I’m not opposed in principle to congestion charging, road pricing or road tolling. It’s clear that congestion occurs because there’s too much demand for road space at certain times of day. It’s also clear that building more road space doesn’t solve the problem – because it simply ‘induces’ demand. Pricing road space in one way or another therefore makes logical sense as a way of allocating the road space most efficiently.
That said, there are of course many other factors to take into account. Congestion pricing is effective (at least theoretically) because it prices people off the road at peak time – which has social equity implications. There are potentially adverse economic outcomes if, for example, we were to install a “cordon” based system around the CBD then we put the viability of the place at risk – particularly in Auckland because a relatively low proportion of people entering the city centre at peak time are on public transport (just under 50% compared to 80-90% in cities like London and New York). There are also issues relating to practicalities, whether the technology has reached a level to enable certain types of road pricing, and also what proportion of the money from road pricing goes into administering the system.
Many different types of road pricing have been analysed over the past few years: generally as a revenue-raising exercise rather than to reduce congestion. A few of them, like an off-street parking levy, probably are worth further analysis in the shorter term. One type of road pricing that seems to be ‘in fashion’ at the moment is something called “network pricing” – where people pay a certain amount at each motorway onramp to join the motorways. At different times of day the price can be adjusted to encourage the peak to be ‘spread’ more. This ‘network pricing’ scheme is being proposed by the NZ Council for Infrastructure Development (NZCID) at the moment – which an NZ Herald article today picks up on:
The Council for Infrastructure Development said tolls of $2 to $3 were needed on Auckland motorways to cover the bills.
Chief executive Stephen Selwood said investment in infrastructure was central to lifting the quality of life in New Zealand.
He said user pays is the fairest system.
“I think New Zealanders are now becoming aware that there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as free infrastructure.”
He said direct user charges is is the next step in ensuring timely investment is made when it is needed.
At first glance the scheme has its advantages. Perhaps the biggest advantage is its simplicity and ease of introduction. There are only a limited number of motorway onramps around Auckland and putting toll gates one them (with overheard cameras like the Northern Gateway Road) would be relatively straightfoward: at least compared to other schemes using GPS systems to track vehicles and the like. Another advantage is the huge amount of money something like this could potentially raise. There are nearly a million trips on the motorway network a day, so you could raise some serious cash with a levy on those trips:
However, the proposal has a giant flaw – one which I would sum up with the phrase “diverted traffic”. Clearly, if people are faced with the possibility of having to pay to get on the motorway they are more likely to choose a route which avoids the motorway and therefore more likely to make their trips on the local road network. This has a number of huge problems:
- Safety effects on pedestrians and cyclists.
- Increased pollution in parts of the city where a lot of people are located
- Clogging up streets where public transport services run
- Increased pressure to widen local roads and less use of motorways which have had huge money spent on them
I’m sure there are other negative impacts. One thing the Council might want to keep particularly in mind is that shifting traffic off state highways and onto local roads puts more pressure on their part of the transport network – rather than the part owned by the government.
The diverted traffic issue is, in my opinion, a fatal flaw of network pricing. One of the good things that motorways do is draw traffic away from local roads. The last thing we want to do is completely undermine that.
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You have the terminology wrong. This is corridor pricing, not network pricing. Network pricing would be all roads. New Zealand already has that – it’s called RUC. 718,000 vehicles in New Zealand already pay by this means, a growing number using a GPS based system called ERoads. This isn’t rocket science, it is being done now, on a voluntary basis. There have been GPS based road pricing trials in the UK and Singapore (and Hong Kong), all of which have proved it is technically viable. There is no technical reason not to do it, the reasons to not do it are purely a mix of the political and the need to manage risk in doing so.
However, you’re right that corridor pricing has major flaws. The ARPES examined this option and dismissed it, although I think a low on ramp charge should be modelled and considered, since it IS a problem to use the motorways for short trips. They are far too capital intensive pieces of infrastructure for short sections to face congestion by people using them as rat runs (a flaw because of past design, as foreign motorways do not have the number of interchanges seen in NZ).
So, with cordons and corridor pricing both fundamentally flawed, why not make RUC the platform to do proper network road pricing? It will take some time, but the sooner it starts as a transition, the sooner you can reap the long run benefits of proper road pricing.
