The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
You don’t have to be a roads scholar to work out congestion
|
Here’s a prediction in the light of Ken Henry’s call last week for congestion pricing to be considered in Australia: it won’t happen in your lifetime, Dr Henry. Urban road transport is a vast public policy failure by governments that costs us billions of dollars a year, but it will go on being tolerated, chiefly because voters won’t accept the solution. The Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics, which has been estimating congestion costs for years, most recently had a stab at costs in 2007 based on 2005 data, and concluded the cost of congestion that year was $9.4 billion. The BTRE concluded it was likely to rise, under a medium scenario, to more than $20 billion in 2020. Sydney and Melbourne are where two-thirds of the costs are incurred, and the costs are roughly split about 40% each for lost business and personal time and the remainder split evenly between pollution costs and extra vehicle running costs. In Henry’s words, that makes a compelling case for reform. There’s not too many micro-economic reforms that would inject $10 billion a year into the economy pretty much immediately. For economists, road pricing has been a compelling case for reform for decades. Impose a price signal and road users will start behaving differently, altering their travel arrangements or switching modes. Provide variable pricing and those who value their time the most can pay the most for a shorter transit time. And road pricing in fact is an area where we now do things significantly worse than our ancestors did. In the US and the UK, private provision of roads, and charges for users, were common in the 19th century. In the 20th century, governments pushed aside private operators in providing road infrastructure for the exponential growth in automobiles, and congestion began to become a problem of interest to economists, who had previously primarily been interested in how best to fund the construction and maintenance of roads. By the 1950s, the likes of Milton Friedman were advocating painting radioactive strips down the middle of roads and fitting Geiger counters to cars to measure travel. But it was only in the 1990s, when the technology for electronic tolling became available, that congestion pricing really took off. “Take off” is relative, because it only ever took off among economists. Singapore established a highly successful system and some Scandinavian countries experimented with it, but Ken Livingstone’s London system was the first example of a major metropolitan road pricing system. As policy makers steadfastly failed to see the good sense in congestion pricing, economists began to wonder what they were doing wrong. What could be more sensible than introducing a price signal in a market — the market of travel time — where consumers were subjected to Soviet-style queueing rather than being able to purchase a better product, in the form of reduced travel time? The problem was motorists, who have consistently indicated strong hostility to the idea of road pricing the world over. Motorists are perhaps the most irrational lobby group of all, as if the act of getting into a car reduces our IQs by 25%. We hold any number of absurd beliefs, such as that fuel excise should only be spent on roads, or is somehow sent into a black hole rather than spent on other areas such as hospitals and schools, that the solution to congestion is more roads, despite constant evidence that congestion simply expands to fill available road space, or that roads should be designed with peak loads in mind, ignoring the wasted investment when road space sits idle the other 20 hours a day. Most of all they believe roads should be free, despite readily accepting that goods and services have a price everywhere else in the economy. Australian motorists are no different to American, European or Asian motorists in this regard. Livingstone is now the former lord mayor of London. One of the persistent arguments against road pricing is that it is regressive, as if current arrangements are not. Car registration is a regressive charge, as is fuel excise — petrol is a greater proportion of the budgets of lower-income people than of higher-income earners. Lower-income families have to live further away from urban centres and, accordingly, have higher transport costs than inner-city residents. For all these reasons and more, it is unlikely any Australian state government politician will propose a comprehensive road pricing system for their capital city — and we’re really talking about the NSW and Victorian governments. Piecemeal tollways, yes — lumped higglepiggledly into a free transport network — but not a London-style system that charges you for using congested areas. You’d have to get a signed-in-blood bipartisan deal between the major parties before they’d ever commit to it. Or perhaps Nathan Rees might figure that, since he’s going to lose the next election anyway, he could actually achieve something in his brief premiership by giving Sydney a proper road pricing system. There’s another reason why governments don’t regard congestion as more than a minor political irritant. The primary victims of congestion are families. Although it isn’t reflected in the BTRE’s allocation of costs, if most people had smaller transit times, they’d spend longer with their families, not longer at work. It is families that pay the main cost of congestion, in terms of less time together, of stress in the home-school-work commute, of greater amounts of disposable income spent on fuel. And despite the homage politicians routinely pay to families, no one spends a great deal of time and money advocating on behalf of families spending longer together. In short, we might hate congestion but we don’t regard it seriously enough. Really, the only sensible solution for motorists is to make congestion so inordinately costly that governments are compelled to act. Everyone who is not driving a car to work at the moment should start driving and clog up the streets along with everyone else. Maybe that will make things so bad a brave politician will decide it’s time, finally, to act. |
|
|
14 Comments
Hey Bernard another great article. You keep zeroing in on very relevant stories and telling them well, thanks.
I wish you were right about the solution. But look at Dhaka . 7.5 hours a day. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26232746-12377,00.html
I am fortunate in that I live closer to Sydney’s CBD than I work. Traffic is mostly light. I see the other poor b_stards stuck going the other way. Dreadful.
A tax on road use in Singapore or London persuades commuters to use alternative, reliable public transport systems. In contrast, a congestion tax on road users, say in western Sydney where 80% of full time workers are car-dependent and there are few public transport alternatives, will have negligible impact on road use. We know what we need for sustainable urban transport movements: concentrations of jobs in multiple urban centres and efficient public transport systems that link these to workers’ homes. This configuration is a pre-requisite to a congestion tax on road use, as Singapore and London planners will tell you.
