User pay per km

User avatar
Cheesewheel
Posts: 1209
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 9:22 pm

Re: User pay per km

Postby Cheesewheel » Tue Jun 05, 2018 9:10 pm

I have been drifting in and out of this thread so I dont know if this has already been brought up

https://www.news.com.au/technology/inno ... 543c60af1c

A PLAN to radically change the way motorists pay for using the road, which could cost drivers more than $8bn a year, has failed in other countries and could fail in Australia, experts have warned.

......interesting that the extra cost of having a car in London simply saw them reemerge after everyone got socialized around the expense.
Go!Run!GAH!

User avatar
bychosis
Posts: 7250
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:10 pm
Location: Lake Macquarie

Re: User pay per km

Postby bychosis » Tue Jun 05, 2018 9:27 pm

Cheesewheel wrote: ......interesting that the extra cost of having a car in London simply saw them reemerge after everyone got socialized around the expense.
It is interesting. Every time fuel prices go up, there are cries of despair as people pretend they will do away with the car. then, sure enough they get used to it and keep on driving with minimal changes. It doesn’t help that fuel consumption is falling in conjunction with the price rises though.
bychosis (bahy-koh-sis): A mental disorder of delusions indicating impaired contact with a reality of no bicycles.

fat and old
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sat Aug 30, 2014 12:06 pm
Location: Mill Park

Re: User pay per km

Postby fat and old » Wed Jun 06, 2018 1:01 pm

Cheesewheel wrote:I have been drifting in and out of this thread so I dont know if this has already been brought up

https://www.news.com.au/technology/inno ... 543c60af1c

A PLAN to radically change the way motorists pay for using the road, which could cost drivers more than $8bn a year, has failed in other countries and could fail in Australia, experts have warned.

......interesting that the extra cost of having a car in London simply saw them reemerge after everyone got socialized around the expense.
As opposed to us cheapskate Melburnians.....when the 60 cent toll was removed from the Westgate Bridge the numbers went up like 1,000% or some such ridiculous figure :lol:

User avatar
Nate
Posts: 3209
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:49 pm
Contact:

Re: User pay per km

Postby Nate » Wed Jun 06, 2018 1:15 pm

march83 wrote: Can you link the paper, or discussion of?
no - it was around 2013, a senior economics guy from one of the big UNI's here in NSW.
all around the fuss with the sydney cycling paths

User avatar
Thoglette
Posts: 6605
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:01 pm

Re: User pay per km

Postby Thoglette » Wed Jun 06, 2018 1:36 pm

Cheesewheel wrote:the way motorists pay for using the road
Somewhere I have a wonderful quotation from W. Churchill arguing against a road tax. On the grounds that it would promote this fallacious attitude: that motorists pay for the road.

I'd much rather have less road, and particularly less high speed road in urban areas than try to have motorist "pay for the road".

There's another reason for this beyond reenforcing the meme that "we pay for the road, get the foxtrot off it". Basically, no matter how much we build, there will never be enough road. Houston is my poster child (see photo below, attached to a plea to solve congestion by building more roads).
Image(From Houston Culture)

And ultimately, having a large percentage of the population commute long distances as drivers indicates a failure in city planning.
If one must move lots of people long distances, trains are massively more efficient and far more effective. E.g. on a proper train, I can actually work. Or read. Or something. You can't (safely) if driving a car - it's dead time. Especially if coupled with bicycles for the last mile. Try parking this many cars!

ImageGrease-Lighnin blog

Plus there's a certain je ne sais quo to the demand that we should commute by car that Ross Zurowski captures rather well.
ImageAre.na
Stop handing them the stick! - Dave Moulton
"People are worthy of respect, ideas are not." Peter Ellerton, UQ

User avatar
biker jk
Posts: 7001
Joined: Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:18 pm
Location: Sydney

Re: User pay per km

Postby biker jk » Wed Jun 06, 2018 1:55 pm

Cheesewheel wrote:
......interesting that the extra cost of having a car in London simply saw them reemerge after everyone got socialized around the expense.
Not quite. The increase was in the taxi and private hire vehicle category (largely Uber) who are exempt from the congestion charge. The number of private cars entering the congestion zone fell by 39% between 2002 and 2014.

User avatar
Thoglette
Posts: 6605
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:01 pm

Meanwhile, in Singapore, this is old news

Postby Thoglette » Tue Jun 12, 2018 10:20 pm

Meanwhile, Singapore is going to replace their current tollway based fee system with a GPS based system (LTA.sg webpage) This will replace their current set of 93 traffic measurement points.

Oh, and they have a limit on the number of vehicles on their roads. You want to drive the car? You need to bid for entitlement
Stop handing them the stick! - Dave Moulton
"People are worthy of respect, ideas are not." Peter Ellerton, UQ

User avatar
familyguy
Posts: 8364
Joined: Wed Apr 16, 2008 2:30 pm
Location: Willoughby, NSW

Re: User pay per km

Postby familyguy » Wed Jun 13, 2018 11:34 am

The Singapore system is the one I use when people rant about bike rego here. Sure, it would never fly here, we've got the space, after all, right? 8)

Aren't WestConnex using a flagfall plus per km charging system for their tolls?

User avatar
g-boaf
Posts: 21320
Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:11 pm

Re: Meanwhile, in Singapore, this is old news

Postby g-boaf » Thu Jun 14, 2018 6:16 am

Thoglette wrote:Meanwhile, Singapore is going to replace their current tollway based fee system with a GPS based system (LTA.sg webpage) This will replace their current set of 93 traffic measurement points.

