More road user charges needed but time is not right

At the Australia Roads Summit in Sydney in late February, most CEOs of the state roads authorities, canvassed the likelihood of more sophisticated road user charges to fund likely shortfalls in road funding.

In NSW for example, taxpayers could be left to fund a $100 to $150M a year shortfall to maintain the national highway in that state. That is because it appears likely the Federal Government will back away from full funding.

And in WA, commissioner of Main Roads Menno Henneveld, estimated WA's total road funding needs for the next decade at $5.6bn spread over a 147,000km system serving 2m people. With indicative funding at $3bn, there is a funding gap of $2.6bn, up from $1.6bn three years ago.

“This gap relates primarily to improvement and expansion projects because the network is maintained under long term contracts that have first call on funding,” he said.

WA receives 8% of Federal road funs while it has 25% of the national highway.

Henneveld said more sophisticated road user charges could include:

Higher mass limits for trucks on selected routes;

Access to bus lanes for cars;

Dedicated toll lanes in congested areas for cars and trucks;

A cordon charge like the one applying in central London; and

A levy on road freight entering metropolitan areas.

Trucking benefits

He said the trucking industry readily accepted refinements in increased charges for road use if there were benefits to its operations. But as 90% of road users are car drivers, and they do not readily accept tolls, much less refined tolls, the challenge is not in devising a charging mechanism, but in making it acceptable to most road users.

The conference was organised by the Australian Roads Foundation not just as an opportunity to exchange information but also to take a first step in establishing a national peak body for Australian roads.

Queensland's Department of Main Roads director general Steve Golding, agreed that extension of road user charging beyond straight tolling was inevitable.

Otherwise the Sunshine Motorway north of Brisbane, currently handling about 40,000 vehicles a day on two and four lanes, would need to be 10 lanes wide to handle the projected load of 140,000 vehicles a day within 30 years, he said.

“But we are seeing the political will to explore new options that will help solve congestion problems coming from accelerated population growth. However there will never be enough funding to meet available needs.” Variable damage

Chief executive of the NSW RTA Paul Forward, agreed that road user charges should vary by vehicle types “because different vehicles cause varying amounts of damage and congestion.”

He said the growing use of electronic tags and monthly/quarterly statements of use, like other utilities, is equipping road users with a better understanding of user pays concepts.

“However, before we promote a system based on road pricing, we need more widespread use of electronic tags and then informed public debate about road pricing. Our preparedness for this debate is increasing…but we are not ready for it yet.”

Forward said one of the key conclusions of Prof Tom Parry's Parry Report into sustainable transport, published last December, was that proper road use prices rather than general motor vehicle costs, send the correct signals to the users of all transport services.

Raise debt

Parry also concluded that a public debt issue is one way to raise funds for public transport infrastructure and this could be used to close the funding gap, as it had been in the past.

But Forward said there had been little public debate on Parry's road pricing recommendations because the time was not right.

At the same time the community expects:

A higher standard of infrastructure and highly maintained roads;

More reliable journey times;

Road works that do not interfere with traffic;

Higher safety standards;

Transport mode integration; and

Sustainable networks with increasingly higher standards of environmental improvement.

On the last point, 5 to 15% of a road's costs are spent on environmental considerations, Forward said.

CEO of VicRoads Peter Anderson said any talk about road pricing in Victoria, “is dicey at the moment. Road pricing signals are up the creek. But a congestion charge can't be allowed to go over the horizon,” he said.

The Victorian government was talking about increasing public transport usage from 8% now to 20% by 2020. “But that would be world record stuff if it happens,” he said.

AusLink uncertain

On the subject of AusLink funding, Henneveld said the proposed method of identifying high priority projects, will favour roads with high traffic volumes “and this puts many of WA's roads, with low traffic volumes by comparison, at a disadvantage, irrespective of their importance to the WA and national economies.”

Henneveld was also pessimistic that WA would receive a fair share of road funds because of the lack of investment in rail infrastructure in the eastern states.

He said that while the Commonwealth had recently told him that it would provide a further $25.7M towards the maintenance of the national highway in 2004/5, WA still had to find an extra $6M “to keep maintenance at an acceptable level. Like other states, we have no indication the Commonwealth will provide further funding after 2004/5,” he said.

Quote: “the challenge is not in devising a charging mechanism, but in making it acceptable”

Caption “Victoria has found that extensive of use of freeway ramp metering increases average freeway speeds substantially. In the evening peak without ramp metering, speeds fluctuate wildly between 30 and 70km/hr with an average of about 45km/hr. But with ramp metering, the fluctuations are largely

between 80 and 95km/hr with an average of 86km/hr.”