Green Taxes: Parking permit plan targets 'gas guzzlers' :

The UK appears to be embracing the concept of "persuading" individuals to change their behaviour via the imposition of "green taxes". Richmond upon Thames in south west London is one of Britain’s most affluent boroughs - its solution is to introduce a sliding scale of charges for residents’ parking permits.

Certain cars will be exempt from resident parking charges (to park on the road outside your house) while others will have to pay up to three times the current level.

Two articles in the British press are here in the Independent and for a lowbrow version in the Sun.

From the Independent:

The scheme would introduce a sliding scale of charges for parking permits from band A, which would be free, to band G, which would charge three times the current cost of annual parking permits.

Band A would consist of electric cars while band G would be made up cars such as 4x4s, the Porsche 911 Carrera, the Jaguar X-type, Range Rover 4.4 litre and the Renault Espace people carrier.

A spokesman for the council denied the scheme was a money-making exercise.

He said: "We have calculated that it could make up to £1 million. However, as people, as we expect, switch to cars in the lower bands, it is obviously going to take revenue.

"This is not being done as a revenue-raising exercise, it is being done as an exercise in cutting down on CO2 emissions."

This exercise is a good first stage. Whether it will make a difference is debatable. If one can afford to drive a Porshe911 an extra £300 a year will make little difference against general running costs. Moreover, most drivers of cars of this type do not keep them on the road anyway. Then there is the question of collection costs - how much will this scheme cost to monitor and enforce relative to revenues. Still, something is generally better than nothing.


Finally, the odds of this scheme actually becoming reality are still slim - time will tell.