Lorry road user charge procurement cancelled

The government has cancelled its Lorry Road User Charge (LRUC) procurement project and invited local authorities to bid for a share of an £18m fund to pilot technologies for its proposed general road charging scheme.

The plan to fit tracking technology to heavy goods vehicles, to monitor where and when a lorry travels and charge the haulier accordingly, has been in discussion since 2001.

The procurement was down to a shortlist of Capita, IBM and Siemens, with the scheme due to be implemented by 2008. But the Department for Transport's plans for a national scheme to combat spiralling congestion have overtaken the LRUC project, transport secretary Alistair Darling told MPs last week.

To investigate technical options, such as satellite tracking, for the national plan, councils can bid for a share of the £18m fund to run pilots between 2005 and 2008. If these pilots are successful, the fund could increase to £200m a year, after 2008.

A key element of the pilot schemes will be to establish technological capability, both now and in the future.

'Many cars are already fitted with technology that combines satellite positioning with mobile communications to provide facilities such as useful information on road conditions, and in 10 to 15 years such technology will be commonplace,' said Darling.

'But we need to establish what technological options there are for putting together distance, place and time of travel.

'We are looking at what is working now, and how we could approach pricing in a way that allows us the scope to benefit from technological development in the future.'

Karen Dee, director of policy at the Road Haulage Association, says that hauliers are disappointed because the scale of the national scheme will delay its implementation.

'The timescale will be a lot longer,' she said. 'It is a completely different ball game, whether you're talking about 425,000 lorries or 28 million cars.'