The case for road pricing

Thornton Wilder remarked that there are individuals who fall in love with an idea long before its appointed rendezvous with history. We hurl ourselves against the indifference of the age.

It is now four decades since one of my first columns was published in London’s Evening Standard. In it I proposed an idea of which (if you read on) you’ll hear more. I got no response. It’s nearly 20 years since I wrote essentially the same piece as a whimsical side column for the Times. Labour’s Alistair Darling had called for debate on the idea. It never happened and my column attracted little notice. Fifteen years later, excited by a competition the Wolfson Foundation ran for the best proposal for implementing the idea, I wrote a serious 1,000-word column for the Times. One could almost hear my readers yawn.

And here we go again, five years on. I have no high hopes that this time my argument will catch the wind, but, kind reader, I hurl myself against your indifference.