Meanwhile, you have to fend off the empty headed and conspiracy theory believing commentators who think that GPS satellites somehow spy on people, when they do so no more than the Optus satellites that broadcast Sky TV.
I’m not calling it network pricing. That’s what the NZCID is calling it.
Fair call, now of course you know better than they do 🙂
“using them as rat runs”
Hehe I used to use the motorway from Khyber pass to New-market to go to the supermarket when I lived near that ramp. I normally went in the evening, so normally off peak. When the motorway was congested the ramp signals were a disincentive to doing so.
“The problem with network pricing” In my opinion the problem is the collection costs. For example I think over 60c for the $2 toll on the northern gateway road goes into transaction/collection costs. This is a huge amount of money wasted.
If we could get the collection costs to be trivial all other issues could be resolved, But until then I think the fuel tax / RUC’s are way to go for efficiency.
I promote a de-congestion charge that varies by road demand (preferably in real time). That would allow our road space to be more efficiently allocated. I can’t see a flat on-ramp charge adding any efficiency (in fact I think it would create massive distortions as outlined by admin above). Using existing fuel taxes seems to be far more efficient.
The Puhoi tunnel system was developed to be able to be used for other toll roads. More roads using the system will decrease the per-transaction costs. At present that tunnel is paying for all the development of a scalable road tolling system, which isn’t cheap.
No, this is untrue. The Toll Systems Project was fully funded from the NLTP. Yes, fuel tax and RUC payers paid for a revenue collection system. It was ridiculous, and was about empire building on the part of the then Transit New Zealand. There were only ever likely to be a maximum of four toll roads for the system (Tauranga Harbour Link – killed by Labour/NZ First coalition, Tauranga Eastern Link and Transmission Gully).
The 60c collection cost is high, because the volumes are too low and because it is run by the Transport Registry Centre – hardly the great model of efficiency in the world of revenue collection. Comparisons to systems elsewhere see there being transaction costs of up to a third of that.
But is it not true that those other roads you mention will increase the number of transactions going through the centre therefore reducing the average collection costs for all transactions?
Even with economies of scale the (with current technology) collection costs are likely to still be high. Remember every spent on collecting revenue is a cent wasted if we could do it a cheaper way. I’m under the impression that the collection costs of petrol tax is quite low.
Well only two of them will proceed – Eastern Link and Transmission Gully, all of them together are still low volume in the tolling world. You’re right, but it wont make much difference. It needs to be outsourced to someone who professionally manages accounts and billing, like utility companies.
Yes petrol tax is low to collect, but then the cheapest tax to collect is one on land – costs of collection are only one element, and fuel tax bears little relationship to the marginal costs of road use – hence why RUC replaced diesel tax for heavy vehicles.
I have to take issue with your last comment, which is not to say I disagree with your main point. But new motorways or additional lanes to existing ones usually in fact had pressure to the surrounding local roads, especially if the additional freeway capacity is instead of any other kind of alternative, because they induce more driving.
The recent work on Ak’s motorways, and the failure to extend the RTN, is clearly creating increasing pressure and additional inefficiencies onto our local roads. This would be ok as it does act as a push factor for people to use alternatives, but those alternatives are either also on those roads [buses] or still incomplete and too infrequent [rail + ferries] that instead we just get underperformance and inefficiency.
But certainly pricing the motorways directly would exacerbate these pressures. Clearly the best answer is to add balance to the systems available and the most efficient and elegant funding mechanism is already available: the NLTF. And this is not inequitable as all drivers benefit by increase in the up take of complimentary systems.
Crazy, next thing they’ll be charging us to use public transp…oh, hang on.
The diverted traffic issue could perhaps be harnessed to contain traffic. Auckland is blessed with a fairly unique topography that leads to plenty of pinch points in the network topology. For example, one cannot Travel between the North Shore and the rest of the city without using the motorway (or making a massive detour into the countryside). Likewise heading south or east there are only three local roads and three motorway crossings out of the ithsmus, and only four and one motorway heading west.
A network charge plus a relatively small number of toll points on those local roads could create a hybrid of the network charge and ithsmus cordon options that would avoid pushing traffic onto local streets for anything but the shortest motorway trips (which should arguably not be on the motorway anyway).
