One aspect of the government’s papers on the Auckland Spatial Plan that has been picked up by the NZ Herald today is the suggestion that some sort of congestion charging mechanism be looked at again as a way of funding Auckland’s future transport requirements:
A paper released by Local Government Minister Rodney Hide before Auckland’s first spatial plan due out in 11 days suggests raising revenue by charging motorists to drive around the Super City at peak times.
“Current legislation permits tolling of new roads to provide revenue for their construction – in the long term, changes could be made to enable road pricing or tolling of existing as well as new roads,” it says.
The idea was parked up after Aucklanders rejected several Ministry of Transport suggestions for “congestion pricing” five years ago, and the Government was quick to abolish a regional fuel tax proposed by the former Auckland Regional Council to pay for electric trains and other public transport needs.
I’m fairly agnostic on the issue of congestion charging – it has its pros and cons. Furthermore, I think great care would need to be taken when looking at exactly how you might undertake congestion charging in a city such as Auckland. The “London style” system, of placing a cordon around the inner-city and then charging drivers for entering that cordon, would be technically easy to implement as Auckland’s surrounded by motorways and there is a relatively low number of entry points to the city centre. However, Auckland’s CBD somewhat struggles for survival, particularly in terms of attracting retailers and competing against suburban office parks, so it would seem unfair to punish this particular bit of Auckland when most of the other transport and land-use plans we have are based around encouraging activity in the city centre.
Another option might be to require a payment on a per-kilometre basis, depending on what time of the day you drive at. If you drive at peak times you might pay a charge of 10 cents a kilometre (or whatever), inter-peak might be half that and late at night the charge might be zero. This could potentially replace (at least to some extent) fuel taxes and thereby act as an incentive for people to catch public transport, or drive at off-peak times, when the roads are at their busiest. To me, this seems a more sensible option – but even then it might have enormous administrative and implementation costs: one would imagine specialist devices would be needed in every car, you’d need some sort of information bank and you’d need a payment process. All of this seems a lot more complicated and expensive than the current fuel levy.
Then there’s the issue of equity. Congestion charging effectively works by pricing the poor off the road. Now I realise this is a natural market situation (in the same way that the poor are priced out of Porsches at the moment), but if the basic ability to get around the city is made financially impossible through a congestion charge, then you really need to have a good public transport alternative. I don’t think we have that in Auckland at the moment.
Ultimately, how you approach congestion charging is going to depend on the question of whether you’re using it as an extra way to raise revenue (in which case the issue of political acceptability is going to be massive) or whether you’re using it to replace existing means of raising transport revenue – just in a way that also helps relieve congestion. Judging from the Herald article above, it would seem the government has the former in mind, probably because the political repercussions would fall in Auckland Council rather than them.
A possible alternative to congestion charging is suggested in the excellent book “Limits to Travel” by UK transport academic David Metz. First, he discusses the way in which pricing can assist in reducing congestion – to some extent.
So what is to be done about congestion? First, recognise that it has always been a feature of busy city centres, ever since Roman times. It’s inconvenient but not disastrous. The proverbial “gridlock” rarely if ever occurs… Overall, congestion is self-limiting since those with the least need to travel at peak times decide to set out at other times or travel by rail when that is a possibility. Congestion charging, as used successfully in central London, can reduce the level of congestion. But it would need very high charges to eliminate it altogether, charges which would be very unpopular and economically inefficient. London-type congestion charging can best be viewed as a charge on motorists for occupying road space while on the move, analogous to the charge for roadside parking, the proceeds from which are used to subsidise public transport and which helpfully lessens congestion.
But he points out the potential problems of extending such schemes beyond areas like London:
The economists are keen on charging for road use to deter those motorists whose need to travel at times of peak use is least, or who least can afford to pay. The success of congestion charging in central London is seen as encouraging. There is, however, a crucial difference between city centres, with their dense networks of public transport and the suburbs and beyond where car use is so extensive.
I would suggest there’s also a significant difference between extremely well established and strong city centres, like we have in London, and those in other parts of the world like Auckland that have generally been neglected over the years and as a result are somewhat more fragile. Metz continues:
Fewer than 10 per cent of those commuting into the original central congestion charging zone in London travel by car, whereas for Britain as a whole 70 per cent of journeys to work are by car. So the impact of London congestion charging falls on a small minority of drivers, mostly better off, while non-drivers benefit from improved public transport. But any form of national road pricing would hit the pockets of lower income motorists for whom public transport options will usually be more limited.
Metz also touches on the technical difficulties of implementing wider road pricing schemes before looking at possible alternatives:
What’s the alternative to road pricing? If you ask drivers why congestion is a problem, they say that the main concern is uncertainty about journey time. So what needs to be done is to provide drivers with predictive information about how long their trip should take, available at both their home and office computers before setting out, and on their mobile phones and in-car navigation devices while travelling. ‘Predictive navigation’, as this might be called, would provide the best route in the light of prevailing traffic conditions as well as the expected time of arrival. This would reduce anxiety about arrival time. It would also allow planning the departure time to avoid the worst of the traffic.
