Road charging 'many years away'
A national road pricing scheme cannot go ahead until concerns about privacy, fairness and enforcement can be answered, Ruth Kelly has said.
The transport secretary also said new technology and local pilots were needed first. Her officials said any scheme would be "many years down the line".
Instead, she said, congestion could be tackled now by letting drivers use hard shoulders on busy motorways in England.
The scheme could be extended to parts of the M1, M6, M62, M27, M4 and M5.
The move, which also covers some motorways feeding into the M25, follows a successful trial on the M42 near Birmingham, where the hard shoulder was used as an extra lane and the speed limit reduced to 50mph.
Online petition
Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers said the government's policies on congestion "now lie in tatters".
She said the announcement was "further evidence that their flagship proposal for a spy in the sky national road pricing scheme is going nowhere. They should now rule this option out completely".
Lib Dem Norman Baker described the measure as a "dogs dinner of a policy".
In a keynote speech, Ms Kelly said the hard-shoulder option would also include motorways which join the M25, such as the M20 and M3.
"The M42 has shown it is possible to smooth traffic flow and improve journey reliability on a notoriously congested route"
Ruth Kelly
Transport Secretary
Other options - such as having a motorway lane which could not be used by cars with only one person inside as well as HGV crawler lanes - were also being considered.
And she announced a further four years of funding for local road pricing pilot schemes - which have been described as forerunners for a future national road pricing scheme.
In her speech on Tuesday she made no mention of any plans for national road pricing, which last year prompted a record-breaking 1.8 million people to sign an online Downing Street petition opposing any such plan.
But she later told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "People legitimately raised concerns about privacy, fairness and how any scheme would be enforced.
"We don't have all the answers to those questions yet. We can't introduce this without having answers to those questions.
"What we are going to do is trial technology over the next couple of years - asking private sector companies to work with volunteers and see whether they can answer some of those fundamental issues."
Emissions down
Instead Ms Kelly told a news conference in London that the M42 experiment had given the government valuable experience of a new approach to managing motorway traffic.
"Through a mix of managing speeds and opening the hard shoulder as a running lane, the M42 has shown it is possible to smooth traffic flow and improve journey reliability on a notoriously congested route - and it has done so safely," she said.
"A national road pricing scheme to replace other road taxes is undoubtedly the way forward, but this latest fudge from ministers will please nobody "
Norman Baker
Lib Dems
A Department for Transport feasibility study identified around 500 miles of England's motorways which could benefit from using the hard shoulder as an extra lane.
In the scheme, sensors detect traffic build-up, which triggers signs telling drivers to slow down and use the extra lane. Emergency refuges were established every 500m.
If accidents happen, messages appear telling drivers the lane is closed, allowing emergency services to get through.
In the first six months of the M42 trial, average journey times fell by more than a quarter on the northbound carriageway, fuel consumption reduced by 4% and vehicle emissions dropped by up to 10%.
Confusion?
She said the government was interested in car share lanes, that have been used in the US for some time, where access is limited to vehicles carrying passengers or drivers willing to pay a toll.
"Allowing motorists to enter a reserved lane if they are carrying passengers or willing to pay a toll gives them a real choice without having to change their route," she said.
But Mr Baker said: "A national road pricing scheme to replace other road taxes is undoubtedly the way forward, but this latest fudge from ministers will please nobody.
"It confuses the purpose of a hard shoulder, which we have been told for decades exists for safety reasons. Now it will become partly pay-if-you-want, partly share-if-you-want and partly for emergency vehicles."
Chris Glen, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said his colleagues were "firmly opposed to road pricing where there are no toll-free alternatives".
"This is a good first step, but we still need a better road network and a more integrated transport system to safeguard UK competitiveness."
Driving on the hard shoulder is well established in some European countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7276634.stm
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