Oh, and they have a limit on the number of vehicles on their roads. You want to drive the car? You need to bid for entitlement
Oh, if you have a Zonda Cinque 1 of 5 I'm sure you'll get that certificate. Same for a lesser Ferrari, Lamborghini or something else. If those things can get such an entitlement, anything else probably can.

User avatar
Thoglette
Posts: 6605
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:01 pm

Re: Meanwhile, in Singapore, this is old news

Postby Thoglette » Thu Jun 14, 2018 2:21 pm

g-boaf wrote: If those things can get such an entitlement, anything else probably can.
It's an auction. So the question when you buy one of those things is: how much change have you got left over ?
Stop handing them the stick! - Dave Moulton
"People are worthy of respect, ideas are not." Peter Ellerton, UQ

User avatar
jules21
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:14 pm
Location: deep in the pain cave

Re: User pay per km

Postby jules21 » Mon Jun 18, 2018 1:14 pm

we'll get a new road user charging system. it won't necessarily by per km travelled, but we will get one.

how do I know? because the current one is short-changing treasury. if you ever needed to be convinced that govt will act, that's all you need. it's a lock-in.

User avatar
Comedian
Posts: 9166
Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2010 7:35 pm
Location: Brisbane

Re: User pay per km

Postby Comedian » Tue Jun 26, 2018 12:48 pm

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/nation ... 4znef.html
“The system is unfair because the link between usage and charging is weak. The system sees taxpayers subsidise all users, while those who use the network less are in effect paying a subsidy to support those who use it most,” the Australian Infrastructure Plan said.

Jmuzz
Posts: 631
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:42 pm

Re: User pay per km

Postby Jmuzz » Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:19 pm

The current fuel excise system actually works quite fairly.
Bigger heavier vehicles pay more.
City vehicles idling in congested traffic pay double vs country roads.
Driving at 110 pays more than driving at 80.

The impending crisis is that electric cars are going to destroy that taxation system so they need a substitute.

Simple odometer km's don't do the same job because they don't apply that congestion penalty. So they either need thousands of cameras to cover Australia (much harder situation than UK due to lots of road at low density) or GPS logger based.

User avatar
Comedian
Posts: 9166
Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2010 7:35 pm
Location: Brisbane

Re: User pay per km

Postby Comedian » Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:53 pm

Jmuzz wrote:The current fuel excise system actually works quite fairly.
Bigger heavier vehicles pay more.
City vehicles idling in congested traffic pay double vs country roads.
Driving at 110 pays more than driving at 80.

The impending crisis is that electric cars are going to destroy that taxation system so they need a substitute.

Simple odometer km's don't do the same job because they don't apply that congestion penalty. So they either need thousands of cameras to cover Australia (much harder situation than UK due to lots of road at low density) or GPS logger based.
Good points. Interestingly - vehicles sitting idling in traffic also incur an environmental penalty which probably isn't really taxed.

Scott_C
Posts: 934
Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2014 10:49 am
Location: Perth, WA

Re: User pay per km

Postby Scott_C » Tue Jun 26, 2018 3:54 pm

Jmuzz wrote:The current fuel excise system actually works quite fairly.
Bigger heavier vehicles pay more.
As I understand it road wear (particularly for heavy vehicles) increases in proportion to the axle load of the vehicle to the 2nd to 7th power (depending upon the initial condition of the road and some other factors). So while heavier vehicles are less fuel efficient and therefore pay more fuel tax than lighter vehicles they still cause a significantly larger share of damage than they pay for.

So if you doubled a vehicles mass on the same number of axles it would use roughly twice as much petrol and it would cause between 4 and 128 times more damage. So while heavier vehicles do pay more they are still hugely subsidised by other road users.

One of the big problems with this subsidy is that it isn't also applied to shipping and rail freight (which have to cover all of their own costs) which means that moving cargo by road is disproportionately cheaper than choosing other methods that have less impact on the public so we have more freight moving long distances on the roads, along with the associated road carnage, than we would have if we got rid of the trucking subsidy.

In my opinion the long term solution is to have GPS monitored per km rates for each road type for heavy vehicles, change the registration cost for all vehicles so it increases to the 3rd or 4th power with maximum axle weight rather than linearly by total weight as it currently does and replace the fuel tax with a carbon tax to cover the environmental angle along with congestion charges based on the London model to discourage/spread peak hour travel.

User avatar
Thoglette
Posts: 6605
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:01 pm

Re: User pay per km

Postby Thoglette » Tue Jun 26, 2018 6:45 pm

Scott_C wrote:One of the big problems with this subsidy is that it isn't also applied to shipping and rail freight (which have to cover all of their own costs) which means that moving cargo by road is disproportionately cheaper than choosing other methods that have less impact on the public so we have more freight moving long distances on the roads, along with the associated road carnage, than we would have if we got rid of the trucking subsidy.
Hell, there used to be a freight levy on trucks specifically to address this problem but it was removed in the sixties or seventies, IIRC. (Referred to by the truckies as "crippling taxes designed to protect the rail freight monopoly." )

Note that trucks pay less fuel levy per litre than normal road users.
For a brief summary see Trucks are destroying our roads and not picking up the repair cost (The conversation June 23, 2017 Philip Laird)

My favourite comment
John Boyd on The Conversation wrote:How many times have we gone around this loop over the last 60 years….many times in my recollection, and nothing changes.
FWIW An unnamed researcher at U. Gong was quoted in letters to the FR editor (Watts 2017) as being ten times as expensive as rail. This is a bit more than the normal "twice" (e.g. Cleary 2014) but it includes the costs associated with accidents (and presumably road repair costs.)
Stop handing them the stick! - Dave Moulton
"People are worthy of respect, ideas are not." Peter Ellerton, UQ

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users