The Freight Transport Association (FTA) has welcomed the publication of a draft bill providing the opportunity for local authorities to trial road pricing schemes. However, the FTA said that the pay-as-you-drive trials must not be proposed as a panacea to solve the nation's congestion problems and that before road pricing is introduced there has to be a whole range of positive investment and policy decisions on the operation of the roads network. Road pricing must not be used as an excuse to abandon the further, and substantial, construction of new roads capacity, maintains the FTA.

FTA chief executive Richard Turner said: “Road congestion is a major blight on the efficiency and the economics of UK industry. Congestion wastes millions of man-hours and billions of pounds every year, to the disbenefit of road users, consumers and the environment. Doing nothing is not an option, and a fair and equitable means of managing road space by cost and demand is an inevitability.

“However, there are many things which must be done before the government should pull the trigger on that option,” he added. “We need new road building to ease congestion blackspots, we need motorway widening on our key trade routes, and so many towns and villages continue to need bypasses.

Turner warned the government that it had to ensure that the proposed trials allowed for inter-operability of the various schemes. For lorry operators, with vehicles visiting many different locations, uniformity is required and it would not be viable to have a range of totally different schemes applying in different locations. Turner said: “The first test of the government's commitment to a practical scheme of inter-operability would be to start work right away on a process to make all existing toll schemes. In that way it would demonstrate commitment to recognising the realities and problems of companies and vehicle operators working on a national basis and dealing with them.”

The draft bill will now go before the House of Commons transport committee alongside a full public consultation, which will last until September.