The government today made their road pricing announcement, that they’d agreed a terms of reference to look into it. Those terms of reference also contain one glaring contradiction.
The project is going to be investigated like ATAP was with the government and council working together on it. Here’s their press release.
Smarter Transport Pricing project gets underway in Auckland
The Government and Auckland Council have agreed on Terms of Reference to establish a project to investigate smarter transport pricing in Auckland.
“Alongside our current multi-billion dollar transport investment in Auckland, we need to look at new ways of managing demand on our roads to help ease congestion. Smarter transport pricing has the potential to be part of the solution,” Finance Minister Steven Joyce says.
“Work undertaken last year by the Government and Auckland Council found that smarter transport pricing could help make a big difference in the performance of Auckland’s transport system,” Transport Minister Simon Bridges says.
“Smarter transport pricing could involve varying what road users pay at different times and/or locations to better reflect where the cost of using the roads is higher (i.e. where there is congestion). This could encourage some users to change the time, route or way in which they travel.
“It is essential that we carefully consider the impacts of pricing on households and businesses. A key factor will be the access people have to public transport and other alternatives.
“The Government has also made a clear undertaking that any form of variable pricing will be primarily used to replace the existing road taxes that motorists pay. This is about easing congestion, not raising more revenue,” Mr Bridges says.
The Smarter Transport Pricing Project will undertake a thorough investigation to support a decision on whether or not to proceed with introducing pricing for demand management in Auckland. Officials from the Ministry of Transport, Auckland Council, Auckland Transport, the New Zealand Transport Agency, Treasury and the State Services Commission will work together and engage the public to develop and test different options.
The first stage of the project, which will lay the groundwork for assessing pricing options, is expected to be complete by the end of 2017.
“Any decision on the use of a demand management tool like road pricing is still some years off,” Mr Joyce says. “We look forward to receiving advice from officials as this work progresses. The Government and Auckland Council will then consider the project’s findings.”
Auckland Smarter Transport Pricing Project Terms of Reference are available at www.transport.govt.nz/smarterpricing
It’s positive that we’ve seeing some movement on this but as mentioned, there is a huge contradiction in details of the terms of reference. This is below
The project must consider the implications of any potential pricing initiative on the current land transport funding system of fuel excise duty (FED) and road user charges (RUC). For the avoidance of doubt, this means the potential for any demand management pricing initiative in Auckland to replace or offset FED and RUC in Auckland.
So the government have ruled out any form of regional fuel tax with arguments including that we wouldn’t want people travelling out of the region for cheaper fuel. Yet, here they are stating that fuel and road taxes in Auckland would different to the rest of the country. If the intention is to keep things revenue neutral then it would be better to do that with the rates portion that goes to transport.
Of course none of this does anything to address the now $7 billion funding shortfall.
I’m also concerned that the ToR doesn’t make any mention of a requirement to investigate exactly what other projects are needed before this can be introduced. In our view, we need to have projects like the CRL completed and other aspects of the rapid transit network completed or at least well into construction. We’ll also likely need additional funding to provide more services across our PT network to cope with an increase in demand.
This project is obviously going to be something we’ll be keeping a close eye on
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“I’m also concerned that the ToR doesn’t make any mention of a requirement to investigate exactly what other projects are needed before this can be introduced. In our view, we need to have projects like the CRL completed and other aspects of the rapid transit network completed or at least well into construction.”
– Yes I suspect because they assume anything to be delivered on this road pricing to be years away.
Serious contradiction! They didn’t want to agree measures before that might have encouraged people to go out of the region to buy fuel, but they’re now stating that any smarter transport pricing would be offset against fuel taxes etc, meaning that people would be encouraged to drive INTO Auckland from outside the region to buy fuel.
I’m also extremely disappointed that the message is clear that this is not a means of raising new transport funding. FFS, given the clear and acknowledged shortfall in capital funding it is seriously negligent to take this approach. If not demand management pricing revenue, nor regional fuel taxes, then what IS the government’s strategy to meet this shortfall?
The longer this discussion goes on, the more I see it in political and ideological terms: English, Joyce and Co actually like the status quo because politically, it puts the government in the driving seat on Auckland transport decisions. And ideologically, it allows them to continue with promoting roading solutions aimed at the private car, while throwing a bone to public transport only when it becomes unavoidable. This is dereliction of responsibility on an epic scale.
