There have been a few suggestions recently that international tourists should be paying more to drive in New Zealand, or have to pass a driving test, or things along those lines. Winston Aldworth, the Travel Editor at the Herald, wrote a column last week suggesting that we should charge a fee for tourists who want to drive on our roads, along the lines of a new scheme in Germany (which was also described in the Herald last week, although the article doesn’t seem to be online).
Would this scheme be fair in New Zealand?
Winston writes: “many tourists on these shores rely on (and clog up) the roads from Cape Reinga to Bluff. It seems fair they should chip in for maintenance and improvements”. It does indeed seem fair, but tourists already do pay for these things. It’s built into the cost of the petrol they use, or the Road User Charges if they hire a diesel vehicle. That money goes straight to the National Land Transport Fund, where it pays for all state highway costs and around half of local road costs (the rest comes from rates). So I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that international tourists aren’t paying their way.
Based on data from the Retail Trade Survey and Tourism Satellite Account, it seems that international tourists account for around 5-6% of sales in petrol stations. Clearly, most of the long-distance trips around the country are being done by Kiwis, not overseas visitors. It’s also likely that most of the trips taken by international tourists are on roads which aren’t particularly congested, and not really in need of upgrades. Most of these visitors don’t make it up to Cape Reinga or down to Bluff. International tourist spending is fairly heavily concentrated in just a few parts of the country, including Auckland, Queenstown, Rotorua and so on.
How much would this scheme raise?
Winston suggests that international visitors buy a $50 permit, which lets them drive for up to a year. “The money raised could go into a protected fund, ring-fenced from other spending… [and used] to kickstart funding on our most important roads”.
2.8 million visitors arrive in New Zealand each year, and when you take out those who won’t be driving and those who visit several times in the same year, you might be left with around half that number (just a guess). So, 1.4 million visitors times $50 gives $70 million – and I think I’m being generous with the figure, with not taking GST out of it, and not allowing for administration and compliance costs. Even so, it’s a drop in the bucket in terms of transport funding.
The Cook Islands
Winston points out that, for many years, the Cook Islands charged tourists $20 for a driver’s license, although they have recently gotten rid of the system. The situation in the Cooks is a bit different from NZ. They’ve got an economy which is almost entirely dependent on tourism. Their system was a way to get that little bit extra out of the tourists and into state coffers, and encourage tourists to visit the Avarua town centre (the police station is centrally located, and visitors will hopefully spend some money in the shops while they’re at it). It also gives the tourists a nice souvenir, which was a big part of not making them grumpy about the charge. Although, it seems, plenty got grumpy anyway – especially when they had a long wait for the license – and this seems to have been a big reason for dropping the system.
The other interesting thing about the Cook Islands is that it clearly doesn’t raise enough tax revenue to maintain its roads, or its other infrastructure for that matter. It relies on international aid to make up the difference. But every time a New Zealander drives around Rarotonga, they’re being subsidised courtesy of that system.
Now, if we’re really wanting to earn more money from overseas visitors, we can either invest in our tourism offering (and we do), or ramp up our marketing (and we’re doing that too), or we can raise money for the government in a cheap-to-administer scheme like a departure tax or similar. But let’s not stick the poor buggers with some kind of overpriced driving permit.
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It’s a ridiculous idea.
The USA charges South Americans $100 for a visa. The South American countries are so annoyed by this that they charge the Yanks $100 to enter their country; not for a visa, just a charge for being from the USA.
The same thing is likely to happen to Kiwis who want to drive in France or India or wherever if we introduce a hare-brained scheme like this.
Dumb idea. It would cost $30 to administer and so raise almost no money, and just drive away tourists.
+ 1. If you want people to come here for leisure travel, you don’t do anything that will create a negative impression. This sort of move can only do that.
And the amount of GST on the spending of the average tourist here would far outweigh such a levy. Negative impressions and minimal revenue raised – the worst of both worlds. Forget it.
How about we put tolls everywhere at key tourist locations in NZ and piss everyone else (locals or tourists) equally?
The Brits do that, it is called Pay and Display parking…
I discovered that there is SOME pay and display parking in Sylvia Park a couple of weeks back.
If we want to stop people driving on the wrong side of the road…
…we should discourage overtaking. It’s as simple as that.
The practicalities of preventing people from entering the path of oncoming traffic are somewhat more complex, but are a combination of education, enforcement, better road-markings*, overtaking lanes where appropriate**, wire ropes where appropriate***, and speed cameras to synchronise speeds on the road****.
*a huge fraction of roading where yellow lines are not indicated is in fact highly unsafe for overtaking – a car has little room to evade an oncoming vehicle travelling at 100km/h.
**their absence is often used by the NZTA as an impediment to marking the road with yellow lines, as if overtaking was a sacrosanct activity.
***motorcyclists claim these are dangerous. Given the number of motorcyclists who overtake and the number of fatalities, I am confident these will save motorcyclist lives.
****almost all vehicles on the road are now capable of travelling at 95-100km/h comfortably. It is the large number of people on the road who think that these speeds are unreasonable who cause problems.
Absurd idea. Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill. Tourists dont usually contribute to peak-hour traffic as they don’t tend to drive during these times, they also tend use country roads more than city roads which don’t have the contribution. Will only discourage tourism. They contribute far more in other ways to more than pay for themselves.
Yes, us Aussies will definitely want to come to NZ more if you charge this. And we could retaliate by charging NZ MIGRANTS, the far greater number, for damage to our roads.
I think there is a case for certain roads eg Milford Sound, but that should be for all tourists, not just foreigners.
Did many countries (including NZ) make Cook Islanders get a driving license as their country wasn’t in the UN traffic convention?
Charge $50 for a driving licence and many tourist couples would only buy one to save some cash. The consequence is the main and only allowed driver cannot share the wheel. Tired drivers are far more dangerous. Morever many tourists want to see as much of NZ within a short amount of time meaning they often driving long distances.
By the way, why should tourist pay more than any of us to use roads for a few weeks only? We should rather encourage them to share the road, pull over to let others passing them while they drive slowly and enjoy the scenery (which is what most kiwis do, especially truck drivers).