One of the reasons the Northern Busway is so successful is because it gives people certainty about their arrival time. If it normally takes you 30 minutes to get to work but once a week it takes you 60 minutes, chances are you’re going to budget 60 minutes of travel time – essentially wasting the extra 30 minutes 80% of the time. The Northern Busway isn’t affected by congestion (plus doesn’t experience the reliability problems of the rail system), and people appreciate this reliability and have flocked to it. Furthermore, if people can see that traffic is really bad now, but might be better if they wait 20 minutes, we will see a “spreading of the load” – which increases the efficiency of the transport network. Metz continues on this issue:
In this respect predictive navigation would function like road pricing by reducing congestion at peak times. But predictive navigation would go with the grain of many current technological developments, as well as being voluntarily adopted and paid for by those most able to benefit.
We have seen some evidence of this in recent times, with signs telling people how long it will take to travel various distances along the motorway. There are also websites showing how congested the roads are. This is a useful step in the right direction I think.
I guess in the end, I’m somewhat skeptical of road pricing because I’m not sure whether it’s the most effective tool for achieving either of its potential benefits: raising more revenue for transport or acting as a useful disincentive for peak time travel (without having big negative effects). As a revenue raiser, localised schemes like what London’s done depend upon superb quality public transport alternatives and a very strong city centre. Wider schemes are likely to have equity issues and also potentially be very expensive and technically challenging to implement.
In terms of congestion charging’s ability to act as a better way of raising the same revenue, there is more hope here I think as it would be more politically acceptable to have the charge replace a portion of our rates bill, or a part of our existing fuel levy. Yet some social equity and sheer efficiency issues remain. Petrol tax is really cheap to collect. Metz’s suggestion of providing better information as an alternative way to “spread the load” of peak times has merit and it would make sense to continue expanding how we do this.
But in the end, there are a lot of cities around the world that are probably better suited to congestion charging than Auckland – at least at this point in time. Yet for some reason it hasn’t happened in those places. That alone says we should be wary before rushing into anything.
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I agree that a charge on the CBD alone would be a really bad idea, most of the time when I have had to drive I find it isn’t the CBD that is a problem but other parts of the road network so any charge would need to address that issue. Also I agree that I don’t think our PT networks would cope with the demand as they aren’t now so we really need to get that issue sorted out or at least get a solid public plan of what and when improvements will happen because at the moment we don’t hear that much on things from AT.
Personally i still prefer a regional fuel tax though you could toll the Harbour Bridge, Southern Motorway, South-Western Motorway and the North Western Motorway but not at too high a rate as to push mountains of traffic of on to the local roading network.
I totally agree with you jarbury and also think congestion charging by ringfencing the CBD will only act to achieve what Joyce and co. want which is the spreading of business parks to the suburbs and city fringes (and whilst some people may switch to PT a lot of people will simply not go there at all) rather than acting as a catalyst to promote PT. I think we have to be conscious here of the fact that National’s plan is for a road’s centric spread-out Auckland, and not for a compact PT friendly city, therefore, congestion charging as contemplated by National will be to achieve the former, whereas in places like London it was to achieve increased PT ridership and fewer cars in the downtown areas. The whole concept has its merits but how you go about it really depends on what you want to achieve, and to be honest what National wants to achieve is pretty scary.
I also have to agree that reliability of PT is a major thing for me, if I know a journey will take xx minutes all day, every day, even in rush hour I’m more than happy to use it because in my view that’s freedom, sitting in traffic isn’t.
Let’s just go back to the originally planned fuel levy….
reliability, at least of arrival, becomes irrelevant with sufficient frequency…. yet another reason why we need that CBDRL
How about this
We built the CBD rail tunnel borrowing money
We impose a congestion tax once the tunell is built
The London style congestio charge helps pay back the debt
Obviously the Northern motorway and Fanshaw street off/on ramps can be excluded as North Shore won’t benefit from the CBD rail tunnel
I agree about the cordon-toll thing- its probably not the way to go. The retailers in Auckland CBD would be fuming at this I suspect.
Road user charges and congestion tolling are helpful I think. With cars moving to electrical propulsion, the whole “let’s raise the funds for transport from taxing petrol” suddenly doesn’t work. I think the funds can be legitimately applied to transportation- both roads and rail, and a refund to ratepayers if that is what is required. It should replace existing charges and fuel taxes levies.
But lets be honest here- the roads will still be busy, congestion charge or no congestion charge. These schemes have the potential to fund public transport expansion too, so it really is a chicken and egg situation. In these types of situations I think, unless there is a really really good reason to start at a particular point, starting at any point will do. In this case, which is easier- public transport expansion or setting up the charge?