Yes. “This is about easing congestion, not raising more revenue,” Mr Bridges says.
So it’s about a fantasy, then, and so glad he made it clear that it’s not about raising more revenue. We wouldn’t want to ever increase taxes to pay for something society needs, would we? That wouldn’t suit our ideology. Cowards.
Since you can’t actually ease congestion – except for those who choose to get out of their cars – why, Mr Bridges, couldn’t it be about carbon emissions, air and water pollution, accessibility for all, reclaiming the city for living?
For all that, we need a regional fuel tax AND a road pricing charge. Plus we need to reduce the number of cars in the city (probably through a regional car tax), and we need to reduce the road network and make our public transport fantastic.
Next stop is to look at what the other parties say, because National’s plans are just plans to make plans to do nothing that’ll work.
I’m not sure about a regional car tax?
How do you envision this be administrated?
while I agree we need fewer cars in the city, the main focus should be fewer cars on the road. If someone has a car sitting in their garage that never gets used should they be taxed for that?
Also if we have road pricing and a regional fuel tax then I would be inclined to want to make one of them cost neutral with the aim that those on lower incomes are not unduly penalized.
One way of countering this could be to use some of the extra revenue to subsidize PT for those with a community services card.
Yes, the number of cars does make a difference to the number on the road. In the Household travel surveys, I’m pretty sure I read that both walking and cycling go down as the number of cars in the household goes up. If you think about it, if there’s an additional car available, you can always use it when your car’s in the garage or out of petrol, you can lend it to your guests, you can all go in different directions by car, the teenager can borrow it, etc.. If there’s no spare car, you figure out PT.
Was reading an in depth Chinese study on the subject but I was kicked out of the site for having viewed too much (grrr…) Here’s one about Santiago, done at MIT:
http://web.mit.edu/czegras/www/Zegras_Stgo_BE_MV_OwnUse.pdf
“To gauge the cascading effects of vehicle ownership on household vehicle use, we turned to an ordinary least squares model predicting household automobile distances traveled on the day of the survey. The expected number of household vehicles shows the strongest relationship. Somewhat surprisingly, income does not display any independent association with vehicle use; income’s effects on use come only indirectly via the influence on the vehicle ownership decision.”
If you find another study, please let me know – I thought I had bookmarked a European study on the subject. Should have printed it. :/
Don’t know how the car tax would be administered, except that I suggest it could be simply an addition to vehicle licensing, for those with an Auckland address… same address would probably have to give some benefit too, like PT discounts? Or usage of car is monitored… Something to make it worth being honest about where you live, dunno. And there could be a better way to try to reduce car ownership than a car tax.
Agree with you about PT subsidy – affordability for all is important. If PT was sufficiently cheap and good, many people could save themselves the cost and hassle of owning a car.
actually, having cheaper fuel in Auckland might not be such a big deal – if someone wants to drive in and pay the congestion charges but get cheaper fuel, is that such a big deal? the numbers of population outside the area aren’t as big as that within the region so should be ok. And in any case, it’s probably good politics – if it helps them sell it by saying ‘yes we’re charging you to use the roads, but it replaces some of your fuel tax’ then people might go for it and it will ameliorate equity issues as well. And to be honest, we so desperately need to price this resource to change behaviour that anything for me that gets it over the political line I’m in favour of. In addition, behaviour change might in part address some of the funding gap by making some ridiculous road projects unnecessary, and revealing exactly what it is that we need most.
once charging is in place, can inch up the price to make it a revenue generator.
I think the issue will be that there won’t be a big difference in the price of fuel. For example if a petrol station in Tuakau is taxed and is charging $2 per litre (say 80c tax), then the petrol station in Pukekohe should be charging $1.20 without tax. However, in reality it would probably be able to get away with a price of $1.80 and pocket the difference, knowing people in Tuakau would still fill up when in Pukekohe.
Until the station next door starts charging $1.70 a litre and then they place charging $1.80 gets zero customers.
Yes, but $1.70 would still be a significant difference to pocket. While you are right that competition would help bring things down, I imagine owning a petrol station on southern and northern fringes of the city, would probably be a pretty good investment.
Even selling at $1.30 – $1.40 would give a pretty decent extra return.
It would probably drive the price down in places like Tuakau sufficiently that it could see their petrol station(s) go bust.