A very simple option would be to set up just two screenlines to toll, one on the waitemata harbour and one across the manukau and tamaki river. This would take only seven toll gantries to sector the city into three areas
Regional fuel tax? It would charge people for travel on motorways and local roads.
Petrol taxes are a very crude and broad way of collecting tax and it would do nothing directly to help congestion other that encouraging a few people not to drive..
Yip very crude. Also cheap to administer and hard to evade. What is being proposed seems to be a flat motorway charge rather than a congestion charge. For example it appears one would have to pay it at 3am, even though there is plenty of free motorway capacity at that hour.
I also like how the petrol tax encourages the use of more efficient cars, which benefits the nations current account by decreasing oil imports.
BTW what is the goal of this charge?
– Is it to more efficiently charge for road-space? i.e. charge more at times/locations where the demand for road space is high.
– Is it so the the council to get the revenue rather than the government. If its the latter chances are the government will quickly pass a law to stop it.
I think the idea put forward by the NZCID was to have variable charges so you paid more at peak than off peak. One other thing to think about with petrol tax is you then get pinged it even if your just buying petrol for things like your boat or lawn mower, sure it’s not much in the grand scheme of things but it these kinds of inequalities that are created.
The goal of the charge is to ultimately raise more funds or at least keep the funding level (remember as cars get more efficient less petrol is used and therefore there is less tax collected). It would be good if it coincided with councils getting greater funding but unfortunately that is entirely up to the government and I can’t see them or any future government wanting to give that control up.
To me, ideally we would have a mix of taxes, the main form coming from a reformed RUC type system that more accurately charges people based on how much and when they use the roads and a petrol tax that is only really designed to recover the environmental costs associated with burning that petrol
The single biggest flaw in the whole idea of congestion / network charging is that it will be Government controlled and therefore another tax on Auckland from central Govt. Auckland City will have no say where the money is spent. Much better to focus on spending the $2.8bn revenue from fuel taxes on projects that offer the best value, regardless of mode.
I’m also of the opinion that a certain proportion of fuel taxes should go to each council to spend in a bulk funded way, regardless of mode. They would then be free to spend the allocated revenue on local roads, rail or bus infrastructure as they like. There used to be “R” funds from the NLTF available for this, but clearly central Govt isn’t interested in giving local councils any other revenue stream apart from rates.
I wonder if the council could charge it’s local roads and keep the revenue itself, what are the legal logistics of such a move? I’m thinking in particular any local road leading to a motorway on-ramp 😉
No public body is legally permitted to interfere with the common law right of passage to introduce a toll on a pre-existing road, unless it is approved by Order in Council and is effectively operationally linked to collecting tolls for a new road or road improvement. Councils have no right to toll their own roads outside this framework, indeed neither does the NZTA for the state highways.
So by my reading you are saying it is possible in the current legal framework for the council to collect toll money if they use it to improve the transport network?
Only if it is a new road, or new road capacity and the toll is operationally integral to that. Northern Gateway is obvious, tolling on new lanes would work as well, tolling on the approaches to a new road (where there is a potential diversion) might be ok too (e.g. if Waterview was to be tolled, it might be done on the Mt Roskill section of SH20 west of the Dominion Rd interchange).
Wouldn’t an even simpler cheaper way of collecting tolls be to introduce a Vignette system similar to Europe. Have a day pass for those from out of town/never use the motor way, weekly passes, monthly passes and annual passes. Anyone caught without one $500 dollar fine.
I agree with James. Or, just charge people to GET OFF the motorway at the city exits. Then, the people that legitimately need to get from South of Auckland to North of Auckland (and who should be using the motorways) get to do so while the people that are going into a city where every different type of public transport terminates (and therefore, shouldn’t be using the motorways because there are other options) get penalised for taking their damn cars into town every day.
Is it people driving into downtown that are the issue though? Just how much traffic is caused by CBD car commuters?
And really should it be more ‘legitimate’ for someone to drive from South Auckland to the North, but not for someone to drive half the distance into the centre? We don’t want to inadvertently encourage people to make longer journeys with very lengthy cross town commutes.