“let’s raise the funds for transport from taxing petrol” suddenly doesn’t work.
In NZ any vehicle powered by a fuel that is not taxed at the source (anything but Petrol or LPG) must pay road user charges. Basically you pay for Kilometers, and get a windscreen label with a maximum odometer reading you must not exceed without paying again. Electric cars have there RUC’s temporally set to a zero price to encourage there uptake. Once they become mainstream they this temporary RUC rating will be removed and they will have to pay the same RUC’s as light diesels.
Theoretically I like the concept of congestion charging, but not sure if we could actually apply it properly in Auckland. You really need to charge all main routes, and have a flexible system of charges that responds in several increments to increasing levels of congestion.
Having said that, Auckland is naturally segmented into subregions with choke points at bridges, causways and thin strips of land that would be idea for tolling points. To do this properly it would need to be implemented simultaneously with a region wide rapid transit system in parallel, plus probably a much stronger regional centres policy. It could be very effective, but not in any half measure.
Being realistic I see a soft option as probably the way to go, such as a regional petrol tax combined with a regional parking levy and building any new motorways as toll roads. Not as effective in spreading the load and creating mode shift, but far easier and more efficient to implement which probably means it drums up more income.
Another consideration is that congestion charging could just reinforce the pattern of people only taking public transport to congested centres during the peaks and driving any other time… except that even more peak PT capacity would be required, making the system even less efficient.
A blanket package of ‘sticks’ would suppress demand for driving at any time, meaning demand for alternatives at any time would increase.
There is no need for toll gantries anymore, you can use GPS Skymeter tolling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk98fFe4N9A
Pay per kilometre, can be adjusted by time or whatever.
I don’t think that it will be a 100% solution, but it might be part of it.
A good, all day frequent PT network would also help, like the Brisbane BUZ.
That skymeter involves a $250 unit per car, so just under a quarter billion to fit out the Auckland fleet. That would buy a fee gantries!
Also what is the deal with enforcement, how many resources are required to make sure people are using their unit. Photographing license plates of cars with no toll tag is straightforward.
Yes, but it could be a private cost, offset by the savings people make from reduced congestion (or at least that’s what it claims).
$250.00 in the grand scheme of things (how much does a car cost, $20 000?) works out to be 1.25% the cost of a car.
And it could be used nationwide, rather than just in Auckland.
Putting gantries up at each motorway interchange and perhaps at major intersections would probably be easier, all data could be fed back to a central location and software work out how far people travelled. It would be hard enough to add a congestion tax without also requiring everyone to go out and spend $250 on a a device they don’t want. If you limited it to new cars then it would just see the existing vehicle fleet and NZ already has a pretty old fleet.
You would also have to implement it nationwide as you never know when someone might drive to Auckland and that would piss not only Auckland off but the rest of the country too (plus make them hate AK even more)
Well, you raise some good questions about how to transition. Though I don’t think it would be harder than when seat-belts were compulsory required in cars in the late 1970’s. It is a good question though.
The thing about gantries is that they are good for cordon tolling, but what if you don’t want to charge just for congestion, but also road use? Or what if you want to charge for driving, but not in any area in particular? Congestion also occurs at other places than highways, like arterial roads. Cordon tolling is just one of many different forms of congestion and road user charging.
The cost of such a device is small when compared to the cost of a car; it could be a private cost, unlike a toll gantry which must come out of the public account. Introduction could be spurred by excepting/refunding such users from the fuel tax component of petrol, for instance (as they have already paid). From my humble scratchings around on the NZTA website it seems that there is some mechanism like this already in existence http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/factsheets/14/excise-duty.html
“Or what if you want to charge for driving, but not in any area in particular?”
We already do, with petrol tax or road user charges. Charging for driving is simple, charging congestion is harder.
The Netherlands is planning a GPS based national system so it will be interesting to see what they do. They intend to make it revenue neutral as petrol tax will be eliminated. One potential way to progressively roll such a system out would be to allow people to either continue paying petrol tax, or start using the GPS system for a few years before making it compulsory (plus new car/ used car imports would automatically start on the new scheme).
What you ‘pro fuel taxing’ people are forgetting is that not all the congestion guilty drivers LIVE in Auckland. Therefore by charging a regional tax you are targetting the penalty on those who may not EVER enter the congested areas and not targetting those who frequently enter and cause congestion. Get it right people !!! Getting it wrong is the cost of my kids school fees and shoes and many other essentials for the year.
Bev, the amount of people who live in the Auckland Council area but not in Auckland itself is miniscule, less than 1% of Auckland’s population. And everyone in the region will benefit from the economic gains of quality rapid transit and freer flowing traffic, even if they don’t commute directly themselves. I don’t understand how this would “not target those who frequently enter and cause congestion” though, who are these people that frequently drive around Auckland, contribute to congestion but don’t buy their petrol there, perhaps a handful of people who commute from the Waikato or Northland I assume.