And then imagine, the gas station that was charging $1.80 goes down to $1.70 to match and the process repeats until both are selling at $1.20. This profiteering spiel about petrol stations is nonsense. There is so much competition in these towns that it can only happen through price collusion which is illegal.
The proposal to reduce tax on one side of a boundary sets up perverse incentives, but residents of Waikato and Northland are the beneficiaries, not fuel retailers. If the government truly didn’t want to use this as an additional tax then they would return a flat fee to every household.
Unlikely that it would be all the tax in anycase.
At most it would be probably about $0.40c per litre tax removed.
Other ways of doing things would be that since this will be technology driven (via GPS) the system could send a unique code to each car so that when it has been driven a certain amount in Auckland then people can get the discount. If it is being mostly driven outside of Auckland then that discount might be reduced or not applied. The petrol station would simply apply it (a bit like smartfuel discounts etc). They all have modern PoS systems now so wouldn’t be hard to do.
Or we just return a flat fee to every household. So much simpler.
There is good reason to view this proposal with concern. For a long time a similar situation existed on the NSW/Qld border in Australia, when Qld fuel was a mere 8 cents cheaper than NSW due to a difference in state taxes imposed. This resulted in all sorts of distorted travel behaviors near the border.
Economists assume people are rational at interpretting price signals. That is mistake number one. People tend to overreact to immediate price signals (tolls, fuel, parking) and underreact to indirect price signals (insurance, depreciation, rego).
So by all means lets have road pricing around congested cordons like the CBD. But differential fuel prices seems most unwise, and possibly inequitable. Not everyone in Auckland is rich. Not everyone in Northland is poor.
So its just a study taking years and probably costing millions. Whats the point? Is this announcement just an excuse for further delaying govt paying for Auckland infrastructure?
yes
I think the psychology of it needs to be taken into account, and there’s a lot of variables which would need to be considered as well for a successful system.
My gut feeling (about as useful as anecdata) is that full replacement of fuel taxes within the Auckland Area with road pricing will have the desired outcomes of less vehicle use to reduce congestion, as well as the environmental benefits, ONLY if the road pricing is applied everywhere and not just on say motorways or a CBD cordon.
If you only apply it to select areas while reducing the cost of petrol so massively, it will only encourage people to go out and buy more unnecessary Ford Rangers to drive everywhere other than the cordoned areas, because all of a sudden the operating costs are so much lower on a day to day basis. Hell, I’d probably go and buy one too! (OK I wouldn’t). We all know that people don’t generally take into account depreciation, licensing, maintenance when comparing PT vs car travel, so a reduction in Petrol by so much gives them the green light to go out and drive as much as they please, which surely defeats the purpose by creating more congestion which didn’t exist before? Sure, they might take one less trip to the CBD per week, but then decide to drive everywhere else because its so cheap? Is the desired behavioural change less driving in congested areas only, or less driving overall including congested areas? Surely the aim should be to change the behaviour of all those drivers who make unnecessary trips to congested Areas, while making sure that everyone else still pays the same amount and isn’t incentivised to drive?
If you only apply it to certain areas, then perhaps a small drop in taxes across Auckland – maybe 10c a litre – would throw a bone to the public to say that we recognise we’re going to try and hurt your pocket in other ways, but if you just reduce your unnecessary travel to congested areas….you’ll be much better off. If you really can’t, then you won’t be penalised in your pocket, but if enough people are taken off the road because they don’t want to pay you’ll benefit anyway as your travel times will be quicker. Politically you can say you’ve done your bit to not hurt people financially, but at the same time the road pricing also has a strong psychological effect on reducing unnecessary travel, even if the pricing is relatively low (i.e. as NZers hate tolls anyway so even a small charge would make a difference).
Re: across the border competition – I think over time if there were such drastic differences between Tuakau and Pukekohe, you would definitely get Tuakau stations shutting down, however natural competition would probably sort out all Pukekohe competing stations. Is this desirable? Maybe, maybe not – i.e. the people of Tuakau probably wouldn’t be too happy about this.
Absolutely absurd.
The government should just get on with the job and introduce peak period congestion tolls on a cordon using gantries.
Roads are built for peak capacity. Managing the peak demand will delay the infrastructure requirements and save much of the discussed funding shortfall.