The Rat Run scenario is the biggest drawback- but that can be sorted by pitching the charge at the right level. Most people will pay $1 to get there 20 minutes earlier…
The real problem, as someone has pointed out- is keeping the collection cost down.
Does anyone have the numbers on the Melbourne car-scanner system costs (the one where you have a sticker thing on the top of your windscreen and a scanner on the roof of tunnels and above toll roads pings you and adds it your account)
?
It’s not just a sticker, but an “e-tag” electronic transponder. They must be used for regular account holders, while occasional drivers can pay as the go using numberplate recognition very similar to what they have available for the northern gateway tunnel. In Melbourne paying by e-tag costs just the toll, while paying by number plate recognition has an additional collection fee of a few bucks per journey. Furthermore if you don’t pay within 24 hours you are sent a bill by post, with a further handling fee. If you just drive through without an e-tag and forget about it a single toll costs you about $13 by the time it hits your letterbox.
One expects that a widespread system in Auckland would be based primarily on transponders and accounts, with only the number plate cameras for back up. Such a widespread application would presumably cut collection costs per unit significantly.
Thank Nick, that’s the one.
Any idea what the collection costs to the Operator are (e-tag billing)?
I don’t know, but they charge 75c extra for not having a tag, so it’s in the region of 75c cheaper than numberplate recogniton.
NZ$0.24 per transaction five years ago, I believe it is below NZ$0.20 now, bearing in mind that is a bigger saving given inflation.
Austria’s nationwide RUC system for heavy vehicles is only NZ$0.10 per transaction.
The simplest solution would be road user charges. Take all the tax off gas (except gst) and make it like diesel. You pay for the liquid, and you pay for however many kilometers you travel. Nice and simple.
Obviously local government should be able to also add in a local projects tax to the road user charges.
The benefits are the costs to administer are low, different types of vehicles can be charged differently depending on how they are used (a container hauling truck pays for motorways, less for regional, a commuter motorcar pays lots for local roads and less for motorways, etc)
Ideally the fuel-efficiency would affect the road user charges too.
Publius, I disagree completely. Your system does nothing to encourage using less of that polluting, imported, forex eating, fossil fuel. I’m all for taxing the bejesus out of the stuff. And anything else we wish to discourage to use of. Ciggies for example. I’m no fan of tax, but do accept it is a necessary evil, so what to do? Tax ‘bads’ ie stuff that does us harm, or, would serve our long term interests to use less of. Only using the RUC, incentivizes us not to travel by car, not bad, but makes no distinction between the the gas guzzler and the more efficient machine… Simple in tax systems is good, but clever is better.
I’m with Patrick on this one. I quite like how petrol tax doubles up as in incentive to have more efficient vehicles.
“Ideally the fuel-efficiency would affect the road user charges too” This is a bit circular. Why not just tax the fuel. What fuel you actually use is a better measure of economy than the sticker on the car when it was new.
“You pay for the liquid, and you pay for however many kilometers you travel. Nice and simple.” I think one transaction is simpler than two. One less sticker on the windscreen, no visits to the AA or VTNZ to pay the road tax. I grew up with a diesel family car. paying road tax with the fuel would definitely be easier. You don’t need to remember to check the odometer reading either.
RUC’s need to be enforced by the police, taking up valuable police time, and leaving punished motorists angry. I have heard in smaller towns the odometer disconnection is also common to avoid the charge.
Definitely no RUC’s for light petrol vehicles please
The reason Diesel has its road user charges paid separately is that something like 40% of diesel is used off-road (tractors, generators, earth moving equt, pumps, large boats etc). A much smaller fraction of petrol is used off-road.
I think RUC’s for heavy vehicles is appropriate as they damage roads dis-proportionately for the amount of fuel they use.
In many countries they just charge road tax with diesel too, and have a special “red” mix for off road use.
The Germans, Slovaks and other combine distance charging RUC style with higher and lower charges for vehicles based on emissions – which effectively does the same as fuel tax, but better targeted. In other words the dirtiest/highest emitting vehicles pay up to 100% more than the cleanest. The externality of petroleum consumption comes from emissions, so that should be targeted.
