Booker on Galileo and Road Charging

A fiasco on this scale could be seen from space
Christopher Booker's Notebook
By Christopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:17am GMT 19/02/2007

As the Downing Street petition saying "no to road charging" breaks all records by soaring past the 1.5 million mark, one crucial factor gets overlooked. Our Transport Secretary, Douglas Alexander, may say he "welcomes a debate" on what, last May, he called his "personal priority", but he knows full well that in this respect we have little choice.

Regardless of how many people log on to the Downing Street website to say that they don't want it, we are committed to basing any road charging scheme on the EU's Galileo satellite system. The only trouble is that the EU is making such a shambles of it that it is highly unlikely to be in place before 2020, if they can get it to work at all.

The reason that Mr Alexander describes charging motorists for using the roads (at up to £1.34 a mile) as his "personal priority" is that three years ago Brussels issued EC directive 2004/52 on "the interoperability of electronic toll collection systems", to ensure that all the EU's planned road charging schemes are similar. But herein lie two practical difficulties.

First, Brussels is committed to drawing up a "technical standard", to which all national systems must conform, and so far, due to the huge technical problems involved, there is no sign of it emerging. A second problem is that the EU scheme is to be based on Galileo, its rival satellite system to the US Navstar. And Galileo - to which UK taxpayers have already contributed £200 million in development costs - is itself a shambles.

Despite the fanfares which greeted the launch, courtesy of a Russian Soyuz rocket, of the EU's first trial satellite last year, it is now clear that Galileo's future is fraught with difficulty. Within a few years Russia and China will join the US in having their own global positioning satellite systems, free to users all over the world. Galileo alone will depend on charging users for an encrypted signal, and since Cornell University last year cracked its operating code, the commercial future of the system looks increasingly uncertain.

As Galileo's development bills soar, it cannot even be guaranteed to become operational, although Mr Alexander has already promised £2.5 billion to local authorities by 2015, under his Transport Innovation Fund, so long as they agree to charge for road use. Our Government is thus locked into a hugely unpopular and complex project which we cannot have any assurance will work.

Mr Alexander obviously cannot tell us this, because it would be too embarrassing. Instead he tells us we can have a "debate", to which he has absolutely no intention of listening. But the chances that we will get our EU road charging system even by 2020 (it was originally promised for 2012) become slimmer by the day. If it wasn't all so time-wasting and dishonest, it would be quite funny. As the Downing Street petition saying "no to road charging" breaks all records by soaring past the 1.5 million mark, one crucially important factor gets overlooked. Our Transport Secretary Alastair Darling may say he "welcomes a debate" on what he last May called his "personal priority", but he knows full well we have very little choice in the matter.

Regardless of how many people say on the Downing Street website they don't want it, under EU policy we are committed to setting up a satellite-based system for taxing motorists - the only trouble being that the EU is making such a shambles of it that it is highly unlikely to be in place before 2020, if they can get it to work at all.
The reason that Mr Darling describes charging motorists up to £1.34 a mile for using the roads as his "personal priority" is that three years ago Brussels issued EC directive 2004/52 on "the interoperability of electronic toll collection systems", to ensure that all the EU's planned road charging schemes are similar. But herein lie two practical problems.

First, Brussels is committed to drawing up a "technical standard", to which all national systems must conform, and so far, so huge are the technical problems involved, there is no sign of this emerging. A second problem is that the EU scheme is to be based on Galileo, its rival satellite system to the US Navstar. And Galileo - to which UK taxpayers have already contributed £200 million in development costs - is itself in a shambles.

Despite the fanfares which last year greeted the launch of the EU's first trial satellite last year, courtesy of a Russian Soyuz rocket, it is now clear that Galileo's future is fraught with difficulty. Within a few years the US, Russia and China will all have their own global positioning satellite systems, free to users all over the world, Galileo alone will be dependent for its viability on charging its users for using an encrypted signal, and since Cornell University last year cracked its operating code, the commercial future of the system looks increasingly uncertain. As its development bills soar, it cannot even be guaranteed ever to become operational, although Mr Alexander has already promised £2.5 billion to local authorities by 2015, under his Transport Innovation Fund, so long as they agree to charge for road use.

Our Government is thus locked into a hugely unpopular and complex project which we cannot have any assurance will work. Mr Alexander obviously cannot tell us this, because it would be too embarrassing. Instead he tells us we can have a "debate", to which he has absolutely no intention of listening. But the chances that we will get our EU road charging system even by 2020 (it was originally promised for 2012) become slimmer by the day. If it wasn't all so time-wasting and dishonest, it would be quite funny.