The congestion tolling revenue can be ring fenced for Auckland and the petrol tax reduced nationwide so the net revenue is the same.
The niceties of a complete system can be studied in parallel. There are plenty of cities with cordon based “congestion” tolling already,
although they all don’t target peak demand.(London, Singapore, Dubai (corridor), MIlan, Stockholm, Abu Dhabi (potentially pending), Gothenburg)
I agree. Another key feature of those systems you referred to getting political acceptance was that the money raised was committed to improving cycle and public transport infrastructure. Otherwise it is just another tax
“This is about easing congestion, not raising more revenue” says Mr Bridges
I have a brilliant idea that could take 200, 300 or more SOVs from the Sh16 western motorway congested car crawl every morning
There is a perfectly good railway line that goes past Swanson to Waitakere to Kumeu and even to Huapai. The line is excellently maintained, properly signalled and there is even station infrstructure at all locations. Heck, there is even a decent size park and ride facility at Waitakere.
AT owns ten 2 car dmus (adl sts), all well serviced and updated, some of these are used for the Pukekohe to Papakur shuttle service. Not all ten are needed for this.
So, perhaps, two to four of these could be used to run a similar shuttle service between Swanson and Huapai.
Swanson station down platform could be used as the dmu platform since the up platform is always used as the emu platforn for both up and down trains. Dmu passengers transfer over to emu platform to continue into Auckland, ok not greatly convenient but there is an excellent footbridge (covered?) with lifts.
Overnight stabling for dmus is Henderson since the storage there is already used by emus but was previously used by diesel trains – so refuel and basic servicing/cleaning is already there.
I bet this could be set up, tested, and hop stuff installed this year, won’t there be spare hop readers (the post types) as some stations are gated this year and there is at least one spare hop/paper ticket machine that came from the closed Westfield station.
Since any other congestion reduction scheme looks many many years away (such as NW busway) then getting this shuttle service looks like a f**king great idea.
Can’t be any naysayers unless there is a more timely suggestion
Sounds brilliant to me, although I admit I’m not very knowledgeable about trains. Don’t understand why the roads have been improved out there while the railway is not used.
David of the ten ADLs sets only eight are usable, half of those are in use in each peak (including the ‘hot spare’) the others are being cycled through Westfield for servicing so there might be two at best available for the Huapai run. The signalling actually changes after Waitakere so that needs upgrading if there is to be regular services running on the single line, Henderson yard is no longer set up to fuel diesel trains and fuelling can not be done under live OLE.
Thanks for that info, I was thinking all ten adl sets were in service after reading the wiki pages about them showing all in service. Have not looked closely at Henderson yard but I thought not all of the storage sidings were OLE fitted. Even so I can’t imagine it being too onerous to have two dmu sidings there with diesel refuelling just like Pukekohe.
As for signalling beyond Whitakere, upgrading as needed should be a doable exercise as that line is vacant near the whole day.
In any case I still think a huapai-Swanson shuttle even if just 2 adl sets were available in peak times could easily remove hundreds of SOVs from congested motorway. ADL capacity of 264 for 4 car train, two or three shuttle trips between 7am and 9am.
I’m surprised the Huapai local board are not jumping all over this and getting AC/AT/NZTA to get it done.
I doubt it would need to be a four car set, there will only be two stations along the route – 132 seats should be fine.
I suspect the issue might be signalling and passing loops making it impossible without improvements.
‘Signalling and passing loops’. There are 2 long passing loops at Waitakere station starting before and after the platform. So a new set of points would be needed north between main line and near loop so up and down dmus could use the platform. A better solution would be to extend that stub platform beside outer loop for a dmu length then have ped crossing between platforms at north of existing platform.
That would allow up and down dmus to cross and make a 20 minute schedule possible.
A shuttle from Huapai to Swanson that runs two or three times in two hours is highly unlikely to attract hundreds of passengers.
Agreed Nick, while the Puke shuttles do attract hundreds of people there are differences with the railway being basically a straight line (like other routes) to the city from Puke. Rail from Huapai would mainly be an attraction to those working in Henderson, New Lynn etc as it is a long route (even with the CRL) from Huapai to the CBD by rail, SH16 (and the planned busway) are basically a straight line direct route.
