Abstract
Governments are increasingly interested in usage-related road pricing, typically based on distance travelled. Delivering a workable, national distance-based charging scheme for all vehicles and on all roads is a challenging proposition, not least because of problems posed by occasional users, the business case and the privacy issues associated with determination of location. This paper presents the argument for re-considering time as a basis of charging to reflect usage. It explains how delivering such a scheme could be considerably simpler than a distance-based charging scheme of comparable scale and it contrasts the likely behaviour of users being chargedon the basis of distance or time. For the covering abstract see ITRD E134653.