The cost is not just on family time. In the Sydney air shed there is a basin effect with a dirty ring of pollution that kills some 500 plus people a year prematurely from bad air quality.
And one wonders also if the lack of exercise, and trend toward unhealthy energy foods and drinks is all connected to poor air quality causing lethargy and stress.
Notice how much better you feel after only a day driving out of the city into fresh country air? That can’t be doing our physiology much good.
I’ve even started noting the complexion of people on the tv news from the country versus the city. The former always look healthier - including the fatties from the country.
“By the 1950s, the likes of Milton Friedman were advocating painting radioactive strips down the middle of roads”
That could work another way, make them high enough emission, and you’d want to avoid being stopped in a traffic jam there :^)
Reports that Ken Henry is advocating a congestion tax on road use is a very sensible suggestion for adjusting the demand for peak period road access which is a very scarce commodity. Such a process would make it economically feasible to encourage heavy transport to move goods outside of the normal peak period as well as discouraging the increasing demand for road capacity.
The technology for road use pricing is already with us with the electronic transponder used for tollway access. This together with optical character recognition which enables numberplates to be resolved electronically could be used for road use charging direct to customer accounts . This technology could be quickly adapted to road user charging in peak periods across all major arteries.
Not only could such a system be used to control peak period use, it could also be used for differential pricing for heavy vehicles to reflect the cost impact on road construction and maintenance. It could also be used to price access to “fast lanes” at a higher cost and slower lanes at a lower cost, and also for differential pricing on congestion days to discourage road use. I would commend Ken Henry’s proposal for serious consideration, not only in Victoria but across Australia as a whole.
It is unfortunate that Victorian Department of Transport has never seriously considered this option even though it is functionally responsible for both public transport and road construction in Victoria. It is perhaps a reflection of the craven supplication of public sector bureaucrats to the political process which preclude such options being seriously discussed in the public arena, or even as recently as two years ago behind closed doors within the Department when any such discussion was actively suppressed.
I think the reality of road pricing is that many bureaucrats would love to consider it (Yes, including the Victorian Transport Department) but whenever the issue gets near a political leader and microphone they run away from it at 100 miles per hour.
A magnificent article BK!
Ok — there’s a *big* existing problem in that car-dependent urban sprawl is not originally the fault of the people who live in it and who now *need* to drive. They don’t actually *deserve* to be penalised for driving … but they *are* the people who must be persuaded to drive less, to reduce congestion and pollution.
What we don’t notice much is that wherever good public transport options exist, there are people using them. Yes, even in the western suburbs of Sydney and northern suburbs of Melbourne.
So — go ahead and charge drivers for driving. Not per kilometre but per minute — or, to promote efficient cars and penalise tanks, per litre of fuel.
But give them a generous rebate for using park-and-ride schemes whenever they transfer to the public transport network at the first opportunity. Let cyclists get the rebate too
“But it’s still regressive!” you say. Okay, make the per-litre charge proportional to the list value of the car. Drop all the other on-road charges, even the import and stamp duties for when cars change hands.
And just as a sop to manufacturers and to promote newer, safer, more efficient models, offer to buy and scrap old cars whenever they’re borderline for road-worthiness or particularly inefficient.
Done.
The sumple truth is that the people know that a congestion tax will only be that.
There will be no additional spending on public transport so that all that will happen is the ordinary mug will pay a lot more for no gain. The politicians will of course get their congestion tax paid for by us. The best way to really improve public transport would be to make politicians to use it as their sole- no ifs and buts - no exemptions- means of transport.
Using the price signal to rationalise congestion will only work if there’s a suitable and reliable alternative - public transport.
As it stands, particularly in outer suburban areas, the demand for driving a car to work will be particularly inelastic, that is unresponsive to changes in price, because there is no close subsitutes.
Levying a congestion tax will raake in a whole heap of money, but only because many people have no other option.
There are two other alternatives worth mentioning.
One: move where you live closer to where you work.
Two: move where you work closer to where you live.
I’ve done both at various points, as have lots of other people. It’s not always an option for everyone, but if transport was subsidised less, more people would arrange for home and work to be closer together. We’d have a little less sprawl, a little more decentralisation of business, a little less congestion and a little less pollution.
Compact cities are recognised by urban-planning experts as better for a number of reasons. Less transit, less loss of bushland and prime soil, cleaner lifestyles as more people can walk to services, shops, friends, etc.
If governments can’t (or won’t) pay for proper rail networks, they should at least be able to provide decent commuter carparks at outlying stations for park-and-ride if they are going to consider congestion taxing. The carrot as well as the stick. And they need to provide security patrols for those commuter carparks. Lots of people who could easily park-and-ride won’t do so because of well-founded security fears for their car.
It’s that damn democracy problem - letting hoi polloi influence their leaders aka betters by voting.
As 70%+ people live in a 50kms wide coastal strip, Bris-Syd-Melb (Adelaide is, as always, a special case..) that is where the votes/seats are. Upset those voters and you lose your seat.
Ergo pander and stick your fingers in your ears and make ‘whoo-whoo’ noises until the problems of megacities go away. Sometime after you’re dead and get your Parliamentray pension & Gold Pass, in that order.
Doesn’t road congestion cost businesses more in transporting their goods?