The problems i can see with road pricing over the entire uk road network using GPS systems are many. To start with, the proposals i have heard of are to charge for different roads at different rates at different times of day. So can any one of you imagine this government, who have a suspect record on matters IT!, putting a workable system in place that can handle 20 million vehicles per day with the many variables mentioned above? All the commuters, school runs, commercial trucks, taxiis, motorcycles, scooters and any other type of vehicle you can think of. All making journeys of variable charging parameters? I travel from Scarborough to London most Monday mornings, leaving at 5am arriving usually around midday. Using all types of road at all times of the charging scale! and i am not unique as i share the roads with millions of other travellers and thats just the commuting type of people.
So i ask you Gentlemen, who really believes this government could successfully implement such a system that could accuratly produce invoices for over 20 million vehicles each day, some making many more than 1 jouney per day! I very much doubt it!!
The other point of contention is how will this data be collected from all these vehicles? GPRS Doesnt have the capacity to handle millions of data packets per hour country wide. That would be an increase in radio traffic akin to more than doubling the entire uk mobile phone network capacity, the spectrum would collapse! So if it isnt a direct live transmission, then data logging would be needed and a quick trip to your local phone un-blocking shop( the most obvious type of establishment to cover this type of work!) and your datalogger, or BLack Box, would be showing a nicely reduced figure!