Wp Ref. factssheet1302.doc

Our headlines follow:

1.	Every lane-km of the motorway and trunk road system pays the exchequer at least £200,000 pa.
2.	Every track-km of Network Rail extracts at least £150,000 pa from the taxpayer.
3.	The cost to the taxpayer of keeping the railways live will amount to £200-£400 per household every year for 30 years.
4.	Alternatively, the cost to the taxpayer per passenger-mile has the range 20 pence to 40 pence. Hence the return from London to Birmingham costs the taxpayer between £44 and £88. The fare itself adds another £20 to £44 providing a total in the range £64 to £132. In comparison Megabus is currently offering the round trip for as little as £3 while making a profit and paying taxes. If Megabus could use the rights of way occupied by the trains then even that modest fare would be substantially reduced along with the journey time

The basis:

(a)	Ref 1 above: taxes from motorist amounted to at least £40 billion last year. £6 billion was spent on the roads. Hence the profit to the exchequer was £34 billion. 37% of vehicle miles are driven on the Motorway and Trunk Road Network. The lane length is in the range 52,000 to 61,000 km. Hence, if net taxes are proportional to vehicle-km, the contribution per lane-km has the range £206,000 to £242,000. (E.g. £34 billion times 0.37 divided by 52,000 = £242,000)
(b)	Ref 2 above: The SRA confirms that the wish list for the decade is: i. Channel Tunel Rail Link £ 5.2 billion ii. Cross rail £10-15 billion iii. Modernisation £70 billion iv. East Coast high speed line £ 9 billion (36 billion over 40 years) v. Total £92 to £97 billion None of that is to be covered by the fare box. Instead operating subsidy has a long run average of £2 billion per year. If the capital, here rounded up to £100 billion, is to be repaid at 6% over 30 years it will cost £7.26 billion per year. Adding the operating subsidy yields £9.26 billion. Dividing by the track length of 32,000 km yields £290,000 per km per year. If the annual cost of the capital and subsidy is reduced to as little as £5 billion per year then the cost per track-km is £156,000.
(c)	Ref 3 and 4 above: There are 25 million households: If, following (b) above, the annual cost to the taxpayer of the railways is in the range £5 billion to £10 billion then the annual cost per household has the range £200 to £400. Similarly, since the annual passenger-miles total £25 million the cost to the taxpayer per passenger mile has the range 20 pence to 40 pence. Megabus fares are available from the Megabus web site.

September 2004

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The previous data (April 2003) for this facts sheet is reproduced below:

In 1999 Government revenue from roads amounted to £38 billion, up by 30% over 5 years. 60% was fuel excise duty, 15% was road tax and 25% VAT on motoring and its services (source TSGB Table 1.21 and special request to HM Customs and Excise). Expenditure amounted to £4.9 billion, leaving the Treasury with a profit of £33 billion. Here that is set to £30 billion and distributed between the various types of road in proportion to the use i.e. vehicle-km. Table 1 summarises the results. In particular that data shows that, per lane-km, the Motorway and Trunk road network contributes between £180,000 and £210,000 annual to the exchequer.

Table 2 provides the background data and calculation.

In contrast, if the national rail's 32,000 track-km of track is being subsidised to the value of about £5 billion per year, the annual subsidy per track-km is £155,000 .

Table 1 Net tax revenue per year from road

	£(000)s per lane km	Total for the network £bn
Motorways, M	250-290	6
Trunk Roads, T	140-155	5
Principal Roads, P	100-110	8
M + T	180-210	11
M + T + P	140-150	19
All roads	36-37	30

Table 2 Road lengths, lane lengths, Vehicle-km and Revenue distribution