In the long run, fuel tax is unsustainable – it is hardly equitable to have vehicles paying a fraction of other vehicles when they are consuming the same piece of infrastructure, which bears no relationship to fuel consumption.
The advantages of shifting all vehicles onto an electronic RUC system are enormous. Finland now is considering this, with a discount for those who do not have public transport alternatives.
The more fundamental point is it changes road use from being considered something free, to paying for a capital intensive piece of infrastructure that has scarcity and which faces very bad decisions around how costs are allocated and expenditure. People would always factor into driving how much “road” they have to pay for, as well as fuel, parking and time. Even a simple shift from petrol tax to a basic RUC, which was charged monthly from a prepaid account would notably change behaviour. Fuel tax wont don’t that.
Emissions are not the only externality, the nation having to import increasingly expensive hydrocarbons at all, or in greater quantity, is a negative externality. Especially for NZ as we have our own renewably generated electricity [mostly: 80% in 2010]. High fuel price is a good incentive to use alternative modes, and, of course even better when that that high price is invested in providing those alternative modes and ensuring that they are high quality- unlike now. Win/win.
But whether from RUCs or tax the main point is to invest the taxation not in entrenching more vehicle use but in transforming the infrastructre of the nation where possible to a more viable and resilient one, and one more able to face current challenges. Of course the road network already built up must be maintained but it does not require the current policy of endless duplication. This is a backward looking act of bloody-mindedness that is impoverishing the nation kilometre by kilometre.
I can see where you are coming from in terms of efficiency and equity etc. However I favor disproportionally taxing petrol to minimize the effect of oil price fluctuations on our economy.
“a 5% permanent increase in retail fuel prices implies a decline in NZ’s GDP of 0.3%”
RUC’s with an emissions component is plausable, but difficult to do accurately. For example a person who drives like a New York taxi driver (hard on gas, hard on breaks to move 10m forwards) would emit a lot more than a person who drives more economically.
In addition it would be hard to rank vehicles emissions. Would you use the rating of the engine when it was new? Is so, the (old) link bus (1905) which puffs out smoke would pay the same as a new Euro 5 diesel, even though something is clearly wrong with the engine. I emissions testing is pretty expensive i think, so Im unsure if it would be worth the money for accurate taxation. Most of my economics classes have suggested regulation (i.e. a minimum standard) over a tax or cap and trade scheme for vehicle emissions due to measurement cost.
“People would always factor into driving how much “road” they have to pay for”
Im a little unsure about this argument. When we had a diesel car RUC’s were just part of the running costs of the car like tires, fuel etc. I think most people understand that some of there petrol money goes to providing roads. Are you suggesting that knowing the exact ratio of costs made up from road tax would be beneficial?
There are some dramatic efficiency gains to be had when we move to a full decongestion charge system where road user charges vary as road demand varies.
Let’s be clear, by far the greatest benefit of shifting to RUC is to charge for congestion. You can charge by road type, and eventually have a level of disaggregation whereby you charge by direction of travel, and can completly avoid the rat-running argument. It would mean you can “toll” a new road while avoiding the diversion issue, because the diverted route would cost as well. Doing this will ultimately enable avoidance of literally billions in road construction and wasted time/fuel because of congestion. The effects on air quality and modal choice will outdo anything that can be achieved by supply side measures. The effects on urban density would be similar, as it would positively reinforce urban land use choices that accurately reflect availability of a scarce resource – road space. There are other side benefits, but consigning inefficient levels of congestion to history would be an enormous improvement in lifestyle, productivity, savings in fuel and reductions in emissions. You could easily delay or defer a second Auckland Harbour Crossing for decades. The reduced congestion and improved traffic flow would effectively mean no need for bus/HOV lanes, although cycle lanes would still have a great value. The rail network could expand, contract, rise or fall on its merits, as pricing roads properly would mean railways can be priced similarly so.
Until then, the gains are going to come from:
– Firstly, shifting heavy vehicles onto a system that varies by location. This encourages use of state highways over lightly built local roads and unsealed roads, and better recovers the costs of those lightly sealed roads. It could also vary by region to reflect variations in such costs. The impacts will be to reduce maintenance costs, and could have a mixed impact on rail freight.
– Secondly, having vehicles pay for what they use, so that people think of paying for distance as well as fuel/parking etc.
