Comment by tomxor

> Road upkeep is from general taxation. Road tax was abolished in 1937

I was skeptical of this being true since fuel duty is notoriously high in the UK, so I did a quick fact check.

Based on the change in 1937 you are "technically" correct, in that none of the motoring taxes are ring fenced for road funds since 1937.

However the opposite is true of what you are implying... income from fuel duty alone is generally around 3 times larger than all road maintenance spending (a fairly steady +25bn/yr [0] Vs -8bn/yr [1] over the last decade).

In other words, although it's officially one big tax pot, motoring taxes pay for road network expenditure more than 3 times over.

This is why they are introducing the per mile EV tax, because fuel duty provided a proportional tax to road use, but EVs skip that and electricity can't be so easily taxed for road use specifically.

TLDR, UK road users pay for far more than the road network.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/284323/united-kingdom-hm...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/533171/annual-road-trans...