Dutch find the way to discourage drivers
It simply had to happen and it will whet the appetite of just about any bureaucrat worth his controlling salt: Dutch authorities plan to change the pollution charge system from the current one, based on fixed annual road tax, to a new GPS-enabled system that penalises the individual road-user. On-board computers will calculate the amount owed, based on time of day (rush-hour vs non-rush-hour), roads used (congested urban roads vs country roads) with €0.03/km as a base price. On the good side, the purchase tax will also be dropped, lowering car prices by as much as 25%. On the bad side, government will know the exact movements of ALL of their motorised citizens. Our estimate is that every other government, first in Europe, then in the rest of the world, will follow the suit, sooner rather than later. Read more: BusinessWeek
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