Maybe so but with the current worsening sh16 congestion right into the city and the impending gridlock with opening Waterview tunnels then perhaps a 20 or 30 minute frequency Huapai shuttle would start to look very attractive. Circuitous the rail from Huapai to city may be but timewise would it be any worse than time wasted sitting in congestion?
I agree that much straighter NW busway is better than this HR rail option but HR could be done in months whereas busway is 10 to 20 years away.
Diesel trains no longer meet the fire safety standards to use the Waitakere tunnel according to Auckland Transport.
Good idea David. They also have some down in Taumarunui that could be brought back up.
Signalling shouldn’t be an issue for a service that is only going to be at most one every 20 minutes (any demand more than that would justify investing in the signalling).
Plenty of places to refuel using the OLE as an excuse doesn’t cut it. They could even look at extending it further up to Helensville since that town is booming. Would make a nice day trip in the weekends for people too (traffic is often worse in the weekends out West as people go to the cafe’s etc in the country).
Actually, that’s a fantastic point, Dude. More options for getting out into the country without a car would be great – I’m often trying to organise that sort of thing.
AKLDUDE first the SA sets are not coming back, the loco’s required are long gone. Second taking a verbal track warrant from TC every twenty minutes would take up time that would make twenty minute services uneconomical so the signalling would need to be upgraded before the first service ran.
“I’m also concerned that the ToR doesn’t make any mention of a requirement to investigate exactly what other projects are needed before this can be introduced. In our view, we need to have projects like the CRL completed and other aspects of the rapid transit network completed or at least well into construction”
Why do we need to build other projects before we start using the road network efficiently? It is actually the opposite – we need them to delay building expensive infra until road pricing is in place so we can tell if it is really needed. How many of those rapid transit network projects you think need to be built have actually been assessed with the assumption of fully internalised congestion costs on the road network?
You honestly think there are loads of people driving in rush hour when they have no need? They could go outside peak and save themselves 30 minutes and a tonne of stress but they choose not to? All I see road pricing doing is forcing poor people to use PT (which without prior investment will be a terrible outcome for those people), and maybe saving the odd unnecessary peak trip (which will soon be replaced by the 50k new Aucklanders using the road every year)
Well I know I and lots of people I work with drive at peak when they could do something else. I alternate between PT cycling and driving and I know others who do the same. Remember also that you don’t need much less traffic to get rid of congestion, so we don’t need huge swathes of people to make massive changes. In fact, over the course of a peak period, road pricing has the potential to actually increase the movement of vehicles. Congested roads have lower capacity than uncongested roads. By preventing the network from degrading into a congested state you can increase the overall capacity of the network.
I don’t know what roads you drive on to think that a 30 min time shift from the peak could result in stress free travel. I other leave work just after 5PM. I would have to wait to somewhere near 7PM to get a markedly better trip.
The thing about PT is that once the road network is cleared of congestion, road based PT will become exponentially better. Road pricing creates better PT. yes you would need some planning but you don’t need new grade separated corridors.
But surely the people who will ‘do something else’ will take PT (some will cycle but not a huge proportion). I don’t buy that road pricing will free up the roads so much that all of a sudden standard buses are quick. Even off peak most people in Auckland don’t have a quick PT option. I quite often have a look at the PT option when I use google maps for a journey and the PT option is almost always significantly slower than driving. Unless we add a lot more rapid transit, I think road pricing will just be a regressive tax on the poor.
“The thing about PT is that once the road network is cleared of congestion, road based PT will become exponentially better.”
I disagree with this. There is no way road pricing would make PT anything more than marginally better. Compare travel times at peak to off peak for a bunch of routes. The difference is small, in fact for a lot of routes the off peak is slower because the bus lanes disappear. That’s as much to do with streamlining movements from stops to intersections as it is for skipping congestion.
Sorry but all the bus stops, all the traffic lights, all the long routes on surface roads. Still there. We need the rapid transit to make PT fast and reliable regardless of congestion. We especially need it with road pricing to provide the capacity.
Saying we don’t need grade separated corridors on the PT network with road pricing is like saying we don’t need motorways on the traffic network with road pricing.
I don’t think he was saying “we don’t need grade separate PT with road pricing” but rather we don’t need to build these all before implementing pricing. I tend to agree.
Yes we need to improve the PT system in general but this doesn’t necessarily need to be done before implementing pricing. Pricing only needs to shift a small proportion of people off the roads to have benefits and not every trip on the road is one that has to be made.
