roads and their maintenance. This is not true. Motor Tax is a tax on motor vehicles and it goes directly into government revenues. There is no correlation between the amount of motor tax collected and the amount of money spent on roads.

For a long time the roads budget has exceeded the amount of revenues from motor tax. In 2021, €907 million was collected from motor tax, but the 2022 budget (funded by those receipts) had €1370 million allocated to roads.

I can also walk and cycle down the road without paying any “road tax”.

Lads, I think most of us know what “road tax” is for. Can we drop the “ACTUALLY it’s called motor tax not road tax and even though you have to pay it to take your car on the road it doesn’t directly fund road maintenance” song and dance which goes on every time it’s brought up?

I would be interested in the possibility of a per-km charge for all roads in the state. As in, at the NCT (or another inspection for this purpose) your mileage would be checked and your road tax would then be based on the number of km driven since the last check. The driver would be able to decide how often they want inspections if they don’t get annual NCTs. I wonder if that could be made work.

It’s going to be interesting to see what replaces fuel excise, which as noted above was in many ways a pretty good usage-based tax for road users.

Your post was too subtle for my half-attentive reading :) Yeah, I agree with your point, sorry for the confusion!

My preferred replacement for motor tax would be a weight-based annual charge - unlike CO2 emissions, it’s easy to check, and hard to cheat. Yes, EVs are penalised by this as they’re usually about 30% heavier than an equivalent ICE car, but then EV owners don’t pay fuel duty, so it balances out (for what it’s worth, I drive an EV).

Per kilometre pricing is something that I think should be limited to high-speed limited-access roads (i.e., motorways and those N-roads that are are motorways in all but name) but not 2+2s. Even then, it should only be considered where there is traffic congestion; putting a toll on the rural parts of M9 or M18 would just subject local villages to traffic pollution while the motorway goes unused.

Indeed. It’s not called road tax and saying that road and motor tax are the same thing doesn’t make it true.