Emissions rated RUC is done in Europe using Euro ratings. If it doesn’t have a Euro rating it is the most expensive category. It is only one tool to address emissions, but frankly dealing to congestion will achieve much more in itself by reducing traffic and making existing traffic more fuel efficient.
Don’t think of light RUC today, think of it more like Singapore’s ERP, whereby you have a small on board unit with a prepaid card which sees value deducted as you drive. Moving towards that sort of model will mean people see road use as something that clocks up a charge. The effect of this would be considerable, not only affecting commuting, but leisure trips, retail and the like, in ways that I would have thought would support the objectives of many who want to see a shift from private vehicle use. Petrol tax is “prepaid” travel, so after someone has filled the tank, they will not think so much about how that tank is consumed. Paying by distance that involves generating a monthly account or deducting value in real time, will be far more effective.
Bear in mind that by no stretch of the imagination will public transport ever replace cars for the vast majority of trips in New Zealand, not least because many people live in locations where frequent public transport is simply not viable or even able to be environmentally friendly to serve where they want to go to and from. In addition, for those who believe fuel prices will skyrocket, fuel tax will not make much difference to incentivising people to shift modes or sources of motive power, for if the peak oil movement is correct, then the market price for petroleum will signal change in any case.
I agree largely with what liberty says but one issue will be how the money is actually collected, if it is a monthly account you then have the issue if non payers which is probably why there has has never been a strong push to move away from petrol tax which can’t be avoided.
Some sort of prepaid system that deducts costs in real time would be better but would need some way of preventing driving if not topped up.
In the end the two biggest roadblocks will be implementation costs and public opinion as most wouldn’t understand the reasons for the change, how it works and many will label it revenue gathering (even if their costs don’t go up simply because the costs are visible)
Further reasons I advocate for road user charges for petrol instead of tax-on-petrol is then you avoid the currently problem of gst-on-the-petrol-tax which we have currently which inflates prices more than linearly.
Other reasons are there are more things to use petrol for than driving on roads (like boats for one) which don’t currently have a rebate available for non-business purposes (farmer can claim back the petrol tax for farmbike use, but an individual can’t for their boat).
Ideally every externality should be individually broken down into its component parts and a tax placed on each part as reflecting the individual “cost” of each externality on its own.
Ie, air emissions from anything taxed separately to taxes for building roads, taxes for acc, etc.
On your last point- that market signal will be too late- is too late. We are continuing to reinforce auto-dependency so any amount of sudden and difficult to absorb price rises in fuel will only cause pain and economic decline as the necessary alternatives- more PT, Rail freight, denser communities, local amenities, mixed neighbourhoods, can not happen overnight. Peek oil is here, how else can you explain stubbornly high oil prices in the midst of a global contraction?
Moving away from FF dependency is urgent and requires a multi-year effort across a lot of sectors; especially transport and planning. The ‘invisible hand’ will not do it without a bit of strong and visible conscious guidance, simply because as things are structured the short term signals drown out the medium to long term ones.
Every fuel price is met with calls for the tax to be cut from people who practically have no alternative to driving cars they already can’t really afford to run, simply to get to a job that may very well disappear under the stress fuel price rises. So not only will be too to change much there will be less ability to it.
To shrug your shoulders and say, effectively, ‘there is no alternative’ to or current way of organising society is wrong, stupid, and smug. And will lead to the alternative that we are currently building: a poorer more divided society with a weaker economy and a bigger and more dispossessed underclass.
Transform or decline. Business as usual is not possible this century.
“On your last point- that market signal will be too late- is too late. We are continuing to reinforce auto-dependency so any amount of sudden and difficult to absorb price rises in fuel will only cause pain and economic decline as the necessary alternatives- more PT, Rail freight, denser communities, local amenities, mixed neighbourhoods, can not happen overnight.”
But as Liberty points out, road pricing will be more effective at generating those outcomes than a blunt petorl tax. Increasing the petrol tax to Western European levels or higher would be politically impossible, however road pricing can be revenue neutral and still have a great effect.
In my opinion road pricing, if properly explained to the public, could have very broad based support, both from the environmental left and from the fiscally conservative right. It is a real opportunity.