Though I agree that doing the PT improvements first will make the politics of road pricing more acceptable.
No I’m pretty sure he means we don’t need to build any more rapid transit if there is road pricing.
I agree with your point. We should do road pricing even if we had zero transit at all.
My point was that if we are going to think about the timing of road pricing compared to significant infra investment, we should tend towards getting the road pricing first. This is because once we actually have road pricing we will have much more info about how much people really value travel.
When it comes to PT use of roads, I wasn’t comparing surface street PT to grade separated PT, I was saying that road based PT will improve significantly due to decongestion. My experience of PT in Auckland is that congestion significantly effects performance. This might not be reflected in time tabling because the buses just run late in the peak and/or because timetabled run times make generous allowance for delay even during the off peak.
Road based PT can use motorways as well. After the CRL, the next few RTN investments proposed in Auckland are more or less parallel to motorways. (NW Busway, a harbour crossing, Mt Roskill to Mangere, Constellation to Albany and then to Silverdale). Would it be more efficient for PT (with obviously investment in stops are related infra) use the existing motorway corridor than building a parallel corridor? This may be the best option post road pricing.
“You honestly think there are loads of people driving in rush hour when they have no need?”
You’ve clearly never lived near a school.
Pricing will increase the use of PT so improve the business cases of PT projects.
Yes but it will also remove the decongestion benefits of PT from the equation. And it will mean road based PT will compare better to new corridor PT than otherwise. So it’s not an obvious answer one way or the other.
But there is barely any extra capacity at the moment.
It’s a regional fuel tax by another way and means.
Different parts of the Ministry of Transport are not talking.
Auckland Smarter Transport Pricing Project
While the fundamental purpose of the recently-announced, joint initiative of the Government and the Auckland City Council by way of the Auckland Smarter Transport Pricing Project is somewhat different, it is nevertheless similar in many ways to the Roading Investigation undertaken in March 1952. Instigated by then Minister of Works, William Stanley Goosman, the eventual report of the Roading Investigation Committee was completed in February 1953.
Of course, priorities were somewhat different sixty-five years ago. One of the main concerns then was not the building of new roads but the strengthening of existing roads and streets so they could withstand the inundation of larger and faster motor vehicles. As the Committee observed, “A comparison of registration figures between those of 1932 and 1952 shows that while the number of cars increased during the twenty-year period from 148,159 to 293,236, the number of trucks increased from 31,319 to 98,668. This means that while the number of cars almost doubled, the number of trucks more than trebled…The growing relative importance of trucks to cars in 1952…indicates a fundamental change in the character of motor transport.”
[Ironically, one of the heavier vehicles to cause a problem was the trolley-bus, so much so that it received special mention by the Roading Investigation Committee: “These vehicles have created special major problems of road construction and maintenance for some of our cities…Contrary to popular belief, trolley-buses, which appear to be the smoothest of vehicles in operation, are in fact excessively severe on road maintenance…Recent developments in Auckland afford even more striking evidence of the effects of these vehicles…In all, twelve streets, mostly with considerable thickness of road formation, have been seriously damaged by trolley-bus traffic and now require extensive reconstruction.”]
Where the two investigations naturally correspond is of course with the issue of local and Government funding. One of the recommendations of the Roading Investigation Committee resulted in the replacement of the Main Highways Board with the National Roads Board and the establishment of a National Roads Fund to finance all road building and maintenance. The Committee recommended that the Fund should receive all road-user taxation as well as a Central Government contribution of approximately 12½ per cent of the nation’s road bill but, of course, that was not to be.
The stated purpose of the Auckland Smarter Transport Pricing Project specifically rules out the raising of extra revenue. Nevertheless, as in 1953, the question of who ultimately pays for this latest roading problem, in terms of proportionality between the road user, local Government, and Central Government, is likely to remain as imponderable as ever.
This study could take years, then the planning and implementation further years what is needed are funding stream now that will reduce the congestion by increasing the use of PT.
How about parking charges?
Could there be a way of charging for parking so that there are 15% of parking spaces f4ee at any time and that the rate increases the longer it is occupied by the same vehicle. How about removing all car pariking from Dominion and Mt Eden Roads and instal permanent 24/7 bus lanes so that the commuter buses have a better chance of keeping to schedule.