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No Road Pricing for motorcycles in the Netherlands
Dear colleagues,
In our report 21-01-2008 we wrote:
Road Pricing: We are invited for a Parliamentary hearing to give our view (31-01-2008) on this important topic. Since the Netherlands apparently want to be the first country to have a nation wide R.P.-system we take this very serious.
It may also set the rules for other European countries in the future and we don’t want to be the victims of unjustified pricing.
It also is an opportunity for manufacturers to use our country to test their hard- and software.
Road pricing is supposed to replace part of our tax-system. In short: until today motorcycles pay around 64 Euro yearly for road taxes.
The average motorcyclist rides between 4000-5000 km’s per year.
One of the possible problems is that our Parliament uses these figures to calculate the break-even point.
For Sunday riders (as we call them) doing less than 4000-5000 km’s there is no problem because they might end up paying little to nothing.
It means that the all year round riders, doing far more km’s, will have to pay an additional amount for each km over 5000 and that will be unfair and counter productive.
Too expensive for us, probably less motorcycles on the road, more cars, more traffic jams and so on.
Today we attended a long and fruitful session with our minister and parliament.
This evening our minister of transport Camiel Eurlings stated that motorcycles will not be included in the road pricing system that has to be implemented in the Netherlands, starting in 2012.
After the meeting today the minister (much sooner than we expected) announced that we will have to pay a yearly acceptable fee like we are doing now and that’s all.
This means no chip or other device on the bikes and no big brother watching us and charging costs after riding on our roads.
The minister congratulated me with a hand shake and a big smile.
Also most members of parliament present in the meeting today agreed with our points of view and did their part of the lobbying very well.
The road pricing system is in the first place supposed to reduce the use of cars in our country on every road, so not just on motorways.
Specially in the congestion zones (around Amsterdam – Utrecht – Den Haag/Rotterdam) the government tries to reduce traffic in the rush hours.
We are happy that our lobbying resulted in this decision by the minister.
It also may set the standards for other countries in the future.
We were on national TV with this topic in the news broadcast, with me in person thanking the minister and our full name on the screen.
A happy Nico, MAG-Netherlands.
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