” Increasing the petrol tax to Western European levels or higher would be politically impossible”
I would think it is quite possible. Phasing in a 15% increase over a few years shouldn’t be too much of killer for a party that had as much popularity as say national does right now.
$2.17 for 95 octane = 1.26 euro
avg euro price for 95 = 1.46
http://www.aa.co.nz/motoring/aa-torque/motoring-blog/petrolwatch/october-2011-petrol-and-diesel-prices/
http://www.drive-alive.co.uk/fuel_prices_europe.html
and the issue would be quite why people driving in provincial areas, which by and large only have one draw on the NLTF – road maintenance, should pay more to support large cities and their underpriced excess demand for road space and peak public transport?
However, good luck with getting politicians elected who promise ever increasing fuel taxes to spend on…
The scope to increase fuel tax in the UK now is at its limit, yet there remains chronic congestion in major cities and on major corridors. Fuel tax for demand management is grossly inefficient and unfair, it underprices those who need to pay more, and makes people using empty roads pay the same.
Moreover, in the NZ context, the diesel fleet pays far more efficiently.
I thought Joyce had already signalled that petrol tax was going to have to go up to pay for all the new RoNS he came up with a few months back? Doesn’t seem to have dented nationals popularity.
Why not remove all vehicle license fees as well? Replace it all with petrol tax. After all the more you drive the more likely you are to need ACC.
I find it interesting that public transport advocates (generally socially-inclined politically) are here advocating a network-wide inescapable tolling system “to reduce congestion”, thinking that if the road network can’t take everyone (congested) then if we are to choose who should get the right to use it congestion-free it should be the rich!
Tolls will naturally rise to find the highest price where congestion is minimised (market forces) thus only the rich will be able to afford to use the road. (Rich get richer means only the rich can drive).
Surely someone can see the irony in this.
So seeing as we’re all communist public transport lovers, shouldn’t we allocate to each drivers licence-holder some equal yearly quota of kilometers to use on the road?
(dont take me too seriously)
It is not necessarily the rich who will drive, but those who value it the most. In the current situation, everyone, rich and poor, is forced to pay for wide motorways to cater for peak time demand whether or not they would rather spend their share of that money in other ways (by choosing not to drive at peak times).
So it is better for the poor as much as for the rich. Also, as 1 points out above, once you have such a system set up you can tie licence fees to it, and quite possibly insurance as well. In that way people, rich and poor, will only have to pay for the amount of driving they partake in and no more.
If you are against road pricing for the reason you have given, then presumably you should also be against getting rid of subsidised parking and minimum parking requirements. Afterall if you reduce the amount of parking to that which the market will provide, only the rich will be able to park!
Funnily enough it appears only ACT and the Greens who support any form of road pricing, among the major parties standing for Parliament.
ACT is rather bold about supporting a wholesale shift towards road pricing, the Greens support trialling congestion charging and to investigate extending RUC to other vehicles.
Political debates about road pricing tend to see four groups emerging:
Road pricing supporters from the environmentalist left – because they see it reducing road traffic and increasing use of other modes
Road pricing supporters from the free market right – because they see it as reflecting economic efficiency and better allocation of resources
Road pricing opponents from the “old” left – because they see it as penalising the poorest by pricing them off the roads
Road pricing opponents from the conservative right – because they see it as “just another tax” and the government getting in the way of them doing what they want.
There are ways to address the criticisms, but it is one of the most curious pieces of public policy to have diverse cross cutting views expressed on it.
The issue is not technology, it is politics.
Presumably if you had road pricing replace petrol tax (to some degree or potentially fully) then that would help limit the opposition.
Yes exactly, but you need to get over the “we don’t trust the bastards to remove petrol tax” attitude, which was the downfall for plans for national road pricing in the UK. Ministers wouldn’t say equivocably that they would abolish ownership and fuel taxes, in part because they couldn’t completely abolish fuel tax, as EU law makes it compulsory to have fuel tax at a certain level. If a clear message of reducing other taxes had been communicated, it might have been a different story. That’s why i think, at first, the transition is voluntary – you either pay fuel tax or pay for distance and get fuel tax refunded.
Yes it is often the case that parties at each end of the spectrum end up having quite a bit in common (although they will never admit it).