Road tolls signal end of congestion charge

London's congestion charge faces the axe to make way for a radical, national road-user charging scheme.

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling today confirmed that motorists would pay up to £1.30 "in extreme cases on very congested roads in central London" instead of the current flat rate if his scheme goes ahead.

But he stressed that for half of all UK drivers his scheme - which would involve motorists having "black box" satellite tracking devices fitted to their cars - would be "revenue-neutral".

Mr Darling said the scheme would undergo trials in a major conurbation-within five to six years. If it is successful, Britain's 30 million drivers face paying a sliding scale of charges "within 10 to 15 years", Mr Darling said on Radio 4.

This would be off-set by reducing or scrapping petrol duty and possibly the road fund licence.

At off-peak times on roads that are not congested, drivers would pay as little as two pence per mile, said Mr Darling.

The objective, said Mr Darling, was "to make sure we can provide drivers with a realistic opportunityof getting around the country - or risk being stuck in gridlock".

He added that some of the proceeds from the system would be used to boost public transport.

Mr Darling attacked claims that the system would act as a "Big Brother", recording details of all drivers' movements.

Key figures from Transport for London sit on the Department for Transport working group which is thrashing out details of the scheme.

Experts say that for a typical motorist driving in and out of central London at peak times, the charge could be as high as ?134 a week - about ?6,400 a year.